Operation Red Dragon and the Unthinkable

Mobilization

Within hours of the nuclear bomb going off in New York, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) immediately went into action. They had run several tabletop drills and exercises of what they would do if a nuclear bomb ever went off in a major city. Now those drills were being put into practice as thousands of FEMA workers were being directed to one of the two disaster zones. FEMA also alerted all of the cities that had been designated as disaster and medical relief centers and activated their FEMA disaster relief volunteers.

Thousands of police officers, EMTs, firefighters, nurses and doctors had volunteered to be a part of a reserve force of FEMA personnel in case of a historic natural disaster. These individuals would immediately head to a designated airport and be ready to fly to the affected area to provide what support they could. Hundreds of hospitals across the US were being placed on alert and told to expect injured people from the disaster sites in the coming hours and days. National Guard Armories and school gyms were also being readied to receive displaced people from the blast.

The non-deployed members of the New York, New Jersey, and Northeast National Guard units were immediately activated and ordered to head to the blast zones to begin assisting in the evacuations and recovery efforts. FEMA began to request hundreds of aircraft from the Airlines to begin the massive airlift of equipment, injured and displaced people, and all of the volunteers from across the country. All flights in to Newark, LaGuardia and JFK were redirected to other cities. All out bound flights were allowed to leave to make room for the incoming aircraft that were bringing additional rescuers and much needed equipment.

Fortunately, the EMP blast from the nuclear bomb was contained to around 5 miles from the epicenter, so it had not affected the airports (though it seriously damaged the telecommunications and transportation system as many routes traveled through parts that were affected). The Air Force began to shift several of their communication drones to head over New York and Baltimore to provide immediate 4G wireless capability over the affected areas until communication systems could be reestablished.

FEMA had organized their rescue and recovery response into three stages, the first being as close to the affected area as possible. These sites would begin the triage of injured people and identify those which needed to be flown out immediately to one of the local hospitals, or if they could be driven to the second stage of treatment and local hospitals. Once there, their injuries would be tended to and then they would be scheduled to be flown to one of the disaster relief cities for further treatment and free up the local hospitals for the more serious patients.

Everyone being treated by FEMA was being biometrically enrolled and then given a wristband with a RFID chip to identify the injured person and to keep track of where they were being treated. This function was going to be critical to ensuring family members stayed together and, if separated, could be found and reunited quickly. The third staging point was for displaced persons and refugees who could no longer go back to their homes. The government immediately established a five-mile perimeter around the blast site, preventing people from going back into the hot zone.

Claudia Álvaros had had the wildest, craziest 48 hours of her life; she had managed to stay awake without sleeping for the last couple of days, moving from one patient to the other without ceasing, and (in true nurse fashion) barely stopping to use the restroom at all. When the FEMA agents arrived at the hospital to help transport all of the patients to safety, she had stayed behind until there were only a handful of people left to move and she was basically ordered to get on a plane. She didn’t realize until she was in the flight, but she hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since the bomb went off; the result was that she had actually gotten incredibly dehydrated and had managed to throw her electrolytes way off balance. She was forced to become the patient for a little while as she was hooked up to IV fluids to stabilize her condition.

Claudia had a brother in Houston, so she had requested to be transferred there. Once she arrived, she learned that she actually was not exposed to a fatal level of radiation. She had gotten indoors before the fallout had really started to come down, and although she was exposed to some additional radiation that emanated in through the entrance, her condition was still treatable. The hospital had also given everyone who was not acutely dying a dose of potassium iodine. She went through the full decontamination process before being transported; she was scrubbed within an inch of her life with a special solution, and given new clothing to wear. Now they were giving her new medications that had recently been developed to treat and prevent damage to her bone marrow and internal organs. It would take her a little while to process the fact that she had another chance at life.

The only individuals being allowed to enter the contaminated area were rescue workers, firefighters and paramedics. Police were assigned to go door to door and search for injured people and to evacuate everyone in the danger zones. Radiation was going to be high within the perimeters, and unless people began to move out of them, they were going to receive a lethal dose of radiation in short order. All police and rescue workers were required to wear a radiation counter and once the readout reached a certain level, they were no longer allowed into the hot zones.

As FedEx and UPS cargo aircraft began to land at previously identified airports, they were being loaded with prepositioned pallets configured to transport injured people in double decker beds. Other parts of the planes’ cargo hold were set up for people with more severe injuries. The Boeing transports could move sixty non-critically injured people, and up to twenty-four intensive care patients, along with all the medical equipment and personnel needed to care for them.

While the aircraft were being readied for their new medical mission, helicopters began to arrive at the airports from the stage one and two triage centers, bringing hundreds of injured people to the waiting aircraft. As the planes were filled with the wounded, they began their take offs to the next destination. Most aircraft would fly to a city within a two-hour radius and then return for another trip. FEMA had the aircraft spread out their trips to different cities so one city would not get suddenly overwhelmed. As medical, police and firefighter volunteers showed up at those airports, they were loaded in to the aircraft for the return flight back.

Within sixteen hours of activating the disaster relief plan, thousands of seriously injured people had been flown to dozens of cities across America. Those who could not return back to their homes were being loaded into trucks and taken to Ft. Dix or flown to Ft. Drum (where field tents and barracks were being made available for people to stay in until they could be flown to their next of kin in another city or state). Because it was in the throes of a cold Northeast winter, establishing adequate shelter for the tens of thousands of refugees was imperative.

By the end of the first day, FEMA had their disaster recovery system fully operational and running at 100 %. People were being treated and relocated to other cities for further care or tended to by their extended family. Those who had nowhere else to go, were being provided with housing and food on a variety of military bases and local hotels near those military installations until something more permanent could be arranged.