- Despite intelligence of homespun "dirty nukes"
and the inevitable use by terrorists of nuclear device delivery via cruise
missiles, the new federal Office of Homeland Security is not promoting
fallout shelters, according to spokesman Gordon Johndroe. The reasoning
behind the policy has the most to do with dollars and cents, with a little
history and psychology percolating in the mix.
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- According to Commander Michael Dobbs, a policy planner
on the Joint Staff, an effective shelter program would cost $60 billion,
30 times the cost of implementing a crisis relocation strategy in large
cities.
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- "Evacuation is still the primary protective measure
in the event of a nuclear incident," said Don Jacks of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.
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- 'Duck and Cover'
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- Edwin Lyman, scientific director for Nuclear Control
Institute, has evaluated the state of affairs as nothing less than a return
to the primitive Cold War ritual of "duck and cover."
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- "If there were a nuclear explosion of relatively
small yield, people who are maybe tens of miles away would have something
like a half an hour to shelter themselves," Lyman said. "Does
this mean that the U.S. should reactivate a system of fallout shelters?
I don't know."
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- According to Dobbs, civil defense programs have historically
been on the government's back burner. Annual appropriations for civil defense
never totaled much more than $1 billion (1962) and, from 1952 to 1986,
varied between $200 million and $400 million.
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- In 1984 per capita federal expenditures for civil defense
programs were 75 cents, contrasted with $6 for ballistic missile defense
and $1,350 for the Department of Defense.
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- In 1957, with a bellicose Soviet Union flexing, President
Dwight Eisenhower refused to initiate a fallout shelter program. Following
through with his campaign promises of "missile gap" catch-up
with the Reds, however, President John Kennedy was an exception to the
rule, calling for "a fallout shelter for everyone as rapidly as possible."
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- In 1972 President Richard Nixon followed the lead of
his former boss and refused to augment civil defense programs.
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- And it is not just the government that's been slow to
get hot and bothered by the issue.
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- In a 1953 poll, Americans were asked whether they were
likely to build an air raid shelter within the next year. Fewer than 3
percent said yes. True to the poll, 10 years later, fewer than one in 50
Americans had built any kind of shelter. And this was the time of the Cuban
missile crisis, when fears of nuclear holocaust were nearly pandemic.
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- According to Dobbs, the public apathy toward shelters
during the Cold War was mostly grounded in a mind-set that such preparations
were futile in the face of a large-scale nuclear exchange.
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- But that mind-set is changing and was well on its way
to being recast, even before September 11.
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- In a 1999 survey by the Pew Research Center, 64 percent
of those polled stated that they thought a major terrorist attack on the
U.S. involving biological or chemical weapons would happen sometime over
the next half century.
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- The experts agree. They now see nuclear attacks from
terrorists or a rogue nation as limited in scope and duration, making precautions
for a WMD incident prudent. There is no more exaggerated fear of "nuclear
winter."
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- The experts also agree that despite all that is being
done by the states and the federal government, self-help will be the rule
for many citizens during the initial hours of a large-scale nuclear incident.
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- The rub, according to Dobbs: "We are spending billions
to train first responders and local leaders, but very little to train the
general public." He suggested that FEMA provide citizens with information
on how to protect themselves and their families from attack just as the
Home Front Command does in Israel. Another imperative: tax incentives for
Americans who install a sheltered space in their home.
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- Dobbs also sees the nation's stockpiling of antidotes
such as the controversial potassium iodide as a step in the right direction,
but of limited utility for those who have to wait days after an incident
until the medicines can be distributed.
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- Gimme Shelter
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- In the meantime, some Americans are voting with their
pocketbooks and digging up their backyards just like the good old days
of the Cold War. "They're treating me less like a crazy woman than
they did before," Dr. Jane Orient of Tucson, Ariz., who promotes home
shelters as head of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, told NewsMax.com.
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- Fallout shelters are a good defense from radiation but
are woefully inadequate in the U.S. and should become a government priority,
she said.
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- Dr. Orient's favored example: "If that soot raining
down in Brooklyn [from the World Trade Center] had been radioactive, there
would be many thousands, maybe millions of people dying slow, agonizing
deaths from radiation sickness that could have been prevented had people
had access to shelter."
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- If she had it her way, the U.S. would be more like the
Russians, Chinese or Swiss. The Moscow subways double as shelters, equipped
with blast doors. Much of the population of Beijing could be evacuated
underground in about 10 minutes. And Switzerland has shelter for 110 percent
of its population in private homes and public buildings.
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- In starkest contrast, companies such as Boeing that have
contracts with the government are proscribed from preparing shelter space
for emergency occupancy.
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- It all comes full circle and back to the dollars and
cents. There are plans for basement shelters that cost as little as several
thousand dollars. However, for really effective protection against biological,
nuclear and chemical threats, prices jump to $40,000 and higher. The deluxe
shelters are equipped with air filtration systems and hand-pump toilets,
allowing people to hold out from 30 days to several months.
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