Abby Christopher on Games Tackle Disaster Planning
When the next enormous disaster hits, you can be sure of one thing: relying on the regional or federal government to respond is stupid. But how can we train local people to be first, and maybe final, responders? Abby Christopher writes at Wired about video games that help people learn what to do in various disasters:
Don’t worry about bird flu — video games will come to the rescue.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding a series of computer games to help prepare health workers and other first responders facing bioterror attacks, nuclear accidents and pandemics.
Backed also by Chicago’s Department of Public Health, a University of Illinois at Chicago research team is developing a series of games that simulate health-related emergencies as well as biological, chemical, radiological and natural disasters.
The new approach is expected to save money — but it can also prepare many professionals and volunteers quickly in the event of a health emergency, like the potential bird-flu pandemic.
This is the sort of thing that I think is essential for preparing for the inevitable Disaster 2.0, like a bird flu pandemic, biological terrorism, or a 100 year storm hitting Manhattan. Instead of overbred bureaucrats holding endless planning sessions and writing voluminous reports about our lack of preparedness, the US Government or Bill Gates should throw a few tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into a massively parallel online game system where those who get to level 100 will get their college paid for, or $50,000/year, or some other NBA-level inducements. We could have millions of people learning what to do in an emergency, and the top 10% or 15% could make serious coin.
And in the case of an emergency, when you are standing knee deep in the rising water in a New York City subway, and someone starts telling everyone what to do, you’d be much happier knowing that she is a level 100 adept of the Disaster 2.0 game instead of some political appointee with a flair for office politics.
