-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Optimizzin Al-gorithym wrote:
>UPI: Report: Al Qaida has 'dirty bomb' >Drudge (TIME): NYC nukes kept secret from proles >AP: yet another cross-border smuggling tunnel, 1000 ft long, with rails >and power >You do the math. Bah, lightweight. Herman Kahn did the math, years ago: in order to *really* take out the New York City metro area, you'd need one -->twenty<-- megaton warhead AND five (!) ten megaton warheads. As in actually detonating, not just sitting there fizzing. It's going to take a lot more than one lousy dirty bomb to do anything truly significant. The main thing you can come away with from his "On Thermonuclear War" (which if you haven't read yet, you really should) is that things like this are survivable as long as you pull your head out of your ass, calm down and do what you can to prepare yourself. Too many people hear the word "nuke" and assume it must be the end of the world; that the only thing left for anyone to do is just lay down and die. Using your head and getting a spine beats freaking out any day. Sadly enough, the US government is taking quite good care of its own with the network of underground bunkers, command posts, "continuity of government" plans etc. while letting the general population's civil defense program (something Kahn himself pushed for tirelessly) totally go to shit. (Any PR spin you may have heard from various agencies to the contrary, objectively speaking, it's still 100% total shit.) The way I see it, there's no reason civilians can't heed the lessons of Herman Kahn personally and put them into practice on their own small scale--after all, he was a civilian himself. Having the courage to face up to unpleasant truths and daring to think the unthinkable is a worthy goal. If the men and women in charge of "continuity of government" planning are cold-eyed enough to take the Kahnian approach, why shouldn't you or I be? For a start, you could always download the old FEMA blast shelter plans that for some reason were taken out-of-print: www.survivalring.org/cd-plans.htm And if your general survivalist knowledge, food-and-water-storage etc. isn't where it should be, try this: http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/basicnbc.htm Hope that helps somebody or other. Unlike some of you, I don't relish the thought of millions of innocent people who never did anything to anyone being killed for nothing. As far as I'm concerned, the more people who wake up, think the unthinkable, and take responsibility for the protection of their own lives the better. ~Faustine. *** "The approach of the radical theorist is more appropriate now than it ever has been." Herman Kahn. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPIKw/vg5Tuca7bfvEQKfIACgmhImoQ439r1uOYJohN7g9xiIDYwAn1rF Q/O4leny/lGUnCOl70uS5QXw =EmkV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
