Sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for. The Lizard’s alter ego Jim Preen wrote an article recently on what makes for a convincing scenario during a crisis simulation.
He had this to say:
So what is my favourite scenario? As with all things scenarios seem to be at the whim of fashion or at least what’s been in the news recently. How long before we start devising an exercise based on widespread rioting and looting?
Some years it’s terror attacks, then the smart money is on damage to data centres, but for me, I miss the ‘good old days’ of pandemic flu. That often seemed the perfect scenario because it was and is potentially catastrophic (how we love a good catastrophe!), could affect any organization, but also allowed for planning, being a rising tide event.
It involves human beings rather than technology, which can be a turn-off to those not technically minded and given the medical evidence also highly credible. No doubt it will stage a comeback in a year or two.
Well bird flu seems to be making a comeback rather sooner than expected. Time is currently running an article headlined:
It’s back: Bird flu returns and this time it’s mutated
During the last couple of flu seasons, we were all worried about H1N1, a new and virulent strain of influenza, but this winter we may have to contend with a much deadlier foe: H5N1 or bird flu. Some Asian countries are reporting this week the first cases of a mutant strain of the virus spreading in poultry.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported on Monday that the H5N1 virus has mutated, something that public health officials had feared would happen and that could possibly make the virus more dangerous to people.
In its original form, H5N1 primarily infects wild birds and poultry, including geese, chickens, ducks and turkeys, but only rarely jumps into people. Still, the fact that some people have become infected with H5N1 by eating improperly prepared and contaminated poultry — the virus has killed 331 people and infected 565 since it first appeared in 2003 — led experts to warn that it was only a matter of time before it altered into a form that made it easier to spread to humans.
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