Ive seen that kinda stuff happen (ie. all the "important people" showing up.  Bout 3 years ago our town "hosted" a mock mass disastor.  It was all over the news and all around town.(My townis very small....3k people small, you gotta ,meet someone from a different town to avoid insest small)  Anyway I was observing the whole ordeal.  People would drive by and ask what was going on and get all pissed off at ME for some odd reason.(I'm plain/street clothed b/c I was observing how everyone was acting, but they didnt know that at the scene).  This one lady pulls up and starts screaming at me and starts physically slapping/punching me because I didnt respnd to her fast enough.
Me: Mam I need you to calm down.  DO you have any children in the school?  Give my their names and maybe I can find something out for you.
Psycho B!tch:  No I dont have any kids in this school....I'm from Ohio!
Me:
PB: What the Hells goin on?
Me: Look lady I dont have time for you (As I'm trying to dicreetly "document" the "behavior" of the workers)
PB: Look kid I dont know who think you are talking to me that way.
Me:  OK you want to know.....They have just found enough anthrax throught the school in large enough quantities to probly wipe out the whole town along with a few bombs wire to it.  You see those guys over there, they are here to to disarm the bombs before they level the school.  Those guys over there are here to put the fire out and rescue survivors shoud the bomb squad cut the wrong wire.  Those guys over there in the siny suits are here to decontaminate the anthrax.  The guys in the ambulances are here to clean up the body parts that will be all over in case the sh!t hits the fan.  Any onther questions?
PB: (While starting to cry) I'm sorry sir, bla bla bla
Me: Mam if you want to help, give the workers some room to work and move along.
(At this time the guys staging the senario had another bomb go off with real sound effects and smoke,  they were right on time but I had lost control of time because of having to deal with PB)
PB: What the hell was that?  (She starts going all psycho again and was finally placed under arrest)
Me:

After the "disaster" was over I went and talked to the police about the lady.  They told me that she was releasedbecause they had more important thing to do, which I thought was right.  So I go in to "debrief"/give my report and guess whose there....PB.
Apparently she was there to start some sh!t "outside" of the hot zone to see how she would be dealt with.  She appoligised to me for hitting me and said nobody would resond to her so she decided to take it to "the next level" which did get some attention.  After the debriefing we went out and had a drink so it was all good

Quoted: PlaysWithAtoms=nuke?  A buddy of mine went to UMR studying nuclear & computer engineering.  He mentioned getting to play with the reactor & such.  Still there working for the university.

Actually, I'm Ceramic now.  Nuke is cool and all, but I prefer the chemical side.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: yes, because it takes no less than 400 people to cordon an area, deal with a single suspect, and test a bag of white powder.  every one of them are heroes and completely necessary. come see how many people my company uses for a cordon and search in a friggin warzone.  a lot of people made a ridiculous amount of overtime today for doing nothing. i understand the concept of redundancy and making sure you have enough resources in an unknown situation, but 400 people is a completely ridiculous number. i dont see any of this a lot of times within the LE crowd, as every single event draws massive amounts of reaction while in the rest of the city the world still turns and the police are still needed to perform their regular functions. dont ever try to compare policing the citizens of this country to the engagement rules you have for a warzone. it doesnt compare in the least. Courts dictate a very soft and gentle hand when dealing with the public of this country, and because of that, you need 4 times as many people. nobody said a word about engaging anything.  a cordon and search is the same no matter what, the only difference between cops and military is that mil get it done with 1/100th the personnel and 100 times the danger ratio.   . again, dealing with the general public is nothing like dealing with people in a war zone. As a LEO, ive been on the scene of a take over style bank robbery, taking cover behind cement walls wearing kevlar helmets and AT15 deployed, and have been walking up to me asking me if the bank is open. That is the type of stupidity which warrants having so many emergency crews there, because the idiots of the world need babysitters, and you cant actively control a scene, and do so without using excessive force, unless you have enough bodies there. edited to add: and guess what happens if you cant effectively keep all the sheeples out, and one gets hurt? a seven figure settlement.

no offense, but i guess im conditioned to the "scan your lane" response.  basically everybody wants to get into the action and have the chance to be a hero/tell cool stories to chicks so when anything goes down everybody rushes to it.

in the military, no matter what is happening, you have to "scan your lane", as in if a firefight breaks out in the front of a column and your tasked with rear security, you maintain that rear security.  you still have a job to do.  this doctrine spreads from the limited scenario presented to a broad interpretation involving AO's hundreds of miles long.  if its neccesary to bring in additional help, more is shifted to cover down, but not friggin everybody.

again, no disrespect, but it simply seems silly to me when i see this happen personally or hear about it.  obviously if only 24 people were quarantined, the affected area must have been small or very sparsely populated at the time.  maybe im wrong and you are right, but im willing to wager that if 400 people responded to this then there were an assload of lollygaggers standing around looking important and wasting resources.  what was described was a carnival style atmosphere.   at the very least i guess you could chalk it up to OJT for a real emergency, eh?

then again, im not a cop, so as i stated its just my opinion which simply makes for moderately entertaining reading on a message board.

I cannot believe that Rolla Missouri has a Homeland Security Hazmat Team. It would be an act of mercy, not terrorism, to destroy Rolla in a chemical attack.



Seriously, My dad went to college in Rolla. It was a little hick town the last time I went through it (1976).