CIVIL DEFENSE PERSPECTIVES

January 2008 (vol. 24, #2)
1601 N Tucson Blvd #9, Tucson AZ 85716
c 2007 Physicians for Civil Defense

“We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency–a threat to the survival of our civilization....” The threat is “invisible, tasteless, and odorless,” and we are locked into “mutually assured destruction.” The “real, rising, imminent, and universal” threat demands “collective action”–said Al Gore in his Nobel lecture.

Real Threats

Banking. “What we are witnessing is essentially the breakdown of our modern day banking system,” writes Bill Gross, CEO of PIMCO, the largest manager of bond funds in the world (Investment Outlook, December 2007, www.pimco.com). It has been called “shadow banking,” a pyramid scheme of leverage based in many cases on no reserve cushion whatsoever.

In 2006, Gross would probably have been forced to quit and advised to have psychiatric treatment, writes Pinhas Landau (Jerusalem Post 12/20/07). “Banking systems, the blood vessels and oxygen of a modern economy, don't simply breakdown, and if we are indeed witnessing that happening we should be horrified, petrified and aghast.”

In late December, the European Central Bank (ECB) pumped no less than $500 billion into the monetary system in one shot–an amount unprecedented and previously unimaginable, which achieved only half of its objective.

The banking system is based on trust, Landau notes. And “we are witnessing an even more fundamental collapse in confidence in all the pillars of the establishment.” The public, he thinks, now knows it has been consuming ”an endless store of lies, stretching from Wall Street to Washington.”

Nuclear Weapons. Previously, the most dreaded “invisible, tasteless, and odorless” threat was not CO2, but ionizing radiation. This threat has fallen out of national consciousness–perhaps because the “world's only superpower” has announced plans to cut its stockpile of nuclear weapons to one-quarter its size during the Cold War. The U.S. Department of Energy also plans to “consolidate” the complex that maintains weapons and to reduce the weapons-related workforce by 20 to 30 percent. Congress axed funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (H. Josef Hebert, USA Today 12/18/07).

The nuclear weapons program of Iran (CDP, January 2006) has been abandoned “in response to increased international scrutiny,” said President Bush, citing “new information” that is still classified. Like the 2005 judgment that Iran was determined to develop nuclear weapons despite international pressures, this is a “high confidence” conclusion by 16 intelligence bureaucracies (Wall St J 12/5/07). Iran, however, does have extensive information on how to fit a warhead onto a ballistic missile,

has evidently been researching a detonation device, and continues to enrich uranium on an industrial scale.

Israel has tightened security at airports, seaports, and border crossings, to thwart attempts to bring in radioactive materials for assembling a “dirty bomb.” Only a rudimentary knowledge of explosives is required to create a “poor man's nuke,” said experts (ynetnews.com 12/2/07). Pakistan and other states have stolen U.S. nuclear weapons secrets with the assistance of high-ranking State Dept. and Pentagon officials, according to Sibel Edmonds, a former Turkish language translator for the FBI. She was fired after making valid complaints, according to a review by the Office of Inspector General, and is under a state secrets privilege order (Sunday Times [London] 1/6/08).

China is courting governments throughout the world, including Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Ahmandinejad has declared the interests of Iran and China to be “identical,” despite Chinese persecution of Muslims. Reportedly, Iran is a conduit for advanced Chinese weapons that are killing American soldiers in Iraq (Steven Mosher, Schwarz Report, December 2007). Chinese anti-satellite weapons threaten the U.S. space-based communications, command, and control, on which its military is inordinately dependent (WSJ 7/23/07). An undetected Chinese attack submarine surfaced at the heart of a U.S. Pacific naval exercise, near the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. This was said to be “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik” (Daily Mail 11/10/07).

For a nuclear attack scenario on Europe, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ii-EYtOPzM&feature=related. No civil defense is shown. It begins with an explosion over the North Sea, which shuts down energy and communications.

Virtual Reality

Americans and Europeans are instead watching the Gore film An Inconvenient Truth, which could shut down energy production without the need to destroy the real estate with explosives. In Tucson, it was brought to a meeting of retired physicians–by a nuclear medicine specialist, whose only critique was the annoying focus on Al Gore's face.

Congress is now saving us–from Edison light bulbs, forcing us to replace them with “energy-efficient” but expensive fluorescent fixtures, which contain mercury, which is poisonous when emitted from a coal-fired generating plant. Almost all presidential candidates, with the exceptions of Ron Paul and Fred Thompson, promise to save the planet from CO2-caused climate catastrophe. They would pour fiat dollars into fraudulent carbon-trading schemes and virtual energy, or virtuous lack of energy (“conservation”). Will they rely on our vanishing reputation as the holder of the world's reserve currency, and as the world's only superpower? Or does the promised “Change” mean poverty and U.N. subservience?

In concluding his Nobel lecture, Al Gore stated that the next generation would ask us one of two questions: “What were you thinking; why didn't you act?” Or, “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

On Carbon Trading

“...[C]arbon emission trading is the only commodity trading where it is impossible to establish with reasonable accuracy what is being bought and sold, where the commodity traded is invisible and can perform no useful function for the purchaser, and where both parties benefit if the quantities traded have been exaggerated. It is, therefore, an open invitation to fraud, and that is exactly what is happening all over the world,” writes Brian Leyland of New Zealand (quoted in The Week That Was 12/1/07, www.sepp.org). Most major investment banks have set up carbon trading desks. Last year, trading almost doubled in [nominal] value to more than $59 billion (Wall St J 1/18/08).

Geo-Engineering

Although we have no way to warm the earth if it is too cold, we could cool it with relative ease by injecting sun-blocking material into the upper atmosphere, using particles so small they are invisible from Earth. Edward Teller estimated a cost of $500 million to $1 billion/year for 1 C to 3 C cooling (Robinson AB, et al. J Am Phys Surg 2007;12:86). “In 1992, a report by the National Academy of Sciences found the prospect of stratospheric albedo enhancement ‘feasible, economical, and capable,’” write Fred Iklé and Lowell Wood (Wall St J 10/15/07). Because of fierce opposition from foes of hydrocarbon energy, however, this option is neither discussed nor researched.

Wind, Solar Power Grow

One-third of all new U.S. electrical generating capacity in 2007 used wind power, which added 5,244 megawatts, a record 45% increase (the equivalent of about 6 nuclear power reactors). The 17,000 megawatts from wind farms supplied about 0.36% of U.S. electricity in 2007. The solar industry added 300 megawatts (about 0.34 nukes). Construction is backed by federal and state tax credits, and utilities are required to buy the output in half the states (Wall St J 1/18/08).

About 40,000 birds are killed by wind turbines in the U.S., or about one bird per 30 turbines. Bird lovers complain that the number is an underestimate, and say that even a small number of deaths of large raptors can affect a population.

“If you give the Fish and Wildlife Service control over the wind-power industry,” said Rick Koebbe, president of PowerWorks, a California company, “there will be no more wind power” (Nature 2007;447:126).

Senate Report Debunks Alleged Consensus

To download the Dec 20, 2007, minority report on 400 scientists who dispute anthropogenic global warming, see: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction= Minority.SenateReport. Among 165 pages of gems, Richard Lindzen of MIT says: “Controlling carbon is...a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life.”

What You Can Do

Many candidates for political office are calling for major cuts in U.S. carbon emissions. Educate and challenge them by demanding answers to one or more of the enclosed questions; and let us know how they respond.

Hospitals as Fallout Shelters; Use Of NukAlerts

In a Sept 11, 2007, article posted on www.domprep.com, Kirk Paradise notes that evacuation from the path of a fallout cloud is not an option for hospitals and their equipment. Using FEMA guidelines for calculating a protection factor (PF), it was found that some parts of hospital buildings had a PF up to 100, and PFs of 20-40 were common. In a high-level-radiation incident, the difference between being outside the building and in a protected area would be the difference between a lethal and a minor accumulated dose not even high enough to cause symptoms. Paradise emphasizes the importance of purposeful leadership by a Shelter Manager; links are provided.

See www.madisoncountyema.com for details on Huntsville's shelter program, and also a PowerPoint presentation on its use of NukAlerts. Physicians for Civil Defense donated 250 NukAlerts to Madison County.

Silly String Detects Trip Wires

After months of frustration, a mother found a way to ship 80,000 cans of Silly String to American soldiers in Iraq. Because it comes in an aerosol can, it is considered a hazardous material and can only be shipped by certain companies. Thom Campbell of Capacity LLC decided to help out. Soldiers can shoot the substance about 10 to 12 feet across a room before entering. If it hangs up in the air, that indicates a possible bomb trip wire (CNN.com/US 10/16/07).

Tips on Expedient Civil Defense

The most common errors in making a Kearny Fallout Meter (KFM) come from not reading the instructions aloud, states Steve Jones. Other problems: If the leaves do not charge, be sure that your paper and plastic combination makes static electricity; not all do. Newspaper seems to be best. Not all plastics are triboelectric. For suspending the leaves and the stop threads, strips from plastic bags such as those used to bag groceries work well–dental floss available today often doesn't–but are fragile and may break if you drop the meter.

Kits containing needed materials (except for the aluminum can) are available; call (520) 325-2680.

A DVD that shows KFM construction is available from Farley Anderson, Non-profit Institute for Nuclear Preparedness, P.O. Box 410, Paradise, UT 84328, for $5 (5 for $10). It also has tips about electromagnetic pulse (EMP), such as using aluminum foil to protect your laptop, and the film “About Fallout” from the U.S. Office of Civil Defense. Commentary on the world situation is from the LDS perspective.

The Fall/Winter issue of The Journal of Civil Defense features articles on “Triage in a Full-Scale Nuclear Attack” by Sharon Packer and “EMP–Ready or Not?” Join the American Civil Defense Assn at www.TACDA.org.

What You Can Do

Steve Jones has a brief press release entitled “Nuclear Attack Survivable” to 130 newspapers, mentioning our press kit at www.physiciansforcivildefense.org. He writes: “You as a reporter might save many lives by simply alerting your readers to where they can get civil defense info and motivating them to do it.” You can questions candidates to get them to think about the issue (see enclosed). Let us know of any interest so we can send them information.