Miscellaneous Relationships
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Division of Bloomberg School of Public Health
This is the third major pandemic exercise that the Center for Health Security has run. The first, called Dark Winter, was held in 2001 and simulated a smallpox attack on Oklahoma. Its timing, just a few months before 9/11, made its terrifying outcome—the near-complete breakdown of government and civil society—deeply resonant. Dark Winter is credited, in part, with spurring George W. Bush to pass Directive 51, a largely classified plan to insure the continuity of government in the event of a “catastrophic emergency.”