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We should contact our elected officials, demand to know the extent of their knowledge regarding both the China nuclear threat and the potential devastating effects of an EMP attack. If they are uneducated, we should demand that they educate themselves.

We should write letters to the editor of our local/regional newspapers.

We should inform as many family/friends/acquaintances/co-workers, etc.

About two months ago, I printed out information similar to this post and placed it in the office mailboxes of many of my co-workers (at least those who exhibit a glimmer of interest in what is going on in the world). I would say roughly three-quarters of them came to me, either with questions they wanted clarified, or asking if they could reproduce the information to give to others.

If a sufficient numbers of citizens are informed about the magnitude of this threat, our elected representatives can’t continue to turn a blind eye, and perhaps (just perhaps) nonsense issues (a la the Karl Rove witch hunt) will fade into obscurity, and we’ll start homing in on genuine threats to our safety and sovereignty.

I live in a staunchly conservative area of the country, so I don’t believe the above response to my small effort to awaken those around me is necessarily representative of what the response would be elsewhere. To be honest, I believe most adult Americans are too lazy and apathetic to inform themselves about such a threat, even when the information is placed before them. So I suppose I am a pessimist as regards any positive, long-term answer to your question.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still do all that we can to awaken the sleeping, and suggest that they demand effective governance from our national leadership. A two step solution will be needed: (1) making the populace aware and outraged enough to call for action (I figure there’s a 20% chance of success in that endeavor), and then (2) forcing our leadership to heighten our preparedness where it is wanting (I figure there’s another 20% chance of that).

I’ve been called a pessimist, but I prefer to label the above a healthy dose of realism.

~ joanie

The problem is that a pronouncement came from on high just as the Civil Defense shelter program was allowed to die saying that the shelters would prove to be useless in the long run. Since the idea--that a nuclear war is in general going to eventually kill most everybody no matter what--is firmly placed in our subconscious so that most people fear the fallout clouds more than they do the initial blast and fire and don't even want a nuclear power plant near their town, most people are doing nothing to prepare but are relying on either a version of SALT or MAD [some kind of destructive interference is going on between those two opposed philosophies] to protect the country. At the same time, this threat of instantaneous thermonuclear destruction without warning of even our archives has been given expression in the free-floating value system and MTV.

I blame that pronouncement. But placing blame and educating our leaders [!] is something the Internet seems to be designed for. It is not designed for action. Should we not all build fallout shelters and stock them? We did that before the pronouncement, the pronouncement was deliberate and in error. We should return to the earlier idea, start digging again, and latch onto some of the older values of the time before MTV and the Internet.