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How does Terror Work - Occhidiangela - 02-28-2003
Got this in an email that was otherwise full of jokes about duct tape, gas attacks inside your house from eating only canned beans, etc. This is an interesting look at how much of terror is in between your own ears. :)
Words of Wisdom About Gas, Germs, and Nukes
By SFC Red Thomas, Armor Master Gunner U.S. Army (Ret) 10.19.01
Since the media have 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 1990s there was 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. (Occhinote: sucks to be in that one percent, though. :o )
CBS-Television's 60 Minutes once had a fellow telling us that one drop of nerve gas could kill a thousand people. He didn't tell you the thousand dead people per drop was theoretical. Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible this stuff is 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 (Itallics mine, Occhi) 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. (Eh? OK, he is an old military man, he is thinking tactically here) They are means of "Area Denial," effective to keep an enemy out of a particular zone for a limited period of time: terror weapons that don't destroy anything. (Occhinote: Except kill people?) 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 airborne particles. Any such agent must be delivered in sufficient quantity to kill or injure, and that defines when and how it's used. Every day we have a morning and evening atmospheric 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 its best effect an hour of so either side of sunrise or sunset.
Also, being vapors and airborne particles, the agents 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. Attackers have 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 injure 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 achieve with military grade agents and equipment. So you can
imagine how hard it would be for terrorists. (I find his deduction here a bit rosy: Occhi)
The more you know about this stuff, the more you realize how hard it is to use.
(Occhinote: Folks who are serious about using this stuff take the time to learn how to use it best. Given the thought and planning that went into WTC, I would never underestimate the dedication and focus such a group would spend on 'getting it right' with nerve, chemical, bio, or nuclear tools.)
A Case of Nerves
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 you to inhale it. If you don't die in the first minute and you can leave the area, you're probably going to live.
The military's antidotes for all nerve agents are atropine and ralidoxime 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 upwind, or outside.
Fresh air is the best "right now antidote." If you have a blob of liquid that looks like molasses or Karo 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, the attackers 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 and quit breathing it by putting space between yourself and the attack.
Bad Blood and Blisters
Blood agents are cyanide or arsine. They affect your blood's ability to provide oxygen to your tissues. The scenario for attack would be the same as nerve agent. Look for a pop or someone splashing or spraying something and folks around there getting woozy or falling
down. The telltale smells are bitter almonds or garlic where it shouldn't be. The symptoms are blue lips, blue under the fingernails, (and) 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 them, let alone use them. (Occhinote: slight overexageration here. Iraq used them versus Iran. No one?)
Blister agents are just as likely to harm the user as the target. They're almost impossible
to handle safely and may have delayed effects 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. Soap, water, sunshine, and fresh air are this stuff's enemy.
Bottom line on chemical weapons (and 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. You're more likely to be hurt by a drunk driver on any given day than be hurt by one of these attacks. (UH, Occhinote: if the attack happens where you live, the odds go up though!) 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.
Up and Atom
Nuclear bombs: These are the only "real" 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 a second. Then there will be two blast waves, one out going, and one on its way back. Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave. Wait. Everything that's going to happen will have happened in two full minutes. Any nuclear weapons used by terrorists will be low yield devices and will not level whole cities. (How does he know this? I hope he is right, but is that not merely an assumption? Occhinote) 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 grasshoppers 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 hazard: 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.
(Occhinote: take a map of your city, and place the point of a set of divides at the center. Then, extend the dividers by 1/2 mile on the maps scale and draw a circle. Everything inside that circle that is above ground is pretty much . . . toast. Think about how many people are there on a given day is, say, Tokyo, Manhattan, London, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing. Then consider the spread out places like LA. LA starts to look better from that perspective . . .)
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. (Occhinote: Depends on the payload of the explosion.) Cars, cell phones, computers, ATMs, you name it, all will be out of order. There are lots of kinds of radiation, but, physically, you only need to worry about three: alpha, beta, and gamma. The others you have lived with for years.
You need to worry about "Ionizing radiation," little sub-atomic 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 irradiated. The good news is you don't have to just sit there and take it, and there are 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. Then you just have to try and avoid inhaling dust that's contaminated with atoms that are emitting these things and you'll be generally safe from them.
(Occhinote: Surgical masks, anyone? :) )
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 affect 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.
The Germs' Terms
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 kiddy 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 as 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, eat well and are active, you're
going to 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 terrorist people can't conceive of a nation this big with as much resources as it has. 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 and does them little good. The government is going nuts over this stuff because they have to protect every inch of America. You 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 in which my advice wouldn't be the best. This article is supposed to help the greatest number of people under the greatest number of situations. If you don't
like my work, don't nitpick, 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. Unlimited
reproduction and distribution is authorized. Just give me credit for my
work, and, keep in context.
How does Terror Work - --Pete - 02-28-2003
Hi,
Gas, as I've said before, is not a problem in the quantities a terrorist can normally deliver. It does require a fair amount to be effective and it does disperse with wind and (most) break down with the UV in sunlight.
A few things SFC Red Thomas (Ret) either didn't know or chose not to say: the military wear combat uniforms with long sleeves and bloused boots to reduce the possibility of coming into contact with chemical agents. In case of potential imminent gas attacks, full protective gear is donned. Civilians don't do or have either. Thus a civilian population is at higher risk.
These are not gasses; they are vapors and/or airborne particles.
This is half wrong, maybe all wrong. A "vapor" is a gas. It is the gas phase of something that is normally (at the given temperature and pressure) a liquid or a solid. I don't think any of the chemical agents are particles (i.e., finely ground solids) since it is harder to make a solid that is as chemically active as a liquid or gas. And he left out what most of the "gases" really are, namely aerosols. Which is a fancy word for small drops of liquid suspended in air. That is, AFAIK, the most common form for chemical agents since it gives easier handling and denser storage with almost the same coverage as a gas.
Also, being vapors and airborne particles, the agents are heavier than air,
Right but for the wrong reason. As I said above, vapors *are* gasses. There is no reason to say that vapors are heavier than air, there are some that are there are some that aren't. The reason chemical agents are heavier than air is because they are designed that way. If a chemical agent were lighter than air, when released it would float *up* into the atmosphere. Not a whole lot of enemies up there to attack. And a much bigger volume to disperse into.
This stuff won't work when it's freezing,
Unless he is talking about the freezing point *of the agent*, temperature has nothing to do with its effectiveness. The reactions occur on the skin or in the lungs of a human, which are at a pretty constant temperature. The freezing point of the agent could well be below the coldest temperature naturally occurring anywhere on Earth. I think he's got two concepts confused. Someone said "freezing point" and he though it meant of water.
Attackers have to get this stuff on you, or, get you to inhale it, for it to work.
Yes, clearly it has to come into contact with you to work. It doesn't work by "action at a distance". However, the implication that you have to walk into a cloud of this stuff is also wrong. A number of chemical agents, dispersed as aerosols, are designed to coat structures. These agents condense on the structure much as water vapor condenses to form dew. Droplets of these condensed agents then can survive for a long time in shady areas. Even days after an attack, rubbing up to one of those areas can cause harm.
This man is clearly not a weapons designer, nor a chemist, nor (as Occhi points or re using mustard gas) even well informed in the history of gas usage. More knowledgeable than the media? Sure, but my cats meet that criterion. An expert? Maybe on battlefield precautions (which is what a DI teaches), but clearly not on chemical weapons in general.
OK, let's go to nukes. Which are not typical terrorist devices. The ability to make nukes requires a large infrastructure that is not portable and not easily hidden. However, we may be entering an era when nukes might be purchasable.
These are the only "real" weapons of mass destruction on Earth.
Bad start. Biologicals have the ability to do considerably more damage than nukes in the hands of terrorists. Again, for tactical purposes he is right. But clearly he doesn't realize that terrorism is strategic and not tactical in nature. The destruction of the WTC, or of a nightclub or a bus, does not have any *tactical* purpose.
Any nuclear weapons used by terrorists will be low yield devices and EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse and it will fry every electronic device for a good distance.
The strength of EMP from a device is highly dependent on the yield of the device. The EMP effects he describes are only important for a very high yield device. For a low yield device, to be close enough that the EMP is significant means you are close enough to be dead. What he average person doesn't realize is that the range in yield of nukes varies by over a factor of a thousand.
I am not going to bother saying anything else about nuclear. It is clear that SFC Red Thomas (Ret) knows nothing about it, again, other than the dubious information given to the troops during the cold war for battlefield conditions. He completely ignores the difference between clean weapons and dirty, the difference in effects from an air burst and a ground burst, etc. What he offers is the pap given to the troops. It *might* help them survive tactical weapons, but if not -- well they were "disposable" assets anyway, only meant to hold the Soviet tank advance back long enough for the "real" forces to get into action (i.e., the BIG nuclear option).
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 kiddy 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 as 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, eat well and are active, you're
going to live.
Holy crap, Batman!! He's gone from a little knowledge to complete ignorance. Is he talking about biological weapons or STD? I don't think he has a clue. The holy grail of bio weapon research is an organism that: (1) is infectious for at least a couple of days before the carrier shows symptoms, (2) is transmitted through the air, (3) has a very high mortality rate even with treatment, and (4) can be vaccinated against with a high probability of immunity or greatly reduced symptoms. This is *not* plague transmitted by fleas or malarial mosquitoes. Nor is it a few letters with a white powder in it.
Frankly, I think SFC Red Thomas (Ret) is just as ignorant and just as useless as the media and the politicians. While they overstressed the problem, he confuses it with something entirely different. The reaction of a military force on the battlefield and that of civilians in their home is, of necessity must be, different. He is a product of the "one size fits all" mentality and his size is just as much wrong as what he is speaking against.
--Pete
How does Terror Work - Occhidiangela - 02-28-2003
that was the word I was trying to recall earlier.
I think that what spawned the SFC's letter was some of the paranoia in Suburbia. His letter got passed around, after the latest duct taping idiocy that got so much media atttention, as an alternative point of view.
Having had to work through a weapons exercise over 20 years ago wherein we plotted how much of San Francisco would turn into rubble based on Kiloton versus Megaton yields on MIRVs and other such lovely weapons, I had to raise an eyebrow with how blithely he addressed the problem of radius of action. I guess the unspoken point is: if you are too near to Ground Zero, no worries, you are dead (from over pressure and flying shrapnel if nothing else) before you know what hit you. I think the assumption he makes is that a device that is both easy to get one's hands on and is also portable enough to use in the infamous "briefcase nuke" model is the limit of the threat and thus likely to be in the kilo ton, versus megaton, yield class. Not sure I would agree with that entirely, but I understand the thought behind it.
I also thought that his most important point might not even have been intentional, and was in the last sentence.
Nukes and chemical attacks work on your body.
Terror works in your mind.
How does Terror Work - TaMeOlta - 03-03-2003
Ah , we got the same article printed out and handed to us at my civilian job - the parts I had to chuckle about were the sections under Nuclear Bombs : "Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave" and the amazing fact that "Radiation will not create 50 foot tall women, or giant ants or grasshoppers the size of tanks"
How does Terror Work - yangman - 03-04-2003
Quote: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 a second. Then there will be two blast waves, one out going, and one on its way back. Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave.
Hm... I'm no expert on the issue, but would anyone be able to react fast enough to drop to the ground before the shockwave or heat blast hits?
Well, when it does hit, guess you'll be on the ground anyhow :P.
How does Terror Work - --Pete - 03-04-2003
Hi,
I'm no expert on the issue, but would anyone be able to react fast enough to drop to the ground before the shockwave or heat blast hits?
You don't even need to react that fast. The atmosphere is very transparent to visible light. It gets there first. It is a lot less transparent to infrared (IR), so while some of it gets there directly, much of it is absorbed and re-emitted. And it is over pretty fast. The shock waves, being material waves, travel a lot slower. At a couple of kilometers, you have about half a second to react before the ground swell hits you. The air blast is even slower.
A lot of this information was declassified years ago. It is available from the US Government Printing office. See http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/nukeffct/enw77.htm It is a most informative book, dispelling some of both side's inaccuracies.
--Pete
How does Terror Work - yangman - 03-04-2003
Ahh, of course, light is a lot faster than most everything else.
Guess I was stuck in thinking in the context of the "half mile" radius mentioned in the article.
The article also mentioned something about living a "very, very long time" if one survives the initial shockwaves and radiation blast of an atomic explosion. From what I learned in school back in Japan, the people of Hiroshima who were fairly close to ground zero below where Little Boy detonated, but lived, certainly didn't live very long after, or at least not develop a life-threatening condition. The Little Boy was a 15kiloton bomb, and if my memory serves me correctly, the area affected by radiation was a few kilometer in radius at least.
Is my memory playing tricks on me again, or is our retired army officer simply clueless?
How does Terror Work - --Pete - 03-04-2003
Hi,
The amount of radioactivity and the area over which it is spread depend a lot on how the bomb is made and where the bomb is detonated. Air burst is a lot "cleaner" than ground burst. An enhanced bomb is "cleaner" than a straight fission job of the same yield. Even the material the casing and control components are made from have an effect. So the radiological effects can be anything from a few painful days to a long life.
And he was not an "officer". "SFC Red Thomas, Armor Master Gunner U.S. Army (Ret)". SFC stands for sergeant first class, IIRC. Now, as one who spent three years in the army as an enlisted man, I do not subscribe to the notion that all officers are smart (most aren't) and all enlisted men are ignorant (many aren't). However in a highly technical and classified field like CBR warfare, it is unlikely that a non-commissioned officer would have much if any advanced information. In other words, he probably has no more, and possibly less, knowledge than does a well read civilian.
--Pete