- Unlimited reproduction and distribution is authorized.
Just give me credit for my work, and, keep in context.
-
- Since the media has decided to scare everyone with predictions
of chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare on our turf I decided to write
a paper and keep things in their proper perspective. I am a retired military
weapons, munitions, and training expert.
-
- Lesson number one: In the mid 1990s there were a series
of nerve gas attacks on crowded Japanese subway stations. Given perfect
conditions for an attack less than 10% of the people there were injured
(the injured were better in a few hours) and only one percent of the injured
died.
-
- 60 Minutes once had a fellow telling us that one drop
of nerve gas could kill a thousand people, well he didn't tell you the
thousand dead people per drop was theoretical.
-
- Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible this stuff was
to keep the recruits awake in class (I know this because I was a Drill
Sergeant too). Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies,
or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie (read this sentence
again out loud!). These weapons are about terror. If you remain calm, you
will probably not die. This is far less scary than the media and their
"Experts," make it sound.
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- Chemical Weapons
-
- Chemical weapons are categorized as nerve, blood, blister,
and incapacitating agents. Contrary to the hype of reporters and politicians
they are not weapons of mass destruction, they are "area denial,"
and terror weapons that don't destroy anything. When you leave the area
you almost always leave the risk. That's the difference; you can leave
the area and the risk but soldiers may have to stay put and sit through
it and that's why they need all that spiffy gear.
-
- These are not gasses, they are vapors and/or air borne
particles. The agent must be delivered in sufficient quantity to kill/injure,
and that defines wh en/how it's used. Every day we have a morning and evening
inversion where "stuff," suspended in the air gets pushed down.
This inversion is why allergies (pollen) and air pollution are worst at
these times of the day.
-
- So, a chemical attack will have it's best effect an hour
of so either side of sunrise/sunset. Also, being vapors and airborne particles
they are heavier than air so they will seek low places like ditches, basements
and underground garages. This stuff won't work when it's freezing, it doesn't
last when it's hot, and wind spreads it too thin too fast. They've got
to get this stuff on you, or, get you to inhale it for it to work. They
also have to get the concentration of chemicals high enough to kill or
wound you. Too little and it's nothing, too much and it's wasted.
-
- What I hope you've gathered by this point is that a chemical
weapons attack that kills a lot of people is incredibly hard to do with
military grade agents and equipment so you can imagine how hard it will
be for terrorists. The more you know about this stuff the more you realize
how hard it is to use.
-
- We'll start by talking about nerve agents. You have these
in your house, plain old bug killer (like Raid) is nerve agent. All nerve
agents work the same way; they are cholinesterase inhibitors that mess
up the signals your nervous system uses to make your body function. It
can harm you if you get it on your skin but it works best if they can get
you to inhale it. If you don't die in the first minute and you can leave
the area you're probably gonna live. The military's antidote for all nerve
agents is atropine and pralidoxime chloride. Neither one of these does
anything to cure the nerve agent, they send your body into overdrive to
keep you alive for five minutes, after that the agent is used up. Your
best protection is fresh air and staying calm.
-
- Listed below are the symptoms for nerve agent poisoning:
-
- Sudden headache, Dimness of vision (someone you're looking
at will have pinpointed pupils), runny nose, excessive saliva or drooling,
difficulty breathing, tightness in chest, nausea, stomach cramps, twitching
of exposed skin where a liquid just got on you.
-
- If you are in public and you start experiencing these
symptoms, first ask yourself, did anything out of the ordinary just happen,
a loud pop, did someone spray something on the crowd? Are other people
getting sick too? Is there an odor of new mown hay, green corn, something
fruity, or camphor where it shouldn't be? If the answer is yes, then calmly
(if you panic you breathe faster and inhale more air/poison) leave the
area and head up wind, or, outside.
-
- Fresh air is the best "right now antidote."
If you have a blob of liquid that looks like molasses or Kayro syrup on
you; blot it or scrape it off and away from yourself with anything disposable.
This stuff works based on your body weight, what a crop duster uses to
kill bugs won't hurt you unless you stand there and breathe it in real
deep, then lick the residue off the ground for a while. Remember they have
to do all the work, they have to get the concentration up and keep it up
for several minutes while all you have to do is quit getting it on you/quit
breathing it by putting space between you and the attack.
-
- Blood agents are cyanide or arsine which effect your
blood's ability to provide oxygen to your tissue. The scenario for attack
would be the same as nerve agent. Look for a pop or someone splashing/spraying
something and folks around there getting woozy/falling down. The telltale
smells are bitter almonds or garlic where it shouldn't be. The symptoms
are blue lips, blue under the fingernails rapid breathing.
-
- The military's antidote is amyl nitride and just like
nerve agent antidote it just keeps your body working for five minutes till
the toxins are used up. Fresh air is the your best individual chance.
-
- Blister agents (distilled mustard) are so nasty that
nobody wants to even handle it let alone use it. It's almost impossible
to handle safely and may have delayed effect of up to 12 hours. The attack
scenario is also limited to the things you'd see from other chemicals.
If you do get large, painful blisters for no apparent reason, don't pop
them, if you must, don't let the liquid from the blister get on any other
area, the stuff just keeps on spreading. It's just as likely to harm the
user as the target. Soap, water, sunshine, and fresh air are this stuff's
enemy.
-
- Bottom line on chemical weapons (it's the same if they
use industrial chemical spills); they are intended to make you panic, to
terrorize you, to heard you like sheep to the wolves. If there is an attack,
leave the area and go upwind, or to the sides of the wind stream. They
have to get the stuff to you, and on you. You're more likely to be hurt
by a drunk driver on any given day than be hurt by one of these attacks.
Your odds get better if you leave the area. Soap, water, time, and fresh
air really deal this stuff a knock-out- punch. Don't let fear of an isolated
attack rule your life. The odds are really on your side.
-
- Nuclear Weapons
-
- Nuclear bombs. These are the only weapons of mass destruction
on earth. The effects of a nuclear bomb are heat, blast, EMP, and radiation.
If you see a bright flash of light like the sun, where the sun isn't, fall
to the ground! The heat will be over a second. Then there will be two blast
waves, one out going, and one on it's way back. Don't stand up to see what
happened after the first wave; anything that's going to happen will have
happened in two full minutes.
-
- These will be low yield devices and will not level whole
cities. If you live through the heat, blast, and initial burst of radiation,
you'll probably live for a very, very long time. Radiation will not create
fifty foot tall women, or giant ants and grass hoppers the size of tanks.
These will be at the most 1 kiloton bombs; that's the equivalent of 1,000
tons of TNT.
-
- Here's the real deal, flying debris and radiation will
kill a lot of exposed (not all!) people within a half mile of the blast.
Under perfect conditions this is about a half mile circle of death and
destruction, but, when it's done it's done. EMP stands for Electro Magnetic
Pulse and it will fry every electronic device for a good distance, it's
impossible to say what and how far but probably not over a couple of miles
from ground zero is a good guess. Cars, cell phones, computers, ATMs, you
name it, all will be out of order.
-
- There are lots of kinds of radiation, you only need to
worry about three, the others you have lived with for years. You need to
worry about "Ionizing radiation," these are little sub atomic
particles that go whizzing along at the speed of light. They hit individual
cells in your body, kill the nucleus and keep on going. That's how you
get radiation poisoning, you have so many dead cells in your body that
the decaying cells poison you.
-
- It's the same as people getting radiation treatments
for cancer, only a bigger area gets radiated. The good news is you don't
have to just sit there and take it, and there's lots you can do rather
than panic. First; your skin will stop alpha particles, a page of a news
paper or your clothing will stop beta particles, you just gotta try and
avoid inhaling dust that's contaminated with atoms that are emitting these
things and you'll be generally safe from them.
-
- Gamma rays are particles that travel like rays (quantum
physics makes my brain hurt) and they create the same damage as alpha and
beta particles only they keep going and kill lots of cells as they go all
the way through your body. It takes a lot to stop these things, lots of
dense material, on the other hand it takes a lot of this to kill you.
-
- Your defense is as always to not panic. Basic hygiene
and normal preparation are your friends. All canned or frozen food is safe
to eat. The radiation poisoning will not effect plants so fruits and vegetables
are OK if there's no dust on em (rinse em off if there is). If you don't
have running water and you need to collect rain water or use water from
wherever, just let it sit for thirty minutes and skim off the water gently
from the top. The dust with the bad stuff in it will settle and the remaining
water can be used for the toilet which will still work if you have a bucket
of water to pour in the tank.
-
- Biological Weapons
-
- Finally there's biological warfare. There's not much
to cover here. Basic personal hygiene and sanitation will take you further
than a million doctors. Wash your hands often, don't share drinks, food,
sloppy kisses, etc., .... with strangers. Keep your garbage can with a
tight lid on it, don't have standing water (like old buckets, ditches,
or kiddie pools) laying around to allow mosquitoes breeding room. This
stuff is carried by vectors, that is bugs, rodents, and contaminated material.
If biological warfare is so easy as the TV makes it sound, why has Saddam
Hussein spent twenty years, millions, and millions of dollars trying to
get it right? If you're clean of person and home you eat well and are active
you're gonna live.
-
- Overall preparation for any terrorist attack is the same
as you'd take for a big storm. If you want a gas mask, fine, go get one.
I know this stuff and I'm not getting one and I told my Mom not to bother
with one either (how's that for confidence). We have a week's worth of
cash, several days worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water.
We don't leave stuff out to attract bugs or rodents so we don't have them.
-
- These people can't conceive a nation this big with this
much resources. These weapons are made to cause panic, terror, and to demoralize.
If we don't run around like sheep they won't use this stuff after they
find out it's no fun. The government is going nuts over this stuff because
they have to protect every inch of America. You've only gotta protect yourself,
and by doing that, you help the country.
-
- Finally, there are millions of caveats to everything
I wrote here and you can think up specific scenarios where my advice isn't
the best. This letter is supposed to help the greatest number of people
under the greatest number of situations. If you don't like my work, don't
nit pick, just sit down and explain chemical, nuclear, and biological warfare
in a document around three pages long yourself. This is how we the people
of the United States can rob these people of their most desired goal, your
terror.
-
-
-
- Comment
By Alfred Lehmberg
Lehmberg@snowhill.com
2-15-3
-
- Yes! With all respect, chill-out America! Truly, as
true now as it was then, we've nothing to fear but fear itself!
-
- I am by no means a weapons expert in the same class with
Sergeant First Class Thomas. Still, I can affirm that his very coherent
essay is spot -on- with regard to the alleged threat suggested by Chemical,
Biological, and Nuclear (NBC) weapons and their posited use by terrorists
on rank and file Americans. I can make this assessment very comfortably.
Given my own more limited experience as a career Army officer assigned
additional duties as an NBC training manager (forgetting the hundreds of
hours of individual education in the defenses available with regard to
these weapons received in twenty-three years of military service and until
my -own- retirement a decade ago), I feel I can be very comfortable indeed.
-
- Assuming for a moment the total veracity of the sergeant's
cogent, learned, and experienced comments on "WND", what are
neighborhood Americans being panicked into a terror driven "stampede"
for, really? This is the issue that should be considered instead of the
foggy and indistinct terrors suggested by the over-sold, over-blown and
over-the-top (and perhaps even overtly absent!) uses of Nuclear, Chemical
and Biological weapons... suspicious weapons held precariously over our
heads by the *elected* leadership like the sword of some terrorist Damocles!
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- What is TRULY achieved with our terror? Who -gains-
as a result of our fear? Where is the profit?
-
- Scared people are more gullible people. People fearful
of their lives concentrate more of their attention on that which threatens
them. Frightened people are kept off balance, more cooperative with perceived
authority, and more easily compelled to -hate- that which they fear. People
ruled by fear are -manageable- people. Ask any Mob boss selling protection
how profitable that can be and begin to get an inkling of what is, perhaps,
the real agenda proffered by this so called "new" threat awareness.
-
- People who live in fear are much more willing to make
-big- sacrifices to alleviate that fear. They give of their sons and daughters
and of themselves. They give up their freedom (such that it was). They
give up their liberty (such that it could be). They give up their autonomy
(such as it is dreamed). They give money, entitlements, and constructive
interests. Additionally, they too readily forgive or forget a lesser (perceptually)
*real* evil to combat the larger *imaginary* one. They'll gladly forego
the small gains made against social injustice and governmental tyranny
over the last 50 years. They'll forget who the enemy really -is-. Verily,
if history is -any- guide, they'll give up their very souls...
-
- ...And could it be that that is the point?
-
- The government is suspect. The media is suspect. All
things are suspect. Even our suspicions are suspect! Could it -be- that
we are being manipulated, managed, and maneuvered into corporate *line*
to satisfy the needs of those that have something less than the total welfare
of American people in mind? Given the conflicted motivations and questionable
legitimacy of the Bush administration, his ties to big corporate oil, and
the (well documented) lies -already- told... the likelihood seems certainly
plausible if -not- undeniable!
-
- We -can- take a deep breath, America! The fears of terrorism,
terrorists, and their egregious acts are likely as overblown, over-sold,
and over-the-top as SFC Thomas thinly indicated in his essay! But, additionally,
that fear -may- be a vehicle used simply to extort more and more money
for petroleum that still flows, -unimpeded- (from -Iraq- I've heard!),
to this day! Moreover, it just might -be- that the Ashcroft endorsed "home
security" hyperactivity associated with terrorists and terrorism is
a mechanism to relieve us of more and more our rights, freedoms, and -real-
securities... all in an effort to make us over into more docile employees
and impotent cognitive drones... drones as intellectually dry as the bone
dust we Americans have -already- produced in Iraq and Afghanistan and in
so many other countries of this tortured and fragile globe...
-
- The United States is the Rome of the 21st Century, good
reader. It is as ill served by unthinking adulation and reflexively ill-conceived
and wrongly motivated patriotism as the old Rome was! It is best served
by rationality, law abiding dissent, and thoughtful reflection. It is BEST
served by justice, fair play, and the RULE of law! It is convenient fear
that we should fear, along with the acts of those that would use their
hijacked positions to feather their own nests (and the nests of their class!)
at the expense of those that they have NEVER respected, really -- ordinary
Americans and anyone else in (and off!) the world!
-
- Chill, America! Take a deep breath (you -can-!) and
know that everything is not as it appears on the Fox news channel, CNN,
or network news. We're threatened to be sure, but that threat comes from
unexpected corners and un-admitted shadows and not -entirely- from foreign
peoples who hate us for right, wrong, and all manner of different reasons.
-
- We're not alone on this globe, good reader. We should
stop acting as if we were despite the aggregate success we enjoy as a result
of it. As a suspected result, a lot of the fear that we endure presently
might just go away or evaporate like the uninformed fog it really is.
Be that as it may, we should not be coerced by our fear, manipulated by
it, or lose as a result of it, especially if it doesn't even exist! That's
not America, not the one I've fought for at any rate. I'd suggest that
it is not the reader's America either.
-
- For AlienViews... read on!
-
- ~~Ö~~ EXPLORE "AlienViews" at: http://www.alienview.net
-
- "I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite.
What others see from afar, I leave far behind me." - Giordano Bruno,
scourged by the scabrously specious scurrilous.
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