24 ms·

Operation Dark Winter

149 points by shalmanese 7y ago

pure-awesome 7y ago
I was confused what they meant by "simulation". But they basically mean like a role-playing game. Like, they acted out how they would respond in that particular situation. This site has more info: http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwinter/index.html http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwint... http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwinter/summary.html#players http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwint...
- dmix 7y ago
  > Discussions, debates (some rather heated), and decisions focused on the public health response, lack of an adequate supply of smallpox vaccine, ... They seem to have missed access to testing, forget vaccines, which is the big thing missing today, at least in the US in the first month or so + many other countries. Not to mention following the limitations of the WHO, CDC, et al guidelines in a scenario with plenty of unknowns instead of one we know well like Smallpox (which caused the first epidemics in the Americas, Haiti to be specific, in 1507 with the arrival of Christopher Columbus - the opposite of something novel). But I guess this bioware scenario is relying heavily on the idea that US intelligence community and (public/private) health care systems will find out exactly what it was rather quickly and already have established testing and vaccines. Which to be honest would be nice to have right now and makes more sense for a biowarfare attack than the global epidemic we currently have. Edit: nice find by the way, it puts the project in better perspective in regards to scale and participants. From the stuff I've read/watched it seems these "war game" scenarios have become quite frequent in many areas of the US and federally (with plenty thanks to spending on counter-terrorism in places like NYC). Much like the endless NATO wargames since the cold war started and more recently with Russia. The politics and bureaucracy, especially early on, seems inescapable and hard to reliably war game IMO. Especially for something without a clear "adversary" or tactical weapon.
  - duxup 7y ago
    Can you have a sort of mass scale viral testing... even available? Is that a thing? Or are tests specific to a given virus?
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      Yes, tests are specific to specific viruses (or classes of them). Yes, testing can be done on massive scales.
- hyfgfh 7y ago
  CDD 2001 larp
- Sharlin 7y ago
  Yes. Like a war game. A standard way to prepare for contingency scenarios. Not all simulations are computer simulations ;)
  - mmahemoff 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_simulation
  - pure-awesome 7y ago
    I wasn't only thinking of computer simulations. The word "simulation" is very vague. It could potentially mean one of: - Computer Simulation - Pen & Paper Mathematical models - Pen & Paper narrative modelling (i.e., writing a paper about different situations and the possible contingency plans - though granted this is not usually referred to as "simulation") - Role-playing a situation via speech - Acting out a situation with props and physical movement / simulated limited communication - Sending out simulated broadcasts ("this is only a test") - Sending out false but believable broadcasts - Infecting the public with a (hopefully less harmful) disease in order to gauge response.
- yorwba 7y ago
  I'm confused how the outputs of the simulation can be considered as anything more than a reflection of the inputs. E.g. the findings include a description of how the public reacts, but that reaction was created by the simulators according to what they thought would happen. Then they they get to write a report saying that "the simulation showed X would happen", even though that's equivalent to "we thought X would happen, so we made it happen in the simulation". I guess there's value in setting up a situation where people actually consider what would happen and write down what they come up with. At least that can point out problems of the "obvious once you think about it" variety.
- sixdimensional 7y ago
  In security, this is sometimes known as “table top exercises” and/or scenario based testing.
- Symmetry 7y ago
  A recent 80,000 Hours podcast had a pretty good explanation of the topic. See #11 https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cassidy-nelson-12-ways-to-stop-pandemics/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cassidy-nelson-12-wa...
sneak 7y ago
It is disappointing that the US got all of the authoritarian surveillance that China did but few/none of the safety/planning upsides it could be used to bring. It’s the worst of all possible configurations. I wish that extremely large government would use its vast resources to plan for large risks other than “people with guns/bombs/tanks/missiles/planes want to kill us”, and focus at least some of that on emergency preparedness. Why isn’t there a strategic nationwide domestic reserve of supplies for emergencies? I know this is what FEMA is supposed to be doing, but they are utterly terrible at it. If we’re paying most of a trillion dollars each year for defense, why not defend us at least a little bit against stuff that might well happen sooner or later: giant fires, flooding, pandemics, big/long power outages, fuel shortages, water or food shortages, ice storms, et c? It’s really disappointing to see almost 100% of that money going to a system that is focused more on war (which is, to varying degrees, mostly preventable) and almost none to natural catastrophes (which are absolutely inevitable).
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Unless there's rapid production of a vaccine or an effective antiviral drug, I think China's system probably won't help them that much. There will be too much opportunity for reinfection from the rest of the world, and inside China as they have to relax restrictions to keep production going.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  That wouldn't line the pockets of the oligarchs and the good ol boy network, because it would require the money to actually go to resources and not just overblown accounting entries to cover the pocketbook lining in the first place. The DC elite say fluffy words in public but in private are almost to a person "fuck you I got mine" people. They take oaths but don't mean them. It's the sad truth that greed is the largest part of it, which enables the oligarchs to buy the politicians in the first place. Then if some rare person does resist, there are a whole slew of tools to use against them to force compliance, usually in the realm of blackmail (this is what Epstein was). These tools grow even more powerful as the surveillance engine is expanded (and the truism to remember is that surveillance is about control, not security). lookup Thomas Drake and William Binney to find out what happens to people on the inside who actually care about security and not control. Top down compromise of a centralized system makes the system increasingly trivial to control as the compromise progresses.
dijit 7y ago
This was the fundamental inspiration behind a game I helped to make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgvo-9pJ1EU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgvo-9pJ1EU
duxup 7y ago
>In Dark Winter, some members advised the imposition of geographic quarantines around affected areas, but the implications of these measures (e.g., interruption of the normal flow of medicines, food and energy supplies, and other critical needs) were not clearly understood at first.[5] In the end, it is not clear whether such draconian measures would have led to a more effective interruption of disease spread. That's one of the more interesting questions. Is it possible to have an effective quarantine in this day and age?
- _rrnv 7y ago
  The answer to your question is: Wuhan.
  - duxup 7y ago
    These days it is difficult to know what people are saying on the internet. Do you mean it is or isn't possible, or something else?
    - skrebbel 7y ago
      Wuhan!!
    - verbify 7y ago
      I presume they mean it isn't possible, as there was an attempted quarantine around Wuhan, and yet coronavirus still spread.
      - _rrnv 7y ago
        It’s like with 42. You see what you want to see. Who knows if Wuhan is a success or not. There is no benchmark. If Seattle, Mediolan etc have 1M cases but Wuhan stays around 100K then their containment will be hailed a monumental success. But if everyone else contains this below 10K and Wuhan stays like today, it will be a failure. But it’s still the answer to OPs question, as Wuhan is the baseline.
- 7y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
This wikipedia page makes a noise. I hear a buzz for only this tab and only this wikipedia page. Strange.
stevefan1999 7y ago
Well, to quote Tyson, "everybody has a plan, until they got punched in the face".
- MrZongle2 7y ago
  I feel as if the US government really didn't have much of a plan, and we're still getting punched in the face.
jnmandal 7y ago
Those hoping to draw lessons from this should be aware that folks who contract smallpox had a relatively large chance of dying, ranging from 30% to as high of 75% for certain strains. It is assumed weaponized form of smallpox would be highly lethal. Meanwhile COVID-19 seems to have a lethality ranging from 1-3%.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  I made comments about being logical about corona virus and I got down voted into oblivion. This disease has never been about lethality, but about panic. I am not sure if it's just good for the mass media to have a panic to discuss, or if it was a concerted effort by some to make it a panic.
  - jesseryoung 7y ago
    A fatality rate of 1-3% is actually quite high. This is significantly higher than the seasonal flu[1]. Sure, it's not as deadly as other pandemics, but still - if the numbers are correct, if you contract COVID-19 you are more likely to die to it than you are to get in a car accident sometime in your life and die from that[2]. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-mortality-rates-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-o...
    - RobertRoberts 7y ago
      Sure, but Ebola is way, way worse, and it was all over Africa for awhile a few years back (IRC) and it even got to the US, and hardly a peep of panic about it. I think we are going to find out in the next year that half the people that were infected were false positives just like many other scares produce. (like HIV)
pradn 7y ago
See the Millennium Challenge 2002 for another interesting "war game", this one a simulated war between the US and Iran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
- cbHXBY1D 7y ago
  Which essentially showed the US would not only be unsuccessful attacking Iran but also lose in a humiliating fashion, making Gulf War 1/2 and Afghanistan look like child's play.

149 points by shalmanese 7y ago

I was confused what they meant by "simulation". But they basically mean like a role-playing game. Like, they acted out how they would respond in that particular situation. This site has more info: http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwinter/index.html http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwint... http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwinter/summary.html#players http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwint...

dmix 7y ago
> Discussions, debates (some rather heated), and decisions focused on the public health response, lack of an adequate supply of smallpox vaccine, ... They seem to have missed access to testing, forget vaccines, which is the big thing missing today, at least in the US in the first month or so + many other countries. Not to mention following the limitations of the WHO, CDC, et al guidelines in a scenario with plenty of unknowns instead of one we know well like Smallpox (which caused the first epidemics in the Americas, Haiti to be specific, in 1507 with the arrival of Christopher Columbus - the opposite of something novel). But I guess this bioware scenario is relying heavily on the idea that US intelligence community and (public/private) health care systems will find out exactly what it was rather quickly and already have established testing and vaccines. Which to be honest would be nice to have right now and makes more sense for a biowarfare attack than the global epidemic we currently have. Edit: nice find by the way, it puts the project in better perspective in regards to scale and participants. From the stuff I've read/watched it seems these "war game" scenarios have become quite frequent in many areas of the US and federally (with plenty thanks to spending on counter-terrorism in places like NYC). Much like the endless NATO wargames since the cold war started and more recently with Russia. The politics and bureaucracy, especially early on, seems inescapable and hard to reliably war game IMO. Especially for something without a clear "adversary" or tactical weapon.
- duxup 7y ago
  Can you have a sort of mass scale viral testing... even available? Is that a thing? Or are tests specific to a given virus?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Yes, tests are specific to specific viruses (or classes of them). Yes, testing can be done on massive scales.
hyfgfh 7y ago
CDD 2001 larp
Sharlin 7y ago
Yes. Like a war game. A standard way to prepare for contingency scenarios. Not all simulations are computer simulations ;)
- mmahemoff 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_simulation
- pure-awesome 7y ago
  I wasn't only thinking of computer simulations. The word "simulation" is very vague. It could potentially mean one of: - Computer Simulation - Pen & Paper Mathematical models - Pen & Paper narrative modelling (i.e., writing a paper about different situations and the possible contingency plans - though granted this is not usually referred to as "simulation") - Role-playing a situation via speech - Acting out a situation with props and physical movement / simulated limited communication - Sending out simulated broadcasts ("this is only a test") - Sending out false but believable broadcasts - Infecting the public with a (hopefully less harmful) disease in order to gauge response.
yorwba 7y ago
I'm confused how the outputs of the simulation can be considered as anything more than a reflection of the inputs. E.g. the findings include a description of how the public reacts, but that reaction was created by the simulators according to what they thought would happen. Then they they get to write a report saying that "the simulation showed X would happen", even though that's equivalent to "we thought X would happen, so we made it happen in the simulation". I guess there's value in setting up a situation where people actually consider what would happen and write down what they come up with. At least that can point out problems of the "obvious once you think about it" variety.
sixdimensional 7y ago
In security, this is sometimes known as “table top exercises” and/or scenario based testing.
Symmetry 7y ago
A recent 80,000 Hours podcast had a pretty good explanation of the topic. See #11 https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cassidy-nelson-12-ways-to-stop-pandemics/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cassidy-nelson-12-wa...

sneak 7y ago

It is disappointing that the US got all of the authoritarian surveillance that China did but few/none of the safety/planning upsides it could be used to bring. It’s the worst of all possible configurations. I wish that extremely large government would use its vast resources to plan for large risks other than “people with guns/bombs/tanks/missiles/planes want to kill us”, and focus at least some of that on emergency preparedness. Why isn’t there a strategic nationwide domestic reserve of supplies for emergencies? I know this is what FEMA is supposed to be doing, but they are utterly terrible at it. If we’re paying most of a trillion dollars each year for defense, why not defend us at least a little bit against stuff that might well happen sooner or later: giant fires, flooding, pandemics, big/long power outages, fuel shortages, water or food shortages, ice storms, et c? It’s really disappointing to see almost 100% of that money going to a system that is focused more on war (which is, to varying degrees, mostly preventable) and almost none to natural catastrophes (which are absolutely inevitable).

pfdietz 7y ago
Unless there's rapid production of a vaccine or an effective antiviral drug, I think China's system probably won't help them that much. There will be too much opportunity for reinfection from the rest of the world, and inside China as they have to relax restrictions to keep production going.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
That wouldn't line the pockets of the oligarchs and the good ol boy network, because it would require the money to actually go to resources and not just overblown accounting entries to cover the pocketbook lining in the first place. The DC elite say fluffy words in public but in private are almost to a person "fuck you I got mine" people. They take oaths but don't mean them. It's the sad truth that greed is the largest part of it, which enables the oligarchs to buy the politicians in the first place. Then if some rare person does resist, there are a whole slew of tools to use against them to force compliance, usually in the realm of blackmail (this is what Epstein was). These tools grow even more powerful as the surveillance engine is expanded (and the truism to remember is that surveillance is about control, not security). lookup Thomas Drake and William Binney to find out what happens to people on the inside who actually care about security and not control. Top down compromise of a centralized system makes the system increasingly trivial to control as the compromise progresses.

dijit 7y ago

This was the fundamental inspiration behind a game I helped to make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgvo-9pJ1EU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgvo-9pJ1EU

duxup 7y ago

>In Dark Winter, some members advised the imposition of geographic quarantines around affected areas, but the implications of these measures (e.g., interruption of the normal flow of medicines, food and energy supplies, and other critical needs) were not clearly understood at first.[5] In the end, it is not clear whether such draconian measures would have led to a more effective interruption of disease spread. That's one of the more interesting questions. Is it possible to have an effective quarantine in this day and age?

_rrnv 7y ago
The answer to your question is: Wuhan.
- duxup 7y ago
  These days it is difficult to know what people are saying on the internet. Do you mean it is or isn't possible, or something else?
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    Wuhan!!
  - verbify 7y ago
    I presume they mean it isn't possible, as there was an attempted quarantine around Wuhan, and yet coronavirus still spread.
    - _rrnv 7y ago
      It’s like with 42. You see what you want to see. Who knows if Wuhan is a success or not. There is no benchmark. If Seattle, Mediolan etc have 1M cases but Wuhan stays around 100K then their containment will be hailed a monumental success. But if everyone else contains this below 10K and Wuhan stays like today, it will be a failure. But it’s still the answer to OPs question, as Wuhan is the baseline.
7y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago

This wikipedia page makes a noise. I hear a buzz for only this tab and only this wikipedia page. Strange.

stevefan1999 7y ago

Well, to quote Tyson, "everybody has a plan, until they got punched in the face".

MrZongle2 7y ago
I feel as if the US government really didn't have much of a plan, and we're still getting punched in the face.

jnmandal 7y ago

Those hoping to draw lessons from this should be aware that folks who contract smallpox had a relatively large chance of dying, ranging from 30% to as high of 75% for certain strains. It is assumed weaponized form of smallpox would be highly lethal. Meanwhile COVID-19 seems to have a lethality ranging from 1-3%.

RobertRoberts 7y ago
I made comments about being logical about corona virus and I got down voted into oblivion. This disease has never been about lethality, but about panic. I am not sure if it's just good for the mass media to have a panic to discuss, or if it was a concerted effort by some to make it a panic.
- jesseryoung 7y ago
  A fatality rate of 1-3% is actually quite high. This is significantly higher than the seasonal flu[1]. Sure, it's not as deadly as other pandemics, but still - if the numbers are correct, if you contract COVID-19 you are more likely to die to it than you are to get in a car accident sometime in your life and die from that[2]. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-mortality-rates-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-flu-... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-o...
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    Sure, but Ebola is way, way worse, and it was all over Africa for awhile a few years back (IRC) and it even got to the US, and hardly a peep of panic about it. I think we are going to find out in the next year that half the people that were infected were false positives just like many other scares produce. (like HIV)

pradn 7y ago

See the Millennium Challenge 2002 for another interesting "war game", this one a simulated war between the US and Iran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

cbHXBY1D 7y ago
Which essentially showed the US would not only be unsuccessful attacking Iran but also lose in a humiliating fashion, making Gulf War 1/2 and Afghanistan look like child's play.