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Drop and Cover if You See A Bright Flash

Tucson, Ariz. At the time of the Utal Emergency Management Association (UEMA) conference on Jan 9, 2014, Physicians for Civil Defense issued the following statement:

All Americans, starting with first responders and emergency managers, need to know this basic life-saving principle: “Drop and cover if you see a sudden very bright light.”

Such a light will be followed by a deadly shock wave within seconds. Those who drop and cover will probably survive. Those who do not are likely to be killed or suffer severe injury.

During the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor explosion, a fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, saved 44 children from potentially life-threatening window glass cuts by ordering them to hide under their desks when she saw the flash. Ms. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the explosion’s blast wave arrived and windows shattered. A tendon in her arm was severed, but not one of her students suffered a cut.

“Large meteor strikes are sufficiently probable that both the U.S. and Russia are working on ways to divert them. In 1908 a meteor strike flattened 800 square miles of Siberian forest,” stated president Jane M. Orient, M.D.

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of disaster.

State of the Union: Lockdown

Civil Defense Perspectives January 2014 Vol. 30 No. 2
[published April 2014]

In his 2014 State of the Union message, Barack Obama made some startling claims:

We’ve had “more oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world, the first time that’s happened in nearly twenty years” (see transcript at http://tinyurl.com/k6jjrls).

“I’ll act on my own to slash bureaucracy and streamline the permitting process for key projects….” Continue reading “State of the Union: Lockdown”

Climate Glasnost?

Civil Defense Perspectives November 2013 Vo. 30 No. 1 [published January 2014]

In its Fifth Assessment Report (AR-5), the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has to confront some inconvenient truths, such as the 16-year “pause” in global warming. Even Nature, “one of the most alarmist voices in the climate debate,” is having to “walk back its past predictions of climate apocalypse,” writes Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute. Continue reading “Climate Glasnost?”

War and Energy

Civil Defense Perspectives September 2013, Vol. 29 No. 6

Those who would dominate the world in the Industrial Age need to control access to abundant energy. They need to have energy themselves—and to keep others from challenging their monopoly over essential supplies. One type of weaponry is explosives and the means to deliver them. The other is fear, propaganda, and government regulation. Continue reading “War and Energy”

The “Bomb”: A Terror Weapon

Civil Defense Perspectives July 2013 Vol. 29 No. 5
[published April 2014]

“We can turn USA into radioactive dust,” stated Dmitry Kiselyov, head of the new Russian state television outlet, reminding the world that because of some 8,500 nuclear warheads, Russia can do whatever it pleases (John Ransom, Townhall 3/18/13).

The perceived apocalyptic threat may well have helped keep the Cold War from becoming hot. However, 3 years after Hiroshima, William H. Hessler warned against reliance on nuclear weapons (“The A-Bomb Won’t Do What You Think,” Collier’s 9/17/1949, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6450/). Its rightful place in military policy is very restricted. It is an instrument of destruction, not of victory. We need to keep it ready for retaliation, to deter an attack, he wrote. Continue reading “The “Bomb”: A Terror Weapon”

War on Prosperity

Civil Defense Perspectives May 2013 Vol. 29 No. 4. [published January 2014]

On Jan 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. Now, $20 trillion later, the poverty rate has barely budged, and welfare spending is up 375% in constant dollars.

In contrast, the war on prosperity is winnable. The U.S. government is waging this war against Americans on multiple fronts. Continue reading “War on Prosperity”

Back to Medievalism

Civil Defense Perspectives March 2013, Vol. 29 No. 3

In the 1330s, Petrarch expressed the view that European culture had stagnated and drifted into what he called the Dark Ages since the fall of Rome in the 5th century, pointing to the loss of many classical Latin texts and to the corruption of the language in contemporary discourse. Continue reading “Back to Medievalism”

Climate Extremism

Civil Defense Perspectives January 2013, Vol. 29 No. 2

The Happy New Year news is that Kyoto is dead. It expired at the end of 2012, leaving the world with 58% more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the 5% reduction sought.

The second phase started Jan 1, 2013. Russia decided to discontinue its participation, and Ukraine and Belarus may follow suit. Canada is officially out. The U.S., China, and India have not committed to reducing emissions (Voice of Russia 12/31/12, quoted in CCNet 1/2/13). Continue reading “Climate Extremism”

EPA v. Human Health

Civil Defense Perspectives November 2012, Vol. 29 No. 1

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is claiming authority to regulate virtually anything it chooses based on the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory, not just of radiation carcinogenesis, but of everything. If economist Frédéric Bastiat tried to construct a reductio ad absurdam on pollutants, like the one in The Candlemakers’ Petition to ban sunlight, he would find that what he proposed as absurd is taken seriously by the EPA. Continue reading “EPA v. Human Health”

The Aftermath of Fukushima

Civil Defense Perspectives September 2012, Vol. 28 No. 6

After Fukushima, people are asking questions such as: Should Japan, and the world, totally give up on nuclear energy(Nature 6/7/12)? Casualties from radiation, from the worst nuclear accident in history, are still zero. But what about the projected later cancers? What if an accident contaminates the environment forever? Should people be allowed to return home?

A rational discussion of evacuation policy must begin with the question: “What is the dose?” The follow-up: If we evacuate Fukushima, should Denver be evacuated? How about Finland? Continue reading “The Aftermath of Fukushima”