-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tim wrote:
>Comment on the original thread title: It's bizarre to see politicians >saying "We should have been told about the nuke suspected to be in NYC!" >The smuggling of a nuke into D.C., the missing suitcase/demolition >nukes, all that stuff, was a hot topic of discussion _here_ and in many >places. They were told about it, all right--they must have been too busy chasing votes, pork, kickbacks, blowjobs and free media exposure to bother reading the research product they've been having the citizens pay for over the past three years: The Gilmore Commission Congressional Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction http://www.rand.org/nsrd/terrpanel/. The Advisory Panel will assess the capabilities for responding to terrorist incidents in the U.S. homeland involving weapons of mass destruction. Response capabilities at the Federal, State, and local levels will be examined, with a particular emphasis on the latter two. The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has entered into a contract with the National Defense Research Institute (NDRI), a federally funded research and development cente r(FFRDC) at RAND, to establish the Advisory Panel in accordance with Section 1405 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, Public Law 105-261 (H.R. 3616, 105th Congress, 2nd Session) (October 17, 1998). Interesting reading, if you skip the interpretive blather and recommendations and head for the hard data in the appendices. I thought the methodology was impressively tight and well-documented. Frankly, it's a wonder somebody hasn't pulled it off the web yet. >Onward: >>On Wednesday, March 6, 2002, at 04:50 AM, Ken Brown wrote: >> It is a very good film. It won an Oscar for best documentary (which is >> odd, seeing as it is fiction). Of course it is very precisely targeted >> against Kahn and his views (there is a parody of him in it) and intended >> to stress the uselessness of "civil defence" in a large-scale nuclear >> war. Close, but not quite. I read that the author relied heavily on RAND research (and researchers) to develop the scenario in the first place; I'm assuming that would have included Kahn himself, given the timeframe. Anyway, it's a gross (but common) mistake to assume Kahn was some kind of stupid optimist about nuclear war, quite the contrary. Read "On Thermonuclear War" if you want to understand the complexity of his thinking on this and not just the wacky soundbite version. For all its propagandizing, I still think it's entirely possible to come away from that film convinced that as a nation we need more and better preparation, not less. Any CD we've ever had or seriously thought about having wasn't enough - --and as the modern-day RAND analysts demonstrated with the Gilmore report data, our level of national preparedness sucks as it has never sucked before. No matter how much money the government is going to throw away on the chimera of "homeland defense", anyone content to sit around whining, whimpering and waiting to be handed safety on a silver platter in times like these is in for a rude awakening. > Faustine wrote: > >> Other "must see" bunker TV: >> >> The War Game (1965) >> ... >I saw it about 30 years ago. I recognized it for the "lefty Brit" >(redundant, I suppose) propaganda it was. Of course, the U.S. lefties >had their own scary propaganda, including "Testament" and "The Day >After." And then there was the utter implausibility of "On the Beach." Did you ever see "Threads"? Just wondering if anyone has an opinion about it being worth tracking down... >Those areas that are downwind of the major blast sites would be >primarily hit by fallout...which is where fallout shelters make a big >difference. (Someone in this thread recently referred to "blast >shelters"...these are expensive to build and were never the thrust of >civilian or corporate civil defense.) True, but it has everything to do with where you are--I'd feel better in a blast shelter; if a fallout shelter meets your threat level, fine. (snip) >but for a relatively small amount of money a person can be pretty well >prepared. I couldn't agree more. But I couldn't help noticing that in another forum you said you haven't been to the doctor in the past thirty years. Doesn't preparedness also include making sure you don't have heart disease, prostate cancer or any of the other illnesses type As of a certain age are prone to? None of my business, but one lousy checkup every third of a century wouldn't kill you. I'm trying to get routine things that are easy to put off (like dental work and eye exams) taken care of now so I don't have to worry about it later. What good are your KI pills going to do you when you're writhing in agony over an impacted wisdom tooth? Fixing it now makes sense to me. ~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - --Thomas Paine -----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/AwUBPIcG8vg5Tuca7bfvEQJNDQCg0h1+LKrEbG9uVZvVf03tJs/tJy8An08P XpPkRGQIWuGCTOJKT4Mn6hb0 =Wr55 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
