U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable

[AdamG]

Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don’t come out till officials say it’s safe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/sc...rror.html?_r=1

http://www.ready.gov/

Reading music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BmEGm-mraE

[carl]

Rand did a study on that.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_r...RAND_TR391.pdf

They postulated that most of the casualties would be the result of the chaos caused by people running and overloading every bit of infrastructure imaginable. The losses from the blast itself and radioactive fallout would less. Hiding in a basement would reduce them even more. The advice seems sensible to me.

[slapout9]

Rand did a study on that.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_r...RAND_TR391.pdf

They postulated that most of the casualties would be the result of the chaos caused by people running and overloading every bit of infrastructure imaginable. The losses from the blast itself and radioactive fallout would less. Hiding in a basement would reduce them even more. The advice seems sensible to me.

There were many studies before that. Back when we actually had something called Civil Defense instead of Homeland Nonsense many Government buildings were designed with such an idea in mind. But then we decide that planning is Commonism and we don't do Commonism so we began to say Government is bad and the Free Market Invisible Hand is going to swoop down and save us.

[Dayuhan]

many Government buildings were designed with such an idea in mind.

Envisioning a scenario in which only Government employees survive an attack, and on emerging into the devastated world they realize that they actually have to sustain themselves without a single taxpayer to mooch off. Sounds like a Robert Heinlein novel...

[slapout9]

Envisioning a scenario in which only Government employees survive an attack, and on emerging into the devastated world they realize that they actually have to sustain themselves without a single taxpayer to mooch off. Sounds like a Robert Heinlein novel...

There was a bit more to it than that. It was an integrated Military/Civilian effort. http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/

[Steve the Planner]

Slap:

I went to planning school during Reagan. Very mixed emotions around my grad school program as much was being discovered to be unmanageable or in need of major restructure/abandonment---not too far from Reagan's message.

My distilled answer was that there were some essential things that only government could do, and that must be taken seriously, but anything else should be, at the least, tested for privatization/demonopolization (Remember when there was just one BIG Bell?).

One permutation no one ever considered was the application used in our long wars----delegating government authority to Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and the like. Fair to say that the answer to that permutation is even worse than the one raised by Dahuyan---a world controlled by surviving federal workers from the bowels----

Steve

PS-Adam: You have jumped from frying pan to fire to incinerator.