The next wave of terror Scenario planners trying to predict the unthinkable <mailto:kfagan at sfchronicle.com>Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, October 28, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle
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Imagine your most unthinkable nightmare of the next terrorist attack. Now try to imagine something even worse.
Maybe then you'll come close to what scenario planners -- experts who craft models for any manner of disaster -- are trying to prepare for in America.
The nation has fired up its most imaginative thinkers to try to map out what could be the next wave of terrorism, and the picture is not pretty. The operating premise is that the hijackings and anthrax attacks are a tepid warm- up for a truly big assault -- which could range from massive truck-bomb explosions to infecting millions with disease to nuclear annihilation -- and that we're not fully ready to combat it.
Now here is the silver lining in that dark cloud: These are simply the worst-case scenarios, not reality. Yet.
In the days after Sept. 11, critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere made much of their belief that America's vulnerability to the aerial broadsides was less a failure of intelligence than a failure of imagination. Accordingly, the Army,
CIA, weapons labs, even financiers and Hollywood writers are trying hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.
And with the nation already on edge over daily reports about the spread of anthrax, the heat is on to get the schematics done fast. Preparations are sprouting coast to coast.
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, scientists are quietly outlining ways chemical, biological and nuclear sneak attacks could be carried out, and perfecting tactics to counter them. Using data from previous disasters, including the Three Mile Island nuclear leak, they have already created evacuation plans for heads of state attending events that get hit by firebombs or crop-dusters carrying poisons.
In Washington, D.C., the Pentagon is crafting scenarios for handling suicide bombings or gas attacks in crowded plazas, and analysts are assessing how to keep the country running if Congress is obliterated. Dartmouth College professors are helping the military envision hackers crippling the Internet -- and even Lloyd's of London is revising formulas for how to compensate for carnage it previously thought impossible.
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