The last few messages about evacuations reminded me of a conversation we had in my High School social studies class (gheeze, that was almost a lifetime ago!) about a law that supposedly required highways to be built for use as landing strips in time of war. The teacher presented this as fact, but I found out a few years later that this was only an urban legend (see links below) My question is this: why didn't they require standards that would allow current highway infrastructure to be used in time of war? Maybe the government was (is) arrogant enough to think that nobody would consider, or succeed, in invading US soil?
The recent evacuation fiascos prove that our highway system is inadequate for the population density that it supports - at least in an emergency situation. The refinery infrastructure that was damaged during Katrina only affected 5% of the gulf oil output. Look at the chaos 5% caused at the gas pumps. A smart terrorist (is that an oxymoron like Military Intelligence?) would start blowing up oil refineries to cause mass havoc in the US. All it would take would be one successful hit and the oil industry would go into a tailspin with "speculation" and raise oil prices drastically. Hell, oil prices went up when the king of Monaco died. What effect could that have possibly caused to justify raising oil prices? from Snopes.com.. http://tinyurl.com/78mrm from About.com... http://tinyurl.com/9fly8 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
