Wired – A virtual pandemic hits New Mexico: Inside the Los Alamos weapons lab, massive computer simulations unleash disease and track its course, 6 billion people at a time. A look at how simulation is aiding biodefense efforts.
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Wired – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding a series of computer games to help prepare health workers and other first responders facing bioterror attacks, nuclear accidents and pandemics.
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News.Medical.Net – A video game that simulates biological, chemical, radiological and natural disasters in a major metropolitan area, developed by a team from the University of Illinois at Chicago, will be used to prepare public health workers and emergency responders for real life emergencies.
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Washington Post – William Arkin looks at the latest wargame played by the Northern Command, which postulated an anthrax attack against targets in Alaska.
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BBC – Officials in New York City have begun conducting a large-scale anti-terror test aimed at simulating the effects of a major biochemical attack.
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Washington Post – Deep inside the cave-like laboratories of the legendary research center that created the atomic bomb, scientists have begun work on a Manhattan Project of a different sort.

In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, they have been constructing the most elaborate computer models of the United States ever attempted. There are virtual cities inhabited by millions of virtual individuals who go to work, shopping centers, soccer games and anywhere else their real life counterparts go. And there are virtual power grids, oil and gas lines, water pipelines, airplane and train systems, even a virtual Internet.

The scientists build them. And then they destroy them.
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Radio Netherlands – The Dutch government feels it would be a good thing for the Netherlands to have its own large-scale exercise in dealing with bio-terrorist attacks, along the lines of Atlantic Storm.
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Honolulu Advertiser – Residents faced a plague of bogus disasters this week as emergency crews from across the state and parts of the Mainland trained on Kaua’i for a series of disturbingly realistic bioterrorism events.
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Associated Press – Federal officials in Washington said they learned a tremendous amount from the massive antiterrorism drill TOPOFF 3 conducted in New Jersey and Connecticut but would wait until all the data have been analyzed before making public what went right and wrong in the weeklong exercise.
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The Times – The United States was today in the grip of the biggest terror exercise in its history as two states flanking New York came under a simulated chemical and biological attack. British intelligence agencies are engaged in providing detailed support for the $16 million operation, which began yesterday and willdraw on a cast of more than 10,000over the next four days.

More from the BBC – Terror drill tests US hospitals.
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Bloomberg – Exercise TOPOFF 3 begins.
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Department of Homeland Security – Top Officials 3 (TOPOFF 3), the most comprehensive terrorism response exercise ever conducted in the United States, will occur from April 4-8th, and will involved the United Kingdom and Canada.
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Scientific American – “Episims” unleashes virtual plagues in real cities to see how social networks spread disease. That knowledge might help stop epidemics.
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New York Times – Analysis of the Atlantic Storm bioterrorism wargame from the co-directors of the Atlantic Storm simulation exercise.
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Pittsburgh Tribune Review – A model for simulating the effects of biological weapons on US cities is being refined at Carnegie Mellon University.
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Pittsburgh Post Gazette – More on exercise Atlantic Storm.

Los Angeles Times – Smallpox Exercise Poses Big Question: Is Anyone Ready?

Radio Netherlands – Atlantic Storm???on a tabletop and Sombre conclusions follow ‘Atlantic Storm’.
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Washington Post – A look at Exercise Atlantic Storm, a wargame that postulates worldwide simultaneous attacks by terrorists using smallpox as a weapon, and the grim results.
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GovExec – A look at the use of simulation as a training tool to teach the proper responses to a biological, chemical, or radiological attack.
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Associated Press – Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge gave governors a taste of terror Monday, playing out a simulated tabletop bioterrorism attack and likely responses – from trying to keep the public informed and calm to carrying out massive vaccinations.
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[Clinical Infectious Diseases] – Lessons learned from Dark Winter, a senior-level exercise in 2001 that simulated a bioterrorist smallpox attack on the United States.
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Washington Post – Last year’s ‘Topoff 2′ bioterrorism exercise in the US showed severe communications problems amongst responders.
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Department of Homeland Security – Lessons learned from last year’s ‘Topoff 2′ bioterrorism exercise.
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Global Health Security Initiative – The formal lessons learned from last year’s global bioterrorism exercise Global Mercury. (In PDF format)
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Washington Post – Lessons learned from last year’s global bioterrorism exercise Global Mercury.

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