Smallpox

Atlantic Storm, January 2005: How a Smallpox Tabletop Became WHO Emergency Powers Four Months Later

27 April 2026·1809 words·9 mins

Corona Accountability Structural Analysis Pandemic Politics Atlantic Storm Tabletop Exercise Smallpox Bioterror WHO IHR Albright Kouchner Hoyer Buzek Brundtland Nunn NTI Johns Hopkins CSIS Accountability

On 14 January 2005, in a conference room in Washington, ten former or sitting heads of government from North America and Europe — together with a former WHO Director-General and an array of foreign-policy advisers — gathered around a table and played out a coordinated smallpox attack on six major cities simultaneously: Istanbul, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Frankfurt, New York City, Los Angeles. Within four and a half hours of exercise time the reported case count climbed from 51 to 3,320. The exercise was called Atlantic Storm.

Dark Winter, June 2001: Those Who Rehearsed the Smallpox Built the Apparatus After

27 April 2026·2014 words·10 mins

Corona Accountability Structural Analysis Pandemic Politics Dark Winter Tabletop Exercise Bioterror Smallpox Johns Hopkins CSIS ANSER OToole Inglesby Hamburg Judith Miller Iraq War Project BioShield Accountability

From 22 to 23 June 2001 — three months before 9/11, five months before the anthrax letters — thirteen former senior US officials sat at an oval table in a briefing room at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington and played thirteen days of a smallpox outbreak in thirteen hours. The exercise was called Dark Winter.

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