Using computer simulations, experts from the Brookings Institution and the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense have devised a strategy to contain a smallpox attack. Based on the computer model, they have developed an alternative strategy for vaccinating against smallpox.
The U.S. Defense Department has licensed to a few select nongovernmental organizations previously unavailable software that can model the effects of releases of nuclear, chemical, biological or radiological weapons and materials.
Sandia Labs in Livermore, California, tests a "deadly serious" simulation program intended to help officials react nimbly to a biochemical attack on San Francisco.
Analysts warn that recent U.S. government 'war games' to predict the effects of terrorist attacks fail to take into account the set of "interdependencies," or specific repercussions, that affect the outcome when a disaster in one industry wreaks havoc on the nearby, dependent infrastructures of other sectors.
Sandia National Laboratories has created a new "Simcity-like" war game that will help train public officials on how to detect and respond to terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction.
Fictional terrorists attempted to launch a biological attack on a fictional U.S. embassy Tuesday. But real-life technology companies helped thwart the invasion by linking their real-life communications networks, as officials from the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and other federal agencies watched and took notes.