Posted on 08/24/2018 2:52:09 PM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
SCIENCE The US Government Is Updating Its Nuclear Disaster Plans And They Are Truly Terrifying “We are looking at 100 kiloton to 1,000 kiloton detonations,” a FEMA official said.
By Dan Vergano
Map of Washington, DC Reporting From
Washington, DC
Posted on August 24, 2018
(Excerpt) Read more at buzzfeednews.com ...
There is nothing unusual for them to now upgrade expected nuclear attack detonations from previous low yield to 100 Kt - One Megaton.
Duck n cover...
http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/Activities/PublicHealth/MedPrep/2018-AUG-22.aspx
Exploring Medical and Public Health Preparedness for a Nuclear Incident: A Workshop
When: August 22, 2018 - August 23, 2018 (8:00 AM Eastern)
Where: National Academy of Sciences Building (Fred Kavli Auditorium) • 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20418
Topics Biomedical and Health Research, Public Health, Health Security
Activity: Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Disasters and Emergencies
Board: Board on Health Sciences Policy
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will host a two-day public workshop on August 22-23, 2018 at the National Academies Building (Fred Kavli Auditorium) called Exploring Medical and Public Health Preparedness for a Nuclear Incident. Through this workshop, participants from government, NGO and private sector organizations will explore current assumptions behind and the status of medical and public health preparedness for a nuclear incident, examine potential changes in assumptions and approach, and discuss challenges and opportunities for capacity building in the current threat environment.
Specific topics that may be discussed in this workshop include:
The current state of medical and public health preparedness for a nuclear incident and how these relate to the prior assumptions about the threat environment;
Possible changes to planning assumptions for nuclear incidents, with particular attention to the (re-)emergence of state-actor threats, and the implications of those changes for nuclear incident prevention, planning and response;
Implications for capacity building of potential communication, education and information challenges posed by a nuclear incident, and opportunities and approaches for addressing them;
Challenges, opportunities, and implications for building capabilities to respond to and recover from a nuclear incident, including building capability for assessment, early treatment, monitoring and long-term health surveillance among survivors.
Previous Meetings for this Activity
Engaging the Private Sector Health Care System in Building Capacity to Respond to Threats to the Public’s Health and National Security
March 20, 2018 - March 21, 2018 (8:30 AM Eastern)
Amid concerns over North Korea, federal emergency managers are updating disaster plans to account for large nuclear detonations over the 60 largest US cities, according to a US Federal Emergency Management Agency official.
The shift away from planning for small nuclear devices that could be deployed by terrorists toward thermonuclear blasts arranged by “state actors” was discussed on Thursday at a two-day National Academies of Sciences workshop for public health and emergency response officials held at its headquarters across the street from the US State Department.
“We are looking at 100 kiloton to 1,000 kiloton detonations,” chief of FEMA’s chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear branch Luis Garcia told BuzzFeed News. The agency’s current “nuclear detonation” guidance for emergency planners, first released in 2010, had looked at 1 to 10 kiloton blasts — smaller than the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs that killed more than 200,000 people at the end of World War II. Those smaller size detonations had seemed more reasonable after 9/11, with high concerns about an improvised terrorist bomb.
“The North Koreans have really changed the calculus.”
But last year North Korea tested an apparent thermonuclear bomb with a surprisingly large estimated blast size of 250 kilotons, a “city buster” much bigger than past test blasts and nearly the size of current US intercontinental ballistic missile warheads. The test blast kicked off a new era of nuclear anxiety in the US.
“The North Koreans have really changed the calculus,” Cham Dallas of the Institute for Disaster Management at the University of Georgia told workshop participants. “We really have to look at thermonuclear now.”
Dallas presented “speculative” analyses of a nuclear detonations in several cities — including New York and Washington, DC — at the workshop, suggesting that a thermonuclear blast roughly doubles the hundreds of thousands of dead and many more wounded (a 1979 analysis of a 1,000 kiloton blast in Detroit estimated 220,000 deaths, for example) compared to the atomic bomb blasts. They also cause many more burn injuries and larger fallout clouds that travel farther away.
The updated FEMA guidance would be for the 60 largest urban areas in the US and will rely on newer detonation models created by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. These models take into account weather patterns that direct and distort weapon clouds, as well as the shelter provided by concrete structures. “A 10 times larger [explosion] yield does not make things 10 times worse,” LLNL’s Brooke Buddemeier said at the workshop. People remaining in shelters in the hours and days after a blast greatly lower their chances of getting radiation sickness.
The new FEMA plan will also have to consider modern contingencies such as cyberweapons striking power plants and cell phone signals before a blast, or a nuclear blackmail scenario where a single bomb is detonated followed by threats to set off more unless demands are met.
In response to an audience question, Garcia said the agency has also considered scenarios where a nuclear bomb, a cyberattack, a coordinated electromagnetic pulse, and biological weapons all hit the US at the same time.
BuzzFeed News
During the “Duck and Cover” period of the Cold War, US planners had fitfully called for civil defense measures for a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, most famously in a short-lived fallout shelter boom during the Cuban missile crisis of 1961.
“All states, all large cities have all thought about this before,” the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile Deputy Director Steve Adams said, and they already designate sites for medical supplies after disasters. “I think the challenge for us will be distribution, a very large one.”
The national stockpile now contains medicine and medical material to treat radiation sickness, but Adams expressed concerns about burn kits. Medical specialists from the American Burn Association frequently raised concerns at the two-day workshop about numbers and training of burn experts nationwide, particularly for treating children. Colleen Ryan of Harvard Medical School told BuzzFeed News that there are only about 300 qualified burn surgeons nationwide, and that the burn treatment requirements for medical school training of surgeons were curtailed a decade ago.
Nursing expert Tener Veenema of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health also questioned plans like FEMA’s, pointing to studies suggesting that many nurses and doctors feared radiation above other threats, and might not show up to treat people after such a disaster, fleeing instead. “We need to analyze these plans for nursing shortfalls,” she said, adding that no one has analyzed the costs of such a blast to the national economy to justify the extra spending and training that would be needed to make the plans justifiable to lawmakers.
Similarly, Ron Miller, acting director of the National Disaster Medical System at the US Department of Health and Human Services, raised concerns about the 6,000 doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals showing up after a nuclear explosion.
At least two kinds of widespread complacency make medical planning for a large nuclear detonation more difficult, Dallas added. The first is a belief in parts of the country far from major cities that a nuclear detonation won’t affect their lives, when in reality such a catastrophe would be a significant blow to resources everywhere.
The other is that a blast will just kill everyone in its wake and that any effort at disaster planning is futile, when in reality acute radiation poisoning and severe burns can be treated.
“We have to get past this fatalism,” he said. “There’s a lot of denial going on.”
Nationwide Test of the Emergency Alert System to be Conducted on September 20, 2018 | FEMA.gov
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Nationwide Test of the Emergency Alert System to be Conducted on September 20, 2018
Release date:
July 23, 2018
Release Number:
HQ-18-089
WASHINGTON – The Federal Emergency Management Agency, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) on September 20, 2018 (primary date) or October 3, 2018 (secondary date). The WEA portion of the test commences at 2:18 PM EDT and the EAS portion follows at 2:20 p.m. EDT. The test will assess the operational readiness of the infrastructure for distribution of a national message and determine whether technological improvements are needed.
This is the fourth EAS nationwide test and the first national WEA test. The WEA test will SEND A MESSAGE TO ALL CELL PHONES.
My biggest fear about a nuclear attack is that some continuity of government plan will actually work. We’ll be standing there, shell shocked in the rubble, and the same low-life SOB’s from DC who caused the problem in the first place will emerge from their bunker and try to assert their authority.
We ought to at least get a new government out of the deal if we get nuked.
Every time there’s a nuclear story, somebody always smugly and knowingly has a sarcastic remark about Duck and Cover. If you’re in the immediate Impact Zone, it does you no good. However, if you’re 6 or 7 miles from downtown ground zero, it’s the difference between being shredded by flying glass and and crap, or afterwards standing up from behind that concrete post and not being dead. I prefer option 2.
Gonna need stronger desks!
PING¡¿¡¿
So the CIA is tipping their hand? Will they use a rogue nuke or will the Brits be behind it /van Rensburg> ?
The only policy that makes any sense:
1. In case of nuclear explosion, bend over with head between legs.
2. Kiss your ass good-bye.
Serious burns are a common injury even without being nuked. 300 is less than one burn surgeon for every million people in the US. Those surgeons must stay awfully busy, and God help us in case of a disaster...
agree, they will not let this coup go silently in the night, our government is prepared to attack us, because they know the world system is dead and they live or we kill them in the war, they plan to win, we have no plans and no legal system to reign it in..say goodbye to any freedom, say hello to tyranny..
well maybe light a cigar with the nuclear fire going by..and thank God he is not like man
Reality can be scary...
Distance from Ground Zero is key to survival, but the fallout plume will mess up part of the downrange planning. The plume from a megaton-range nuke will spread dangerous levels of radioactivity several miles downrange for maybe one-eighth of the compass, while the rest should be clear. And fallout loses its radioactivity fairly rapidly
Which way are the winds aloft going to be blowing when the bad mushroom sprouts? Damn good question. Bugging out would be advisable.
But if the device is detonated as an air burst, there is negligible fallout. Ever hear about the Hiroshima Crater? Or the Nagasaki Crater? That’s because they don’t exist. Both detonations were air bursts, to maximize blast.
Too funny - brought back memories.
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