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.

Comments

Aeron Chairs?!

[guttentag]

What are thousand-dollar Aeron chairs, which the dot coms were criticized for wasting money on, doing at a government lab?

Flaws in this System

[Mirell]

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.