Internet Special Bulletin, 09-Nov-01

    There is good news and bad news. First the bad news.

    For years, almost every issue of EARLY WARNING REPORT contained an article or two about this new war. One of the best issues was November 1997, it was packed with warnings about coming attacks, war in Asia, and nuclear weapons. A good explanation, I suggest you review all eight pages.

    On September 6th, George Bush broke the ice, openly admitting nuclear attack is a serious possibility. Finally, the whole country is on the same page EWR subscribers have been on for years.

The Good News

     Confirmation of a possible nuclear attack is the bad news. The good news - news that Bush should have talked about at length but didn't - is that the nuclear danger posed by the September 11th group is not as awful as it sounds.

     We need to cover two topics: (1) kilotons vs. megatons and (2) your geographic location.

    Kiloton means a thousand tons of TNT. A megaton is a million tons.

    A one-kiloton bomb has one one-thousandth the power of a one-megaton bomb.

    When we think of nuclear attack, our minds instantly jump to the Armageddon we feared during the Cold War. Our imaginations conjure up a hail of thousands of bombs ranging in power from 100 kilotons to 20 megatons. The end of the world.

    In 1961, during the Berlin Wall Crisis, Soviet rulers wanted to frighten America. They detonated a 50 megaton H-bomb - equal to a million railroad cars full of explosives. It was 2,500 times as powerful as the A-bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

     The leg of the mushroom cloud was six miles wide, and the shock wave broke windows in Norway and Finland 700 miles away.

    That bomb was so horrifying it became the image that stuck in the minds of the public, and it is what many certainly envisioned when Bush admitted a nuclear attack is possible.

    I suspect the fear generated by the thought of the end of the world is so great that most Americans cannot face the true threat, which is nothing like what we faced during the Cold War.

    The September 11th group certainly does not have a 50-megaton bomb, and probably not even a one-megaton bomb. Such doomsday devices are big, most weigh tons, and are therefore hard to steal and smuggle. They have locking devices that make them difficult to detonate. They are also extremely hard to make even if the attackers have the necessary uranium or plutonium.

    Much more likely are the simple, easily smuggled "tactical" nukes of 20 kilotons or less.

    Most likely - and I give this a 95% probability - the attackers have one or two dozen suitcase-size tactical nukes of two kilotons or less.

    The RA-115 backpack nukes reported missing from Russian stockpiles are one kiloton. The blast would be one 20,000th of the big bombs.

    Also, these backpack nukes are Soviet, which means there is a significant chance they are junk and will not work.

    Easy to steal, make and transport, the small tactical nukes are firecrackers compared to the Cold War doomsday devices. We are most likely talking about the type of bomb that can destroy a few city blocks, or two or three square miles, not a whole state.

    That is three square miles out of 3.7 million square miles. If it happens near you there will be plenty of safe territory to run to.

    If you have the bad luck to be just around the corner from one of these bombs when an attacker sets it off, it will ruin your day, but what are the odds of that?

    Persons who are more than three or four miles away won't have much to worry about as long as they do not do something stupid, like hang around and wait to see if they can inhale enough fallout to glow in the dark.

    You might get a better feel for the danger in your area if you open a map, and around the center of the nearest likely target draw a circle two miles in diameter. That is the three square miles of greatest risk. How far are you from that circle?

    Blast effects from explosions drop off surprisingly quickly with distance. The Hiroshima bomb, which was about 12 kilotons, was detonated under ideal conditions - at an altitude of 1,850 feet above a flat city, no hills. A brick building only 640 feet from ground zero survived. At 0.91 miles, a trolley car remained intact and on its tracks. And, that bomb was six times larger than what the September 11th attackers are likely to have.

    This brings us to the second topic, your geographic location.

    I feel very confident promising you that the September 11th group will not nuke Buzzard's Breath, Wyoming. Nor will they nuke 99.9% of the other tens of thousands of cities and towns in this very large country.

    They pick their targets for maximum emotional effect, because they want to stoke our war fever and draw us deeper into the war. I will bet that you can think of any number of places that will give them more emotional bang for the buck than wherever you happen to be.

    If you are more than ten miles from a large city center or military base, I doubt you have anything to worry about at all.

    If you do not live near a likely target, you can skip the next section.

In Case You Live Near A Target

    No matter where a bomb goes off, the rest of this vast country will remain intact, so a spot that is hit will quickly receive mountains of help from surrounding areas. You do not need to be prepared to survive for years, just days, and maybe only hours.

    Even if you are one of the unusual cases who have the bad luck to live near a likely ground zero, you have a good chance of surviving if you take a few simple precautions. Here is what to do.

    Immediately explain the danger to your family and make a plan:

    When a nuclear bomb goes off, it produces a bright flash followed by a shock wave of blast and heat. When you see the flash, duck and cover. This means put as much mass as possible between you and the flash. If you can get to a basement quickly, go there. Otherwise, get behind anything solid. Steel reinforced concrete is best.

    Don't look at the flash, it can be blinding.

    Note the location of windows and cover yourself against flying glass.

    As an example, my home has no basement but it does have a large fireplace in the center of the house. In our area there are two likely targets, a city center and an airbase. The city center is to the south, the air base to the west. For a flash that comes from the direction of the city, we would stand behind the north side of the fireplace; from the airbase, the east side.

    After the blast, the most important thing is to quickly get upwind of the target to escape the fallout. If you can drive, do so; otherwise walk, but do whatever you must to get away from the cloud of fallout.

    The cloud from a small bomb will be only a few miles wide. A healthy person can walk or ride a bicycle to get out from under it.

    Someone who cannot get away from the fallout should put as much mass as possible between them and the radiation. Radiation moves only in straight lines, so even a storm sewer provides good temporary protection if you stay away from the opening and get behind a curve.

    Your family may not all be at home. One of the most important preparations is to get out a map now and select four meeting places - north, east, south and west - of the likely target. Each meeting place should be at least 50 miles away, to avoid the turmoil that will surround the immediate area of the attack.

    Unless your home has a fallout shelter, everyone should go to the meeting place upwind of the target.

    Select an exact address for each of the four destinations - a school, shopping mall or other large place that would have restrooms, water and an enclosed space to shelter against bad weather.

    At all times, each person should carry a card with these addresses in their wallets, plus cash and credit cards.

    Either in the car or ready to go at all times have a suitcase packed with maps, three days of food and water, blanket (or sleeping bag), soap, toilet paper, change of clothing, radio, medications, cash and whatever else you need to be comfortable away from home a few days.

    If you have children in school, talk with their teachers about the school's emergency plan. Know where you should meet your children. A cell phone for each child is not a bad idea either. Everyone in the family should have a list of phone numbers of friends who live far away and would be able to act as an electronic contact point for your family.

    Schools should be doing the kind of training they were doing in the 1950s. If your child's school is not, do it yourself.

    For more about protection against a nuclear blast and fallout:
    www.tacda.org/resources/ptw/ExpedientSheltering-4.html
    www.ki4u.com/free_book

    Also do a web search for words such as: Civil Defense, Nuclear Protection, Fallout, Fallout Shelter, etc.

    Most of what you will find will be about surviving a massive attack by the USSR, so it will be much more detailed and frightening than is necessary for the type of small incident likely now. But it is better to have too much information than not enough.

    When George Bush admitted the possibility of nuclear attack but failed to explain that we are not facing the end of the world, I think he frightened a lot of people into sticking their heads in the sand. Do not be an ostrich, learn what you need to know, and warn everyone you care about.

Relax, It's Not That Bad

     Let me emphasize, unless you live near a likely ground zero, you have little to worry about, and even then, if you take precautions and know how to quickly duck and cover, odds of being harmed will be greatly reduced. This is a big country and the attackers are not likely to have very many bombs. It is a high statistical probability that almost everyone reading this will be in no danger, they will see the disaster only on TV.

    But, essential services and supplies of food may be temporarily disrupted, especially if a rail center is hit, so take the Y2K preparations recommended in the January 1999 EWR, page 3, and June 1999 EWR, page 7. Have supplies to get along comfortably for at least a month.

    Again, I suggest you review the November 1997 EWR, it will help get you oriented to the present situation including the nuclear threat.

    We are thinking about you and will continue doing all we can to help.

    Sincerely,

    Editor, Early Warning Report

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