Caption: Adaptive Focus Training Exercise. (DTRA photo)

A full scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes...could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors would envy the dead. For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot conceive of its horrors. [ President John F. Kennedy ]

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has more than a dozen on-call quick response units to deal with worst-case scenarios. These Consequence Management Advisory Teams (CMATs) provide task-organized, deployable, and technical expertise support, advice, and hazard prediction assistance for the U.S. Department of Defense and other Federal agencies during all phases of accidents or incidents of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear nature. CMATs often have additional specialists in public affairs, legal counsel, radiobiology, and other fields, working across the Federal government and academia to provide timely mission critical information to America’s warfighters and partners.