In 2008 terrorists executed a coordinated attack across Mumbai over a three-day period which lead many New Yorkers to wonder 'what if they were to try a similar attack here?' As far as the NYPD is concerned, they already have. Since the Mumbai attack the NYPD has run eight large-scale tabletop simulations of similar attacks on the the Big Apple—and they've learned some interesting strategies while doing them. And now so can you!
The biggest lesson? You can't be too prepared. Seemingly small things like visiting wounded officers needs to be carefully thought through (in one simulation Commissioner Kelly went to visit wounded police officers at Bellevue only to be incapacitated by a bomb in the ER). And the big things count too. The Mumbai attackers used military-style assault weapons, so the NYPD has gone and trained an additional 375 officers to use "heavy weapons"—like MP5 submachine guns and Mini-14 semiautomatic carbine rifles—to better fight back.
The Department also learned from these exercises that they need to be better prepared for chaos. Even when told to stay put New Yorkers will have a tendency to try and go home, so security needs to be stationed to make sure the bridges are walkable. And though conventional logic would imply if you had a major attack you would want to shut down mass transit, evidence now suggests that in terms of moving people to safety it is best to keep the buses running.
There is no way to predict how, or more importantly if, another terrorist attack would occur here but it is reassuring to know that there are people out there plotting how not to kill us. To that end, the Journal has a nice infographic of the last simulation here.
