COVID-19 has awakened the most primordial fears and concerns within most of us. It is stealthy, contagious and lethal. It is statistically certain to kill a proportion of our population. It has no borders, no antidote and can spread as fast as we travel. Fueled by 24/7 media coverage, this pandemic has focused us existentially in a way that only a nuclear crisis could.
Despite current sorrows and hardship, has its malignant arrival now actually done mankind a favor?
In 2005, concerned by the recently concluded SARs pandemic, my U.S. Army 66th Military Intelligence Group in Darmstadt, Germany, conducted a “what if” tabletop exercise about how to survive and manage during a Spanish Flu type outbreak in Europe. Beforehand, we handed out dozens of Gina Kolata’s highly readable book, “Flu,” to our officers and senior enlisted.
We then brainstormed how the several thousand soldiers, civilians and dependents in our bases and housing areas would ride-out such a pandemic if it were to hit us internally or infiltrate first into the German community that surrounded our installations.
The fundamental question was how would our personnel and families survive yet subsist and conduct mission within this challenged ecosystem?