How To Survive A Pandemic or Chemical Attack – Surviving Disaster

According to the US government, a biological or chemical terrorist attack is highly likely to occur within the next four years. Will you be prepared?
This week on Surviving Disaster, a double feature, the world is under attack from terrorists with deadly nerve gas and a global pandemic threatens to kills millions.
Host Cade Courtley shows you how to survive.

The full length video is available this week online.

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Seaports Still At Risk of Biological and Chemical Threats

U.S. Customs and Border Protection should consider taking additional steps to counter biological and chemical threats in maritime cargo, according to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general.

The IG recommends that the agency update its guidance for inspecting sea cargo containers for biological and chemical threats, and assess the benefits of deploying new detection devices in a maritime environment, according to a redacted version of a report released Nov. 2.

CBP is responsible for examining cargo containers entering the country. During a performance audit conducted between November 2008 and March, the IG’s office observed different operating procedures at several ports that were visited, the report states.

As a result, the IG recommended that CBP develop and issue guidance to help ensure its officers use consistent examination processes for all potential threats. The agency agreed with the recommendation and said it was making updates.

Meanwhile, CBP officials said new technologies are being developed and tested to help officers rapidly identify such threats during inspections, according to the report. However, CBP hasn’t formally identified the pathways through which biological and chemical threats are most likely to enter the country, the IG said.

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Biowatch Quietly Protects Nation From Biological Terror

I’m always impressed by the countless men and women who quietly work behind the scenes to protect this nation from the threat of terrorism. It’s not often that you get even a small glimpse into the vital role many of them play, yet for every investigation and every plot that is thwarted there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, who played a crucial role. One such group, Biowatch, is featured in a USA today article.

Behind the scenes, system sniffs for biological attacks

A ringing telephone startled Tom Slezak from a sound sleep. It was 1 a.m. on Oct. 6, 2001. The caller gave Slezak three hours to pack for a chilling, top-secret mission: to protect Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities from a major bioterror attack.

For all Slezak knew, an attack had begun. Hours earlier, a Florida photo editor named Bob Stevens had died after inhaling anthrax powder sent by mail, jolting a nation that was still reeling from the 9/11 hijackings. At the time, the scope of the anthrax attacks that eventually killed five people and sickened 17 others wasn’t clear.

Slezak got the call because he helped pioneer the genetic analysis of biological agents at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Today, eight years after the anthrax attacks, the system Slezak’s research team started, known as BioWatch, is quietly operating in more than 30 cities.

A federally funded, locally run program with an $80 million annual budget, it depends on a network of vacuum pumps that draw surrounding air through filters, sniffing for signs of biological agents.

[...]
The scenarios envisioned by Hooks and other Homeland Security officials are enough to keep anyone awake at night: A terrorist in a pickup in Charlotte, spewing a biological agent through an agricultural sprayer. A small plane releasing microbes into night skies upwind of Washington, D.C. Someone spraying anthrax from a briefcase in Pennsylvania Station in New York, the busiest transit hub in the USA, with 600,000 people streaming through each day.

“How many people would be infected? How far would it spread? They’d go right through there, jump on a train and be gone,” Hooks says. “Those are the kinds of things I worry about.”

The only way to know the detection system is capable of picking up such threats is to test it, says Omberg of Los Alamos. BioWatch analysts have released benign microbes upwind of likely terrorist targets and population centers. BioWatch sensors in the Washington, D.C., area have reliably picked up bacteria released near the Pentagon and Tysons Corner, a close-in office and retail hub in Virginia.

Real-world alerts, such as the tularemia incident in Washington, D.C., also have helped some cities gear up for a biological incident. Houston, even more than Washington, is home to the bacteria that cause tularemia, Francisella tularensis, which regularly triggers BioWatch alerts.

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Chertoff Points To Possibilities Of Biological Attack

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says the biggest threat from terrorists may come in the form of biological weapons.

In an interview segment aired Thursday on the FederalNewsRadio program Homeland Security: Inside and Out, the ex-DHS head said concerns about the possibility of a biological attack should outweigh fears of an attack using a nuclear weapon, chemical agents or conventional explosives.

“The natural ingredients of a biological threat are not difficult to come by, and it’s just a question of the know-how in terms of fabricating them to make a weapon,” said Chertoff.

While he did not dispute the idea that a nuclear attack would have the most far-reaching and devastating consequences, the likelihood of terrorists getting a nuclear bomb is “very remote at this point,” Chertoff said.

The former Homeland Security chief told program co-host Dave McIntyre that, far from being a theoretical possibility, a biological attack has already occurred in the United States. “Only someone who has a very short memory and doesn’t recall what happened in the fall of 2001, when we had an anthrax attack, albeit one on a small scale, can say it hasn’t happened,” Chertoff said.

And – while terrorists would have to go to some lengths to obtain nuclear material – anthrax and plague are naturally occuring and thus far more readily available for nefarious use, according to Chertoff.

The former DHS head said he believes the U.S. has already done much to implement biohazard detection. “We also need the capability to distribute detection equipment much more widely and much less expensively,” Chertoff added.

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Kuwaiti Professor Fantasizes Of Biological Attack On US

In this speech Kuwaiti Professor Abdallah Nafisi openly speaks of how he fantasizes of a biological attack at the White House and prays for the bombing of a nuclear plant on Lake Michigan. Perhaps even more disturbing is the laughter his speech draws from the audience.

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