Reporting from Afghanistan

Main Page

TERRORISM: A SURVIVAL GUIDE
Report by Dan Kapelovitz
February 2002

A single-engine crop-dusting plane flies over an American city, releasing large quantities of odorless, invisible spores of freeze-dried anthrax from dozens of wing-mounted nozzles. Two days later, thousands of people feel symptoms similar to those of a common cold or flu: sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching head, fever and the inability to rest. Shortly thereafter, patients overwhelm hospitals, suffering from severe respiratory problems, abnormal water retention and shock. Some are treated with high doses of antibiotics and eventually given a vaccine, but the supply of such drugs quickly runs out. Many of those treated with medication and 90% of those who aren't choke to death on their own blood. As the afflicted's lungs hemorrhage, their sanguine fluid becomes poisoned and their internal organs die.

This is just one of an endless number of scenarios in which terrorists could cause massive casualties using biological weapons. Anthrax and smallpox are the most talked about biological agents, but there are many others, such as those that cause bubonic plague, botulism and tularemia, also known as "rabbit fever," a highly infectious disease causing pneumonialike symptoms that is usually contracted from contact with infected animals or ticks. While smallpox is not as deadly as anthrax ("only" 30% of those infected will die), each carrier becomes a walking biological weapon able to infect others with nothing more than a sneeze or cough.

In addition to biological warfare, chemical, radiological and nuclear weapons are all possible ways that terrorists could snuff out American lives in large numbers. What can the general public do to protect itself?

"Don't be there," answers Bruce D. Clayton, survivalist and author of After Doomsday: A Survivalist Guide to Nuclear War and Other Major Disasters. "If you want to know what Islamic terrorists would attack in your neighborhood, go to the drugstore and look at the postcards. It's going to be [targets such as] Disneyland, the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the U.S. Congress and the White House. They're interested in casualties; they're probably not going to fly a jetliner into Mount Rushmore-they can't kill enough people there."

While Clayton, who lives in an undisclosed and sparsely populated rural town, doesn't believe we should never visit national monuments, he does advise against spending large amounts of time at them. "You're visiting New York, and you want to see the view from the top of the Empire State Building-sure, you're only going to be in the building an hour during your whole life. That's a very tiny risk. But if you live in New York, and someone offers you a job in the Empire State Building, [taking the position is] not a good idea. You're gonna spend a third of your hours sitting in an attractive target. Find a job somewhere else."

Neil Livingstone, a security expert and coauthor of The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb, doesn't advise relocating, but not because certain areas make more enticing terrorism targets than others. Rather, he believes that no place is 100% safe. "The problem with moving to the hinterlands is that's where some of the loony-toon groups exist that are racist and anti-Semitic, the militia-type groups. And we've had some of those, groups flirt with developing chemical and biological weapons. They haven't been successful, but they have accumulated some poisons. There was a cult in the U.S., the [followers of] Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who were trying to poison the people in Antelope, Oregon, so they could take over the county. They were doing that with salmonella and other things; so if you think you can move to Antelope, Oregon, to get away from [bioterrorism] or Dipstick, Georgia, you may not have Middle Eastern terrorists, but you have other types of threats."

Those seeking to avoid terrorism by moving to the boonies should also make sure they aren't relocating near any of the 103 nuclear power plants in the United States; each one is a potential terrorist target. Attacking them could create fallout problems worse than those that would result from a nuclear bomb. "The nice thing about nuclearwar fallout is that it decays very rapidly," says Clayton. "if you can get into a safe spot and stay there for 14 days, you can come out again. And even in the really hot spots you can get out long enough to drive out and get out of the really hot zone."

By contrast, Clayton notes, "There's plenty of expended nuclear fuel sitting around in 55-gallon drums around nuclear power plants. That stuff does not decay quickly; it remains as radioactive as it is for quite a long time-years. Think of Three Mile Island-crashing an airplane into it could create a radiological mess that would force people to abandon a chunk of the state."

Leaving the area would not be easy. Massive evacuations would likely cause major traffic problems. Motorcycles may be the best method of escaping a congested city. People shouId plan an escape route using small streets and always have bags packed with essential items ready to go. Sitting tight and waiting out the gridlock is another, though not particularly attractive, alternative.

There is some good news for West Coast residents: Because the jet-stream winds travel east, living to the west of a nuclear disaster offers some protection from fallout. Unfortunately, people living far away or upwind from a nuclear power plant may not be completely safe from radiation. Terrorists could detonate a "dirty bomb" (a conventional bomb containing radioactive material). "Our fear would be that you have another Oklahoma City," says Livingstone. "And instead of just having a bomb, you have radiological material scattered throughout the city and into the wind with an explosive device. You'd have many more casualties in that event."

In the case of a radiological attack, taking either potassium iodide or potassium iodate pills before exposure will saturate a person's thyroid gland with safe, stable iodine, allowing no room for later uptake of the radioactive iodine that would result from such an attack.

Instead of moving, Livingstone advocates preparedness. "A lot of firms that were in the World Trade Center wished that they had had smoke masks and a few things like that now. Twelve bucks each, and they didn't want to make the investment. If someone releases a chemical agent in the area, and you have a respirator, you're way ahead of the next guy." Livingstone concedes that, for gas masks to be truly effective, citizens would have to wear them 24 hours a day.

Even so, in the days following the September 11 attack, there were huge runs on gas masks. Every army surplus store that HUSTLER contacted was sold out, and gas masks are selling on eBay for upwards of $150. But gas masks are not effective against agents that attack the skin or the mucous membranes. There are full-body protective outfits used by the military and emergency response teams, but these hazardous material suits are more suitable for those who need to enter a contaminated area. Moreover, if not used properly, a hazmat suit could suffocate the person wearing it.

Dr. Amy Smithson, a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a private think tank in Washington, D.C., that specializes in international security, believes that the current hysteria over bioterrorism is unwarranted. "Any bozo can make [biological agents] in a beaker, but disseminating these agents in a manner that would cause mass casualties is a heck of a lot harder than flying an airplane into a building."

Smithson, who also serves as director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project, believes experts who are sounding the bioterrorism alarm, particularly those with ties to defense contractors and pharmaceutical firms, may have ulterior motives. In her report titled Ataxia: The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the U.S. Response, Smithson writes, "An astute reviewer would examine statements bearing in mind what the source really knows about terrorist behavior and the technical aspects of chemical and biological weaponry, and what the source and their organization stands to gain from an artificially inflated threat."

Smithson's own blase attitude should probably be examined cautiously. As of this writing, an initial wave of anthrax infections in Florida has grown to include similar incidents at NBC in New York and the personal office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschille in Washington, D.C., making the possibility of future attacks seem endless.

Smithson's suggestion in case of a biological attack? "Go inside, batten down the hatches, close your windows and doors, and shut off your air conditioner. A toxic cloud will dissipate with the wind; the threat will pass. If you're in a toxic cloud, what do you do? Hold your breath, run like hell, get out of the toxic cloud, strip, wet yourself down and jump into a fountain."

Jenny Benavidez, a research analyst for Frost & Sullivan, an international marketing, consulting and training company, confirms that military budgets have indeed skyrocketed since the September I I attacks. But she and most experts agree that the problem with following Smithson's advice, and that of wearing a gas mask, is that people most likely wouldn't even know they were exposed to deadly biological agents until days after an attack.

There are detectors on the market, but they are mainly sold to the military. According to Benavidez, a chemical weapon detector costs from $6,000 up. Since detecting biological agents is much more difficult, a biological detector costs even more (upwards of $15,000).

"Individuals can't do a lot, because most terrorism has changed," says Samuel Watson, codirector of the Biomedical Security Institute and former National Security Advisor to the elder George Bush. "Terrorists used to claim credit for things to get political recognition or recognition of, say, the plight of the Palestinian people. Now terrorists aren't announcing that they've done something; so unless the terrorists announce it, which would create great panic by the way, most people are not going to know they are infected or there has been an attack until they all of a sudden begin to show up in emergency rooms with whatever the symptoms are. They could buy masks and wear them all the time. They do in Japan; people wear little masks around during flu season."

That being said, there are some preparations that the public can and should make. Basically, the guidelines are the same that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) suggests for any natural disaster: Have plenty of water and canned food, a manual can opener, a first-aid kit, a battery operated radio, a flashlight, batteries and cash. Although FEMA doesn't include weaponry among its emergency supply list, a gun may also offer some protection from those who would want to steal your other essential items.

"You need more water than you think," warns survivalist Bruce Clayton. Storing large quantities of bottled water could also be life-saving in the unlikely event that the water supply has been poisoned. Although the risk of a water supply being contaminated is relatively low (municipal water is chlorinated, which would kill most agents, and it would take tons of an agent to be effective), terrorists could target local distribution of water, such as an office building's pipes. Water filters, unfortunately, don't filter out bacteria or viruses. Iodine tablets are also used to purify water.

Experts seem to be divided over whether or not a biological or chemical attack is likely. "I think it's going to happen at some point," says Livingstone. "The question is not if, but only when." He points to news reports of nerve-gas experiments being done on cows in Afghanistan.

In addition to testing on cows, terrorists may poison cattle, other livestock and crops in hopes of infecting humans. Terrorism involving agriculture, known as agroterrorism, is usually reserved for the killing of animal and plant life as a way to starve the enemy, but it is possible to poison cattle and thereby harm beef-eating populations.

Ken Alibek, who was deputy chief of Biopreparat, the Soviet Union's military biological weapons program, before defecting to the United States, doesn't consider meat contamination a likely weapon, and even if it were utilized, it could be defended against. "If you infected a cow, the concentration of the agent wouldn't be very high. It would not be something like millions of spores of anthrax in each gram of meat. First, we cook it. If you eat well-done steak or medium well, the probability of digesting [even] a little dose of this agent is very low. These scenarios wouldn't result in mass casualities."

Alibek is more concerned with the spraying of boilogical weapons into the air. "The only threat is when biological weapons are deployed by aerosol and, in this case, depending on type of deployment, place of deployment, type of agent, meteorological conditions, we could see a huge number of [infections]."

Many Americans are stocking up on antibiotics. And while these medications are effective against many biological agents, they have to be taken before symptoms are present.

"Right now, the only protections we have are vaccines and antibiotics, but it is absolutely impossible to vaccinate entire populations in the U.S. against every infection," says Alibek. "Keep in mind that the number of biological agents is very large.

"The government must expedited the process of developing [antibiotics and vaccines], then give permission to the FDA to have an expedited process of approval and a fast manufacturing for these products. in case of a BW [biological warfare] attack, you would see Significant overwhelming of all medical services. In some cases, antibiotics could give some window of opportunity to people to wait for qualified medical assistance. This is a good way to go. The government should issue an executive order giving permission to buy antibiotics by ordinary individuals without having prescriptions, and to have some sort of stored amount. [The antibiotic] Cipro would protect completely even from anthrax before the disease starts. You can start taking these antibiotics; we could guarantee that up to 90 to 100% of people could be protected."

Even if a person can acquire Cipro (doxycycline and penicillin may also be effective), he or she must be careful not to take it unless there is an attack, or their body could very well build up a tolerance to the drugs and be immune to their effects later on. Cipro and doxycycline can also help fight off tularemia. In the case of plague, early treatment with streptomycin or the tetracycline and fluoroquinolone classes of antimicrobials is advised.

"There is another problem-viral biological weapons," warns Alibek. "Unfortunately, we have no good antiviral substances developed as products, but some research is being done by several companies."

While viral diseases are difficult to weaponize, survivalist Bruce Clayton believes terrorists who are willing to die would have a much easier time spreading fatal diseases. "We need to rethink as a nation what's possible and what's not," says Clayton. "For instance, if you want to culture hemorrhagic fever like the Ebola virus, and turn it into a technological weapon, something you can put in an artery shell, you need very sophisticated facilities. However, the human body can manufacture Ebola viruses extremely efficiently. All you need is someone who is willing to inject himself with it. Next time there's an Ebola outbreak, you go on down there, pull the needle out of the victim's arm and jab it into your hand. A week later, you've got it, and you're dying in terrible agony. Your 500 closest, suicidal friends all inject a drop of your blood into their skin and then go and tour the United States and mess around with every prostitute they can find for a week. This is going to sound like an incredible vacation to them. The point is that [terrorists] could try it without having electron microscopes and tissue-culture facilities because they are willing to sacrifice themselves."

According to security expert Neil Livingstone, individuals have little power, to protect themselves from bioterrorist attacks. "The main thing they can do is support a strong national defense policy that does not permit rogue nations to get hold of these kinds of chemicals and biological [agents]. That means seeing them as a military threat and acting accordingly. I've often said it would be therapeutic to see an occasional businessman dead in his hotel room if he's engaged in the illegal trafficking of chemical, biological or radiological material. It might be a disincentive for people to break the law."

One of the few things that individuals can do is to keep healthy. People in good physical condition have a better chance of surviving any attack, be it biological, a severe burn or a blow to the head. Working out and eating right could delay a meeting with the reaper.

Or at least leave you limber enough to stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

Main Page