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by SFC Red Thomas (Ret)
Since the media has decided to scare everyone
with predictions of chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare
on our turf I decided to write a paper and keep things in
their proper perspective. I am a retired military weapons,
munitions, and training expert.
Lesson number one: In the mid 1990's there
were a series of nerve gas attacks on crowded Japanese subway
stations. Given perfect
conditions for an attack less than 10% of
the people there were injured (the injured were better in
a few hours) and only one
percent of the injured died.
60 Minutes once had a fellow telling us
that one drop of nerve gas could kill a thousand people, well
he didn't tell you the thousand dead people per drop was theoretical.
Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible
this stuff was to keep the recruits awake in class (I know
this because I was a Drill Sergeant too).
Forget everything
you've ever seen on TV, in the
movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a
lie (read this sentence again out loud!)!
These weapons are about terror, if you
remain calm, you will probably not die. This is far less scary
than the media and their "Experts," make it sound.
Chemical weapons are categorized as Nerve,
Blood, Blister, and Incapacitating agents Contrary to the
hype of reporters and politicians they are not weapons of
mass destruction they are "Area denial," and terror
weapons that don't destroy anything.
When you leave
the area you almost always leave the risk.
That's the difference; you can leave
the area and the risk; soldiers may have to stay put and sit
through it and that's why they need all that spiffy gear.
These are not gasses; they are vapors
and/or air borne particles. The agent must be delivered in
sufficient quantity to kill/injure, and that defines when/how
it's used.
Every day we have a morning and evening
inversion where "stuff," suspended in the air gets
pushed down. This inversion is why allergies (pollen) and
air pollution are worst at these times of the day.
So, a chemical attack will have it's best
effect an hour or so either
side of sunrise/sunset. Also, being vapors and
airborne particles they are heavier than air so they will
seek low places like ditches, basements and underground garages.
This stuff won't work when it's freezing,
it doesn't last when it's hot, and wind spreads it too thin
too fast. They've got to get this stuff on you, or, get you
to inhale it for it to work. They also have to get the concentration
of chemicals high enough to kill or wound you. Too
little and it's nothing, too much and it's wasted.
What I hope you've gathered by this point
is that a chemical weapons attack that kills a lot of people
is incredibly hard to do with military grade agents and equipment
so you can imagine how hard it will be for terrorists.
The more you know about this stuff the
more you realize how hard it is to use.
We'll start
by talking about nerve agents.
You have these in your house, plain old
bug killer (like Raid) is nerve agent. All nerve agents work
the same way; they are cholinesterase inhibitors that mess
up the signals your nervous system uses to make your body
function.
It can harm you if you get it on your
skin but it works best if they can get you to inhale it. If
you don't die in the first minute and you can leave the area
you're probably gonna live. The military's antidote for all
nerve agents is atropine and pralidoxime chloride.
Neither one of these does anything to
cure the nerve agent, they send your body into overdrive to
keep you alive for five minutes, after that the agent is used
up. Your best protection is fresh air and staying calm. Listed
below are the symptoms for nerve agent poisoning.
Sudden headache, Dimness of vision (someone
you're looking at will have pinpointed pupils), Runny nose,
Excessive saliva or drooling, Difficulty breathing, Tightness
in chest, Nausea, Stomach cramps, Twitching of exposed skin
where a liquid just got on you.
If you are in public and you start experiencing
these symptoms, first ask yourself, did anything out of the
ordinary just happen, a loud pop, did someone spray something
on the crowd? Are other people getting sick too?
Is there an odor of new mown hay, green
corn, something fruity, or camphor where it shouldn't be?
If the answer is yes, then calmly (if
you panic you breathe faster and inhale more air/poison) leave
the area and head up wind, or, outside. Fresh air is the best
"right now antidote".
If you have a blob of liquid that looks
like molasses or Kayro syrup on you; blot it or scrape it
off and away from yourself with anything disposable. This
stuff works based on your body weight, what a crop duster
uses to kill bugs won't hurt you unless you stand there and
breathe it in real deep, then lick the residue off the ground
for while.
Remember they have to do all the work,
they have to get the concentration up and keep it up for several
minutes while all you have
to do is quit getting it on you/quit breathing it by putting
space between you and the attack.
Blood agents are cyanide or arsine which
effect your blood's ability to provide oxygen to your tissue.
The scenario for attack would be the same as nerve agent.
Look for a pop or someone splashing/spraying something and
folks around there getting woozy/falling down.
The telltale smells are bitter almonds
or garlic where it shouldn't be. The symptoms are blue lips,
blue under the fingernails, rapid breathing. The military's
antidote is amyl nitride and just like nerve agent antidote
it just keeps your body working for five minutes till the
toxins are used up.
Fresh air is the your best individual
chance. Blister agents (distilled mustard) are so nasty that
nobody wants to even handle it let alone use it. It's almost
impossible to handle safely and may have delayed effect of
up to 12 hours.
The attack scenario is also limited to
the things you'd see from other chemicals. If you do get large,
painful blisters for no apparent reason, don't pop them, if
you must, don't let the liquid from the blister get on any
other area, the stuff just keeps on spreading. It's just as
likely to harm the user as the target. Soap, water, sunshine,
and fresh air are this stuff's enemy.
Bottom line on chemical weapons (it's
the same if they use industrial chemical spills); they
are intended to make you panic, to terrorize you,
to herd you like sheep to the wolves. If there is an attack,
leave the area and go upwind, or to the sides of the wind
stream.
They have to get the stuff to you, and
on you. You're more likely to be hurt by a drunk driver on
any given day than be hurt by one of these attacks. Your odds
get better if you leave the area. Soap, water, time, and fresh
air really deal this stuff a knock_out_punch.
Don't let
fear of an isolated attack rule your life. The odds are really
on your side.
Nuclear bombs. These are the only weapons
of mass destruction on earth. The effects of a nuclear bomb
are heat, blast, EMP, and radiation. If you see a bright flash
of light like the sun, where the sun isn't, fall to the ground!
The heat will be over in a second. Then
there will be two blast waves, one out going, and one on it's
way back. Don't stand up to see what happened after the first
wave; anything that's going to happen will have happened in
two full minutes.
These will
be low yield devices and will not level whole cities.
If you live through the heat, blast,
and initial burst of radiation, you'll probably live for a
very very long time.
Radiation will not create fifty foot tall
women, or giant ants and grass hoppers the size of tanks.
These will be at the most 1 kiloton bombs; that's the equivalent
of 1,000 tons of TNT.
Here's the real deal, flying debris and
radiation will kill a lot of exposed (not all!) people within
a half mile of the blast. Under perfect conditions this is
about a half mile circle of death and destruction, but, when
it's done it's done.
EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse
and it will fry every electronic device for a good distance,
it's impossible to say what and how far but probably not over
a couple of miles from ground zero is a good guess. Cars,
cell phones, computers, ATMs, you name it, all will be out
of order.
There are lots of kinds of radiation,
you only need to worry about three, the others you have lived
with for years. You need to worry about "Ionizing radiation,"
these are little subatomic particles that go whizzing along
at the speed of light. They hit individual cells in your body,
kill the nucleus and keep on going.
That's how you get radiation poisoning,
you have so many dead cells in your body that the decaying
cells poison you. It's the same as people getting radiation
treatments for cancer, only a bigger area gets radiated. The
good news is you don't have to just sit there and take it,
and there's lots you can
do rather than panic.
First; your skin will stop alpha particles,
a page of a news paper or your clothing will stop beta particles,
you just got to try and avoid inhaling dust that's contaminated
with atoms that are emitting these things and you'll be generally
safe from them.
Gamma rays are particles that travel like
rays (quantum physics makes my brain hurt) and they create
the same damage as alpha and beta particles only they keep
going and kill lots of cells as they go all the way through
your body. It takes a lot to stop these things, lots of dense
material, on the other hand it takes a lot of this to kill
you.
Your defense
is as always to not panic.
Basic hygiene
and normal preparation are your friends.
All canned or frozen food is safe to eat. The radiation poisoning
will not effect plants so fruits and vegetables are OK if
there's no dust on them (rinse them off if there is).
If you don't have running water and you
need to collect rain water or use water from wherever, just
let it sit for thirty minutes and skim off the water gently
from the top. The dust with the bad stuff in it will settle
and the remaining water can be used for the toilet which will
still work if you have a bucket of water to pour in the tank.
Finally there's
biological warfare.
There's not much to cover here.
Basic
personal hygiene and sanitation will take you further than
a million doctors.
Wash your hands often, don't share drinks,
food, sloppy kisses, etc., ... with strangers. Keep your garbage
can with a tight lid on it, don't have standing water (like
old buckets, ditches, or kiddie pools) laying around to allow
mosquitoes breeding room.
This stuff is carried by vectors, that
is bugs, rodents, and contaminated material. If biological
warfare is so easy as the TV makes it sound, why has Saddam
Hussein spent twenty years, millions, and millions of dollars
trying to get it right? If you're clean of person and home
you eat well and are active you're gonna live.
Overall preparation for any terrorist
attack is the same as you'd take for a big storm. If you want
a gas mask, fine, go get one. I know this stuff and I'm not
getting one and I told my Mom not to bother with one either
(how's that for confidence).
We have a week's worth of cash, several
days worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water. We
don't leave stuff out to attract bugs or rodents so we don't
have them.
These people can't conceive a nation this
big with this much resources. These
weapons are made to cause panic, terror, and to demoralize.
If we don't run around like sheep they won't use
this stuff after they find out it's no fun. The government
is going nuts over this stuff because they have to protect
every inch of America.
You've only
have to protect yourself, and by doing that, you help the
country.
Finally, there are millions of caveats
to everything I wrote here and you can think up specific scenarios
where my advice isn't the best. This letter is supposed to
help the greatest number of people under the greatest number
of situations.
If you don't like my work, don't nit
pick, just sit down and explain chemical, nuclear, and biological
warfare in a document around three pages long yourself. This
is how we the people of the United States can rob these people
of their most desired goal, your terror.
SFC Red Thomas (Ret) Armor
Master Gunner Mesa, AZ
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