NORTH VERNON, Ind. — It's awful that anybody has to spend time practicing fighting terrorists. But for $14 an hour in Jennings County, Ind., where unemployment is high and per capita income is low, it meant that David Robertson and many of his fellow townsfolk had jobs.

Robertson, 51, a food service worker laid off in October, was among 150 folks here who portrayed victims of a simulated terrorist attack on Indianapolis. The simulated nuclear detonation — the military actually has a word for it, "nudet" — happened last week at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, just outside North Vernon in southeastern Indiana.

About 4,000 soldiers, police and firefighters from around the country converged here to practice coming to the rescue. It's part of a national exercise called Ardent Sentry, involving thousands of military personnel, volunteers, first responders, elected officials and emergency managers.

Last week's simulation was by far Muscatatuck's largest-ever war exercise, but there is more where that came from.

The former "Muscatatuck Colony," a residential hospital campus for the developmentally disabled that operated from 1919 to 2003, has about 70 buildings on 250 acres. The grounds lay dormant for a couple of years after closing before being turned over to the Indiana National Guard.

The place looks like a college campus, albeit a dilapidated one. Last year it recorded 16,000 "man days" of training.

That number is expected to grow tenfold after last month's announcement that the Army would spend $100 million to upgrade Muscatatuck — shoring up infrastructure and installing sophisticated surveillance so trainees can learn by watching their performance played back, like football players on Mondays.

The civilian role-players won't get that level of scrutiny, but they are not to take their jobs lightly.

Robertson played an injured man, bandaged and bloodied realistically — "cut, burned, that sort of thing," said Matt Sment, operations supervisor with Cubic Applications, the Lacey, Wash.-based subcontractor that hires and trains role players for military scenarios.

Robertson also could have been a victim of radiation sickness, which is simulated, Sment said, by "chewing a Fig Newton and pretending to vomit it."

In either case, it was work. And while this one lasted only about 40 hours, it could develop into something more when Muscatatuck's full-time staff grows from 80 to 290. Part-time work opportunities will swell similarly, with 10 major exercises a year and dozens of smaller ones.

Albert Jackson, a longtime North Vernon banker, expects the area to get a new hotel (currently there's just the one, a Comfort Inn), "and I look for several new restaurants," he said. "Look what Atterbury did for Edinburgh."

Camp Atterbury, a World War II-era Army camp in Johnson County outside Edinburgh, Ind., has functioned as a national troop training and mobilization center since 2003, one of just six in the nation. It employs 400 soldiers, 200 contract workers and 150 state-paid workers.

"It's meant more civilian jobs," said John Drybread, president of the Edinburgh Economic Development Corp., "and our hotels are 90 percent occupied. ... There's four or five new chain restaurants going up, and a new hardware store. You can't go out in town without seeing people in uniform."

Officials couldn't give a hard and fast estimate of the financial impact expected in North Vernon, but they all agree there will be one.

The pizzeria Joe Spicer opened at Muscatatuck last summer already outsells his shop in North Vernon. Sometimes the various military and police exercises spill over into the shop.

"I think it's exciting," he said. "The State Police used me for a robbery scenario. They had two guys in here fighting, rolling around. It was interesting to watch.

"Last July, we were supposed to be Baghdad. They had me and the wife dressed in robes. My wife had to wear the veil. I looked like bin Laden."