Had the emergency scenario area that officials spent four days training for been real, Waupun residents would have been evacuated to Beaver Dam. As it was just an exercise, life went on as normal. People shopped for groceries. Exercise classes were held. Church women got together to make blankets for charity. Things would have been dramatically different if the simulated accident — a train derailment in which nitric acid has spilled — was real. A total of 25 workers at National Rivet would have died. The entire city would have been evacuated. Gas masks would have been required. The death toll would have risen quickly. The event gave emergency personnel a chance to enact a crisis as a dry run to something that all hope will never happen.