Posted on 10/05/2001 5:28:17 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
TOP SCIENTISTS WARNS OF BIOLOGICLE WAR THREAT
What are the signs that a poison gas attack (or a chemical accident) might be taking place?
One of the many unsettling characteristics of chemical agents is that some of them cannot be seen or smelled. Citizens can protect themselves by observing the following rule of thumb: If a single person is on the ground, choking or seizing, it is likely this individual is having a heart attack or some sort of seizure. However, if several people are down, coughing, vomiting, or seizing, they could be reacting to the presence of a toxic substance. Evacuate the area immediately and dial 911, making sure to tell the dispatcher that a hazardous gas may be present.
Indoors: If indoors, exit the building as rapidly as possible. Once outside, if you believe that you may have been exposed to the toxic substance, discarding your modesty and shedding your clothes could save your life. Taking off your outer clothing can remove roughly 80 percent of the contamination hazard. Look for a nearby fountain, pool, or other source of water so that you can quickly and thoroughly rinse any skin that may have been exposed (e.g., jump in the pool). Studies show that water alone is an effective decontaminant. Rescuers will arrive within minutes, and firefighters will hook up hoses and spray everyone to decontaminate them. Try to remain calm. Rescuers will triage everyone so that they can give medical attention to the most seriously affected individuals first. Even if you are showing no symptoms of exposure (e.g., eye problems), paramedics and physicians on scene will want to give you a check-up and advise you about follow-up care. Police officers will also want to speak with you about what you may have observed that could help them catch the individual(s) responsible.
Outdoors: Birds and other small animals would very quickly be overcome by a poison gas, so if birds are dropping from the sky, that is another warning sign of toxic trouble. The most important thing to do is to get a physical barrier between you and the toxic cloud. Get indoors quickly--preferably into a building but even being inside a car will help. Shut all windows and doors and turn off the air conditioner. Try to plug any air drafts (e.g., under doors). This technique is known as sheltering in place. Call 911 and notify authorities that a hazardous gas may be present. If that is indeed the case, the wind will carry the toxic hazard away within a relatively short period of time. Stay indoors, and turn on the television and/or radio for news and announcements. Authorities will notify you when it is safe to go outside. If you are at home, put your clothes in a plastic bag and take a shower, which will help remove any contamination that might have occurred before you were able to get indoors.
Should citizens buy gas masks?
The chances that terrorists will turn to poisonous substances instead of conventional bombs are very, very remote. However, if it makes you feel better to purchase a gas mask, by all means, go ahead. Please make sure that you are properly fitted---a loose gas mask defeats the purpose. Also, please ensure that you are properly instructed in the use of the mask.
Personally, I do not carry a gas mask with me. I take the subway to and from work daily, and I continue to go to meetings and other events in large buildings.
Note also that the only nation that has ever issued gas masks to all of its citizens is the state of Israel.
What are the signs of a biological attack?
By now, the media has repeatedly broadcast that biological agents can be dispersed from commercial sprayers, such as crop dusters. Often omitted from these reports is the fact that, among other complications, commercial equipment would have to be modified for such an attack strategy to have a chance of success.
Still, crop dusters are out of place over cities, and the FBI has already placed restrictions about where they can fly. Were I to see one over a metropolitan area, I would immediately go indoors, shut all windows and doors, turn off the air conditioner, and notify authorities. The same would hold true for any other unusual spraying activities. For instance, a person tending a rooftop garden would not raise my suspicions, but an individual deliberately spraying a substance from a rooftop, or a truck dispersing a misty substance through side vents, would.
Keep in mind that occasionally local authorities employ helicopters and other means to spray approved pesticides to control mosquitoes and other pests. Officially sanctioned spraying activities are announced well in advance, repeatedly. A call to local authorities can confirm whether any spraying that you might observe would fall into that category.
What can citizens do to protect themselves from a possible biological disaster?
Frankly, it may not be apparent that a biological agent has been dispersed until people begin falling ill several days later . For most biological agents, the initial symptoms would resemble a flu-like malaise. Across the nation, local, state, and federal authorities are putting capabilities in place to improve the ability to detect abnormal public health problems rapidly---to distinguish between multiple cases of the flu or a possible biological agent attack.
As the normal cold and flu season rolls around in the next few months, please do not jump to the conclusion that you have been infected with a biowarfare agent if you begin to feel achy or have the sniffles. In fact, people catch colds throughout the year. You are more likely to get hit by lightning than to be the victim of a bioterrorist attack.
If, however, you hear reports that a biological agent may have just been released, stay indoors or get indoors right away, shut all windows and doors, and turn off the air conditioning system. The most worrisome method of biological agent dissemination is aerosol dispersal. For a biowarfare aerosol to make you ill, microscopic particles must find their way into your lungs. Therefore, putting a physical barrier in between you and a possible aerosol cloud is a key self-protection step.
Of course, a gas mask can provide excellent respiratory protection. Alternately, a surgical mask or one of the respiratory protection masks recommended for various construction and laboratory tasks would help to screen out particulate matter that might be in the air. To protect your airway, masks need to be fitted snugly over the mouth and nose.
The Army Handbook on Medical Management of Biological Casualties recommends that medical personnel attending patients infected with most biowarfare agents employ what is known as "standard precautions." This term essentially means wearing a surgical mask and gloves. Standard precautions are effective against anthrax, brucellosis, Q fever, tularemia, viral encephalitis, botulinum toxin, and Staphylococcal enterotoxin b.
Should citizens stockpile antibiotics?
NO. Keeping a stockpile of antibiotics is, in short, a bad idea. While antibiotics would be used to treat individuals who might fall ill during a disease outbreak, the use of these medications should always be done at the direction of a physician. People who self-medicate themselves or their children could very well do more harm than good. Overuse of antibiotics, as well as their misuse (to treat illnesses such as colds), is harmful as it reduces the ability of these drugs to work in serious health emergencies.
The US government keeps a cache of antibiotics and other medical supplies that can arrive in an area in which an outbreak has occurred within 12 hours.
What precautions can citizens take with their water supply?
Poisoning of a city's water supply is much more easily said than done. However, citizens can protect themselves by boiling their drinking water, which will kill any microorganisms that may have survived the municipal filtration systems. Another option is to use a personal water filtration system.
Where should citizens turn for instructions in the event of a chemical or biological disaster?
The electronic and print media can be very useful sources of information, especially when events are developing at a rapid pace. However, reporters can occasionally pass along faulty or inaccurate information. Local, state, and national public health, public safety, and emergency management officials would be the most reliable sources of information. As soon as the circumstances are understood, these officials will call press conferences to convey accurate information and instructions to the public. Subsequent press conferences will be called as frequently as possible to update the public about the steps that local, state, and federal government organizations are taking to address the situation and what individuals can do to help themselves and their fellow citizens. In a genuine disaster, the Emergency Broadcast System would also probably be employed to give instructions to citizens.
I'm also printing it to share with others (who aren't 'online')
I feel it's best to have information, and know whats what...instead of being in some sort of panic and trying to think straight!
NO. Keeping a stockpile of antibiotics is, in short, a bad idea. While antibiotics would be used to treat individuals who might fall ill during a disease outbreak, the use of these medications should always be done at the direction of a physician.
This is the same arguement they made against stockpiling emergency supplies for Y2K. "It's not fair to hoard. The government has everything under control. You're doing more harm than good."
I don't see anything wrong with stockpiling antibiotics. Should there be an emergency, there won't be a shortage of doctors to tell you what to take. There will be a shortage of drugs to take. There's nothing wrong with self-reliance. Think of it as Darwinian natural selection. People who have the foresight to prepare will survive.
Amen! As Nietsche said, "That which does not kill us makes us strong."
My thoughts exactly. 9-11 took people by surprise. Even if it occured to them to strike back, they wouldn't know where to find a mosque or a muslim. Now they know. If there's a follow-up terrorist attack (like CIA says there will be) I wouldn't want to be a Mohammadan in America...
1. WHERE is the FEMA map?
2. Can anyone tell me if those filtration systems on new refrigerators would remove contaminates?
Thank you in advance.
BTW, I'm a 60 year old grandmother and I just want to say I have a gun or two.... Nothing would delight me more than to cast my eyes on one of those little buggers in my neighborhood when things heat up. I'd be wearin' my guns and it would please the hell out of me to be able to shoot them down like dogs. BRING 'EM ON! ....say WE don't have the courage to go to war.... say WE are chicken.... heheh
LOL, FReepers will thus survive- we spend very little time moving anywhere since our fingers are fused to our keyboards.
I can't resist...
What are you gonna do...live inside the refrigerator?
Sorry.
It can be done... ever been in a frat house and looked in their fridge? therein is the very basis of life- primordial ooze.
In the cold war days it made sense. No one was going to survive 6000 nukes. But one nuke?
Yes, we need to learn to protect ourselves from a few days of bad radiation -- then drive to the next county 10 days later and go on with life.
"I would be beyond worrying. if we get a general nuclear war, it's going to be bad beyond understanding."
The "kiss your butt good-bye" days are over.
It's time to learn to survive.
The "kiss your butt good-bye" days are over.
It's time to learn to survive.
The chance of an effective bio attack from terrorists is very small because of the logistics involved, and would require the equivalent of biological suicide bombers, already in country, so they could spread antigens by physical contact with an infected terrorists. Gas masks are not effective against bio threats anyway.
Chemical agents? Unless you are going to walk around with it already on your face all day (terribly uncomfortable - I know since I spent 48 hours in one once), you will probably be thoroughly contaminated long before the threat is even identified. If you see choking people on the ground around you, or birds dropping on your head, its to late. Take a deep breath and get it over with. In any case, disseminating them in sufficient quantities to do real damage is difficult, and probably beyond the technical abilty of most terrorists (that includes crop dusters which would have to have all the spray nozzles changed, and then filled and flown by someone in a full chemical suit so they could avoid killing themselves before completing their mission).
Gas masks? Well you better make sure that the mask you buy is serviceable - do you know how to check? Are the filters (if it even has any) the right type for the chemical attack expected? Most surplus masks and their filters are not serviceable, which is why they're sold as surplus. Filters for combat are kept factory sealed until just before they are expected to be needed, and only then issued to troops to make sure they are fresh (the filters in the masks that our troops carry around during training and initial deployments are not considered combat effective, and most have been contaminated by CS during trainiing and are no good - a fact most soldiers don't learn about until the balloon is about to go up and the NBC officer shows up to issue new filters!)
Ground delivered nukes (i.e. backpack nukes, etc)? If they had them they would have used them by now. Its gonna be much more difficult to try that in the future. If they manage it, get behind a wall and pray when you see the flash. Wait 48 hours and see if you show signs of severe radiation poisoning. If so, get a gun and kill yourself.
The biggest threat is if one of these sand monkies gets hold of some nuclear waste and dumps it in a reservoir. It won't take a lot to contaminate the water supply and unless the government is monitoring the water, we'll all be consuming radiated minerals in suspension in the water. Not enough to make you sick right away, but maybe enough to give you cancer in a year or two.
If you are thinking about buying a gas mask, save your money. You'll get more mileage and satisfaction out of Pizza and beer. There are way too many people putting up panic posts about nuclear, biological and chemical threats who know only enough to scare themselves and others. This panic is also being promulgated by the press, which only likes to quote ignorant doom and gloomers with books to push.
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