It's a situation that has played out in school districts across the country - an active shooter inside of the building.
Thursday, a number of Juneau County agencies put their skills-and communication to the test handling the unthinkable.
"The story line is the one I hope we never see," Gervase Thompson, director of Juneau County Emergency Management, says.
It's a nightmare scenario --
"Just look what's happened... last 10-15 years...schools have been a target."
-- a gunman enters a school... and begins shooting. Within seconds, a school's in lockdown, people flee...
"Did you see any shooting? Yeah, we did see a few bodies."
This, however, is an exercise, designed to test school staff and first responders during a crisis.
"What did the gunman look like... "
"We also wanted the exercise to be as realistic, spontaneous as possible to see how people would react," Mauston Schools Superintendent Dr. Steve Smolek says.
How people would react, for instance, if the fire alarm goes off while the school's locked down.
"Typically with a fire alarm,you know what that is... it's the known versus the unknown and which danger is greater."
"You do know you blacked out .. but don't know what happened."
School staff as well as some recent grads, like Nate Blasco, served as actors.
"Just felt good to take part in something like this," Blasco says.
This has been in the planning for more than a year at a cost of upwards of 15-thousand dollars. Juneau's County's Emergency Management Director says it's being funded through a grant.
"The quicker they can get here, the more lives they can save," elementary school teacher Jim Beaver says.
Emergency management says such a large scale
exercise happens about every five years. A discussion was held afterward to identify any possible concerns to study further.