Why not bring back the Civil Defense Plan again. Just like we had during the cold war. In this case however, they would also be trained to handle Chemical and Biological as well with Nuclear incidents and mass violence (we all know that it doesn't take much to set the average American who would survive such an incident to suddenly let their dark side of human nature to take affect.). I think that we can all agree that FEMA just seems to suck at everything they get their hands on.
Also, have retired Law Enforcement Officers (all) and retired military with various "needed" MOS's like MP, NBC, and Medical. Have each state resposible for the training under Federal Guidlines to a very small extent. Those "extents" would be the allowance for all to carry NG and ARES weapons once they have all properly been trained. In other words the Feds supply some of the guidelines and the states would have the option of more in depth training if neccessary and making it work would be additional cross-training such as working side by side with different MOS's or civillian training.
The NG and ARES's would be responsible for either back-up or to intervene if attacked by foreign invaders including ants.
Anybody think this would work?