Defense Threat Reduction Agency (Zombies 2010)

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (or DTRA) was an agency within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) created "to safeguard America and its interests from threats of mass destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosives) by reducing the threat and providing quality tools and services." DTRA's main functions are threat reduction, threat control, combat support, and technology development. The agency is headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. DTRA employed 2,000 civilian and military personnel at more than 14 locations around the world, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Ukraine.

DTRA was founded in 1998 by consolidating several DoD organizations, including the Defense Special Weapons Agency (successor to the Defense Nuclear Agency) and the On-Site Inspection Agency. DTRA's vision was "to make the world safer by reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction."

Background
After the end of the Cold War, DTRA and its predecessor agencies have implemented the DoD aspects of several treaties that assist former Eastern Bloc countries in the destruction of Soviet era nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons sites (such as missile silos and plutonium production facilities) in an attempt to avert potential weapons proliferation in the post-Soviet era as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program.

DTRA is also responsible for reducing the threat of conventional war, especially in Europe, by participating in various arms control treaties to which the United States is a party, such as the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies.

DTRA was also particularly responsible for defensive control of biohazard threats to American homeland security. According to a popular motto adopted by the DTRA, “We must support the ongoing revolution in the life sciences by seeking to ensure that resulting discoveries and their applications, used solely for peaceful and beneficial purposes, are globally available. At the same time, we must be mindful of the risks throughout history posed by those who sought to misuse the products of new technologies for harmful purposes. Specifically, we must reduce the risk that misuse of the life sciences could result in the deliberate or inadvertent release of biological material in a manner that sickens or kills people, animals, or plants, or renders unusable critical resources.”

Zombies 2010
After the massive Zombie outbreak of 2010, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was forced to plan the first action taken against the widely spreading contamination of individuals with the 'Zombie Strain'. The agency had to remain true to its purpose of 'Safeguarding the Homeland from Chemical and Biological Threats'. The outbreak in fact occurred when a military development corporation known as 'Shallingly' accidentally released the unstable strain in a gas form over Maryland, in the United States. The gas quickly traveled to Washington, D.C., causing large numbers of fatalities. Due to the unstable and mysterious qualities of the developed strain, the corpses of those killed by the gas quickly rose again as 'walking corpses'.

Civilians nicknamed these states of living matter 'Zombies' due to their resemblance to the pop culture horror icons of the same name and similar nature. The DTRA was paralyzed by the initial outbreak as their headquarters in Virginia were quickly overwhelmed by a Zombified population. The gas spread like a wildfire, creating a toxic cloud over the rest of the United States by September 14. It moved like radiation, being carried to Mexico and Canada and causing Zombies to appear in greater and greater numbers there. This caused the Zombie Outbreak to become an exponentially growing crisis; the spreading "zombie plague" swamped normal law enforcement organizations and chaos reigned. The response of American authorities to the threat was slower than its rate of growth, which gave the strain critical time to expand beyond possible containment.

By the time DTRA was able to mobilize, the entire eastern United States were already engulfed by chaos. Entire agencies and departments for crisis and emergency management had been wiped out and their supervision crippled after the loss of Washington, D.C. The remainder of these still-functioning agencies were quickly placed under DTRA supervision as the American government declared a state of national emergency. Due to the growing numbers of the Zombie populance, DTRA was the first to suspect that the strain may have mutated and produced the ability to spread the Zombie organisms from one person to another through direct contact. Working jointly with the remains of the U.S. Department of Defense, DTRA was able to formulate a plan to control the emergency as it spread across the North American continent. However, response was only further delayed by the surprise of the outbreak, and DTRA was unable to sufficiently take action against the spread of the Zombie Strain until September 20. By this point, much of the nation had been overrun.

Currently, DTRA has moved its base of operations to California, where it directs the fight against the Zombified hordes. It works jointly with what is left of the United States Armed Forces in increasingly losing efforts to contain the Zombie Outbreak.