The others kept referring to “the NRP,” until finally Carter leaned over and asked Richard, “What the hell’s ‘NRP’?” The National Response Plan, said Richard. It lays out how the federal government organizes itself during an emergency. That sounded important to Carter, and so he went and found a copy and read all four hundred pages of it, and felt no wiser for the experience. “It’s all government language,” he said. “They’re just saying the same thing over and over.”
