Americans have been told their nation is prepared to meet a terrorist attack that uses chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry.
The assurance of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is typical: The U.S. is prepared to handle “any contingency, any consequence that develops from any kind of bioterrorism attack,” he told the nation in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks.
Such blanket assurances would be more settling if they did not come from the same agencies that evaluated the first anthrax case as naturally caused – and after determining that anthrax spores were being sent through the mail, protected Congress, but not the postal workers.
What is actually certain is that governmental preparations are proceeding in a backward fashion. That is to say, in any CBN (chemical/biological/nuclear) emergency, the first persons at the scene will be ordinary citizens. Their on-the-spot reactions will be the primary determinant of how many people die or are injured. Local responders will be on the scene within minutes or hours, and will play the secondary role, striving to save those already exposed. Federal responders will not begin to arrive until hours or days after the event, in time to provide food for the living and body bags for the dead.
Common sense, therefore, would suggest that high priority be given to increasing the preparedness of the citizenry, since they will play by far the greatest role in reducing the potential death toll.
As any student of bureaucracy could predict, however, government’s reactions to the risk of terror have run exactly contrary to this logic. Even before the events of Sept. 11, the government was spending billions in preparation for terrorist events. But as commentator Leslie-Anne Levy noted, after a detailed study of the spending, “What is certain is that $8.4 billion worth of programming has mushroomed without supervision, evaluation or coordination, resulting in a confusing mess that has left officials outside Washington uneasy and frustrated.” The funds are divided among 12 different federal agencies, each anxious to get its share of the largess, power and publicity. Only a small part goes to local first-responders – and none to the education of the average citizen.
Indeed, the very idea of citizen awareness and training provokes a horrified response from many government officials.
When Secretary Thompson recently testified before a House committee, his advice on individual preparedness was essentially: Don’t think about it. He advised that citizens not buy gas masks or antibiotics, just “be very vigilant.” The vigilance in question amounted to little more than seeing a doctor if you feel ill. “Anything mysterious dealing with your body, get to a doctor,” said Thompson, adding that Americans should “ask if their doctor knows anything about bioterrorism.”
It’s not enough. Citizens have always needed to take primary responsibility for their own health – a fact medicine has only recently affirmed – and the health threats posed by bioterrorism don’t change that fact. How many citizens realize there are no antibiotics for smallpox? If citizens followed Thompson’s advice, how many doctors’ offices or hospitals would be equipped to receive a smallpox sufferer without infecting all of their patients and staff in the process?
Let’s get serious here. Smallpox is a hideous disease. About 14 days after infection, pustules begin to rip through the victim’s skin, causing agonizing pain. (In the form known as blackpox, the virus overwhelms the immune system, and instead of forming pustules the skin simply dies; in hemmoragic smallpox, blood gushes from skin and intestines, much like Ebola.) Smallpox also attacks the throat, so that millions of viruses leak into the victim’s saliva and are spread with each breath. It attacks the lining of the intestines: The finding of tubular sections of the linings in the victim’s feces is a clear sign that the victim is dying. The victim is surrounded by the smell of smallpox – the smell of rotting flesh.
Smallpox is incredibly infective. Everything around the victim – his skin, his excretions, his clothing and his very breath – is saturated with viruses looking to trap more human hosts.
In 1972, an infection began in Yugoslavia with a single Iranian immigrant. Before he was diagnosed, he infected 36 other patients, nurses and doctors. Within a month, these had infected 150 more people in several towns, and the deadly virus was on the verge of leaping out of control. Stopping it required full use of the Yugoslav government’s dictatorial powers: The borders were sealed, roadblocks isolated entire towns and regions, and the military forcibly confined 10,000 persons to hotels seized as quarantine buildings. In 10 days, 18 million persons – around 90 percent of the population – had been immunized.
Smallpox isn’t dead; it may well already be in the hands of America’s enemies. Consider that a dose the size of the period at the end of this sentence is enough to infect 10,000
victims, and the Soviet biowar program stockpiled massive amounts of the virus. Most of the program’s 70,000 scientists and technicians are now out of work, and know that one vial of the stuff could be worth more than a nuclear warhead to a certain millionaire terrorist.
As Dr. James Hughes, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, advised the House Government Reform Committee regarding biological warfare attacks seven weeks before Sept. 11: “Many experts believe that it is no longer a matter of if, but when such an attack will occur.”
Is there any defense? Dr. Michael Osterholm and John Schwartz, in their book “Living Terrors,” lay out a scenario they characterize as being “very conservative.” It involves an intentional smallpox release in two cities: Minneapolis and Chicago. Minneapolis, according to the fictional scenario, has prepared its citizens well, and the full community reacts to isolate victims and contain the spread. Chicago, on the other hand, reacts as most cities would in reality, starting with little preparation, and with measures hesitantly imposed in the face of public fear and opposition. The result is almost 500,000 infections and 140,000 deaths. In Minneapolis, preparation kept the virus to 5,000 cases and 1,300 deaths.
In September 1976, a real-life illustration of how a government protects its people (and itself) was seen in the Ebola outbreak in 55 African villages near the Ebola River in Zaire. Richard Preston relates the African nation’s response in his best-selling book, “The Hot Zone.”
The villages were surrounded with armed troops. All communications were cut off and anyone that tried to escape the containment area was shot.
It seems that the tribal culture and customs and lack of basic hygiene knowledge precluded the ability to “educate” the citizens so they could help themselves. There was no time to change the way the people in those villages lived, so they died like so many sick cattle in a pen.
In his attempts to strike a balance between informing and comforting the American people, Thompson would have been closer to the mark had he asked himself why people are buying gas masks and antibiotics. The answer is obvious: They desire to protect themselves, yet no one in government has provided the leadership or information they need to accomplish that.
A deeper question underlies Americans’ lack of real domestic preparedness. Is the citizenry, in the eyes of government, an asset in the post-9-11 world, as it was in past national crises? Or is it more akin to a commodity to be managed, much as one would manage a herd of anthrax-exposed cattle? Thus far, the managers are winning this debate.
Preparation, and its most vital key, information, are being monopolized at high levels of bureaucracy. The implicit assumption is that, if the average citizen is informed of risks, his or her response will not be intelligent preparation, but panic. Thus were Americans initially told that the anthrax outbreak was due to natural causes – the first victim was described as an outdoorsman who must have caught it from wild game. And thus are National Guardsmen placed in airports to reassure travelers – hoping few will notice that their rifles have no ammunition magazines. The possibility that fear and concern will lead intelligent citizens to creative acts, to preparation and social unity, is simply unthinkable.
For government, it is not a question of involving the citizenry, but of preventing the timorous cattle from stampeding. This is why citizens need to take individual action to safeguard their families’ lives, health and security.
Editor’s note: Michael McNulty and David Hardy’s forthcoming book, “Surviving Terrorism,” is designed to do precisely what the government has neglected to do: provide citizens with the information they need to intelligently prepare for any terrorist chemical, biological or nuclear attack. Experts, including a former U.N. arms inspector and a former Soviet biological warfare creator, give their professional appraisals of risks, setting out which are probable and which are not. From there, they outline possible sources of an attack and the locations where such an attack is most likely to occur. The book outlines what preparations are most appropriate at the individual level, what equipment the citizen should possess, and how it can be obtained. It also gives practical guidance for crisis situations: How does one avoid or minimize exposure, what are the signs that others are being exposed, and what first aid is likely to save an exposed person.
In addition, the book outlines questions citizens should ask local authorities to ensure government preparations are more than window-dressing. The authors of “Surviving Terrorism” expect to have the volume available by late spring.
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Michael J. McNulty is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and radio talk show host. His past efforts have won him an Academy Award nomination and a National Emmy for Best Investigative Journalism. He is best known worldwide for his documentary films on the Waco investigation. David Hardy is a successful civil litigator and author, known for winning several landmark 2nd Amendment decisions, and, like McNulty, for his relentless efforts in the Waco investigation.
