At 09:11 AM 9/19/99 EDT, Greg Burch writes:
>now, so I've been thinking about this question as I read the book. It seems
>like your scenario would result in a fairly speedy collapse of the political
>order into multiple declarations of emergency by the various branches and
>levels of government and other, non-political institutions. Each would be
>claiming to uphold the "true" constitutional order.
Interesting. The original scenario did not account for the long line of succession in power in our government. I would think that a remaining member of the cabinet, the speaker of the House, the Senate pro temp, whoever was left, would find themselves under quarantine and running government via telephone. Would every successor in our government actually find themselves all in one place to be infected? The Secret Service definitely considers biological scenarios in their threat assessment. They do not let all top members of the government fly in one plane, attend the same meeting, or Presidential address--there's always one person separated out to avoid a mass assassination (or a mass infection, I guess!)
Kathryn Aegis