Mother of invention

So, I'm driving into work and I caught sight of a government billboard advocating being ready to combat terrorism if and when it hits American again. And I'm thinking, "No way in hell can we ever honestly be ready for someone unleashing anthrax in the New York subway system or detonating a nuke in downtown Seattle or opening a bag of sarin in your favorite airport the day before Thanksgiving." Forget it. Government agencies will be reduced to playing cleanup, finding the dead and dying and closing off parts of an already crippled infrastructure. You can't fully prepare against the anarchic nature of terrorism; that's its beauty. That's its simple, elegant truth. Damage from terrorism is unpredictable at best, and a horrific Cassandraesque nightmare to those that think about protecting our borders.

However, I was curious about planning for the worst on a citywide level. It makes the most sense to revamp whole downtown canyons and major road systems to a) deliver emergency containment crews to the scene and b) allow people in other parts of the city a fast way out of town. You would need to station first responders in different parts of your major downtown zones and give them unfettered access to hospitals, water and power pipelines or, god forbid, city dumps.

And then it hits me.

SimCity.

For those of you not in the know, SimCity is a widely popular video game where you take on the seemingly unsexy role of a city planner/authority figure/unelected mayor and try to develop your little patch of land into a thriving metropolis, complete with suburbs, office areas, parks, roads and industry while trying to meet the needs of your citizenry without too much crime, pollution and traffic jams. Like chess, the concept is easy to get, but will take years to master as you try to balance the needs of your people with want you can do. Around since the 1980s, it's a game that has helped launch the "God" gaming genre, where you are in total control, and has led to a zoo of other Sim titles, from SimEarth (run a planet) to SimAnt (run an ant colony) to The Sims (run...er, yourself).

So, I'm thinking that the makers of the SimCity series could cash on the whole "be ready" craze (or at least point out how futile it is to think we can minimize an attack) by creating a modified version (a.k.a. "mod") of SimCity to incorporate terrorism into the spate of disasters that can befall your city. In SimCity, players can find themselves coping with the aftermath of an earthquake or a leaky nuclear reactor or rioters, so why not the hell on earth of a dirty nuke?

I'm not saying terrorism is a game, although the makers of first-person shooter Counter-strike had no problem putting you in the shoes of a terrorist. Why not seriously give city officials a special version of SimCity to help them run scenarios of terrorist attacks? If the Army can get off licensing a first-person shooter that simulates you as a soldier, then the best we can do is make a portable engine of SimDestruction to get our town leaders ready for carnage.

Maybe there'll be a "WarGames" moment for the elected leaders. As in the 1983 Matthew Broderick movie, it became apparent that when NORAD's master computer was simulating nuclear war (inspired by real software that is used to run horrific "what-if" scenarios) that the only way to win this game was not to play. If a machine can piece that together, then possibly some elected official will too, and maybe we'll figure out a new, smarter way to win this war on terror.