A terrorist detonated a suicide bomb in the pharmacy building Tuesday, killing and seriously injuring a crowd of students and young children. But afterward, victims, emergency personnel and even the terrorist laughed about the experience.

The terrorist attack was a disaster drill, part of the pharmacy school’s disaster preparedness course.

“We try to simulate these events as they actually occur elsewhere,” said Cham Dallas, a professor of toxicology and emergency medicine and director of the Center for Disease Control Center for Mass Destruction Defense.

Volunteer victims were smeared with gooey substances and sprinkled with white powder meant to represent anthrax, then sprawled themselves around a lab in the pharmacy building and waited for the drill to begin.

Dallas said terrorists often target children, so he brought his own children in as volunteer victims of the simulated attack.

“To see a child that way is very disconcerting – We have to acclimate (the students) to that,” he said.

As soon as pharmacy students dressed in yellow safety suits and gas masks arrived, the victims commenced screaming, moaning, crying for help, clutching their wounds or playing dead.

While victims grabbed at his legs and screamed in his face, Heath Ford, a third-year pharmacy student from Alamo, struggled to give orders over a walkie-talkie through his mask.

His colleagues took bloodied victims to the decontamination area where Stephanie Keep, a third year pharmacy student from Augusta, pretended to spray them with decontaminating fluid.

Then victims were sent to triage, the first aid area. Jessica Chmielewski, a third year pharmacy student from Atlanta, judged the severity of victims’ wounds and treated them if still “alive.”

Daniel Dallas, Cham Dallas’ son and a junior at Thomas Edison State College, played the terrorist. He hid a theatrical bomb under his jacket and detonated it in a crowd of victims.

“I’m looking forward to it with great glee,” he said before the drill began.

As victims screamed for Jesus and their mommies, some students couldn’t help but giggle.

“The topic is so negative. We find learning increases with a little bit of humor involved,” he said.

Dallas’ Basic Disaster Life Support curriculum has been adopted by the American Medical Association as a national standard for response to terrorist attacks in 36 states. The program soon will be in all 50 states.

Third year pharmacy student Chris Jones, from Jefferson, said students did “better than last time … we contained the contamination.”

While the students were appreciative of the opportunity to gain realistic experience, they all hoped there would never be a situation like the one practiced in the drill.

“(The experience) makes me hope even more that I will never ever be in a situation like this,” Keep said.

After this course, students attend a course at the Department of Homeland Security where they encounter situations involving real nerve agents.