The Obsidian Registry · File 068
They Rehearsed the Pandemic. Then Someone Sold the Ending.
A drill is only practice until somebody writes the ending.
Built on the real record of Pandemic Rehearsal Exercises. Every documented fact is numbered and cited at the end. The rest, use your own judgment.
logged · file_068.txt · 10.9 KB · recovered by
Intake record
| Recovered from | Storage unit, Arlington, Virginia; contents sold at auction for unpaid rent |
|---|---|
| Contents | A ring binder of exercise inject cards, a burner phone, eleven printed text messages |
| Finder | Auction buyer |
| Status | Binder withheld. The last card is blank on both sides. |
| On the record | Real history is cited with numbered sources. Everything else, use your own judgment. |
INJECT 1. HOUR 00.
A NOVEL RESPIRATORY ILLNESS IS REPORTED IN A LIVESTOCK MARKET. TWELVE CASES. THREE IN INTENSIVE CARE.
Dana Okafor wrote disasters for a living, and she was very good at it.
Her firm built tabletop exercises for governments and companies: a conference table, a room full of officials, and a facilitator who reads cards aloud. A bridge collapses. A server farm goes dark. A virus jumps from pigs to people. The officials argue about what to do while the facilitator makes it worse, one card at a time.
These exercises are real, and some of them are famous. In June 2001, an exercise called Dark Winter at Andrews Air Force Base imagined a smallpox attack on the United States; former senators and officials playing the National Security Council watched it spread to twenty-five states.1 From January to August 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ran a series called Crimson Contagion, simulating a flu pandemic that began in China. Its draft report, later revealed by The New York Times, found the government underfunded, underprepared, and short of masks and ventilators.2
And on October 18, 2019, in New York, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a public exercise about a fictional new coronavirus spreading around the world.3
Ten weeks later, the real one started. In January 2020, Johns Hopkins issued a statement saying plainly that the exercise had not been a prediction. Millions of people decided they did not believe it.3
Dana believed it. She had written forty exercises. She knew how ordinary they were. That was what made the binder so strange.
Remaining record sealed · 4 known copies
This is where they stopped the last reader.
You have read the part that leaked. The ending, every cited source, and the archivist's note are still sealed.
This file
File 068
$2.99
- The full file, unredacted
- Sources and archivist note
- Instant access
This volume
Volume XII: They Rehearsed This
$9.99
- All 4 files in this volume
- Every source, every archivist note
- Yours to keep. Read on any device.
Every file is original fiction built on real, cited records. The records and sources are real. The characters and endings are made up. How it works
Delivery: instant, PDF + EPUBReads anywhereUnread? Refund within 14 daysCard checkout through our processor
Want all of it instead? , about 39¢ a file.
Not ready to break the seal?
The Archive opens on October 31. Join the priority list for 20% off when the Vault opens, plus File 027 free in full tonight.Leave your email and get File 027 free in full, plus a warning the moment a new file is unsealed.
No spam. We barely email. One click to leave.
