Don’t panic: taking the terror out of terrorism

I am a retired military weapons, munitions, and training expert. Since the media has decided to scare everyone with predictions of chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare on our turf I decided to write a paper to put these threats in their proper perspective.

In March 1995 there was a series of nerve gas attacks on crowded Tokyo subway stations. Given perfect conditions for an attack, less than 10% of the people there were injured (the injured were better in a few hours) and only 1% of the injured died. CBS’s Sixty Minutes once had a fellow telling us that one drop of nerve gas could kill a thousand people. Well, he didn’t tell you the thousand dead people per drop were theoretical. Drill Sergeants exaggerate how terrible this stuff was to keep the recruits awake in class (I know this because I was a Drill Sergeant too).

The lesson is: forget everything you’ve ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie (read this sentence again out loud!). These weapons are about terror. If you remain calm, you will probably not die. This is far less scary than the media and their ‘experts’ make it sound.

Chemical weapons

Chemical weapons are categorised as nerve, blood, blister, and incapacitating agents. Contrary to the hype of reporters and politicians they are not weapons of mass destruction, they are ‘area denial’ and terror weapons that don’t destroy anything. When you leave the area you almost always leave the risk. Soldiers, of course, may have to stay put – that’s why they need all that elaborate gear.

These are vapours and/or airborne particles, not gasses. The agent must be delivered in sufficient quantity to kill or injure; that defines when or how it is used. Every day we have a morning and evening inversion where ‘stuff’ suspended in the air gets pushed down. This inversion is why allergies (pollen) and air pollution are worst at these times of the day. So, a chemical attack will have its best effect an hour or so either side of sunrise/sunset. Also, vapours and airborne particles are heavier than air so they will seek low places like ditches, basements and underground garages. They do not work in freezing conditions, they do not last in great heat, and wind spreads them too thin too fast.

An assailant has to get this stuff on you, or get you to inhale it for it to work. He also has to get the concentration of chemicals high enough to kill or wound you. Too little and it’s nothing, too much and it’s wasted. So, a chemical weapons attack that kills a lot of people is incredibly hard to do with military grade agents and equipment, even harder for terrorists.

As for nerve agents, you have these in your house; plain old fly-killer is a nerve agent. All nerve agents are cholinesterase inhibitors that mess up the signals your nervous system uses to make your body function. It can harm you if you get it on your skin but inhaling it is far more damaging. If you don’t die in the first minute and you can leave the area, you will probably live. The military’s antidote for all nerve agents is atropine and pralidoxime chloride. Neither does anything to cure the nerve agent; rather, they send your body into overdrive to keep you alive for five minutes – after that the agent is used up.

The best protection is fresh air and staying calm. Here are the symptoms of nerve agent poisoning: sudden headache, dimness of vision (a victim will have pinpointed pupils), runny nose, excessive saliva or drooling, difficulty breathing, tightness in chest, nausea, stomach cramps, twitching of exposed skin where a liquid touched you.

If you are in public and you start experiencing these symptoms, ask yourself: did anything out of the ordinary just happen, a loud pop, did someone spray something on the crowd? Are other people getting sick too? Is there an odour of newly-mown hay, green corn, something fruity, or camphor where it shouldn’t be? If the answer is yes, then calmly (if you panic you breathe faster and inhale more air/poison) leave the area and head upwind or outside. Fresh air is the best ‘right now antidote’.

If you have a blob of liquid that looks like molasses or Karo syrup on you; blot it or scrape it off and away from yourself with anything disposable. This stuff works based on your body weight; what a crop duster uses to kill bugs won’t hurt you unless you stand there and breathe it in deeply, then lick the residue off the ground for a while.

Remember, they have to do all the work, they have to get the concentration up and keep it up for several minutes – all you have to do is stop getting it on you, or stop breathing it in by putting space between you and the attack. Blood agents are cyanide or arsine, which affect your blood’s ability to provide oxygen to your tissue. The scenario for attack would be the same as for nerve agent. Look for a pop or someone splashing/spraying something and folks around you getting faint or falling down. The telltale smells are bitter almonds or garlic where it shouldn’t be. The symptoms are blue lips, blue under the fingernails and rapid breathing. The military’s antidote is amyl nitride and just like nerve agent antidote, it just keeps your body working for five minutes till the toxins are used up. Fresh air is your best individual chance.

Blister agents (distilled mustard) are so nasty that nobody wants to even handle it, let alone use it. It’s almost impossible to handle safely and may have a delayed effect of up to twelve hours. The attack scenario is also limited to the things you would see from other chemicals. If you do get large, painful blisters for no apparent reason, don’t pop them. If you must, don’t let the liquid from the blister get on any other area because the stuff just keeps on spreading. It is just as likely to harm the user as the target. Soap, water, sunshine, and fresh air are its enemy.

The bottom line on chemical weapons (as with industrial chemical spills) is this: they are intended to make you panic, terrorise you, herd you like sheep to the wolves. If there is an attack, leave the area and go upwind, or to the sides of the wind stream. Your odds get better if you leave the area. Soap, water, time, and fresh air really deal this stuff a knock-out punch. Don’t let fear of an isolated attack rule your life. The odds are really on your side. You’re more likely to be hurt by a drunk driver on any given day than be hurt by one of these attacks.

Nuclear weapons

These are the only weapons of mass destruction on earth. The effects of a nuclear bomb are heat, blast, electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), and radiation. If you see a bright flash of light like the sun where the sun isn’t, fall to the ground! The heat will be over a second. Then there will be two blast waves, one outgoing, and one on its way back.

Don’t stand up to see what happened after the first wave; anything that’s going to happen will have happened in two full minutes. These will be low yield devices and will not level whole cities. If you live through the heat, blast, and initial burst of radiation, you’ll probably live for a very long time.

Radiation will not create fifty-foot tall women, or giant ants and grasshoppers the size of tanks. These will be at the most 1-kiloton bombs; that’s the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. Flying debris and radiation will kill a lot of exposed (not all!) people within a half-mile of the blast. Under perfect conditions this is about a half-mile circle of death and destruction, but when it’s done it’s done.

EMP will fry every electronic device for a good distance – it’s impossible to say what and how far, but probably not over a couple of miles from ground zero. Cars, cell phones, computers – all will be out of order.

There are many kinds of radiation. You only need to worry about three; the others you have lived with for years. ‘Ionising radiation’ describe little sub-atomic particles that move at the speed of light. They hit individual cells in your body, kill the nucleus and keep on going. That’s how you get radiation poisoning; you have so many dead cells in your body that the decaying cells poison you. It’s the same as people getting radiation treatments for cancer, only a bigger area gets radiated. The good news is you don’t have to just sit there and take it, and there’s lots you can do rather than panic.

Your skin, your clothing, even a page of a newspaper will stop beta particles; if you avoid inhaling dust that is contaminated with atoms that are emitting these, you will generally be safe from them.

Gamma rays are particles that travel like rays and they create the same damage as alpha and beta particles, only they keep going and kill lots of cells as they go all the way through your body. It takes a lot of dense material to stop these things; on the other hand it takes a lot of them to kill you.

Your defence is, as always, not to panic. Basic hygiene and normal preparation are your friends. All canned or frozen food is safe to eat. The radiation poisoning will not affect plants, so fruits and vegetables are all right if there’s no dust on them. If you don’t have running water and you need to collect it, let it sit for thirty minutes and skim off the water gently from the top. The dust will settle and the remaining water can be used for the toilet which will still work if you have a bucket of water to pour in the tank.

Biological weapons

Finally, there is biological warfare. Here, basic personal hygiene and sanitation will take you further than a million doctors. Wash your hands often, don’t share drinks, food, or sloppy kisses with strangers. Keep your garbage can with a tight lid on it, do not leave standing water around to allow mosquitoes breeding room. This stuff is carried by vectors – bugs, rodents, and contaminated material.

If biological warfare is as easy as the TV makes it sound, why has Saddam Hussein spent twenty years and millions of dollars trying to get it right? If your person and home are clean, if you eat well and are active, you will live.

Overall preparation for any terrorist attack is the same as for a big storm. If you want a gas mask, fine. I’m not getting one and I told my Mom not to bother with one either (how’s that for confidence). We have a week’s worth of cash, several days’ worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water. We don’t leave stuff out to attract bugs or rodents so we don’t have them.

These potential assailants cannot conceive a nation as large, and with as many resources, as the United States. Their weapons are made to cause panic, terror, and to demoralise. If we refuse to panic, they won’t use this stuff after they find out it’s no fun. The government is going wild over the danger because it has to protect every inch of the country. But you only have to protect yourself – and by doing that, you help the country.

Finally, there are millions of caveats to everything written here; there are specific scenarios where my advice is not the best. This letter is supposed to help the greatest number of people under the greatest number of situations. I believe that it contains the best possible advice for how we, the people of the United States, can rob our adversaries of their most desired goal: your terror.