Ping to new thread:)
Thank you Davey for giving us thread #4 of the war on terror
(WT) tthread.
We will work hard to fill it up for you.
Good work, as always.
Marked to read later.
I read this on another site and it's very thought provoking. You may want to pass it on as well:
Do you marvel at the blind eye turned to evil by many “intellectuals” today? Does the creeping anti-Semitism that condemns Israel for defending itself against Hezbollah rocket attacks stun you? Are you baffled by the moral equivalency given to Israel and the blatant terrorist fanatics of Hezbollah?
Recently, I suggested in conversation that the world is recreating the precarious conditions of the 1930’s that led to the deaths of millions in the Second World War. Victor Davis Hanson, in National Review Online, has explored that very premise in a lengthy and illuminating article.
Some excerpts:
When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.
Our present generation, too, is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last four weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.
These past few days, the inability of millions of Westerners here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.
The growing turbulence of the 1930’s went largely unchallenged by those in power in Europe who instead sought to appease, smooth over, and get along with evil instead of condemning or combating it. As a result, roughly fifty million people died in the vast war that followed, and millions more would suffer for decades under the scourge of Communism that rose from the destruction.
The evil history of man is poised to repeat itself. Who will stand to prevent it?
placemarker
;o)
SHELTERING IN PLACE INFO --
SNIP:
If you do not want to trust in weather and traffic, the alternative is what the experts call “sheltering in place.” You want to be in a building, as solid as possible to block the gamma rays, as airtight as possible to keep out radioactive dust. You need to turn off air conditioning, close vents, seal the seams around windows and doorways. If you wondered what former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was talking about, this is what you need the duct tape for. Abandon rooms with windows broken by the blast.
The dust that does not seep into the building will settle outside, on the roof and on the ground, emitting gamma rays. A car with an intact windshield stops 30 to 50 percent of the radiation — probably not enough, however, to save someone who’s inside the car and stuck in traffic a few miles downwind of ground zero.
A wood-frame house, similarly, stops just 30 to 60 percent of gamma rays. A windowless basement stops 90 percent. The middle floors of a concrete apartment building, safely away from both roof and ground, stop 99 percent or more. But there is no 100 percent protection.
For those whom evacuation and shelter fail — or for those, like the thousands fleeing in blind panic, who never try either — there is still decontamination. A lethal dose of radiation takes time to build. The sooner the radioactive dust is off the skin, the better. And it is not that hard to remove. “Radiation contamination is easier than chemical,” said Col. David Jarrett, a medical doctor and the director of the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda. “Simply removing the clothes and washing takes off up to 90 percent.”
END OF SNIP
===
Surviving Nuke Blast Thread posted by ExSoldier Synopsis, link to article at end.
SYNOPSIS OF THREAD:
2006 Marker / Refresher / Timely
Surviving a Nuclear Attack [Anywhere]
Everyone’s first reaction is wrong because the problem is not, in fact, the nuclear blast. If at this point you’re still alive and uninjured — and after a Hiroshima-sized explosion at ground level, 99 percent of the people in the D.C. area
[or anywhere else for that matter]
are — then your real problem is the radioactive dust that the blast threw into the air. According to the estimates in National Planning Scenario No. 1, an explosion that kills 15,000 people outright could eventually expose 200,000 people to lethal doses of radiation if they stay exposed and unprotected in the fallout path for 24 hours. Sitting downwind in gridlock, with your vehicle’s windshield shattered, goes a long way toward giving you a lethal dose. All sorts of simple alternatives — moving away from downwind, seeking proper shelter, even taking a shower — go a long way toward saving you.
Fallout is simply radioactive dust, launched miles into the air in a mushroom cloud and then carried on the wind. Much of it is alpha particles, whose radiation cannot penetrate bare skin, or beta particles, which cannot penetrate layers of clothing. Both are most dangerous if inhaled — or if they settle on food that is eaten unwashed. More deadly are the gamma rays, whose radiation can go through walls. But even gammas cannot hurt you from cloud height. The danger starts when the dust settles to earth.
The ideal is to avoid the fallout in the first place. In apocalyptic gridlock, you cannot drive very far. But you may not have to. Normal winds blow the cloud into a long but narrow plume, just a few miles across. In typical Washington-area weather, Virginia, Montgomery County in Maryland, and most of the District itself are not in the fallout path at all. People in the path could conceivably walk out of the fallout zone in the 10 or 15 minutes before the dust begins to fall — if they know which way to go.
But, of course, you cannot count on perfectly typical weather. The wind might shift; the breeze you feel at ground level may be blowing crosswise to the radioactive clouds five miles up; a still day might cause the fallout to seep outward slowly in all directions; sudden rain or snow could wash the dust out of the sky, heavily dousing everything beneath the storm but sparing areas farther out.
If you do not want to trust in weather and traffic, the alternative is what the experts call “sheltering in place.” You want to be in a building, as solid as possible to block the gamma rays, as airtight as possible to keep out radioactive dust. You need to turn off air conditioning, close vents, seal the seams around windows and doorways. If you wondered what former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was talking about, this is what you need the duct tape for. Abandon rooms with windows broken by the blast.
The dust that does not seep into the building will settle outside, on the roof and on the ground, emitting gamma rays. A car with an intact windshield stops 30 to 50 percent of the radiation — probably not enough, however, to save someone who’s inside the car and stuck in traffic a few miles downwind of ground zero. A wood-frame house, similarly, stops just 30 to 60 percent of gamma rays. A windowless basement stops 90 percent. The middle floors of a concrete apartment building, safely away from both roof and ground, stop 99 percent or more. But there is no 100 percent protection.
For those whom evacuation and shelter fail — or for those, like the thousands fleeing in blind panic, who never try either — there is still decontamination. A lethal dose of radiation takes time to build. The sooner the radioactive dust is off the skin, the better. And it is not that hard to remove. “Radiation contamination is easier than chemical,” said Col. David Jarrett, a medical doctor and the director of the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda. “Simply removing the clothes and washing takes off up to 90 percent.”
Every major Washington-area hospital has some decontamination facilities, but 10,000 radiation patients in one day would swamp them. So mass decontamination falls to fire departments, with their mobile pumps and generators; their protective gear; their hazardous-materials experience; and, because both Maryland and Virginia have nuclear power reactors, their years of radiation training. Area firefighters can quickly set up special decontamination tents, and they have plans to take over buildings that have lots of showers — so high school gyms, for example, are a good place to head for. In the chaos of those first hours, said Michael Cline, state coordinator at the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, “the real key is to make sure people go to those facilities.” It will take every firefighter available to man the decontamination sites, and every cop to control the crowds pouring in panic out of the city.
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE, GO TO
NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE [NTI]
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_6_24.html#A0F258F9
http://www.nti.org/index.html
REFERENCE LINK:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1429926/posts
The fall of the Taliban and of the Baath in Iraq, however, changed Iran and Syria’s patient plans. The political changes in the neighborhood, regardless of their immediate instability, were strongly felt in Tehran and Damascus
Bingo. We have a winner! THIS my friends is he real reason we liberated Iraq. Will it work? Ya got me, but if I were to make a WAG I'd say yes, but come back and ask me in 30 years.
I think the point is that IF Hezbollah and Syria are defeated, then ther Cedar Revolution still has a chance. If not....
Placemark.
for later
bump for later
.