Guardian Centers may be a place to practice how to respond to a disaster, but that doesn't mean real danger is nonexistent. 

When we headed over to see its mock subway station, complete with eight cars donated from Washington's Metro system, we were told we had a limited window to view it. The reason -- they were going to be pumping actual toxic gas into the building to simulate a chemical attack. 

As smoke rose from chunks of concrete representing an obliterated building, Chris Schaff put it this way: "As soon as you come in here, the pretend goes away." 

He's a fire and rescue battalion chief with Fairfax County, Virginia, and his words carry a lot of weight. His elite team of urban search and rescue operatives has been deployed to numerous disasters, including Hurricane Sandy, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the 2010 Haiti quake. 

Luis Fernandez, a two-decades-plus veteran of disaster response, agreed the Perry, Georgia, facility passes muster. 

"The temperature extremes, the building extremes, the noises, the environment, are incredibly lifelike," said Fernandez, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue chief of staff and.a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

The brotherhood of Disaster City 

From the aforementioned subway station, to a mock bridge with crushed cars, to a devastated structure made to look like the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Guardian Centers' 830-acre site is designed to allow a variety of responders to do a variety of drills in one location. 

This kind of "doomsday Disneyland" owes its vision to Geoff Burkart, a telecommunications executive who was in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. During Katrina, he saw "what was being done there, and what was not being done." 
what's cominhg off them?
smoke rose from chunks of concrete