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Monday 16 August 2004

Are You Prepared? [Brit]

Like many on the UK mainland, I recently received a copy of the government's rather garish emergency preparedness handbook through the post. This rather strange booklet will undoubtedly be dismissed in fairly short order by a forgetful public, which is why it's launch is being backed up by a nationwide TV campaign, gently reminding us to take notice of the warnings & information contained within.The fact that we have this booklet represents a significant change (albeit largely unobserved in the popular press) in government policy. Despite the many ways the media couches it, the fact remains that the threat of attack on the mainland has warranted the publication of this material - something that hasn't been done since the 1950s with the issuance of the now iconic "Duck And Cover" material.Taken in isolation, you would imagine that simply sending these publications out was something of a waste of time; a certain type of person may well suddenly start stocking up on tins of spam and bottled water, but in the main, it's simply another bit of junk mail clogging up our doormats of a morning.However, this isn't the case. Sky One / Sky One Mix is currently running a series of high (production) value programmes entitled Terror Alert: Could You Survive? - which runs on Thursdays and repeats on Sundays. It's sassy, intelligently produced, and whilst not necessarily anything to do with a wider governmental "education" plan for events such as these, sure as hell looks that way.This hour long programme covers a scenario each week - from nuclear suitcase bomb detonation in an urban area, to the outbreak of an airborne contagen on the Underground. It employs a series of devices to avoid an air of dry academia or monotone governmental dictum - fronted by ex-SAS trooper Chris Ryan, and with skillful direction and vision, the scenarios are scarily realistic.Last night's episode was particularly "real" for me; since I do honestly believe that we are a very viable target and the grey area of suitcase/portable nuclear weapons is sufficiently fuzzy and well publicised to be of a concern. Over the course of an hour, Ryan took us through two scenarios following the detonation of a 1-2kiloton device in Plymouth; stay at home, or peg it for the hills.After 40 minutes of watching what I'd need to do to avoid fallout (effectively build a shelter inside your home and stay there for 14 days) and survive the immediate after effects of emerging into an area potentially flattened and contaminated by such an event. It struck me that I don't even have a roll of gaffer tape in the house, let alone the ability to quickly remove doors for shelter... as the clock ticked down, I became very aware of a) how very real this whole scenario may be and b) how fundamentally lacking my preparations are.The question is, are you prepared? Have you done anything to assess your options in such an event? Part of me wants to simply ignore it all, labelling it "paranoia", but the programme wheels out big gun Government Scientist Types and Other Experienced People, who make a damned good case for doing anything but simply ignoring it...

15 comments:

  1. I recently bought a bbq, sausages & burgers and 12 litres of Irn Bru, should see me ok.

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  2. To: Ossie911@al-queda.com [Osama bin Laden]From: The Decadent WestSubject: re: your ongoing campaign of terror against the west.Hi Ossie,Okay, you win. You and your lads have successfully struck fear into the hearts of us decadent westerners, to the point where we're willing to live in fear and terror everyday of our lives.As I type this, normally sensible people are stacking matreses in their downstairs cupboards, painting their windows white and stocking up tinned beans and cockroach guns. Hell, people are even believing the sensationalist crap that Sky One are deluging us with (the channel that gave us "When Bees Attack!" and "101 Dumb Texas Criminals!"). Surely proof that your campaign has been massively successful? Most people don't even realise that the chance of a nuke getting in and going off is so tiny, and the chance of surviving (even if one did go off) so low, that they'd be better served in meteorite-proofing their houses... ROFLMAOWe realise now that we were defeated by your masterful tactic of allowing our own politicians and media to fight the majority of your terror campaign for you. With their cynical electioneering and willingness to keep the populace in this constant state of fear and terror, you couldn't help but win.So you've done it. We concede. You might as well write off to Allah and claim your 36 virgins and sweet spot in the afterlife.Looking forward to the next game,Your pals,The West

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  3. Wasn't duck and cover a US initiative? There's been a few since the 50's too, with nuclier 'protect and survive' advice booklets produced by the govt well into the 80's..Daves right, I'm not about to go buying crates of beans based on some sky1 scarefest unless there's a specific threat and associated warning.

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  4. Look my babs, if a terrorist organisation ever nukes a western city, the next tin of beans will become a very minor concern indeed.

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  5. Nuke in a city still isn't a very likely scenario. Sadly a dirty bomb is far more likely and is probably more likely than a biological attack as well. Purely going on easy of obtaining materials and difficulty in fabricating weapons.But yeah, now I'm catching the tube to work every day it is a bit of a cause for concern...

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  6. I might have said this in the pub, but my mate was a senior health physicist in Aldermaston in the late eighties and we used to discuss this over a pint some 17 years ago. He was the first person who ever told me about what a dirty bomb was and could explain how you'd source the materials standing on your head. HOWEVER, the reason he said that he wasn't concerned about it is that blowing up a lump of uranium etc is not at all effective - you don't get any kind of dispersion of radioactive material to speak of. He said that what you had to do was grind this stuff to powder and that takes specialist equipment indeed if you're not going to wind up killing the grinder through radiation. His basic line was with nation-state involvement, mebbe, without, extremely difficult. So no-one's stuck a couple of kilos of powdered uranium on the top of the post office tower since 1987 and I'm not going to start worrying about it now. If they do, there's nothing I can do and in the meantime I'm sure as hell not going to give them the credit of worrying about it.

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  7. I don't think you understand. You don't use Uranium, that would hardly be dangerous at all. You build proper nukes out of Uranium. You build a dirty bomb out of radioactive isotopes and there is a worldwide trade in such things as radiation sources for medical purposes. You can get that stuff standing on your head and it's very very dangerous indeed and a simple bomb would effectively render a few city blocks uninhabitable.

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  8. Luckily, a dirty bomb is far more successful in its ability to scare people witless than it is in its ability to kill people.The main danger from a dirty bomb, believe it or not, is from the actual explosion itself. Like any bomb, if you're near it, you're pretty much scuppered - but through the blast, not the radiation. The actual radiation component, provided adequate evactuation procedures in the immediete areas for a short time and sensible cleanup procedures are followed, would have very little effect on its surroundings. I saw some stats that said that if a DB went off in London, most people would see no effect of the increased radiation. At worst, the long term effect would be a couple of percent increase on the chance of developing cancer within 50 years in a small number of people living close to the area. In other words, flying across the atlantic a couple of times in the same period would have the same effect.The true power of a DB is the fact that in the minds of people who watch "Sky One Terrorist Survival Specials" (featuring ex-SAS hardman Chris Ryan, for authenticity), Nuclear automatically equals Bad-Murder-Death-Kill. So we get back to hoarding beans and stacking mattresses. Win for the T's.Personally, I'd be far more worried about these crazies getting hold of some smallpox.

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  9. Certainly true that they don't kill people from the radiation or anything like that. However I think you're being quite absurdly optimistic when it comes to the effectiveness of mass decontamination of a city from something like caesium. Quite appart from anything else, the threat is obviously related to the effectiveness of dispersal, the specific agent and the quantities involved so bugger knows how, with so many variables, you can claim that 'most people' would see no effect outright. I don't know what stats your talking about but I've read at least two articles talking about the sheer difficulty of decontamination, one of them even had costs associated with it which are so high that the feature advocated abandoning the areas instead (that particular one was Scientific American, you should be able to find it). Further to decontamination difficulty, even if you were to go to the trouble that doesn't even take into account the difficulty getting anyone to want to work/live or even traverse the affected area in the time following. That makes an attack on a financial area, for example, a pretty lucrative target.It's mostly a weapon of fear I agree but that's what they're out to do. Setting off a bomb is not even the limit of what can be done. One of the articles I read had some other nastier scenarios whereby the actual detection of radiation might go on for some time before the authorities figure out what's going on and trace the source. I think you can use your own imagination on that one.On the other hand, terrorists usually like bombs as they kill people and make a definitive statement which can be reported on including the death toll. A conventional dirty bomb just bolts onto that, adding massive cost and an ongoing fear factor for little extra effort.I also don't accept your connection with the blatantly scaremongering television programs and this threat. People have been worried in a profound sense about the invisible fearsome threat of 'radiation' well before these programmes came along. I don't think the result will be terribly much different before or after these yank style scare-shows took off.

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  10. We live in a radio-active world - anyone who lives in Edinburgh gets more radiation from the ground than the recommended Xray dose limits.
    People worry too much about most things. Life goes on, and a few radiation caused mutations will simply help advance the gene pool in a period of stagnation.

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  11. I concede the point about decomtamination, to a certain extent. The article I linked to points to a case in Brazil where they had to decomtaminate a similar sized region as a dirty bomb attack, following a radiation accident. The ultimate solution was to bulldoze the buildings and move the (still radioactive) materials elsewhere.
    But in general, the area can be decontaminated, and as you said in your comment above, this can mean the loss of several city blocks. True, the effect on a financial centre would be devastating, but so would the effect of a conventional bomb (Canary Wharf, Manchester) or alternative suicide attack (World Trade)... which also result in the loss of buildings, and hence money. I wasn't really trying to play down the deadliness of a dirty bomb attack.
    The point I think I was trying to make was that dirty bombs are perceived as an attack against people, but are in fact an attack against infrastructure. The bodycount is about the same a conventional attack, the real effect is in the loss of buildings, and the subsequent financial loss due to confidence in the markets etc.
    The point about Sky One programs was not to suggest that nuclear paranoia originates in sensationalist programming like this, but that these (and the wider media) have managed to link the idea of "Nuclear Weapon" with "Dirty Bomb" in the mind of the public.
    Witness the error of the Good Amnesia, a highly educated man, who was under the impression that a dirty bomb was the detonation of a lump of Uranium. Probably a common fallacy thanks to the countless "mushroom cloud/london skyline" photoshop jobs doing the rounds in the popular press these days.

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  12. Actually my mate explained all of the obvious routes (this was over a few beers right) including medical isotopes and the various materials. As an aside he said yer actual favourite is the isotopes they use as crude x-ray machines to check out pipe and tube integrity in steel factories. Because of the thickness of the pipes, the isotopes have to be fairly bitching - much better than medical caesium. However the issue is the same whatever the material - you have to powder it for any kind of effect and if the radioactivity is any good, powdering it (and transporting it) is very very very difficult without killing your agents. If the radioactivity is "ok" to handle (say you die after a couple of weeks / months) then it it's relatively ok to clean up.
    So basically I trust this guy I knew and who used to spend time between Aldermaston and Los Alamos doing this stuff year in year out.

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  13. Yep, good point well made. With reference to Brazil (did you actually watch that Horizon television show when it aired?) decontamination... obviously there are some pretty huge fundamental differences versus an attack on a major Western city. There are also some depressingly convienient and vulnerable infrastructure targets.
    It's easy enough to lambast the scaremongering going on but if the result of it is that public awarenesss is raised to the point of us being better prepared, then there's a case for arguing that some good has come out of it. Other than the value of Murdoch's share portfolio, I mean.
    Maybe I'm a pessemist but with the climate the way it is - I've just got to take the view that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

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  14. Am: I believe medical radiation sources are a powder inside a ceramic puck. Convienient no?

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  15. Interesting how this morning the radio etc have been reporting that the 8 people arrested have been charged with conspiracy to commit radiological or chemical something. What they are repeatedly failing to do is state the full charge which ends in the less dramatic "or explosives". It'll be interesting to see what comes out in the trial - was this a dirty bomb / chemical plan or another conventional bomb?

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