OPERATION: DARK WINTER-REVISITED

Sometimes our worst fears are often chalked up to personal hysteria. There are times, however, when our dread is based off the horrible possibility of a very real event. The latter is the foundation of Operation: Dark Winter, a senior-level government exercise from June 2001 that simulated a bioterrorism attack in the United States using smallpox as its agent of choice.

Designed and controlled by key members of Johns Hopkins University and a company known as Analytic Services, Operation: Dark Winter (ODW) focused on evaluating the nation’s capabilities to respond to a massive smallpox attack on a major American city, namely Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. From there, the simulation’s scenario only grows worse, looking to test America’s resiliency to stand up to a coordinated attack by international terrorists.

The results of ODW’s efforts revealed a stunning reality that many Americans aren’t aware of — we as a nation are drastically ill-prepared for such an attack. Problems range from a lack of sufficient training, insufficient amounts of vaccine or drugs, or the ability to stop the spread of a potential pandemic in communities. ODW revealed many gaps in the nation’s preparedness levels enveloping a bioterrorism attack.

With advances in healthcare and government-sponsored preparedness efforts, America should be able to stand against such an attack today, right? To best answer that question, we’ve assembled a guest-panel of experts. Colonel Randall Larsen, USAF (retired), one of the chief architects of ODW, will be joined by combat psychologist Neal H. Olshan, Ph.D., and Dave Jones, Army Chemical Officer (retired), who has a background in nuclear/chemical/biological warfare (NBC). Here we delve deeper into the current state of affairs with the nation’s healthcare system to determine if we’re better prepared now than we were when the study was originally conducted or if the healthcare