I wonder if the DHS will be able to predict the weather the day such an attack occurs? Sure the test will them how far the gas might reach on that day, but won't the weather and wind be different on that day that i hope never happens?

and isn't there a computer program that could do the same thing without all the man power and theatrics?

Again? They did this last fall, iirc (read about it in amny methinks), anyone remember the results of that?

Actually, worldwatcher, they'd do this because they don't have modelling programs. It's very hard to predict these sort of things, fluid dynamics is very ornery stuff. Weather patterns may be different, but the general flow of things is going to be similar. The wind tends to blow in certain ways all the time, and any knowledge is a boon.

Oh when it rains it pours!!

Nothing new, they've been doing these experiments since...well, let me see here:

1949, United States Army begins 20 years of simulated germ warfare attacks against American cities, conducting 239 open air tests

1950, United States Army engages in simulated germ warfare in San Francisco

1951, Army simulated a germ warfare project in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

1952, Army's germ warfare project in Ket West, Florida and Ft. McCellan, Alabama

1954, Army's germ warfare project in Point Muqu and Fort Hueneme, California

1962, Central Intelligence Agency pays a Canadian agriculture technician to infect Cuban turkeys with Newcastle disease

1963, CIA begins weather modification project over Hue, Vietnam

1966, CIA begins weather modification experiments over Cuba, later used in an attempt to ruin Fidel Castro's sugar cane crop...again, Army has a simulated germ warfare project in (WHERE?!) New York City (probably we never heard of that terrorist attack that killed so many Americans at that time...wow, such secrecy lol)

1967, beginning of CIA's $21 million rain-making program over Indochina which would make 2,600 sorties by 1972

1969, Richard Nixon issues Executive Order No. 11490 establishing plans for dictatorial control in the event of a national emergency...also, the Pentagon and the Department of Interior researchs study methods of inducing earthquakes by injecting fluids into deep wells

1970, United States Army experts complete a mock assassination project against the president and Congress, demonstrating that determined terrorists could wipe out U.S. leaders through the use of chemical germ warfare

The list goes on...smack dab into 2005. I think we catch the drift. A study to see how certain gases do what where why when how with who? Never mind, only another million tossed into the East River.

One of my first jobs (I am a software engineer) was for a company developing zinc-chloride batteries. This was in the 70's.

These batteries were intended to be used in electric vehicles and for storage on the power grid. (Although I believe much of the work on the latter was funded by our government as part of the goofy plan to move nukes around the country on rails... They wanted off-grid storage of electrical power to power the rails.)

Anyway, these batteries produced chlorine gas within a closed system during operation. Should the system be breached, you could have a significant release of chlorine gas.

(Unfortunately, exactly that happend when the company showed off a car powered by the battery on the "Today" show... OK, not a significant release, but enough to draw comment from the host. They brushed that off with "that's just chlorine - the same thing you use in your pool..." We also had a couple of releases in the building, where the local fire department responded and basically stood around waiting for the gas to clear after evacuation of the immediate area. The stuff is not particularly easy to contain - everything has to be stainless steel, etc. Turned out not be be something you want in millions of cars. Duh.)

One of my co-workers (a Russian, FWIW) was tasked with devloping modeling software to similate the spread of the chlorine plume under various scenarios. (i.e. different environment conditions, release locations, etc.) This was required for an "FMEA Analysis", (FMEA is (or was?) a U.S. government agency dealing with disaster preparedness).

So, I've assumed since then that this is a fairly commonplace thing to do. Certainly, an actual test might be useful (but also useful to terrorists if the results are released...) but I doubt very much that it is being done for lack of modeling programs.

[edit on 5-8-2005 by Bay_Watcher]