Operation Dark Winter

"Dark Winter has revealed how vulnerable we've become. Our lifestyle, our security, our safety depends on a delicate and unstable economy. We've created a system so complicated that we no longer understand how to control it. Oil, power, shipping, transport -- we live in a complex world, and the more complex it gets, the more fragile it becomes. The system is built on a global supply chain that gets things where they're needed -- just in time. We've created a house of cards. Remove just one, and everything falls apart. And what's fueling this system? Money." In 2001, an operation known as "Dark Winter" was launched. It was a real-world exercise that tested the emergency response to a bio-terror attack on the United States. The simulation spiraled out of control within a few days, and predicted that a "breakdown in essential institutions," civil disorder, and massive civilian casualties.

The simulation’s target was to assess the shortcomings during such a national emergency, should it come to a biological attack against the American people. This project served for creating preventive measures and strategies to cope with this kind of problem. Moreover, this should make the government as well the population aware of such a problem.

The scenario of Dark Winter was about a local smallpox attack on Oklahoma City. It was designed so that things were out of control soon. It resulted in an emergency to the fact that the National Security Council, on the one hand, had to focus on locating the attack-origin and on the other had to contend with the problem of the ever-spreading virus. Not being able to keep in step with the virus with such a rapid contagion rate would mean for the high rate of civilian casualties, that all emergency equipment in America would reach their limits, a breakdown in essential institutions and civil disorder.

Dark Winter has revealed how vulnerable we have become.

These catastrophic contingencies and the fact that many people would lose their lives have been used to demonstrate the weaknesses of the U.S. health infrastructure, but secretly to point out that it would not be able to avert such a threat and deal with. Not to be forgotten is also the resulting stampede among the population, which would lead to a complete stop of the social apparatus, which in turn would entice people to outbreaks of violence at all ends. Also, intelligence services such as TV and radio would have enormous problems to provide appropriate security procedures for the population.

Many years later and with a retrospective to Dark Winter, a new presidential directive called Directive 51 was put into effect tacitly.

Appearances

 * Tom Clancy's The Division

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