anthro today

8 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 5, OCTOBER 2004

Bioterrorism ‘response scenarios’ are representationalforms intended to simulate a biological attack and its after-math, primarily for audiences of US government decision-makers, national security analysts and professionals inmedicine, public health, public safety, law enforcementand emergency management. The primary, analytic goal ofthis essay is to understand such scenarios in relation to ‘thesubjectivity of the state being’ – the embodied experi-ences, identifications and desires of bureaucratic and otherprofessionals working in the public interest, and the publicperformances and discourses through which an Americanstate identity is constituted (Aretxaga 2003: 395, 2001;Taussig 1997, 1992).

Through bioterrorism scenarios, participants come toimagine themselves and their actions in relation to anumber of communities: a polity vulnerable to contagionunleashed by a calculating enemy, a government obligatedto protect its citizens, a fellowship of health professionalsworking on behalf of the potentially infected,and so on. A secondary, political aimof the essay is to open up for discus-sion among a wide range of col-leagues, including those in biodefence,what may be gained and/or lost throughthese narrative structures wrought in theUS apocalypticist tradition.1

The ‘when’ of a biological attackWhether read as a text, played as a computergame or dramatized as a role-playing exerciseor an operational drill, a bioterrorism scenario isan artifice through which a person or group con-jures a potential biological attack into their imme-diate experience. Participants are thus witness to ahypothetical attack. Bioterrorism scenarios help substan-tiate the now widely accepted maxim in the US that ‘it is nota matter of if, but when’ terrorists will carry out an assaulton American soil involving ‘weapons of mass destruction’(WMD). With Cold War political imaginaries becomingobsolete, scenarios have proven ‘good to think with’ forinterpreting, understanding, communicating, projecting andacting upon current and future US security environments.

Similarly, in the aftermath of World War II, role-playinggames and simulations emerged as tools with which USpolitico-military analysts approached an apparent shift inthe ‘technical horizon’ of war-making – the advent ofnuclear weapons (Ghamari-Tabrizi 2000: 164). Prior bat-tlefield experience with conventional weaponry seemedinappropriate for crafting strategic doctrine in the face ofthe ‘new’ and future nuclear threat. Bioterrorism scenariosplay a comparable role today in conceiving both the prob-lems of and solutions to a (perceived) novel class ofweapons – the biological. Characteristic of both trends inscenario use are struggles for authority among diverse pro-fessionals wishing to claim primacy in defining dangers tothe nation and articulating the government’s proper courseof action.

Government preparations before andafter 9/11The prominence of the bioterrorism scenario2

correlates with heightened federal concernduring the 1990s about the potential conver-gence of two trends: terrorists’ interest inmass casualties, as interpreted from the1993 World Trade Center bombing, 1995Oklahoma City bombing and the 1995Tokyo sarin gas attack, and theincreased availability of unconven-tional weapons, indicated by newlyacquired intelligence about covertIraqi and Soviet bioweapons pro-grammes and worry over whether

cash-strapped Soviet scientists and tech-nicians might sell their weapons technology and/or

know-how (Smithson 1999). The September 11th andanthrax letter attacks greatly heightened the perceivedurgency of the need for domestic preparedness; federalsupport for counter-terrorism planning, training and fieldexercises has since grown by several orders of magnitude(see Fig. 2). Bioterrorism scenarios have moved from thelimited venues of national government and security thinktank circles to spread through all levels of US govern-ment.

BioterrorismUS public health and a secular apocalypse

MONICASCHOCH-SPANAMonica Schoch-Spana isAssistant Professor ofMedicine at the University ofPittsburgh and Senior Fellowat the Center for Biosecurityof the University of PittsburghMedical Center, Baltimore,Maryland, USA. Her email [email protected]

This analysis was preparedfor the ‘Bioterrorism:Historical contexts, long-termconsequences’ conferenceheld at the Department ofAnthropology, History, andSocial Medicine, Universityof California, San Francisco,on 8 May 2002. A revisedversion was presented at thepanel ‘A plagued future?Emerging diseases,bioweapons, and otheranticipated microbial horrors’at the 2002 AmericanAnthropological AssociationMeetings, 23 November. Ithank meeting participants fortheir comments, as well asNick King, Joe Masco and theanonymous referees for AT. Iam indebted to colleaguesD.A. Henderson, TaraO’Toole, Tom Inglesby andMichael Mair for theirreflections on thehumanitarian and publicpolicy dilemmas posed bybioweapons, and to OnoraLien and Ari Schuler forresearch assistance.

Fig. 2. Federal investments supporting scenario use, 1997-2004

Agency or programme Purpose Impact

Pre-9/11 attacks

Domestic Preparedness Program, Planning, training and field exercises Funding hugely increased, from $16.8M estab. 1997 – administered by Dept for first responders (e.g. fire, (FY ’98) to $99M (FY '00);3 by 2003,of Defense, then Dept of Justice, police, hazmat) to handle eligible personnel in 120 largest US citiesand finally Dept of Homeland Security chemical and biological attacks had participated, ending the programme.

Post-9/11 attacks

Dept of Homeland Security Standardization, planning, First responder grants (FY 2001-04) totalledconduct and assessment of state c. $11B, with $8.4B set aside for training;4

and local counter-terrorism exercises states and localities are required to conduct exercises to qualify for support.5

Dept of Health and Human Services, Upgrading the ability of state c. $2.8B support made available FY 2001-04;6

Centers for Disease Control and and local health departments to preparation and testing of response Prevention respond to bioterrorism plans are a mandated priority.

Fig. 1. The front cover ofTime magazine’s specialissue on terrorism, includinggerm and chemical warfare,October 2001.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 5, OCTOBER 2004 9

Scenarios inhabit the realm of practical training for dis-asters and emergency management that includes the‘tabletop’ – an informal discussion, organized aroundhypothetical situations, among elected/appointed officialsand key staff with emergency management responsibili-ties, the ‘functional exercise’ – a more complex simulationtaking place in ‘real time’ that evaluates the performanceof a specific element of a broader strategy for confrontingan emergency, and the ‘full-scale exercise’ – an under-taking to evaluate, in real time over an extended periodwith many disparate groups, the operational capability ofa greater emergency management system.

The tabletop is primarily used among ‘decision-makers’, i.e. those individuals who hold senior leadershippositions and whose decisions, by definition, have reper-cussions for larger numbers of people and institutions. Thelatter two exercises differ from the tabletop in that theyattempt to incorporate, to a lesser or greater degree, the‘operational’ personnel, physical spaces and equipmentexpected to be in play during the genuine crisis. All exer-cises have the intended dual purpose of instructing partic-ipants of the danger they face and of the legal authorities,strategic plans, operational procedures and materialresources that can be marshalled in response, and of eval-uating the current state of readiness for the unexpected,cataclysmic event (i.e. identifying deficiencies so as toremedy these during ordinary times).

Public health visions of intentional epidemicsFormed in 1998, the Center for Civilian BiodefenseStudies (CCBS) – a joint enterprise of the Johns HopkinsSchools of Medicine and Public Health – was the institu-tional platform for professionals who wished to put for-ward an alternative vision of the ‘when’ of the bioterroristthreat to that offered by the WMD-related initiatives of themid-to-late 1990s. Counter-terrorism planning andtraining programmes, argued the founding director,focused on the crisis following an explosion or a chemicalrelease, while neglecting the qualitatively different emer-gency posed by bioweapons (Henderson 1999). A diseaseoutbreak was a disaster that mounted after an initial attack;in a matter of weeks or possibly days, an affected groupcould develop infections and, if contagious, potentiallyinfect others.

Law enforcement, firefighting, hazardous materialsexperts and emergency rescue workers, though critical inthe aftermath of a chemical or explosive attack, were notprofessionally equipped to handle an unfolding outbreak.Emergency room doctors and nurses, specialists in infec-tion control and infectious disease, family practitioners,laboratory technicians, epidemiologists, public healthauthorities and hospital administrators had the more cru-cial roles to play. Rarely, however, had such health profes-sionals been incorporated in planning and training forWMD terrorism.

In 1999 and 2000, the Biodefense Center convened twosymposia in Washington, DC to define prevention and pre-paredness specifically in relation to biological weaponsrather than a generic class of WMD. Defining the outcomeof a bioterrorist attack as an epidemic, conference organ-izers had hoped, would compel health professionals tograpple with this grave policy issue, and inspire govern-ment officials to incorporate more medical, public healthand bioscientific expertise into strategic and operationalplanning for the newly perceived security threats. Theprogramme centrepiece for each national symposium wasa scenario that dynamically illustrated the epidemiologicaland health perspective absent from existing federal initia-tives (see Fig. 4).

1. For the last six years, Ihave worked withmultidisciplinary groupsdedicated to preventing thedevelopment and use ofbiological weapons and toadvancing an adequatemedical and public healthresponse, should preventionfail – the Johns HopkinsUniversity Center for CivilianBiodefense Strategies and theCenter for Biosecurity of theUniversity of PittsburghMedical Center. I draw fromthese professionalexperiences to explore theinstitutions, discourses andpractices regardingbioterrorism and its politicalremedies.

2. Space does not permitme to give a full account ofthe swapping of ideas, peopleand techniques between therealms of war-gaming,strategic business planning,government disaster planningand virtual reality educationand entertainment (seeGhamari-Tabrizi 2004, DerDerian 2002). Suggestive ofthe complex origins oftoday’s scenarios as tools formanaging uncertaintomorrows is the career ofPeter Schwartz, aninternationally renowned

Fig. 4. Bioterrorism scenarios influential in political and popular culture

Sample participants

Chief, UCLA Emergency Medicine; Chief,Johns Hopkins Hospital InfectiousDisease; Chief, CDC Hospital InfectionsProgram; Minnesota State Epidemiologist;Former Governor of Minnesota

Police Commissioner of Philadelphia;Mayor of Atlanta; Texas StateEpidemiologist; Director of EmergencyManagement for New York City;Emergency Physician, George WashingtonUniversity Hospital

President played by Sam Nunn, former USSenator and member of Senate ArmedServices Committee; Director of CentralIntelligence played by former CIA headR. James Woolsey

Audience(s)

Primary: 950 federal policy-makers and national leaders inpublic health, infectious disease,epidemiology, medicine, micro-biology and nursingSecondary: Print and online sub-scribers to Emerging InfectiousDiseases journal

Average Nightline audiencec. 4.5 million viewers, probablyhigher for this high-profile event

Primary: 60 observersSecondary: Individuals andgroups receive in-person andonline briefings

Storyline

Terrorists linked to ‘rogue’ stateattack US Vice President withsmallpox in crowded auditorium.In <3 months, 15,000 US resi-dents infected, with 1/3 expectedto die. Within 9 months, endemicdisease in 14 countries.

Terrorists release anthrax sporein city subway; in 8 days, 65,000people develop inhalationalanthrax, with 80% expected todie.

Smallpox releases in OklahomaCity, Philadelphia and Atlanta;within 2 weeks, >16,000 con-firmed cases in 25 states. Tenother countries face secondaryoutbreaks.

Impact

First national, public event to define thenational security threat of biologicalweapons in public health terms

First nationally televised bioterrorismtabletop featuring actual authorities

Participants testify at hearing of HouseCommittee on Government Reform, 23July '01, and hearing of Senate ForeignRelations Committee, 5 Sept. '01. FromJuly '01 to Sept '02, at least 38 hearingsreference the exercise. Influences devel-opment (and criticism) of smallpox vacci-nation programme initiated in Dec '02.

February 1999 National Symposium – CCBS

October 1999 ‘Biowar’ – Nightline

June 2001 ‘Dark Winter’ – CSIS, CCBS, MIPT, ANSER

Fig. 3. Four non-governmental organizations,all with expert knowledge ofsecurity, terrorism and/orpublic health issues,collaborated on ‘DarkWinter’, an exercise designedto test possible responses toa simulated deliberateintroduction of smallpox inthree US states during thewinter of 2002.


Bioterrorism scenarios for a mass audienceAn increasingly common feature of government trainingmaterials (and among their critics outside of govern-ment), bioterrorism scenarios have entered the publicdomain through mass media news reports and docu-dramas. As response drills involving bioweapons attacksbecome a more routine feature of local and state govern-ment activity, so too do local news stories on them. TedKoppel of the ABC primetime news programmeNightline, however, introduced a broad US viewership tothe dynamic tabletop, a practice previously confined tomore ‘closed’ venues. Broadcast over five nights inOctober 1999, ‘Biowar’ featured a fictional anthraxrelease in a city subway. During this live tabletopenhanced with stock video footage, Koppel regularlyreminded his audience that the tragic event, though ‘realin its potential’, was ‘fabricated’ – a precaution aimed ataverting a repeat of the 1938 radio broadcast of H.G.Wells’ War of the worlds, when listeners assumed fic-tionalized events to be true.

The BBC production ‘Smallpox 2002 – silent weapon’,aired in February 2002, brought the bioterrorism scenarioto a mass international audience by means of a fictional‘retrospective documentary’ from the vantage point offilmmakers who, in the year 2005, chronicle a smallpoxpandemic that began with a biological attack three yearsearlier. Members of the public have, however, moved frombeing mere spectators of bioterrorism scenarios to becomeactual participants. Tests of US emergency response plansand capacities may now include local residents. ‘SoonerSpring’ was an elaborate, multi-site tabletop held in April2002, the planning of which involved local public healthand medical providers, law enforcement, emergencyresponse personnel and civic groups from four partici-pating Oklahoma cities. Residents of McAlester (popula-tion 18,000) attended one of seven distribution points for‘antibiotics’ in the form of jellybeans and fruit punch, aspart of a mock public health campaign against pneumonicplague.

Narratives that captivate, motivate and entertainThe professionals and institutions which craft, performand disseminate bioterrorism scenarios wield considerablepower in that they shape vicarious experiences of the‘when’ of a bioterrorist attack, an event of which very fewUS citizens, political leaders and public health and safetyprofessionals have first-hand knowledge (apart from the2001 anthrax attacks). In simulating future horrors, sce-nario authors cultivate, though they do not fully control,expectations within their audiences regarding what abioterrorist looks like, what the devastating repercussionsof a biological release are, and what weaknesses exist inthe capacity of contemporary institutions, concepts andpractices to deal with a biological assault. Deliberatelyapproaching their work as storytelling, some writers seethe bioterrorism scenario as a powerful means for gener-ating new patterns of thinking and acting within intendedaudiences.

Scenario design principles reflect their authors’ desiresto captivate and motivate participants for specific purposes.Scenario scriptwriters do not ask participants to ‘suspend’reality. Instead, they depict realistic situations that draw inparticipants, striving toward accuracy in scientific andsocial facts – the clinical and epidemiological features of anoutbreak, the legally mandated responsibilities of agenciesand institutions charged with tasks known as ‘crisis andconsequence management’, the organizational structuresand hierarchies of institutions relevant to the storyline (e.g.chains of command within a hospital, a health department,or among various law enforcement agencies). A relateddesign principle is plausibility: events as they unfold withinthe narrative must seem reasonable, credible and con-vincing to scenario participants and other anticipated audi-ences, based upon what they already perceive about thematerial, political and social realities around them.

A final principle of the scenario craft is balance.Narratives that arise out of a desire to enhance ‘prepared-ness and response’ are written to avoid, as one governmentcontractor puts it, ‘an Armageddon scenario’. This is the

futurist, whose clients haveincluded Fortune 500executives, the Hollywooddirector for Minority Report –a movie set in 2058, the USDefense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency, the CentralIntelligence Agency, and theHart-Rudman Commission,author of the watersheddocument, ‘American securityin the twenty-first century’.

3. Derived from MontereyInstitute of InternationalStudies, Chemical &Biological Weapons Resourcepage, ‘Federal Funding toCombat Terrorism, includingDefense against Weapons ofMass Destruction, FY 1998-2001’, available athttp://www.cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/terfund.htm,accessed 11 June 2002.

4. Ari Schuler, researchanalyst, Center forBiosecurity, personalcommunication.

5. US Department ofHomeland Security. U.S.Homeland Security Exerciseand Evaluation Program,Volume 1: Overview anddoctrine. Available athttp://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp/docs/HSEEPv1.pdf.Accessed 5 July 2004.

6. HHS Press Office. HHSFact Sheet: Biodefensepreparedness: Record ofaccomplishment, 28 April2004. Available athttp://www.os.dhhs.gov/news/press/2004pres/20040428.html. Accessed 13 May 2004.

7. The Center for Strategicand International Studies(CSIS) – a national security‘think tank’ based inWashington, DC – conceivedof the idea of an exerciseinvolving former seniorleaders of the federalgovernment. The HopkinsCenter for CivilianBiodefense Strategiesprovided medical and publichealth expertise in designingthe exercise. ANSER Institutefor Homeland Security, anArlington-based spinoff of theRAND Corporation, providedexpertise in military strategyto aid in crafting the scenario.Oklahoma City’s NationalMemorial Institute for thePrevention of Terrorism inOklahoma City funded theexercise, and CSIS providedlogistical and administrativesupport.

8. See O’Toole et al. 2002.9. See Martin Enserink,

‘How devastating would asmallpox attack really be?’Science, 31 May 2002, 296:1592-1595; Jon Cohen and

Fig. 5. Excerpt fromtestimony to US Congress byformer US Senator SamNunn, who played thepresident in the June 2001tabletop exercise, ‘DarkWinter’.


type of plotline that ‘would cause an exercise participantwithin the first move or two to just throw up [his/herhands] and say, “You’ve given us 100,000 people exposedto smallpox; there’s no way we can manage this type ofevent.”’ This literary brinksmanship involves stimulatingawareness of the grave dangers and complexities posed bybioterrorism while implicating the participant in the out-come of his/her actions. A scenario focusing on managingthe effects of bioterrorism rests ultimately on the assump-tion that constructive intervention is, to a lesser or greaterdegree, possible. The degree of manageability, however,may vary according to the perspective of who producesand interprets the scenario, as public exchanges regardingABC’s ‘Biowar’ series, cited below, reveal.

Emblematic of the recognition that storytelling is a pow-erful tool for cultivating new understandings of the bioter-rorist threat is the June 2001 ‘Dark Winter’ tabletopexercise, a collaboration between four non-governmentalorganizations expert in security, terrorism and/or publichealth.7 Twelve former senior officials participated in aseries of simulated US National Security Council meetingsto confront a smallpox attack. A central premise of theexercise, from its creators’ perspective, was that nationalsecurity and defence principals were largely unaware ofthe nature of bioterrorist attacks and equally unfamiliarwith public health strategies for interrupting disease trans-mission and with mechanisms for providing medical careto large numbers of sick people.8 The collective experien-tial lessons suggested by ‘Dark Winter’ had considerableinfluence throughout the government, from Congressionalhearings on terrorism to White House planning for anational smallpox vaccination programme (see Fig. 4).9

Sobering instructional tools and drills for governmentleaders, policy analysts and emergency personnel, bioter-rorism scenarios nonetheless share the characteristics ofproducts more deliberately conceived as popular enter-tainment (King 2002). The perceived quality of popularand official scenarios, in fact, rests on an appropriate infu-sion of authentic detail, though the standards applied toHollywood scripts, novels, fictional documentaries andformal bioterrorism scenarios vary with their intendedaudiences. A public health practitioner who rents the

movie Outbreak may scoff at how quickly Dustin Hoffmanmanages to trap and ‘bleed’ an infected monkey, develop asafe and effective vaccine, and stamp out a rampant out-break of viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF). Yet this sameprofessional may feel comfortable participating in an offi-cial role-playing exercise that involves a VHF bioattack,as long as the assumptions that frame the scenario seemtechnically accurate as well as plausible, and provided thatthe larger purpose is protecting public well-being.

The compelling nature of bioterrorism scenarios as sto-rytelling and role-playing comes, however, with potentialdangers. Anxiety over the accuracy of the reality repre-sented in scenarios reflects reasonable concern on the partof the authors and their critics over the practical and polit-ical stakes involved in one vision of the future over another.If the powerful experience of the ‘when’ of a bioterroristattack does (as it is intended to) motivate participants to par-ticular ends, then the explicit details of the narrative mattera great deal. Monitoring the accuracy and plausibility of ascenario suggests that those who put it forward fear claimsthat the danger of which they speak is just ‘make-believe’.In general debates among US public health practitionersabout the need to prepare for biological attacks are pep-pered with anxiety as to whether the problem is ‘real’ or‘cooked up’ by the US political leadership.

The policing of the boundaries between fact and inaccu-racy is exemplified in a round of Washington Post edito-rials regarding the October 1999 ABC Nightline ‘Biowar’series.10 The medical detail of the incubation period forinhalational anthrax was the subject of an intense publicexchange between D.A. Henderson, a leading advocateoutside the federal government for increased attention tothe medical and public health aspects of bioweapons, andTed Koppel. Henderson cited ‘careful media coverage ofthis easily sensationalized topic [of bioterrorism]’ as animportant contributor to increased ‘public awareness’regarding the ‘true threat’ of bioterrorism. He chidedNightline, however – and by extension, its technical con-sultant (a leading government contractor in bioterrorismpreparedness) – for reporting that inhalation anthrax had a3-7 day incubation period, rather than two days to sevenweeks as suggested by available epidemiological datafrom the 1979 Sverdlosk anthrax release.

Built on this erroneous assumption, Henderson argued,the ‘Biowar’ scenario implied that there was only a verylimited window of opportunity for antibiotic therapy andprophylaxis, and thus that medical and public health inter-ventions would be largely ineffective. Nightline’s execu-tive producer, anchor and senior field producer – whoseseries goal had been to highlight the lack of preparation forbioterrorism within US cities – retorted that Henderson’s‘conclusion that there would be plenty of time to react toan anthrax attack and save many lives is misleading andrepresents the most dangerous of fictions.’A larger contextfor the epidemiological point made, however, is that pri-vate ‘emergency management’ firms, with varying degreesof health expertise, have been largely responsible for thedesign, conduct, and evaluation of local preparednesstraining and exercises.11

At one level, the different positions taken in the‘Biowar’ debate turn on the accuracy of the epidemiolog-ical data that underpin the broadcast. At another, they raisethe more fundamental question as to who has the authorityto characterize the bioterrorism phenomenon and itsappropriate remedy. An accusation of ‘fiction’, in this par-ticular case, is a professional slur: the social legitimacy ofboth positions rests primarily on claims to objectivity –that is, the science of epidemiology and the impartiality ofjournalism – and secondarily, to work on behalf of thegreater good – public health and news reporting in a freesociety. Categories of real versus simulated, and so on,

Martin Enserink, ‘Rough-and-tumble behind Bush’ssmallpox policy’, Science, 20December 2002, 298: 2312-2316.

10. D.A. Henderson,‘Dangerous fictions aboutbioterrorism’, TheWashington Post, 8November 1999, p. A-21; TBettag, T Koppel, L. Sievers,‘More dangerous fictions’,The Washington Post, 13November, 1999, p. A-27.

11. In June 2001, forexample, Research Planning,Inc. (RPI), secured a three-year contract to provide bio-chem preparedness trainingsupport to state and localgovernment, estimatingpotential revenues of $11.2million.

12. The moral of the story,of course, depends upon theperspective of the participant.Here, the vantage point is thatof health professionals andlife scientists working inbiodefence.

13. See Diana JeanSchemo, ‘More Christiansbelieve the Second Coming isapproaching’, The New YorkTimes, 31 December 1999, p.1-42; Tim Weiner, ‘U.S.monitors millennium troublespots around world,’ The NewYork Times, 19 December1999, p. 1-42.

14. David Kirkpatrick,‘The return of the warriorJesus’, The New York Times, 4April 2004, p. 4-1.

Aretxaga, B. 2001. Terror asthrill: First thoughts on the‘war on terrorism.’Anthropological Quarterly75:139-53.

— 2003. Maddening states.Annual Review ofAnthropology 32: 393-410.

Borchardt, F.L.1990.Doomsday speculation asa strategy of persuasion: Astudy of apocalypticism asrhetoric. Lewiston, NY:Edwin Mellen Press.

Campbell, D. 1992. Writingsecurity: United Statesforeign policy and thepolitics of identity.Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press.

Der Derian, J. 2001. Virtuouswar: Mapping themilitary-industrial-media-entertainment network.Boulder, CO: WestviewPress.

Ferguson, J. and A. Gupta2002. Spatializing states:Toward an ethnography ofneoliberal governmentality.American Ethnologist29(4): 981-1002.

Fig. 6. Meetings ofprofessional societies andinter-governmentalorganizations, such as theNational GovernorsAssociation, have beenimportant venues for thedramatization anddissemination of scenarios.


thus mask a larger issue: who is socially, politically, andmaterially empowered to say what the future brings, apoint to which the essay returns in its conclusion.

Apocalyptic bioterrorist scenarios In the view of their creators, bioterrorism response sce-narios operate as educational tools and as practical testsof emergency response capabilities: that is, they servestrictly instrumental functions. From a symbolic per-spective, however, they participate in a larger apoca-lyptic-millenialist discursive field that has suffusedeveryday life in the US over the last decade – that ‘his-torical sensibility transfixed by the possibility of immi-nent catastrophe, cosmic redemption, spiritualtransformation, and a new world order’ (Stewart &Harding 1999: 289-90). Bioterrorist scenarios manifestthe apocalyptic ‘voice of prophecy’, speaking to anincontrovertible future event (Stewart & Harding 1999:286). Providing exercise participants with the experi-ence of a confused and tragic scenario time is meant togenerate action in actual, historic time (cf. O’Leary1998, Borchardt 1990).

Though the emphases in bioterrorist scenarios shiftaccording to their venue, some ‘endtime’ features recur.The scenario is a story of an inevitable, crippling biolog-ical attack – the ‘when’ of the ‘not if but when’ formula-tion. Written in plague time, events are projectedaccording to the epidemiological traits of the pathogenreleased and possibly manipulated by the terrorists. Thescenario is typically a worst case, where everything thatcan go wrong does go wrong: mass casualties that over-whelm society’s ability to treat the sick and contain thespread of disease, delays in communications betweenhealth department and hospital, tensions and misunder-standings between public health and law enforcement offi-cials that impede effective collaboration for the publicgood, scarcity of life-saving medical resources and theexacerbation of pre-existing social fault lines, jurisdic-tional tensions between local, state and federal govern-ments, public panic, civil unrest, mob violence and theneed for state force to contain the disturbances. These fea-tures tend to emerge whether they are written into the sce-nario at the outset, or conveyed by participants themselvesin the course of role-playing.

The new millennium inspired both optimistic and cata-strophic predictions of the future, with the years 2000 and2001 heralding change of cosmic significance (O’Leary1994). The US, however, ‘has always been an eschatolog-ical hotbed’, from the Puritans who wove visions of ‘apoc-alyptic crisis and millennial hope’ into their colonialexperiences to the ‘hundreds of movements, revivals,communities and institutions[…] fashioned in part, afterbiblical texts and visions pertaining to endtime, imminentcataclysm, judgment and redemption’ (Stewart & Harding1999: 289). Secularized endtime visions of US historyhave also been put forward, and many show elements oftechnophilia and technophobia: technological progressrather than a divinity has been represented as the source ofdevastation or salvation (Stewart & Harding 1999).Apocalyptic prophecy experienced a resurgence in popu-larity in the latter half of the 20th century, as the threat ofnuclear war made religious warnings of ‘planetarydestruction credible to a much wider audience’ (O’Leary1994: 7).

The bioterrorism response narrative can be read as a sec-ularized apocalyptic tale whose fundamental moral is thatsubversion of scientific, biological knowledge for mali-cious and destructive purposes can lead to calamitous lossof human life and massive social disruption.12 Afflictingthe simulated population under siege are the pathogen, the‘thinking enemy’ who makes use of and compounds thevagaries of infectious disease (Larsen 2001), a desperateand distraught public, and a fractured, ineffectual emer-gency response on the part of institutions of governmentand public health, public safety and medical bodies.Scenario narratives and the participant debriefings thatoften accompany them provide glimpses of potentiallyredemptive forces as well: biomedical progress in the formof rapid diagnostics, vaccines and antibiotics thatempower the practitioner and the patient’s immune systemto ward off infection, and an emergency response ‘system’predicated upon a principle of collaboration among theformerly bounded, autonomous realms of medicine, publichealth, national security, law enforcement and multiplelevels of government.

Bioterrorism scenarios are meant to ‘ready’ the politicalleadership and professionals charged with protecting thehealth and safety of the population for an inevitableassault. Focused upon the foregone conclusion of abioweapons attack (the ‘when’), these scenarios may sub-vert more robust discussion of preventative measuresrather than reactive ones (that is, the ‘if’) – namely thosein the realm of foreign policy. On the other hand, grim epi-

Foucault, M. 1980[1976].The history of sexuality,volume I: An introduction.New York: VintageBooks.

—1991[1978].Governmentality. In TheFoucault effect: Studies ingovernmentality.University of ChicagoPress, pp. 87-104.

Ghamari-Tabrizi, S. 2000.Simulating theunthinkable: Gamingfuture war in the 1950sand 1960s. Social Studiesof Science 30(2): 163-223.

— 2004. The convergence ofthe Pentagon andHollywood: The nextgeneration of militarytraining simulations. In:Rabinowitz, L. & Geil, A.(eds) Memory bytes:History, technology, anddigital culture, pp. 150-173. Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press.

Henderson, D.A. 1999. Thelooming threat ofbioterrorism. Science 283:1279-1282.

King, N. 2002. Dangerousfragments. Grey Room 7:72-81.

Larsen, R.J. 2000. ‘Thethreat of bioterrorism’.Paper presented to‘Planning for BiologicalEvents: Responses toTerrorism and InfectiousDisease Outbreaks’Conference, 19-21October, UniformedServices University of theHealth SciencesSubstance Abuse andMental Health ServicesAdministration, Bethesda,MD.

Martin, E. 1994. Flexiblebodies: Trackingimmunity in Americanculture from the days ofpolio to the age of AIDS.Boston: Beacon Press.

O’Leary, S.D. 1994. Arguingthe apocalypse: A theoryof millennial rhetoric.New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

— 1998. Apocalypticism inAmerican popular culture:From the dawn of thenuclear age to the end ofthe American century. InS.J. Stein (ed.) Theencyclopedia ofapocalypticism, pp. 392-426. New York:Continuum.

Fig. 7. A sample ofbioterrorism-related contentfrom the web pages of the UScitizen preparedness campaign,Ready.Gov, launched by theUS Department of HomelandSecurity in collaboration withthe Advertising Council andThe Alfred P. Sloan Foundationon 19 February 2003.

Fig. 8. Final report on the2002 ‘Sooner Spring’exercise, made available topolitical leaders andemergency responseorganizations at state andlocal levels in the US.


demic images may incite new waves of support forenhanced measures to prevent research, development andproliferation of biological weapons. Such was the inten-tion of the founding practitioners of Physicians for SocialResponsibility and International Physicians for thePrevention of Nuclear War, when they carefully plotted theanticipated effects of nuclear winter and advocated disar-mament because no ‘response’ could attenuate the horrificeffects of this technology.

Instructive in terms of the capacity of biologicalweapons to inflict human suffering on an immense scale,bioterrorism scenarios nonetheless invite elaborate fan-tasies as to the cataclysm that could ensue. Playing one-dimensional roles in bioterrorism scenarios, members ofthe public usually surface as mass casualties or hysteria-driven mobs who self-evacuate affected areas or resort toviolence to gain access to scarce, potentially life-savingantibiotics and vaccines. These images, around which offi-cial response systems are being built – the public as aproblem to be managed during a crisis – preclude carefulconsideration of, and planning for, ways to solicit thecooperation of an affected population. The emphasis is oncrowd control rather than enhancing the people’s ability tocope with a public health emergency. In addition, suchimages help skirt the difficult issue of how to ensure a fairdistribution of resources during an epidemic emergency,by perpetuating a more simplistic notion of the ‘natural’volatility of people in grave peril.

The apocalyptic mode of scenarios comes at the cost offatalism and questionable substantive claims such as thoseinvolving mass responses to disaster. Scenarios also havepositive, generative effects as well. They are a compellingmedium through which policy-makers and public healthand safety professionals come to comprehend the complexdangers posed by biological weapons. As deliberatelystaged interactions among disparate communities, sce-narios temporarily embody a larger response ‘system’, onetypically outside of individual experience. The mayor seesthe dilemmas of the hospital administrator who sees thedilemmas of the emergency room physician who sees thedilemmas of the health department, and so on.Bioterrorism scenarios foster acquaintances, social con-nections and understandings across disciplinary bound-aries. In this respect, bioterrorism scenarios have beenrevelatory experiences for officials unaware of how publichealth actually operates or what limited ability it has todeal with unforeseen events, given its historically low pri-ority in government, or how a dysfunctional health caresystem bears directly upon security matters.

Conclusion: Emerging political subjectivitiesBioterrorism scenarios permit explorations into ‘govern-mentality’ – the institutions, processes and practicesthrough which a population comprised of individuals isimagined, their conduct and well-being made meaningful,their sense of self nurtured in specific ways, and theirefforts directed to some purposes over others (Ferguson &Gupta 2002; Foucault 1991[1978]). Bioterrorism sce-narios are a symbolic structure through which a particularkind of danger is construed, and particular social identifi-cations and relationships are made, with manifest politicalconsequences (Campbell 1992, Weldes et al. 1999). Asrepresented in official response scenarios, bioterrorism isan amalgam of dangers against which the US populationmust be made secure – the foreign terrorist, the replicatingpathogen, and the panicky public.

Around this definition, new networks of authorities inand out of government are coming together to protect thecommon good (cf. Trouillot 2001); their interests some-times converge, at other times conflict. Bioterrorism sce-narios – through their authorship, performance and

dissemination – help to generate new political subjectivi-ties. A range of authorities find reinvigorated purpose inproviding protection against bioterrorism. Political andmilitary leaders reassert the duty to safeguard Americafrom foreign enemies. Law enforcement professionals findnew purpose in the goals of subverting terrorist attacks andcontaining disorderly publics. Medical and public healthpractitioners fulfil oaths to provide protection againstbodily harm for patients and populations – the politicalboundaries of which may shrink or expand, from the localto the national to the global. Present concern with bioter-rorism may signal novel forms of ‘biopower’ (Foucault1980[1976]), where the task of governing becomesenhancing the ability to fight off infection, i.e. buildingbetter ‘emergency response systems’ at the institutionallevel and better ‘immune systems’ at the individual level(cf. Martin 1994).

‘While an evangelism of fear has been cardinal for theconstitution of many states’ identity, the apocalypticmode[…] has been conspicuous in the catalog of Americanstatecraft’ (Campbell 1992: 153). Bioterrorism imaginariesof professionals charged with ensuring preparedness areapparently secular: bioscience, technology and medicineare among the forces invoked to deliver the populationfrom danger. Approaching counter-terrorism scenarios asnon-religious, however, risks obscuring the complexity ofUS culture and politics. Religious and secular apocalypti-cisms frequently interpenetrate one another (Stewart &Harding 1999). Tens of millions of Americans, it is esti-mated, believe that the endtime prophesied in the Book ofRevelation is soon to be realized: biological weapons aresingled out by some as the means of final destruction.13 Thelatest instalment in the evangelical ‘Left Behind’ series –the best-selling adult novels in the US – presents a ‘war-like’ Jesus in the Second Coming, an image that resonateswith President Bush’s portrayals of military actions inAfghanistan and Iraq in terms of ‘godly purpose’.14

Whether and why various ‘publics’ in the US (and else-where) embrace the vision of a bioterrorized future is anopen question. Prevalent in US popular culture, scenariosmay constitute a modality of power through which currentpolitical leaders produce consent for their counter-terroristactivities and professionals reproduce their expert status.Mass culture effects, however, are uncertain, unstable andcontradictory (Traube 1996). More ethnographic study isthus needed to understand whether and under what condi-tions various ‘publics’ internalize dominant images ofthemselves as being at risk of bioattack, and as legiti-mately protected by current domestic and foreign policyand professional practices (cf. Skidmore 2003). An addi-tional ethnographic and political question is what rolebioterrorist narratives play in reinforcing apocalyptic sce-narios in the minds of individuals and groups fantasizingabout bringing them about. Bioterrorism scenariosembody ambitions of both antagonist and protagonist.

Thinking hopefully about a future not threatened by bio-logical attacks is doubly difficult in the current environ-ment: apocalyptic rhetoric of an incontrovertible,impending doom ‘all too easily overwhelm[s] the opti-mistic faith necessary for meaningful political action’(O’Leary 1998: 412). Moreover, the social authority todefine and/or validate matters of biology, health and secu-rity is outside the realm of the majority of people. That is,there are institutional limits on one’s claim to be theprophetic voice in the wilderness, the holder of specialknowledge regarding bioterrorism – a hybrid of defenceand medical concerns. This is not to dispute the presentand perilous realities of biological weapons and globalconditions favourable to infectious disease, only thepotentially exclusionary terms under which dominantapproaches to them are developing.

O’Toole, Tara et al. 2002.Shining light on ‘DarkWinter’. ClinicalInfectious Diseases 34:972-983.

Smithson, A. & Levy, L.-A.1999. Ataxia: Thechemical and biologicalterrorism threat and theUS response. Washington,DC: The Henry L.Stimson Center.

Skidmore, M. 2003. Darkerthan midnight: Fear,vulnerability, and terrormaking in urban Burma(Myanmar). AmericanEthnologist 30(1): 5-21.

Stewart, K. & Harding, S.1999. Bad endings:American apocalypsis.Annual Review ofAnthropology 28: 285-310.

Taussig, M. 1992. Thenervous system. NewYork: Routledge.

— 1997. The magic of thestate. New York:Routledge.

Traube, E. 1996. ‘Thepopular’ in Americanculture. Annual Review ofAnthropology 25: 127-151.

Trouillot, M.-R. 2001. Theanthropology of the statein the age ofglobalization. CurrentAnthropology 42(1): 125-138.

Weldes, J. et al. (eds) 1998.Cultures of insecurity:States, communities, andthe production of danger.Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press.

Fig. 9. Programme for theFebruary 1999 NationalSymposium on the Medicaland Public Health Responseto Bioterrorism, organized bythe Johns Hopkins UniversityCenter for CivilianBiodefense.

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