Yesterday NATO conducted a simulation of an Islamic nuclear attack on the city of Brussels: Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European officials conducted a simulation showing how al-Qaida could kill 40,000 people and plunge the continent into chaos if a crude nuclear device were detonated outside NATO headquarters in Brussels.

“We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe,” said former Sen. Sam Nunn, who helped organize the exercise, dubbed Black Dawn. “To win this race, we have to achieve cooperation on a scale we’ve never seen or attempted before.”

Nunn spoke to reporters Tuesday, a day after the closed-door war games attended by top officials including the European Union’s security chief, Javier Solana, and his new counterterrorism czar, Gijs de Vries.

In first part of the scenario, European officials were asked how they would respond to intelligence that al-Qaida had obtained enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb.

In the second, they were confronted with computer projections and video displays illustrating the impact of terrorists exploding the device at NATO’s headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels, immediately killing 40,000 people, overwhelming hospitals with hundreds of thousands of injured, spreading panic through Europe and plunging the world economy into turmoil.

“Once you are in this phase, there are no good options,” said Michele Flournoy, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who helped prepare the exercise.