Operation Jumpstart

Operation Jumpstart is the next phase of Project NOAH announced after the twelve subjects had been secured. The transition was meant to move the program beyond its existing facility, but the plan described around it also reveals a far more expansive military purpose: treating the subjects as weapons for deployment beyond the laboratory.

Transition from Project NOAH

The order to graduate Project NOAH to Operation Jumpstart came after the twelve subjects had been brought under control, with Tim Fanning counted separately as a thirteenth. The transition marked a change in scale and institutional direction. The existing work was nearing its conclusion, and the next phase was to proceed elsewhere, beyond Richards’s authority.

Richards understood that the transfer was imminent: the subjects, referred to as sticks, were to be moved within a week. Armored trucks would take them to Grand Junction, where they would be transferred to a train bound for White Sands. The carefully staged logistics made the program’s next step concrete, even as Richards anticipated that the outcome would soon be out of his hands.

Strategic purpose and the weapon concept

The rationale associated with the new phase was captured in Cole’s earlier description of the subjects as ultimate bunker busters. The concept imagined deploying them against fortified enemies in places such as caves in northern Pakistan, deserts in Iran, and damaged buildings in the Chechen Free Zone. In this formulation, the subjects were not simply research participants to be contained; they were potential instruments of military force.

Richards regarded that prospect with alarm. He thought the idea violated multiple international treaties and doubted that the violence could be contained to the distant targets invoked to justify it. His concern sharpened the central contradiction of the operation: a program built around containing extraordinarily dangerous subjects was considering their deliberate use in conflict, where containment could not be assured.

Costs and consequences

The move also entailed clearing personnel from the site. Sweeps, technicians, and most soldiers were expected to leave, beginning with those considered especially troubled. Richards had been examining the record of Derrick Paulson, a young soldier who had served at the facility for nearly two years and had received several disciplinary actions. Richards suspected that Paulson knew more about the events surrounding the subjects than ordinary rumor could explain, adding an unresolved security concern to an already unstable transition.

The broader stakes extend beyond the facility. In the unfolding Colorado fever crisis, public authorities were reporting widespread deaths, outbreaks beyond Colorado, and collapsing communication with officials inside the quarantine zone, while the federal response framed the epidemic as a possible act of terrorism. Against that background, Operation Jumpstart’s weapon logic belongs to a world increasingly organized around emergency, military force, and uncertain information. The planned transfer does not resolve the danger posed by the subjects; it relocates that danger into a larger and less controllable arena.