Part 2: COMMON SENSE ON BIO AND CHEM HAZARDS

[Ttulipss]

Please be sure to read Part 1 first
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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, d on'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 the 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 grasshoppers the size of tanks. These will be, at the most, one 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," 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
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 gotta 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 are safe to eat.

The radiation poisoning will not affect plants, so fruits and vegetables are OK if there's no dust on 'em (rinse 'em 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 gotta 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
Unlimited reproduction and distribution is authorized.
Just give me credit for my work, and, keep in context.


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[stking]

Wow Suzanne, I am gonna look into this further to see if what he says here is true. If it is, it sure does put our minds to ease a bit. Living right next to Disneyland, I am concerned that it would be a target of some sort. After reading this, I feel a little better. I hope it is all true. Thanks for the post!


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[FUNdamental]

This site explains in detail the government's new standardized labels for chemical and biological storage and handling.

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[whitequeen96]

FUNdamental, was that a joke? I got a million pop-ups, including a hilarious one about emergency signs the government has put out, but nothing on chemical and biological storage and handling. If that's what you intended for us to get, thanks! I laughed out loud, which hurt my back because I have the flu. (But that's alright.)

[tasker109]

i got this as an email last week. it was very interesting and informative. these things are terrorist techniques and are not effective en masse. that is a relief. thanks for the post.

[tlspiegel]

It was a joke! Funny too...

Originally posted by whitequeen96
FUNdamental, was that a joke? I got a million pop-ups, including a hilarious one about emergency signs the government has put out, but nothing on chemical and biological storage and handling. If that's what you intended for us to get, thanks! I laughed out loud, which hurt my back because I have the flu. (But that's alright.)

[FUNdamental]

I am glad you all enjoyed the satire.