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Sandia Labs Creates "Sim-Terrorist Attack"
linuxwrangler writes "This article in the San Francisco chronicle describes the new "Weapons of Mass Destruction Decision Analysis Center" software created at Sandia labs. Work started on the software, modeled after the popular Sim* series of games, well before 9/11. It is designed to simulate a "war room" atmosphere and looks like a cool way to put geek toys to practical use. Now if I could just download the tarball...." Be sure to examine the picture of it running on their CAVE like system.
why a tar ball? why not a self installing exe?
Have these "scientists" learned nothing from the esteemed Dr. Falken?!?!
But i was playing Castlevania so it was all worth it!
That thing looks nothing like a CAVE. I worked at the Cornell Theory Center and my group used our CAVE a lot... it is ideal to cover 3 angles (via 3 walls and projection) for immersion, and a CAVE is typically used for more immersive visualizations than spreading out information ala' their display.
Theirs is more like a movie screen.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
I'm glad to know that our elected officials will be prepared to deal with the threat of large monsters destroying our cities...
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Let's hope the simulation doesn't go haywire and start to distribute real anthrax samples!
What about funky furniture sets for your terrorist attack? That'd be good too.
It looks a lot more like non-technical people spending government money and trying to come up with something to show for it. And not doing a very good job...
"looks like a cool way to put geek toys to practical use"
Geek toys are never of practical use. That's the whole point of them.
Then again, there have been plenty of nuclear war sim-type games released throughout the years, so why would this be any different.
Damn...I just flamed myself.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Just go up to the menu and turn disasters off.
modeled after the popular Sim* series of games
Sim City: Do they include the scenario when the aliens visit?
The Sims: So will it take them 15 minutes to go to the bathroom, and set fire to the simulation room centre when trying to cook a snack?
I thought it was funny enough when games were used for real life scenarios. Esp. the designers of a major building, creating a virtual version in the Quake engine... and then prospective clients/investors took a virtual tour and promptly died when trying to use an evelvator (falling down the lift shaft didn't help either).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Just a couple of questions.
1. Why did you post this all as an a c?
2. why did you post this?
3. Where's my tin-foil hat
anyone heard the Penny Arcade theme song? it kicks your ass and fucks your mom, all while getting drunk on monkey piss.
yup, its that great.
...just check out the Aeron chairs. They'll be bankrupt in a month.
Use your Blackberry Pearl as a Bluetooth Modem in OS X
...software run on Windows... people use giant projection screens filled mostly with empty space in dialog boxes yet don't have their own monitors, and sit in Aeron chairs... photos show infamous "text projected on a face" effect except that it's real this time, someone actually got a face in front of a projector, blocking it from all others...
Why does it all look like a PR stunt, dotcom style, or something from a low-budget TV series?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
the slashdot effect as a viable effect?
I wanted to see the site...and lookie there, its gone. Fear the slashdot.
This would undoubtedly lead to more violence in schools. They should put an NC-17 rating for this kind of games and enforce them.
Maybe they bought them at auction from MyLawnmowerPortal.Net?
'Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out.'
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
What are thousand-dollar Aeron chairs, which the dot coms were criticized for wasting money on, doing at a government lab?
That text is really sharp. It's amazing how the pale whiteness of her skin makes for a really good projection surface.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Keep in mind that the value of such a simulation is NOT to play the game but to experience the decision-making cycle and understand the process of what comes at civic leaders with a potential pandemic on their hands.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Whoever marked this offtopic has obviously never even played "The Sims".
Lunix is for the gays.
Oh well, since no one else has said it: THEY SHOULD OPEN-SOURCE THE PROJECT!!!!!
Just wonder if anyone's considered that one.
Posting as AC so I don't get credit for it.
Sandia Labs forget about their flashy crap while we real megalomaniacs play World Dictator with some other nifty game that involves WarGames like scenes. Rawr!
Hate me!
...before Maxis releases this as another cheesy $30 expansion pack for The Sims?
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
Sim my ass! There's no "war room" like my seventh grade arts class. That's what people should be worried about.
I wonder what addon packs it would have?
Sim Terrorism(R): Nuclear Winter anyone?
I thought Microsoft published this a while ago.
What I want to see is Osama getting it on with the attractive female maid.
I wonder what their child would look like. You may have to construct a cave attached to the house.
"You have chosen to distribute medication to halt the spread of the bioterror weapon. Windows must reboot to continue saving the world. Please wait."
"Shall we play a game"
I can save us all a bit of money by coding a freeware replacement for their programs... Here's the output from the beta program in action...
$ What happens when a nuclear device is used upon a city?
--> Many people die.
$ How do we prevent people from dying in a nuclear attack?
--> Delete all memory of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians dying in multiple nuclear attacks, then build forty thousand nuclear weapons at a cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars, then threaten to use them against any nation, peoples, race, organization, or other human population that you determine are unfit to live.
Clearly there's no more fine tuning to be done, so expect the tarball on freshmeat tonight.
Since they term the system: Weapons of Mass Destruction Decision Analysis Center, then obviously it deals from simple plagues to tactical nukes, no? The article mentions about a possible nuclear holocaust. They plan to distribute this to various public agencies. The only problem that I have with this is the fact 1) This has already been done by the military, playing "war games" of such where you have a group of military/civilian high-ranking officials, being presented with a situation, having a narrator provide more details and sparse messages that manage to get through.
The problem with allowing non-military public officials to use this software to possibly prepare for various "Attacks" of sort, is the issue of possible other means that could arrive from the military, since they are kept classified. Intelligence gathering and analyzing most probably does not play an issue in this situation. This is for the "anthrax attacks". And if it was a bioweapon to cause that many people to die, you would also have to deal with such things as A-4 Skyhawks with 80 rounds of Zeni missiles patroling the area, the National Guard mobilized, ports closed, airports closed, phone lines shifted for emergency use only, et cetera. I fail to see how this program could easily deal with the large amount of variables for a seemingly "attack upon the nation", without all the information for each and every military post, equipment, flight patterns, tours of duties, et cetera.
We have so much time, and so little to do - strike that! Reverse it. Tryn Mirell
This is just another Disaster type of Preparedness/Emergency Management (DP/EM) software. I had the chance to see similiar software used by large government installations/institutions. This particular one was purchased by Camp LeJeune developed by Applied Ordanance Technology. The typical scenario use was either for prepardness, running simulations of disasters (everything from terror attacks to floods), or for Emergency Management where emergency professionals would use the software on site at an emergency location to help plan their efforts. Usually all of this was tied into GIS/Mapping software compiled with all kinds of information. You could program the software to raise the water levels by X feet in one area, or map out affected areas depending on a WMD you specify, weather, social events, population, season, etc. It would even allow you to get all the way down into the nitty gritty getting detailed architectural plans of any building you specify. This is great for emergency personel who need to know what type of materials are stored in a building at a location before they enter.
Sure I guess video games are useful for combatting terrorism, but I think minimizing saber-rattling would work a little better. George W Bush: TR said "speak softly and carry a big stick" not "run around and attack countries because they're arab" or "support jerusalem because the damn palestinians are a bunch of arabs"
Come on, as "extreme" as these attacks are, it's not like they're unfounded. They hate the US because we're a bunch of saber-rattling bullies. If we simply butted out of the stupid conflicts into which we continually interpose ourselves, there wouldn't be so many people who hate the US.
you mean the WOPR?
Here is a 6 sided cave(like), and a 4 sided with movable walls... http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/about/otherLabs/index. html
----
http://subatomic.vrsource.org!!
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
I want one. This would be perfect for Half-Life..
That said, I think Sim-Terrorist actually sounds like both a good idea and a good game. Honestly, Counterstrike is based on an counter-terrorism scenario. Why couldn't you build a game where you're Tom Ridge, and it's your job to stop the fanatical flavor of the month.
Speaking of "fanatical flavor of the month", Who's it going to be next? Think I'm being too cynical? Think Quadaffi, Khomeni, etc etc etc. In America we NEED someone to hate, otherwise we won't feel like we're better than everyone else.
When the economy gets slow, we bomb stuff. Sometimes it's stuff we've never bombed before, but most often, it's the usual suspects...
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
on the left...is that San Francisco? One could speculate that the Golden Gate or SF is target #1...I knew there was something suspicious about that city.
I'm a MOS44R20, and when things get slow we make up crazy shit and tell it to all the dumbass MOS33Q10's just to see if they'll bite. Jeez, I can't believe this moron bought this stuff...
At UF, we just had a NAVE installed (by students) this past year. Looks just like the one in the picture, except theirs is rounded.
The main difference is that a NAVE is MUCH cheaper to build. The above link has more details.
Now we know what Dick Cheney was up to all that time.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Lots more possibilities will arise once we get past our squeamishness; this will be a boon for the game industry! Sim Holocaust, Sim Plantation, Sim Jihad, even Sim Irish Potato Famine!
You really do need to read L'effroyable Imposture by Thierry Meyssan. (There should be an English translation out any day now). What you mention, among many other points, is brought up in the book as well the following very curious point: The morning of September 11, amateur radio operators in NYC encountered very strong beacon signals emanating from the WTC from about an hour before the attack until the planes hit. Why did they get activated suddenly?
Also, you may wish to view some more images of the alleged plane that hit the Pentagon. Now after reexamining those images, tell me with a straight face that you still believe a 757 full of fuel hit the Pentagon. The actual damage was miniscule compared to the plane that allegedly hit it.
If you don't believe this was a major US government cover-up, read the book. You'll be converted...
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Look at the middle image. Clearly a Win32 app running under WinXP, right? It would make sense that all the computers used for the same project would be running the same OS, and that is likely what is happening.
However, on the left, we see a Windows 2000 style window. The two machines could still be configured the same, and the system would look like the picture, if the app running on the left was a Win16 app. This would suggest that the system is much, much older than we are led to think.
-twb
http://www.somethingawful.com/inserts/articlepics/ photoshop/fakegames/Dolex_sim.jpg
Is there anything else to say?
I'm a GLG20 and you should hear some of the crazy shit we tell to the MOS44R20's.
Anyone else notice that they have H. Miller chairs in the "cave"? Good to know that my tax dollars are going towards something as important as a $1200 chair.
www.bleepyou.com
Nothing unusual with this sim. Software similar to this is in wide spread use by the military, it's called Command and Control software or something similar. I saw a sim at a security industry trade show that simulated counter terrorism assaults on aircraft and buildings. You could load in CAD drawings, put in way points, set team targets, then click go and watch it work from the POV of each of the team members. Just like Counterstrike!
If God meant people to go naked, then they would be born that way.
Are you on speed or something?
I would have thought that using a matrix style war gaming would be far more appropriate as it allows much more versitility. Computers should be an aid to this process, not the exclussive medium.
The book is hilarious. There's sooo many holes in the "plot".
Just as an example, the 757 that hit the pentagon hit the ground first. And you call that damage miniscule? Riiiiight.
Please, go back to wearing your tin-foil beanie. Maybe they ARE out to get YOU, but only because you need the care...
Actually this is both on topic and funy.
Why all the anti-jock attitude in schools now days?
You see? This is why I hate the French. You guys are such jerks.
France during WWII - "We surrender!Unconditionally!"
> When you make a cell phone call, the first thing that happens is that your cell phone needs to contact a transponder. Your cell phone has a max transmit power of five watts, three watts is actually the norm.
cell phones operate at a MAXIMUM of 500 milliwatts. 5 Watts, huh? that'd give you about, oh, 2 hours of constant runtime on a LiION battery.
Osama Sim Laden
Sandia should be very experienced with mass destruction, after all, they've (along with Los Alamos) been developing weapons of mass destruction for decades.
Guess it takes one to know one.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Where can I purchase a copy? Is it multiplayer? :-) j/k.
Albeit, it would be really cool to try out.
~ kjrose
well.. the people that benefits of all this terrorist shit has been israel.. they are the culprit who is behind all this..
from the terrorist issues they had got more financing from US, they got all their enemy onto their feet(osama, saddam), they gonna be conquering the arabs land by being the only country that have nuclear power, having united states congress backing them up no matter what kind of shit(since majority of the democrats and republicans are jews), they got reasons(terrorist) to kill innocent palestinian kids, women and families, they are 'BRIBING' Bush(having his own oil company) with oils in the arabs land once Israel manage to become the super-power in the arab land.. it all so clear..
don't be too sensitive.. i don't blame US on this.. it just that the jew conspiracy has been so powerful there..
Please get help for that overactive imagination of yours. Either that or beam back up to the mothership...
ummm, because jocks are complete morons, assholes, and they suck?
>cell phones operate at a MAXIMUM of 500 milliwatts. 5 Watts, huh? that'd give you about, oh, 2 hours of constant runtime on a LiION battery.
Actually, the early analogs have up to 5 watts.