CIVIL DEFENSE PERSPECTIVES

September 2002 (vol. 18, #6)
1601 N Tucson Blvd #9, Tucson AZ 85716
c 2002 Physicians for Civil Defense

THE REALLY BIG THREATS

Officials and pundits who constantly drive Americans to strain at gnats and swallow camels should be sent tapes from the Colorado Springs meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. ``The Really Big Threats''-delivering megadeaths, trillions in economic damage, and staggering blows to American civilization-were outlined by Lowell Wood. Should we escape those, less dramatic forces described by other speakers could still turn the United States into a Third World nation.

In contrast to the ``9/11'' loss of a small part of New York City, the destruction of critical infrastructure would mean darkness, no flow of natural gas or water, empty grocery stores, closed banks, flooding rivers, malnutrition, exposure, and despair across the land.

One of various possible mechanisms is the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by a nuclear burst at 100 to 1,000 km height. One burst could disable all vulnerable electrical and electronic equipment in the United States. ``If you can see the nuclear burst above your horizon, its EMP can see you and yours,'' stated Dr. Wood.

U.S. strategic forces have EMP protection of a ``patchwork quilt'' variety, which may be substantially better than that of day-to-day tactical forces, according to Dr. Wood's June 1, 1999, testimony before the House Committee on Small Business. U.S. civilian infrastructure has no such protection. ``Our civilian telephony, electricity, broadband communications and electronics plants are all naked to our nuclear-armed enemies.... [E]ven a modest, single-explosion EMP attack on the U.S. might well devastate us as a modern, post-industrial nation.''

It being widely known that the U.S. contemplated an EMP laydown on Iraq as a commencement to Operation Desert Storm, it should not be surprising that other nuclear-armed nations might consider such a strategy, Wood remarked. It ex-emplifies a ``technologically asymmetric response'' to the ``impending Revolution in Military Affairs, one in which our adversary acts purposefully to leverage his set-of-strengths and exploit our set-of-weaknesses. (Saddam Hussein fought us entirely on our terms in Desert Storm; we must assume that we will not be gifted with a similarly inept adversary for some long time.)''

A few nuclear weapons and ``unstoppable delivery systems (e.g. attacking ballistic missiles facing only Clintonesque missile defenses)'' are obviously very desirable to a ruler facing invasion by electronics-dependent troops. There are 10,000 ballistic missiles owned by 30 countries capable of lifting a nuclear weapon over U.S. expeditionary forces. And in the near term, the continental U.S. is also threatened even by North Korea and its advanced Taepo Dong missiles.

Primary prevention is a robust missile defense to keep warheads from entering U.S. space.

Passive defense is far more readily available, less expensive, and more effective today than even a decade ago. High-perfor-mance personal computers and telecommunications generate low-level EMP-like signals themselves and are also very vulnerable to interference from EMP. Thus, manufacturers have incor-porated EMP protection: (1) enclosing electronics in metallic shells and (2) simple, low-cost means for suppressing electrical surges. Such methods could be use to protect much of our currently vulnerable infrastructure. For a congressional EMP defensive initiative, Wood suggested a mandated public information program, government-sponsored prototyping, tax incentives, credible performance certifications, and other measures (www.house.gov/smbiz/hearings/106th/1999/990601/wood.htm).

For recovery after attack, there is no substitute for lots of stored spare parts and people who know how to install them and to revive systems.

EMP is the inverse of the perfect ``capitalist weapon''- destroying infrastructure without directly harming people. (The perfect capitalist weapon is not the neutron bomb, but smallpox or other biological weapons-see DDP Newsletter, Sept. 2002).

Other anticapitalist weapons-ways to destroy in-frastructure without overt violence-include litigation, regula-tion, and international treaties.

The role of the ban on asbestos in bringing down the World Trade Center was discussed by Andrew Schlafly, Esq., General Counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) (see http://www.oism.org/ddp). Asbestos litigation -costing at least $200 billion, the estimate of The Economist--has pushed at least 60 companies into bankruptcy since 2000, including Bethlehem Steel. More than 90,000 new claims were filed in 2001 alone, only 6% involving claimants actually suffering from asbestos-related illness. All U.S. automakers are endangered due to past use of asbestos in brake linings.

Fire is a great destroyer of infrastructure, and the U.S. already has one of the highest fire death rates in the industrial-ized world: 4,500 deaths and 26,500 injuries annually. Not only have we lost our best fire retardant-nothing comes close to asbestos-but our best fire extinguisher is now banned.

The Montreal Protocol, also based on junk science, forbids production of halon, which is essential for military prepared-ness. Critical uses of halon 1301 in military and commercial aviation and aerospace are permitted, but must utilize existing stocks. Although the halon bank is supposed to last for 200 years, 17 years worth was depleted in 45 days by F-16s in the Gulf War, as Dr. Sallie Baliunas pointed out. None of the alternatives are as good. And all are ``greenhouse gases,'' so their use may eventually be curtailed by the Kyoto Protocol.

The robust U.S. economy-the underpinning of all defense and disaster preparedness-is under attack through international agreements designed to destroy private property rights and place the economy under global governance. This means U.N. control of all business activity, down to the local community level, stated Henry Lamb (www.freedom.org, click on ``Sovereignty International''). The Wildlands Project would ban all human presence, including infrastructure, on 50% of land in the ``lower 48'' and heavily regulate most of the rest (see the map at www.epi.freedom.org/mapwild.htm). Even without these proposed new shackles, the American economy carries a load of $800 billion in environmental, health, and safety regulation to ``protect'' against trivial or nonexistent hazards while preventing defense against really big threats and causing a rising toll of premature death, stated Jay Lehr.

Unless the nation can shift its focus to dangers too large to see from the current perspective, the prognosis is grim.

 

Personal EMP Protection

In the Journal of Civil Defense 35(1), TACDA Vice President Sharon Packer suggests some anti-EMP measures that citizens can take: (1) Maintain a supply of spare radio parts. (2) Use one system at a time during a threat period. Disconnect other systems from power and antennas and keep them in a Faraday cage. (3) If your car ignition fails, disconnect the negative battery terminal, wait two minutes, and attempt to restart the car. Some computerized ignition systems on late-model cars might possibly be reset in this way. The possibility of economic chaos following an EMP is reason enough to put away a supply of essential goods. See www.tacda.org.

 

Notes on Asbestos and the WTC

 

The Truth About Ozone Depletion

Stratospheric ozone anxiety, states astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, carries an enormous cost extending far into the future. By 2004, the cost of banning CFC refrigerants will reach $100 billion. The benefit: none. The human contribution to ozone depletion is at most small, she states. The most important cause may be tiny extraterrestrial particles, as demonstrated in revolutionary work by Jan Rosinski, presented at the DDP meeting by his coworker, mathematician Thomas Kerrigan.

A program of atmospheric sampling at ground stations widely dispersed around the globe found micrometeo-rites, unassociated with known meteor showers, with intensity correlating with variability in Antarctic ozone depletion. On the surfaces of these particles, reactions between ozone and water vapor are catalyzed by iron oxide in the spherule, leading to net loss of ozone.

The spherule theory accounts for the decrease in ozone before sunrise and the spike up in ozone at sunrise, two features that are unexplained by the consensus chlorine-bromine theory.

Data and quantitative analysis are published by the Societa Italiana di Fisica:

Rosinski J, Kerrigan TC. The role of extraterrestrial particles in the formation of the ozone hole. Part I: The concentration of extraterrestrial particles at ozone hole formation. Il Nuovo Cimento 2001;24C(6):815-842.

Kerrigan TC, Rosinski J. The role of extraterrestrial particles in the formation of the ozone hole. Part II: The action of extraterrestrial particles at ozone hole formation. Il Nuovo Cimento 2002;25C(1):57-97.

It is conjectured that this mechanism may also shape the atmosphere's temperature profile, radiation budget, and possibly general circulation between 20 and 80 km altitude over the entire globe.

Dr. Kerrigan's presentation is posted at www.oism.org/ddp.

 

Critical ``Infrastructure'': Scientists

Between Nov 2001 and Mar 2002, 11 microbiologists, most in the upper echelons in fields relevant to biowarfare, died in unusual ways. Similar series of apparent coincidences have been observed in the past, involving weapons and defense experts.

While no conclusions can be drawn, the Mackenzie Institute suggests the need to protect those specialists whose education and experience is a priceless strategic asset in a world in which biowarfare is an increasing threat (Mackenzie Institute Newsletter, July 2002, www.mackenzieinstitute.com).

 

As Others See Us....

Correspondence from Europeans who speak Mandarin and have wandered about China listening to ordinary people:

``On the street, I am often called a `Fan' or `Hu' [barbarian races erased from history 2,500 years ago]. The message is to let me know that not only am I a savage, but I am to be eliminated.''

``The other day I heard a civil servant refer to me as a `subhuman hybrid'.''

``He [a young child] said that he hated all Americans (which is here a kind of general term for whites), and one day Chinese would kill them all, because Chinese are strong. He said his parents told him all this, and that one day soon there would be no more Americans'' (Mackenzie Inst Newsletter, April 2002).