2/16/03 NYT article on duct tape, plastic / real considerations of protection and potential damage.
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The Smart Way to Be Scared
February 16, 2003
By GREGG EASTERBROOK
WASHINGTON
Thursday, I walked into a hardware store in suburban
Maryland to buy de-icing crystals in advance of a predicted
weekend snowstorm. Lines of customers waiting to pay snaked
through the aisles, dozens of men and women with shopping
carts full of duct tape and plastic rolls. Needless to say,
I left without de-icing compound. I also left thinking,
What's the point of this?
Flashing "threat level" warning boxes on newscasts. Police
officers with shotguns wandering Times Square, antiaircraft
missiles near the Washington Mall. Federal instructions to
stockpile water and batteries and obtain plastic and tape
for a "safe room." Yet it's far from clear that this
security rush will help anyone.
Government cannot, of course, know what will happen or
when. During the 1960's, when the menace was missile attack
by the Soviet Union, citizens were urged to do both the
useful (stock fallout shelters) and the useless (crouch
under the desk at school). Officials suggested such things
because it was what they were able to think of.
Today, with no sure defense against terrorism in a free
society, officials concerned about chemical or biological
attack are suggesting the things they are able to think of.
But this may only distract attention from the more likely
threat of conventional bombs - and the ultimate threat of
the atom.
Consider the mania for duct tape. As Kenneth Chang and
Judith Miller reported in The New York Times last week,
experts view the taped-up room as mainly a psychological
benefit. Moreover, many now rushing to buy duct tape may
have exaggerated, media-pumped fears of chemical or
biological weapons.
If terrorists use chemical weapons, they will probably
affect a tiny area at worst, because terrorists would have
chemical agents in relatively small amounts. Though any
amount of chemical agent might seem ghastly, in actual use
chemicals have proved no more deadly, pound for pound, than
conventional bombs.
The British and Germans used one ton of chemical weapons
per fatality caused during World War I. The 1995 release of
the nerve gas sarin in the Tokyo subways by the Aum
Shinrikyo sect killed 12 people, fewer than a small,
standard bomb might have killed in that crowded, enclosed
area. An estimated 5,000 Kurds died in Saddam Hussein's
chemical attack on Halabja, Iraq, in 1988, but this
involved dozens of fighter-bombers making repeated low
passes over the town. It's hard to imagine that terrorists
could pull off such a coordinated heavy military maneuver.
A terrorist release of chemical weapons in an American
city would probably have effects confined to a few blocks,
making any one person's odds of harm far less than a
million to one.
Your risk of dying in a car accident while driving to buy
duct tape likely exceeds your risk of dying because you
lacked duct tape.
Last week, a Washington talk radio host discussed what
listeners should do if "a huge cloud of poison gas is
drifting over the city." No nation's military has the
technical ability to create a huge, lingering gas cloud: in
outdoor use, chemical agents are lethal only for a few
moments, because the wind quickly dilutes them. Chemical
agents are deadly mainly in enclosed circumstances -
subways, for example, or in building ventilation systems.
The duct-taped room in a home is of little use in such a
scenario.
A 1993 study by the Office of Technology Assessment found
that one ton of perfectly delivered sarin, used against an
unprotected city, could kill as many as 8,000. But the
possession by terrorists of a ton of the most deadly gas
seems reasonably unlikely, while perfect conditions for a
gas attack - no wind, no sun (sunlight breaks down nerve
agents), a low-flying plane that no one is shooting at -
almost never happen. Even lights winds, the 1993 study
projected, would drop the death toll to about 700.
Seven hundred dead would be horrible, but similar to the
harm that might be inflicted in a crowded area by one ton
of conventional explosives. Because these explosives are
about as deadly as chemicals pound for pound, but far
easier to obtain and use, terrorists may be more likely to
try to blow things up. Almost all recent terrorist attacks
around the world have involved conventional explosives.
The image of millions cowering behind plastic sheets as
clouds of biological weapons envelop a city owes more to
science fiction than reality. The Japanese use of fleas
infected with bubonic plague against Chinese cities in
World War II was the only successful instance of bioattacks
in contemporary warfare. In 1971, "weaponized" smallpox was
accidentally released from a Soviet plant; three people
died. In 1979, an explosion at another Soviet site released
a large quantity of weapons-grade anthrax; 68 people died.
In 1989, workers at an American government laboratory near
Washington were accidentally exposed to Ebola, and it was
several days before the mistake was discovered; no one
died. A coordinated anthrax attack in the fall of 2001
killed five people, a tiny fraction of the number who died
of influenza during the time the nation was terrified by
the anthrax letters.
None of this means bioweapons are not dangerous. But in
actual use, biological agents often harm less than
expected, partly for the simple evolutionary reason that
people have immune systems that fight pathogens. Also, as
overall public health keeps improving, resistance to
bioagents continues to increase.
Conceivably, being in a duct-taped room could protect you
if a plane dropping anthrax spores were flying over.
Smallpox, on the other hand, must be communicated person to
person. Those in the immediate area of an outbreak might be
harmed, but as soon as word got out, health authorities
would isolate the vicinity and stop the spread. By the time
you knew to rush to your sealed room, you would either
already be infected or the emergency would be over.
Another point skipped in the public debate: smallpox is
awful and highly contagious, but with modern treatment
usually not fatal. Anthrax doesn't necessarily kill,
either, as the nation learned in 2001. Only in movies can
mists of mysterious bioagents cause people to drop like
stones. In reality, pathogens make people ill; medical
workers rush in and save most of the exposed.
If germs merely leave sick people whom doctors may heal,
terrorists may favor conventional explosives that are
certain to kill.
While government officials now emphasize improbable events
involving chemical or biological arms, less is being said
about how to be ready for two macabre threats the public is
unprepared for: atomic explosion, and the radiological, or
"dirty," bomb.
The chance that a crude atomic device will someday detonate
on American soil is, by a large margin, the worst terror
threat the nation faces. Yet the new Department of Homeland
Security has said little about atomic preparedness.
To think the unthinkable, if an atomic device bearing about
the yield of the Hiroshima weapon went off outside the
White House, people for roughly a mile in each direction
might die. But most people in the District of Columbia
would survive, while the main effect on Washington's
suburbs would be power failures and broken windows. So the
majority of people in Washington and its suburbs who would
not die would need to know what to do. But do they?
Generally not, because there has been scant discussion.
(Here's what to do: Remain indoors at least 24 hours to
avoid fallout; remain on ground floors or in the basements
of buildings; if you are upwind of the explosion stay put;
if downwind, flee by car only if roads are clear since
buildings provide better fallout protection than cars.)
Perhaps more likely than an atomic detonation would be a
"dirty bomb," in which conventional explosives spread
radioactive material. Since this has never been used,
effects are hard to project. Most likely, even an extremely
large dirty bomb (say, an entire truck converted to one)
might kill only those within a city block. Fallout would
probably threaten only those a few hundred or thousands of
yards downwind.
Yet if people heard on the radio that a dirty bomb had
exploded - if they so much as heard the word radiation -
panic might set in. In Manhattan or Washington, mass chaos
to escape might result in more deaths than the bomb itself.
But is the government explaining to the public how to react
if a dirty bomb goes off? (Stay indoors; if upwind do
nothing; if downwind, drive away only if roads are clear;
take potassium iodide pills to prevent some effects of
fallout.) The Department of Homeland Security Web site, for
one, has loads of information about anthrax, but offers
essentially zero on what to do in the event of radiological
explosions.
Increased presence of police and military units in cities
may help deter terrorists, and by being more visible and
waving bigger weapons, law enforcement is doing what it can
think of. But government officials who are advising people
to buy plastic sheets create unnecessary anxiety while
achieving little beyond helping hardware stores. The advice
people need to hear concerns the atomic threat - and why
potassium iodide matters more than duct tape.
Gregg Easterbrook, a senior editor of The New Republic,
writes regularly about science and government. His latest
book is "The Here and Now."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company. |
