Mitigation and response planning in a bio‐terrorist attack

With the emergence of biological weapons of mass destruction as potential tools of terrorism, Presidential Decision Directive 39 initiated US plans to enhance mitigation and response activity. Anecdotal information suggests many of the likely behavioral and organizational response challenges are not being addressed. The current paper applies the disaster research literature to identify the likely behavioral and organizational response challenges a community or nation would encounter in a bio‐terrorist attack on a metropolitan area. Mitigation and response planning, it is argued, would be enhanced if these likely challenges were actually taken into account.