CDC OPT

The Center for Disease Control Outbreak Prevention Team is a secretive class-2 military organisation that serves as a global CBRN task force, under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that was formed in 2002, originally as a humanitarian aid and bio-terrorism investigation unit.

## Formation

While there are many reasons for the formation of the OPT, the main reason was due to the United States' eventual recognition of the rise of terrorism, primarily due to the event that took many lives in 2001, a terrorist attack that is still remembered to this day. Originally, the OPT was primarily based around humanitarian aid, counter-bio-terrorism (as a non-militarised organisation) and, of course, as its name suggested, the containment of outbreaks. They would play a major role in the deployment of the Polio vaccines in the 2010s, assisting in almost eradicating the disease in Nigeria, though they were put a stop to by the local militias, and pulled out of the region once funding was cut off. This also saw the first bit of militarisation for the OPT, resulting in a small branch being created, originally as a small security detachment for staff.

In 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic broke out, which was alarming for both the CDC and OPT alike. As a result, the OPT would be one of the organisations on the forefront of vaccine research, assisting many of the medical organisations that were researching such things in the UK, and, later, in the December of 2020, would begin assisting in distributing the vaccine. However, this also brought about complications - many were unhappy that they were not getting the vaccine first, which led to small-scale protests and riots in certain areas around the world. This led to the OPT's security branch being bolstered to allow for OPT operatives to remain safe while they distributed the vaccines, up until the virus was later deemed to no longer have been as much of a threat as it was before.

The next four decades saw a gradual militarisation of the OPT, forming into a class 3 military organisation, with the rise of bioterrorism becoming increasingly apparent - and the non-interventionist policies that had been adopted by much of the world many years before were resulting in the bioterrorism threat being ignored, for the most part - with there only being UN laws to prevent it. As a result, the OPT underwent reforms with many new military operatives being introduced into the group, which would then be rebranded instead as a CBRN task force in 2053, and later became classified as a class 2 military organisation in 2072. The OPT originally drew members from the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army, providing additional, rigorous training to ensure that they would be sharpened to the organisation's standards. Of course, this inevitably meant many failed the recruitment program, although when the USSOCOM finally approved the CDC OPT drawing members from special operations divisions of the United States Military, the group finally began to gain enough members to become a formidable military force.

However, with the transfer of the CDC under NATO in 2065, the OPT was later rebranded as the NATO CDC OPT, and the militarised nature of NATO resulted in more resources being put into the organisation developing into a militarised CBRN task force - which is what would lead to its eventual reclassification in 2072. However, this transfer also brought about the recruitment of military operatives in other nations as well, resulting in the OPT, which was previously a majority American military group, becoming an international military, which would also open up some more windows in terms of relations with other countries - which was also led to the OPT developing into a fully-fledged CBRN taskforce instead of a counter-bio-terrorism group. Soon, OPT was operating all across the world, and many members were receiving additional training to allow for them to be deployed off-world too, with the apparent arrival of the space age with the UN and UNSDC.

Towards the end of the 2080s, the OPT was contracted under the UNSDC to assist them in countering CBRN threats, primarily due to the UN's lack of CBRN task forces of the same calibre and levels of experience, especially since the OPT had become known throughout most of the world for their operations in preventing biowarfare. Since then, the OPT has remained operational alongside the UNSDC, albeit still under NATO jurisdiction, and had prevented several small-scale virus strain outbreaks, countered chemical weapon threats, and dealt with nuclear emergencies both in UNSDC facilities, and on UNDC spacecraft, and still remains operational under them well into 2114.