The doors of the cafeteria open to reveal a canopy fitted with rows of showerheads that spit out a solution of heated water and soap. Wind resistant infrared heaters are there to fight off hypothermia - in case this entranceway must be used in the cold of winter.
A modesty curtain runs the length of the shower corridor, dividing the men's side from the women's.
Those who march through here will strip down to nothing. And modesty probably will be the last thing on their minds.
They will place their clothes in an evidence bin and their trust in the hands of physicians who will be wearing airtight suits and charcoal-filtered masks.
This is a decontamination area for the walking wounded of a chemical attack.
Weapons of mass destruction in an age of global terrorism created this training facility.
It is a one-of-a-kind facility, a place where hospital teams from across the country visit free of charge - airfare included - to study a subject made necessary by the dangers of the times.
And the facility, the Noble Training Center, is here in Anniston, at the former Fort McClellan, a base the Army deserted in 1999.
"The whole principle here is, the hospital has to keep the contamination outside," said John Hoyle, director of the center, which is part of the U.S. Public Health Service Office of Emergency Preparedness.
Hoyle and the 11 staffers who currently work at Noble teach an intensive chemical, biological, and radiological training course that teams of doctors, hospital administrators, and nurses attend.
The Noble staff hope the building designs, such as the facility's inexpensive decontamination corridor, will inspire other hospitals to follow suit.
Some studies suggest that when chemical attacks occur, such as the 1995 sarin (GB) gas attack in a Tokyo subway, about 80 percent of the exposed victims are not decontaminated until they reach a hospital.
Hospitals can rig up a decontamination area under an existing canopy for as little as $1,000 or as much as $50,000. The one at Noble is a Cadillac model that Hoyle said cost about $25,000.
Cost "will depend on how many people you want to put through and how thorough you want to do it," Hoyle said.
Workers converted an ambulance garage at the rear of the former Army hospital into a decontamination area for more severe patients.
It has a conveyer system that enables emergency responders to easily push unconscious patients down an assembly line of dishwasher-style showerheads. A holding area occupies the back of the garage.
Some residents in Calhoun County believe - incorrectly, says Hoyle - that the training facility was placed here because of the tons of aging VX and sarin nerve agents, as well mustard gas, that the Army stores a few miles down the road at its chemical weapons stockpile.
However, this is a training center. It lacks the staff of doctors and nurses a real emergency would require.
It has no patients. It has no medicines. But Noble instructor Don Crowe says when it comes to providing a training area that mimics a hospital environment, there is no place better.
When the Army left the fort, it abandoned the hospital and all the medical equipment stored there.
Crowe said his first day on the job was like walking into a ghost town or hospital. He cleared stacks of aging documents left behind by the Army from his office filing cabinet.
Crowe, who teaches how to avoid exposure by using personal protection equipment, said one advantage of the center is that medical professionals can train in a hospital environment without disrupting the care of patients.
There is plenty of equipment to train with: heart monitors, intravenous hookup stations, defibrillators, a working emergency room and operating room, along with rows of beds that life-like mannequins quietly occupy.
By January 2003, the center will start a new intensive training program for medical professionals. Hoyle said it will be able to train 150 people a week.
The University of Alabama Birmingham, Louisiana State University, Vanderbilt, Auburn University and Noble are developing the curriculum.
"It's a deadly serious business because it's all about saving lives," Hoyle said.
At Noble, experts like Ed Battle, a retired Air Force colonel with a doctorate in nuclear physics, teach about the dangers of dirty bombs.
"The psychological effects are more dangerous than the physical ones," he says.
Battle's message isn't surprising for a man who can recall truly dangerous days. He speaks vividly of occasions when silo gates opened and launch orders initialized countdowns that stopped just short of all-out nuclear war.
He tells how his parents - who were born before the nuclear age - ran for the safety of a fallout shelter that they built in their back yard.
"Those were truly crazy days," Battle said of the cold war era, the era when someone in the former Soviet Union coined the phrase, 'weapons of mass destruction.'
Battle says the threat from some terrorist with a 'dirty bomb' doesn't compare.
"It is a weapon of mass disruption," he said. It preys on people's fears.
Instructors like Dr. Michael Proctor teach medical personnel how to diagnose patients who have been exposed to a chemical agent such as sarin, VX, mustard, chlorine, cyanide.
Some potential weapons of mass destruction aren't stored in military stockpiles. According to Proctor, they are common industrial chemicals that truckers regularly haul down the interstate.
Recognizing what a victim has been exposed to in a timely manner, and knowing how to treat it, are of the utmost importance, Proctor says.
When a person is exposed to the nerve agent VX, the difference between life and death is measured in seconds and minutes. Proctor teaches how the antidote, atropine, can determine the outcome. Properly administered, it can save a person who has received a lethal dose of the weapons-grade chemical.
"These are reversible effects," Proctor says.
Instructors at Noble say they offer the specialized training that will teach doctors how to diagnose the danger in time.
"They don't teach this kind of subject in medical school," Hoyle said.
