Pandemic Simulations

This is the third major pandemic exercise that the Center for Health Security has run. The first, called Dark Winter, was held in 2001 and simulated a smallpox attack on Oklahoma. Its timing, just a few months before 9/11, made its terrifying outcome—the near-complete breakdown of government and civil society—deeply resonant. Dark Winter is credited, in part, with spurring George W. Bush to pass Directive 51, a largely classified plan to insure the continuity of government in the event of a “catastrophic emergency.”