Here is my favorite exerpt of a conversation about today's simulated terrorist attack: "Today, a girl in ripped up clothes and covered in blood with a real-looking, big, metal screw sticking out of her forehead came up to me after being hosed off by guys in bunny suits and told me quite cheerfully that she was dead and did not require medical attention. I sent her to the morgue." "Conversation I had today: (Woman about my age): "Hi, I'm a five year old boy and I was at Starbucks when the bomb hit. I lost my mommy and have various contusions and fractures." Me: Um, okay. Where does it hurt? Woman: I don't know. Does it say anything about that on my card? Me: I thought the bomb was on the bridge. Why is everyone coming from Starbucks? Woman: I'm not sure." "yeah, we had some people who feel off the bridge into the willamette with "minor injuries" I love that radiation, bridge fall, exposure to the willamette=minor injuries"
It's about as lame as practicing hiding under a desk from a nuke. It's funny how humans feel practicing for a disasters is really going to help anything. You can have all the fire & exit plans in the world. You can practice them all day. But someone yells fire and sees real smoke. Nature is going to kick in and niggas are going to run. It's in our DNA.
I think the idea is that it is a training exercise for emergency and medical personnel, not for the general public.
It doesn't matter. People aren't going to file in and say. Hi I have a screw in my head and I think something is eating away at my leg it's kind of green can you help me? There will be screaming hitting biting kicking.
I did a hurricane response scenario with the active Army, the National Guard, Air Force, FEMA (etc). They (FEMA, I think) had actually recorded fake newscasts complete with stock footage of other hurricanes to make it look like real time. They released these videos periodically on the common shared server we used and ran them on VCRs around the building. It was pretty well done but we never travelled outside our building. It was all computer-driven.
yea scenarios, and simulations and shit sound great. but when you say remain calm and peaceful. people do the complete opposite
Yeah, you never know how you will react in a crazy situation. I know that I go into slow-mo usually when something bad happens. An old guy collapsed in front of me and I just stood there. I'm one of those people you want to fucking choke to death in a bad situation because I would probably just stand in everyone's way.
At the moment of an attack, they will, and the areas where the attack was simulated also had simulated panicking. But by the time people have been hauled up to the hospital they're usually in shock and not doing a lot of kicking, screaming, and biting. The girl with the screw was dead, so there was no reason for her to be simulating freaking out. Anyway, no, nothing will go smoothly if there's an attack, but the idea is to give emergency and medical personnel a plan of action and help more people get treatment and hopefully survive than if there was no course of action.
I am not denying that terrorist attack drills are stupid and useless, I'm just saying that the training is probably useful for lesser emergencies.
I've worked more real hurricanes than scenarios. At least in the real world you can see the effects of your actions versus a computer "guess." But such scenarios of for the planners more than the people on the ground. You have to create some planning factors by "war-gaming" so you have some vague idea of the manpower and equipment needed to accomodate "X" amount of displaced civilians. The best plans never survive first contact but at least you know where to aim even if you miss the target. DId I overstep my military analogy quota?
Maybe if you arm yourself with a cordless drill, you can torque that screw a little deeper and thwart the zombie attack.
