Actions for Survival: Saving Lives in the Immediate Hours After Release of Radioactive or Other Toxic Agents

Foreword

by Ronald L. Kathren

This is a multilevel book designed to serve a multilevel readership. On one level, it provides for the practicing professional the scientific bases underlying protection of the population following an act of nuclear terrorism. On another level it provides first responders with the necessary information to counter an act of nuclear terrorism and to carry out the mission that they are wont to do, protect and save the lives of innocent civilian members of the population. On yet another level it is a resource for elected officials and decision makers charged with the responsibility for protection of the civilian population. On its most important level, it makes available in plain language for all members of the general public the vital information needed necessary for survival following a nuclear terrorism event, providing simple common sense methods applicable to chemical and bioterrorism as well.

This book is not a dry textbook or simple recitation or cookbook of protective actions. Rather it sparkles with anecdotes and real life experiences and frustrations from the more than half century of professional practice and teaching by its author, an internationally known expert in the field of health physics, the science and art of protecting people and the environment from radiation hazards. Dr. Brodsky, it seems, has known just about everybody involved in radiation protection, and has a story to tell about many. These along with his narratives of his personal experiences with radiation and radiation safety, illustrated in some cases, are interspersed throughout the book and make for gripping reading. So too does his near legendary passionate concern for protection of the public from radiological disasters come through loud and clear as an underlying motif. For decades he has advocated radiological protective measures for the general public, persevering despite numerous frustrations in his effort to educate and gain the support of elected officials and other decision makers.

The genesis of this book can be traced back to the end of World War II, a war brought to a swift and sudden climax by a powerful new weapon, the atomic bomb. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki starkly demonstrated the destructive powers of this new weapon, which, in addition to the destruction wreaked by the blast and heat produced, left a lingering hazard in the form of exposure to ionizing radiation. Despite our rather blasé attitudes towards radiological protection of the public during the era of the Cold War, we were fortunate in that there was no need for protective measures. However, the destruction of the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, gave an awakening to the potential for nuclear and other forms of terrorism, and this book will hopefully demonstrate how we can protect ourselves and our families following terrorist acts.

Ronald L. Kathren, MS (Hygiene), CHP, DEE

Professor Emeritus of Pharmaceutical Science, Washington State University

Former President, Health Physics Society, Former President, American Academy of Health Physics

March 22, 2010

Preface

In order to reach as many citizens as possible with guidance for their safety, I am aiming the writing to serve the widest variety of backgrounds and interests. Therefore, at certain points in the text, I am advising persons of different interests that they may skip or skim certain chapters or sections of the book that do not meet their immediate needs or interests, or read them later as desired. Therefore, I have included some repetition of statements that I have thought were needed in certain chapters, in order to help in understanding introductory material that might have been skipped in previous chapters. I hope that I have limited the redundancies to a reasonable amount.

Why am I writing this book? One book, Public Protection from Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Terrorism, was published for the Health Physics Society as a text for their 2004 Summer School, and this Summer School text (see References Section) covers even more information for protection in over 800 pages. The Summer School book was prepared with the input of more than forty experts whom I solicited from throughout the nation. However, the 2004 reference book included much more scientific and technical information for use by scientists or engineers, or other responders, who would be involved in recovery efforts many hours or days after an attack. It has been distributed to a limited number (hundreds) of scientists and professionals involved in preparing for attacks by weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, much information needed by most responders as well as members of the public for their own immediate protection has apparently not trickled down to them, including the information and planning documents that have been produced by our government homeland security agencies and our expert professional organizations. Therefore, the present book extracts information for the public, as well as immediate information needed by technical personnel, from references to chapters in the 2004 book, from many other documents cited in the references, and from my own experiences with fallout from weapons tests and other experiences managing patients who were exposed to intakes of radioactive materials.

This book is needed and timely because we know from the news almost every day, and from some other books and literature, that a terrorist attack with weapons of mass human destruction could occur in the United States within the next few years. Experts say that this is so despite the billions our nation has spent on homeland security and on attempting to detect dangerous materials or people entering our borders. Terrorists could destroy the future not only for my children and grandchildren, but yours too. Therefore, I am focusing this book on information on protective actions that members of the public, including responders and emergency managers, need to know in order to avoid undue panic and save as many lives as possible in the event such terrorist attacks do occur.

Why do all members of the public need to know about protective actions? Knowledge of immediate actions to take in any emergency can save lives. Discussions with many persons tell me that most of the public and many responders are still in the dark about protection from weapons of mass human destruction. Our citizens must know how to save as many lives as possible after any attack and be resolved to survive in a free nation. In any fight, the fighter can only win if: 1) the fighter knows how to strike the blows; 2) the fighter knows how to block the blows of his opponent, and 3) the fighter is prepared through preparation and strength to take as many blows as necessary to survive and win the fight. Our government, military, and in particular the Department of Homeland Security, have made progress on the first two abilities. However, while our military focuses mainly on delivering and dodging blows abroad, I believe that our military, our leading agencies, and all of the rest of us, have done all too little to prepare ourselves to receive the blows that are likely to come our way, on our own American territory, as did the attacks on 9/11.

I know that such preparation is possible with the right policy attitudes. When I was a physicist in the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) in 1956-57, our nation did face up to the possibilities of the most destructive attacks with nuclear weapons sent to us from the Soviet Union. Many millions were spent in the 1940s through 1960s by our government agencies and military organizations to perform research toward civil defense protections and continuity of government. Much of the research and preparations for national survival in this early period has been forgotten, particularly since its demise in the so-called peace dividend of the 1990s claimed by politicians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the Radiological Defense Officer of Region II in Olney, Maryland, 1956-57, my job was to visit with State and local emergency directors in seven Eastern States and the District of Columbia, and negotiate with them to receive Geiger counters and other radiation monitoring instruments that had already been manufactured in large quantities at minimal prices, and to provide training for their responders. All citizens were aware of the possible dangers, and we were well on our way to providing shelters for the public and educating them on survival actions. The President and the members of Congress had secret, heavily sheltered, evacuation sites, some of which I visited in secret when I was employed by the FCDA. Plans for continuity of government were well prepared in the event any of our leaders would be killed.

Still, nobody in the public seemed to panic about the possibility that such a multi-hydrogen-bomb attack could occur. In those days, before the Cuban affair in the early 1960s, there was no assurance that the Soviet Union could or would control its nuclear arsenal and not indeed initiate a nuclear attack upon the United States.

However, today, much of the earlier civil defense effort has been dissipated, and the research of the Civil Effects Test Group of AEC has been forgotten. One of the shelters for members of Congress that I visited with my wife a few years ago has been turned into a museum. The citizen shelters that were designated around the country are now mainly ignored by the public. With wishful thinking, too many, but not all, political leaders joined the bandwagon of advertising their presumed victory over the Soviet Union as a peace dividend and worked to end our radiological defense programs in the 1990s. Despite joint pleas to congress with my friend, Marlow Stangler, who for fifty years after I left FCDA continued instructing responders to perform in radiation fields, even the radiation instrument calibration program was ended, and the vast majority of States gave up their calibration sources. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with its new generation of emergency experts, has been attempting to prepare the general public appropriately, but has not brought to bear much of the actual experience with training needs for responders, or educational needs for the public, to adequately avoid unnecessary fears of small amounts of radiation exposure. Neither is the DHS adequately recommending or promoting the kinds of instruments and protection against the possible large exposures to a minority (but large numbers) of civilians in the event of an attack with a nuclear weapon or radioactivity dispersing device (RDD)(sometimes called a radiological dispersal device or radiation dispersal device).

What caused this increasing apathy and opposition to civil defense efforts beginning in the late fifties? Probably some of it was due to good, outspoken, anti-war activists, who believed that our own preparations to save lives of citizens would somehow indicate to the peaceful Soviets that it was we who wished to start nuclear war and destroy them. This belief is somewhat akin to thinking that if we put smoke detectors in our homes, we will likely want to set our homes on fire. Anyone who has studied or seen the effects of nuclear weapons knows that our nation would not initiate nuclear war, even if protections were established for survival of some of our population. Kruschev slammed his shoe on the table and said, We will bury you! His statement was unrelated to any of our civil defense research or preparations, which the Soviets had undertaken themselves.

Apathy about civil defense preparations began, I believe, with media presentations such as the widespread viewing of the 1950s movie, On the Beach. This movie came out giving the public the misleading impression that in any nuclear attack everyone in the world would die from radiation exposure, and that protection measures were futile. Although widespread radioactive contamination would devastate life as we know it for the immediate generation, most persons would survive and live to old age. The misimpressions were reinforced by activists such as Dr. Ernest Sternglass, a colleague of mine at the University of Pittsburgh, whose (largely successful) misinformation activities I will address in Chapter 1.

With movies like On the Beach, and such misinformation in the media, public apathy grew and through the years the civil defense program was kicked from one agency to another. I followed the civil defense, or domestic preparedness programs, through the years after my FCDA participation largely through contacts with my friend, Marlow Stangler, one of those to whom this book is dedicated. The last of the Federal radiological equipment program was finally destroyed in the mid-1990s as a presumed benefit of the end of the cold war. My visits with Marlow to Congressional offices did nothing to help stop this destruction. Little political or public thought was given to civil defense after that, until the September 11, 2001 attack.

I will give in the early chapters at least some concrete examples from my own experience, and make some additional remarks about the misinformation propagated in our media, which have contributed to our apathy about personal civil defense protections. After all, congressmen and administration officials come from all walks of life and all parts of our nation. They must have been influenced at least in part by what they were taught in school and what they read and heard in the media in the past fifty years or more. Nobody under retirement age today could have been subjected to the logic of the 1950s scientific information that initiated our early radiological defense program, worked and trained responders in actual nuclear weapons fallout, or evaluated and helped triage some of the few persons exposed to the inhalation of plutonium or other radioactive materials in the era when nuclear power was still expanding in the USA. That is another reason why I feel obliged to write this book.

I know that when people understand dangers and know actions to take to reduce them, they do not panic and can immediately take the proper actions for protection. I know this from my own experiences as a scientist who recovered neutron-measuring instruments in heavy fallout fields from nuclear weapons, from training police, firemen, and other responders in such fallout fields, and from evaluating and comforting patients exposed in production plants to intakes of plutonium and fission products. I also know this from other personal experiences as a young man and from my Army training as a combat platoon leader. All Americans must know this from observations of how our trained soldiers perform bravely under combat conditions, although I regret the overburden that is now being placed by us on so few of our young adults. (I think that many others should be drafted to serve at least at home in the National Guard or in other efforts against terrorism. Many younger citizens should be allowed to enjoy life experiences at least up to age 40 before being drafted for combat. Probably many more over 40 would be saved from heart attacks than would be killed in combat, if they were put into good physical shape by military training. I have personal reasons to believe that also.)

Moreover, as I have observed, many first responder courses today are emphasizing the measurement of very low levels of radiation intensity with extremely sensitive instruments, sometimes misnamed pagers because of their size. These pagers, which were really designed to detect clandestine nuclear materials, can measure radiation exposure rates so low that they present little or no danger, and thus could induce unnecessary panic or fear if radiation risks vs. exposure levels are not understood. Unfortunately, many myths propagated (sometimes innocently) to the public about small amounts of radiation by the entertainment and news media over the past six decades could do much harm if not adequately dispelled. Most members of the public, including those currently employed in national policy making as well as those teaching responders, grew up with myths about radiation and its monstrous effects in entertainment media, violent video games, many books and comic books, and even the daily news. That is why some personal evidence of my own about media misinformation is presented.

This book will provide a necessary understanding of these issues, and will recommend not only protective measures, but also recommend urgently the provision to the public of appropriate, light, pocket-sized radiation exposure indicators so that the majority of citizens who will not be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation will not panic. I know from my work in fallout fields in the 1950s, and from examining the distribution of fallout from many nuclear weapons in my more recent employment, that even in the worst cases of radioactive contamination, there are still very large areas where initial radiation measurements will set off a high click rate in Geiger counters but still not cause lethal or even harmful total exposures to persons taking proper precautions. Also, those few survivors of a radiological attack who might receive exposures needing further medical surveillance or care should know from their personal pocket dosimeter cards how and when to get such care, and/or provide for their own decontamination and immediate first aid.

In order to support my statements and also provide further information for those who would like to search deeper into these issues, I cite a number of references. Perhaps I should apologize for citing so many of my own publications. However, it is easier for me to find many of the important facts in my own writings; and in these writings I always tried to cite and give credit to other authors with whose work I have developed my own concepts and methods. The references in all of the cited publications can lead interested readers, especially those whose jobs require planning for homeland security, to many hundreds of other literature sources with which to dig deeper into these subjects.

Thus, this book is aimed at providing information to save many lives in case attacks do occur. Such scenarios are not fun to write or read about, but must be addressed in our current world situation. Each member of the public is his own first responder in the initial moments after an attack, and will need to understand and be prepared with ways to protect himself and his or her family within the critical first seconds and minutes after an attack. Otherwise, serious panic or wrong actions will occur, which could inundate medical facilities and also interfere with the later rescue and recovery efforts of responders. There are not enough responders in the nation, such as policemen, firemen, and medics, to be at everyone’s side, or to advise everyone by radio, in the immediate hours after an attack.

After writing the above paragraphs, I arose early on July 7, 2008, and watched the Black Writers Conference on C-SPAN at 6-6:30 a.m. The questions from the audience, and the responses of the panelists, made me aware of the fact that there is a strong analogy between the Katrina aftermath failures voiced at the Writers Conference and my concerns about preparations of the public and government agencies at all levels for WMD attacks. Especially of note, the Poet Laureate of Louisiana, Marie Osbey, gave her impression of governments …on vacation… and that no individual strata of society by itself could have prepared for the events of Katrina. At one point, she blamed the flooding catastrophe on the failures of the Corps of Engineers, who had responsibility for planning, constructing, and maintaining the protective structures, having assured the population through many events that they were adequate. This is an illustration of how citizens must be prepared to protect themselves in any event. Even with the best efforts of government agencies, individual citizens cannot rely on government or any other groups to make up for the lack of individual preparedness needed before or after catastrophic events. Government agencies and responders can only do so much, even with their most competent efforts and maximum resources. Only appropriate individual citizen preparations can provide most of the safety and survival actions needed in the immediate minutes and hours after a catastrophe of any kind.

Because much of this book is aimed at providing concepts and methods of protection for most citizens, who usually are not trained in the radiation sciences, the detailed data and methods provided for the scientific readers should not interrupt their reading necessary information for protection of themselves and their families. Thus, the important, simpler information for protection of all citizens is set apart by print in italic font, as is this paragraph.

Finally, a caveat: Although I have sought comments from many, the content of this book is my responsibility alone; nobody with whom I am affiliated has approved the final version of this book. Any mistakes, or statements that are disagreeable to any reader, are my fault alone. In many parts of the book, the mixture of units of radiation measurement and radioactivity is deliberate; I want the reader to have practice in remembering the different units because units are mixed on the various radiation instruments now available within the United States, and documents provided by the Federal government and other useful references will present quantitative information in different units. Simple definitions appear in Chapter 3, and more complete definitions and discussions of units in Appendix A.

Allen Brodsky, Sc.D., CHP, CIH, DABR

Adjunct Professor of Radiation Science, Georgetown University

121 Windjammer Road

Ocean Pines, Maryland 21811

February 2011

CHAPTER 1

An Unpleasant Truth

AN UNPLEASANT WORLD SITUATION

This section is not a pleasant one to write. It is distasteful to me to recollect my failed attempts to refute myths about radiation that were propagated in the media by certain former colleagues and others. It is also not pleasant to think about possible terrorist attacks that might harm my own and other persons’ children. However, because almost everyone alive today has been subjected to a barrage of mostly inaccurate myths about nuclear radiation, in the media or even in school texts, and either in reference to nuclear power programs or civil defense efforts, I must present documentation of some personal experiences and information to assure the reader of the credibility of my statements and recommendations in this book. I must, therefore, document truths about radiation risks and some of my personal experiences that document the distortion of these truths and outright myths, as well as caution the reader about possibilities of terrorist uses of the so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

As derived from my personal experiences and observations, the odds are very high that any reader opening this book has been subjected through various media more to misinformation rather than to true facts about radiation risks and how they have been controlled within our society. If we are to be prepared to minimize loss of life in the event of terrorist attacks involving radiation, or other toxic agents, we must understand how to judge the differences between non-harmful and non-lethal exposures and the high exposures that are dangerous to life and health.

In particular, the deliberate release by a terrorist of larger amounts of radioactive material within a large population area, will immediately confront members of the population with levels of radioactive fallout and exposure never before occurring in the United States. (This is true except in atomic test sites where all participants were appropriately trained, monitored and protected from exposures likely to cause health effects; again, as I can document from personal experience evaluating such exposures (including my own) this is also true despite claims that have reached the press.) When such a terrorist release is deliberately aimed at the general public, we can no longer depend on peacetime regulatory controls and programs that have maintained natural background levels for the public. We need to be able to discriminate between the vastly larger numbers of persons who will not receive exposures likely to cause harm and the others who might need medical attention. Undue panic over the lower levels of radiation that would not likely be of significant harm, but which can easily be detected to be well above background, can only result in unnecessary deaths and societal disarray in the event of releases of radioactive material to the environment.

Dr. Marcel Barbier (Barbier¹ 2001), in a panel discussion after 9/11 organized by the Baltimore-Washington Chapter of the Health Physics Society (BWCHPS 2001), presented an outline of the shelter and protective cautions instituted in other nations, precautions that have been neglected in the United States. He stressed, even then, that terrorists or rogue nations might well have or acquire nuclear weapons. He also quoted Edward Teller (H bomb developer), who visited Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed and was told by a high-ranking officer that 8 nuclear rocket tips were already missing. Teller asked, What about nuclear artillery shells? and the officer answered, On that we have absolutely no control. Barbier also pointed out that nuclear bombs can be introduced into the United States aboard ships and airliners that load many millions of containers or packages into trucks that reach all areas of the nation.

By now, everyone who listens to radio, watches TV, or reads newspapers and magazines must know it is an unpleasant truth that there are a growing number of terrorists throughout the world, in organizations or sleeper cells, who aim to destroy our nation and our lives unless we adhere to particularly extreme religious practices, are governed only by their strict religious laws, or are governed in other autocratic ways. Many of these terrorist groups have no exit strategy; they train generation after generation to commit suicidal acts according to their touted religious objectives (Wright 2006). We learn about these terrorists while at the same time hearing about the ease with which they might obtain so-called dirty bombs (which are not really dirty but contain dispersible radioactive material) and deliver them within our country (Ervin 2006; Kean and Hamilton 2006; Burchfield 2009, Ridge 2009).

One morning (October 12, 2007), before beginning Chapter 2, I heard on CNN TV news that there are 101 countries who are attempting to develop nuclear weapons. One report indicated that we know such weapons, if developed by some of these countries, will be used on us. Osama bin Laden has advertised many times how he intends to obtain such weapons and use them to destroy America (Wright 2006). Illegal exports of critical materials and equipment to produce such weapons have already been uncovered, with little more than a slap on the wrist to the violators, who could usually give good reasons for their error; many items of modern technology already traded in our global economy can have dual or multiple uses. Margonelli (2007), in tracing the history of oil exploration and the current origins and production of oil and gas, provides insights regarding how the misdirection of oil profits in some nations dominated by tyrants are impoverishing populations and causing unemployment, providing breeding grounds for the recruitment of young terrorists who would be happy to detonate a nuclear or RDD weapon within the United States.

We already know from many news reports that North Korea has obtained nuclear weapons and their delivery systems despite the long negotiations and applied sanctions. We are also aware of the many times North Korea has attempted, perhaps with considerable success, to sell and transport these weapons to other nations who do not love us or any democratic societies. Parsi (2009) has suggested it is not likely that those in power in Iran will let any negotiations, threats, or stated agreements to stop their uranium enrichment toward nuclear weapons, despite the fondness of many of their fine citizens for the United States. John Bolton, a former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, has appeared several times in September 2010 on national television warning of the devotion of Iran’s despotic leaders to the development of nuclear weapons, showing videos of the mountain sites in which these leaders are safeguarding their nuclear activities. The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to stop them. Relying on our own abilities to destroy the good citizens of Iran as a counter to their leaders’ hatemongering and death wishes for us, is not to me a moral policy. We must ensure the survival of our own families, and not plan to kill the many good and intelligent citizens of Iran, who themselves are severely limited in their freedoms and persecuted by their leaders. All of my graduate students who came from Iran have been fine and intelligent people.

Exhibit 1 shows a sample of news article warning about possible imminent dangers of a terrorist attack, including possibilities of a bomb containing radioactive material (dirty bomb). Exhibit 2 shows news articles about the possibilities for terrorists to obtain radioactive material or nuclear bombs. As time passes, the chance that terrorists will obtain and use such weapons against us only increases unless such weapons are destroyed in time, or terrorists are somehow prevented from obtaining them (Ferguson and Potter 2005).

The reasons for every citizen to prepare for possible attacks by terrorists with weapons of mass destruction may also be reinforced by examination of Jerry Strope’s (Strope 2007) web site of the Strategic Defense Initiative, www.strategicdefense.org.2 The January-February (2008) issue (ASDA 2008) of his concise newsletter includes the repeat of an article (Schultz et al. 2008) in the Wall Street Journal. The authors of this article, the noted previous high government officials George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, provide a summary of current dangers of nuclear proliferation and their efforts to reverse current trends. Just a few quotes from this article will further indicate the reasons for my continued concerns:

• We face a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands.

• With nuclear weapons more widely available, deterrence is decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous.

• These smaller and more portable nuclear weapons are, given their characteristics, inviting acquisition targets for terrorist groups.

We see and hear every day how we are working through the United Nations to get the leaders of Iran to stop their work toward development of a nuclear weapon. Did thirteen United Nations sanctions of Iraq convince Saddam Hussein to allow inspectors to determine the status of his weapons of mass destruction? Did negotiations prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons?

Should we not wonder whether any negotiations or sanctions will really be effective in stopping Iran’s development of an atomic bomb? We have initiated discussions with representatives of Iran’s leaders, but can we believe whatever they say or promise, when their President tries to refute truths that all of us know from our own family soldiers and survivors who witnessed the holocaust? Iran’s nation is controlled by extremists whose religious beliefs, certainly not mainstream Muslim, determine them to destroy not only Israel, as proclaimed by their front man who is called President; we can see the hatred of America that they are instilling in many youth so that they can also destroy democracy throughout the world and eliminate all other religious beliefs and the freedoms we take for granted.

Our nuclear armaments will not protect us if we do not ensure the destruction of their nuclear capabilities. A retaliatory attack on the good Iranian people, many of whom I have known, would add just another global sin to any attack on us. I am afraid that the United States citizens in their anger would just set off nuclear attacks that would only kill the good populations of Islam, not the despots who are causing all the trouble. In order to avoid this, we need to prepare to survive any radiological or nuclear attack and remain level-headed enough to preserve our nation and take only appropriate retaliations, regardless of our degree of suffering. The President of Iran is trying to draw out discussions, while surreptitiously building nuclear capabilities, by claiming that it is fair for Iran to have nuclear capabilities if the US has them and has used them. Nobody should be fooled by such arguments. We must remember that our use of nuclear weapons was only to save millions of lives, including many in the Japanese population who would have died in a continuing war. And then, we did not destroy Japan and Germany, but instead helped their populations to get back on their feet, keep their cultures, and develop nations that provide their citizens with more freedom, not less, and a better life.

It is the intentions of Iran versus the United States that must be seen as the difference that makes imperative the prevention of Iran’s leaders’ obtaining nuclear weapons. Israel cannot do it alone, as many have suggested. Also, it is erroneous to think that the world will be less favorable to us if we destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Neither Syria nor the rest of the Arab world hated Israel any more (if it could) after Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear facilities. Quietly, the rest of the Arab world, and everyone else, was thankful. They would also be quietly thankful to us if we prevented the despotic present rulers of Iran, who enslave their peoples, from obtaining nuclear weapons. If we do not prevent Iran or other unstable nations from obtaining nuclear weapons, as many think we cannot do, then our citizens must be prepared as described in this book to provide maximum immediate protections for themselves, and avoid destructive fear and panic. Both efforts, prevention of a nuclear Iran, and preparations for our own public protection, must be pursued at the same time in this troubled world.

We also know that many of these nations whose citizens are calling for our destruction are governed and brainwashed by dictators who hate our democratic governments and ways of living; examples of democratic government observed at close range or internet by their citizens would threaten their reign as dictators. Some of these dictators, if replaced by truly elected leaders, would lose their rights to enjoy as many wives and concubines as they wish to force into their harems, would lose their rights to siphon off much of the wealth of their nations for their families, and would lose the ability to pass on their powers and riches to their offspring and other relatives. We can understand why these dictators would prefer that we and other democratic governments cease to exist, and thus spread hate propaganda against us in their self-controlled media.

Of course, some of these dictators have now realized they must moderate their support for some of the extreme clerics or jihadists. They themselves have been subject to assassination attempts, and some assassinations, when they have not conformed to the extremes of some of the clerics. Also, rivalries for power have also resulted in assassinations. Osama bin Laden was estranged from his own family and banned from Saudi Arabia after he called the Saudi King a heretic, qualifying him for assassination. He declared war on the United States in 1996, when at the time he actually had only a few dozen of his own followers. (Wright 2006)

We also know that some of the nations that would support terrorists either already have nuclear bombs, or might be expected to have them within the next few years. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tell us that this is possible, either from their own observations or from the fact that they have been prohibited from making some of their desired inspections. Recent intelligence reports that other nations are far away from obtaining nuclear bombs are based on uncertain information given to inspectors by belligerent nations that are intent on, and expert in, deception about their hidden nuclear programs. Strope (2007) reports that the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which indicated that Iran had ceased development of nuclear weapons in 2003, only says, "We judge with high confidence that in the fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." What was not clear in the unclassified summary of the NIE was that the NIE estimate was not a determination based on certainty. The covert program may well have been halted in 2003 after Iran saw the invasion of Iraq as evidence of international resolve to halt terrorism. However, uranium enrichment has continued, with the possibility that it could continue all the way to enrichment to bomb-grade material. Strope’s report indicates that only a tiny circle within Iran’s regime possesses certain knowledge of Iran’s current nuclear weapons program. In the meantime, Ahmedinejad has announced in February 2010 that Iran is now a nuclear nation.

Also, in regard to North Korea’s agreement to dismantle the nuclear reactor that produced material for its first nuclear bomb and to end its uranium enrichment program, as of early January 2008 the documents requested by President Bush to ascertain that the agreements of North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program were neither complete nor accurate. North Korea signed an agreement in 2005 to end its nuclear weapons program at the six-nation talks in the summer of 2005, but walked out of the next meeting in which schedules were to be planned to implement the agreement, when conflicts about the scheduling reached an impasse. No further meetings were scheduled in 2006, and in October 9, 2006, North Korea conducted its test of a 1-kiloton nuclear bomb. Although some called this a fizzle compared to the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a 1 kiloton bomb could result in a serious loss of life if detonated in a population center by a terrorist (Auxier 2004), and could disrupt economic and human activities in such a center for a long period of time. The US and other countries condemned the test and the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1718 on October 14, 2006, requiring North Korea to refrain from further nuclear or missile tests, to rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and to abandon its WMD and missile programs. After some further impasse, North Korea agreed on February 13, 2007 to begin implementing the denuclearization agreement of 2005. IAEA inspections in July 2007 verified the shutdown of the Yongbyon reactor facilities. The disabling of these facilities has not yet been completed. While Back Jong-chun, a key South Korean official, said he expected North Korea to easily meet its pledge to disable the reactor by the end of 2007, this has not occurred and the complete abandonment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has not occurred (Strope 2007). In fact, we now know that North Korea has continued development of nuclear weapons, has detonated some in nuclear tests, and continues to develop missiles for their delivery.

Before his visit to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, I talked with Dr. David Kay, the scientist appointed by President George W. Bush to lead the mission to find the WMDs that Dr. Kay had assumed were likely hidden by Saddam Hussein from his previous inspections. I visited with Dr. Kay when he was employed in McLean, Virginia, by the same company where I was employed. I was impressed by his scientific achievements and his down-to-earth honesty. His opinions about the expertise of Saddam’s scientists in hiding such WMD weaponry were widely reported in print media before his team’s latter inspections after the fall of Saddam. This fact can be checked. His honest statements about not finding the WMDs after Saddam’s fall from power do not erase the facts about his earlier opinions; they also indicate that President Bush would not have appointed someone like Dr. Kay if he had wanted to bias the findings.

Anyone who cares to examine Dr. Kay’s reports will find that he did not assert that the President was attempting any deception; only that the inspections did not reveal the evidence of WMDs. Dr. Kay did not assert that these weapons had not existed, or were not planned by Saddam. Do we really know that such WMD were not passed over the border to some other nation supporting terrorism? Have there been effective inspections in such border nations? Is there really any doubt that some of these dictators would slip nuclear bombs into terrorist cells that could not be identified with the origin of these bombs? Many others have asked these questions. Some of these dictators have assisted Al Qaeda and their allies in attempts to take over other Middle East nations, ultimately construct a fundamentalist Caliphate covering the Middle East and Asia, and then again further attack Europe and America (Lewis 2003; Wright 2006; McConnell 2008). I would not want to risk the error of assuming that these bombs will not fall into the wrong hands and not be used on us.

Because we are a free nation, we will never, even with our best efforts, be able to ensure that a terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) could not enter our country; we can never guarantee against such an attack (Ridge 2009). In order to guarantee minimum, rather than maximum, killing in the event of an attack with WMD, it is to that end this book is dedicated.

Guaranteeing minimum effect of a WMD attack requires that we face up to this possibility and prepare ourselves as we attempted to do in the days of the cold war and the civil defense programs related to possibilities of hydrogen bomb attacks. However, going back to such thoughts does not make for happy moments, and I believe that many of us would rather believe that somehow WMD attacks on us will never really occur. In my own case, I am by nature just another happy American, usually focusing on the good life in my retirement years, preferring to play tennis and enjoy happy occasions with my wife and family. Writing this book has not been a joyful experience, and has required overcoming mountains of procrastination.

However, thinking back to my many opportunities has made me obliged to share experiences that might save life in the event of an attack. My experiences include: recovering instruments in high intensities of radioactive fallout as a scientist on the early hydrogen bomb tests; training responders in fallout fields at nuclear tests in Nevada as a physicist and Radiological Defense Officer with the Federal Civil Defense Administration in 1956-57; managing and evaluating patients accidentally exposed in the growing nuclear industry of the 1960s to inhalation of plutonium, americium, and fission products as Technical Director of the Radiation Medicine Unit at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; and in other positions involving radiation emergency response leading up to being the first chairman of homeland security for the Health Physics Society after September 11, 2001. These experiences have informed me about the dangers of exposures to radioactive material at high levels and how to reduce them. The ways of estimating and minimizing radiation risks under accidental or attack conditions are probably more real to me and are more often among my conscious concerns. My experiences and my current discussions with responders and the public also tell me, unfortunately, that responders and the public are still largely uninformed today about radiation matters and ways for their own protection and avoidance of panic.

Although most of the thrust of this book is in regard to protection against radioactivity dispersing weapons, there is also material in Chapters 6 and 7 regarding information about chemical and biological weapons. We have known of the existence of these weapons, and the possibilities of their finding their ways into terrorist organizations or the hands of disturbed individuals from the use of anthrax in the attacks against Congress, and the subway use of botulinum toxin in Japan by the Aum Shinriko cult. Unfortunately, in the past few years, as a result of the popularity of Botox for the treatment of skin aging and other medical problems, with the toxin used in very dilute concentrations, the availability of underground and widely available sources of the potent form of Clostridium Botulinum (CB) bacteria has increased. Al Qaeda has been known to be trying to obtain CB, as well as other weapons of mass destruction. (Warrick 2010; Mowatt-Larsen and Townsend 2010)

However, the lethality of such agents, when present on human skin in the smallest amounts (smaller than a grain of sand in the case of CB toxin), allow little prospects of immediate personal protection in the case of their effective dispersion other than some of the same protections suggested for limiting exposure to radioactive fallout — seeking immediate shelter before exposure, holding breath or covering face if exposure is expected, and immediately seeking indoor shelter. Yet, some further discussion of chemical and biological agents, and references to further information, will be provided in later chapters.

How I Know the Public is Poorly Informed on Life-Saving Actions after Terrorist Attacks

The remaining sections of this first chapter are not particularly necessary for learning in later chapters the actions that might need to be taken to save life in the event of terrorist attacks. Therefore, they may be skimmed or skipped. The rest of this chapter provides anecdotes and evidence to show, from my own experience as well as from experiences of other colleagues, how the vast majority of the American public has been misled about phenomena involving radiation for decades. In this way, I show my realization that this book has to overcome much misinformation and belief before the facts and recommended protective actions presented would be accepted by many. This material will be of interest to many of my colleagues and others who deal with policies regarding informing the public and preparing for homeland security.

I thus provide documentation about my factual information and some suggestions to colleagues about some communication principles I have learned in presenting radiation information to the public, from my personal experiences as well as from some of the references I cite in the text. I do know that members of the American public are intelligent enough to understand the basic information in this book, and can hope this book will have life-saving impacts in the event of any WMD attack.

My efforts, and those of my best-informed colleagues, to educate the public through the media, professional activities, other writings, and meetings with top government officials, have not borne sufficiently widespread fruit at the public and personal levels. This is not because the citizens are not intelligent, but because adequate and true explanations have not been generally provided to those outside the community of radiation and nuclear scientists. All members of the public need to face the facts about present dangers, and understand what can be done to save lives in the event of terrorist attacks. Life is precious and nobody should die because of ignorance of simple facts and preparations that could save many lives. Some of these preparations could save life in the event of natural disasters. Moreover, if people know the actions they can take after the moment of attack, they will take the proper actions and not panic. They will also retain a resolve to survive and fight back as a nation.

I need here to support with some documented facts and personal experiences about how the public has been misinformed on radiation and nuclear issues. I must also provide evidence of how other honest and outstanding scientists I know have attempted with futility to provide truths, in an environment where so much misleading information about radiation has reached the public by a media courted by aggressive but misguided scientists; the credentials and accomplishments of such scientists will be found to be absent from professional literature on radiation risks and effects, or will be found to be rejected by many other authors. My statements will be documented for the reader. One of my exhibits will show irrefutable evidence of a personal experience with such misinformation.

Case 1

A congressional hearing in 1978 about a report on claimed radiation risks, in which the TV journalists covered only the witness claiming findings of harmful occupational exposure, and censored out all of the evidence that I, a former co-investigator of that witness, and other competent scientists presented that refuted the false claims:

On January 9, 1978, I was seated waiting to testify before the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment (Brodsky 1978b), and watching my former boss Dr. Thomas F. Mancuso, testify about his claimed findings of radiation-caused cancers among workers at the Hanford site at Richland, Washington. I was going to testify against Dr. Mancuso’s claims of such findings, only because I knew his methods of analysis, obviously selected by Dr. Alice Stewart, to be defective and his claims to be absurd. It was not pleasant for me to prepare for my testimony, because Dr. Mancuso and I had worked well together for over eight years; I had believed that he was a careful and honest investigator, and we had become good friends.

I had been a co-investigator from the beginning of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Health and Safety Study with Dr. Mancuso and Dr. Barkev S. Sanders when I was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, 1964 through 1971, and adjunct faculty through 1972. I had written my part and edited the final version of Dr. Mancuso’s first research proposal to the AEC, and with major contributions by Dr. Sanders and input of Dr. Mancuso, all the other proposals and project reports up until the time I left the project. I left the University of Pittsburgh in 1971, having by then taken a position as radiation therapy physicist at Mercy Hospital, Pittsburgh, and Adjunct Research Professor at Duquesne University School of Pharmacy. However, I continued to work with Drs. Mancuso and Sanders in 1971-72 on my own time, without additional salary, until we provided our report to the AEC on the methodology we had developed and some preliminary results (Mancuso et al. 1971), and presented them at a midyear meeting of the Health Physics Society (Mancuso et al. 1972). The methodology had been finalized for an extensive retrospective-prospective analysis of large populations of atomic energy workers over the many years since the advent of the Manhattan District during World War II. By the time I left the project in 1972, I had expected that the developed project methodology would be stable and result in a continued unbiased study of AEC worker populations for many years.

A few years before my Congressional testimony, I had been shocked by a presentation by Dr. Mancuso with Dr. Alice Stewart, at a midyear meeting of the Health Physics Society in Buffalo in the latter 1970s. Mancuso and Stewart presented a limited and improperly analyzed case-control study of the Hanford population, claiming to have found radiation-caused cancers in the Hanford worker population. At this Buffalo meeting, the Mancuso-Stewart presentation was followed by a talk by Dr. Sidney Marks, a physician with a background in statistics, together with statistician Dr. Ethel S. Gilbert, who was already, and has continued to the present time, to be one of the foremost statisticians involved in radiation epidemiology. Marks and Gilbert refuted the so-called findings of radiation-caused cancers at Hanford by Mancuso and Stewart. Yet, I was deeply disturbed to find that Dr. Mancuso had, without really understanding statistical methods in human research (which he had admitted to me when I tried to explain the t test on an airplane trip), had fired Dr. Sanders several years after I had left the project, and had discarded all of the careful methods and procedures that Dr. Sanders and I had set up for the project, in over eight years of effort on my part