The Day after 20??
- From: pyotr filipivich <phamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:32:23 -0700
Lifting wholesale from Hugh Hewitt's blog at townhall.com, I'll add some
thoughts at the end.
Quote:
Not a happy read, from Ashton B. Carter, Michael M. May, and William J.
Perry in the Washington Quarterly. (HT: Stanley Kurtz). Excerpt:
"Although there are some unknowns and variations, the broad outlines
of the grisly effects of a 10-kiloton groundburst are clear.2 The
downtown area, about one mile in radius, would be obliterated. Just
outside the area leveled by blast, people wounded by flying debris,
fires, and intense radiation would stand little chance of survival.
Emergency workers would not get to them because of the intense
radiation, and in any event, their burns and acute radiation exposure
would require sophisticated and intensive medical care to offer any
chance of survival. Further downwind from the detonation point, a plume
of radioactive debris would spread. Its shape and size would depend on
wind and rain conditions, but within one day, people within five to 10
square miles who did not find shelter or flee within hours would receive
lethal radiation doses. This area, for example, could include Brooklyn,
New York; northwest Washington, D.C.; or the upper peninsula of San
Francisco."
"People who were relatively close to the detonation point or who did
not shelter themselves from the radiation, which would be most intense
on the day of the blast and subside with time, would receive large but
varying doses of radiation. If the dose was intense (more than 400
rems), they would get sick and die; if strong but moderate (50?400
rems), they would get sick but probably recover; if moderate (less than
50 rems), they would not notice the effect immediately but would have a
greater chance of contracting cancer over their lifetime than if they
had received no dose. Because there is little that could be done for
those in the area in and around the blast zone, responders would
concentrate on minimizing the radiation dose to the population further
downwind and preventing chaos among the rest of the population, which
would be physically unaffected but traumatized and deprived of whatever
utilities and services were located in the affected area."
Here's the kick in the head:
"One might think, given the distinct possibility of a nuclear attack
on a U.S. city, that the federal government would have already developed
a realistic response plan specific to this scenario that marshals the
resources of all the agencies. Remarkably, such a plan does not yet
exist, although one is being drafted."
Yes, a lack of preparation is unsettling, but nowhere near as unsettling
as the refusal of the enemies of national security to take seriously the
threat. The scope of the devastation that such a one-off could bring
makes leaks of the sort discussed below even more unimaginably
disgusting. [Referring to the release of the Bin Laden tape recently]
End quoted text
The original paper is presented at
www.twq.com/07autumn/docs/07autumn_cmp.pdf and is worth the read, if
only for this idea: evacuating a city is tough enough during rush hour.
in a panic, it will be even worse.
If, and this is a big if, certain roads (the Interstate?) get
designated "government only", and that can be enforced (another big if),
what does that do to any plans to bug out? I suspect that the first
thing responders will have to do is clear the road of abandoned
vehicles. If fallout covers an evacuation route - let me rephrase that
"evacuation routes in the fallout plume" will have the additional
problems of radioactive contamination, existing radiation casualties
(dead, dying and those who think they are.)
I'm not afraid of spiky hair mutant cannibals. I'm afraid of
progressive nanny state believers spewing that they are entitled to
food, shelter and all the rest. True, the mutant cannibals are harder
to kill, but there aren't as many of them.
tschus
pyotr
--
pyotr filipivich
"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement
of the obvious." George Orwell
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