TOPOFF 4 Starts, but what about Vigilant Shield?

October 16th, 2007

By Rowan Wolf

The TOPOFF 4 exercises started in Guam and Portland, Oregon. There are reports from various sources on how those are progressing. However, there is no news at all out of Phoenix (the third site in this week’s scenario). Further, while there is news regarding TOPOFF, there is absolutely nothing about Vigilant Shield 2008 which is running currently and in coordination with the exercise.

The lack of media coverage of TOPOFF is planned. Media that are involved are fake media. Yes, they have fake media present for the exercises, but have placed the real media at a distance.

Also participating in TOPOFF-4 are individuals acting as reporters and photographers that are actually reporting on the incident as part of a virtual news operation. This part of the drill is designed to test the communications and responses of the players tasked with dealing with the media. ~ KUAM News

And the media. Did I mention the drill includes fake media? ~ OregonLive

The most humorous bit of first person reporting is from an employee at the Oregon Department of Transportation Region 1 Headquarters:

ODOT Region 1 headquarters response: Evacuate the nice filtered air conditioned building that was untouched by the explosion, protected by three separate approach spans to the bridge, to send everybody outside into the rain that is now supposedly polluted with radioactive dust. Take a full head count of 600 employees to make sure there are no survivors, and that everybody is now dying of massive lung cancer before letting them back in the building.

However, the news from Guam shows more disruption than from Portland. Guam had significant traffic disruption, and the access to the hospital is blocked to all but emergency vehicles. As I already noted, there is no news about Arizona and how the TOPOFF exercise is going there. Nor is there any mention that I can find about what or how the Vigilant Shield exercise is progressing.

Entry Filed under: NEGATIVE SPACE, FICTIONAL FREEDOM