Purified water and toilet rolls

[Damini]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2863003.stm

Seems the government is contemplating what to do should the nasty evil terrorists (tm) come handing out poisoned candy and dirty bombs. I just wondered how seriously everyone here is taking this?

Anyone got a secret stash of bottled water, toilet rolls and torches? Or at the more extreme scale a gas mask and a bunker? I'm usually quite a doom and gloom merchant, but this seems almost too bizarre to sink in.

The worrying thing is I wouldn't trust this government to organise a piss up in a brewery. Only enough small pox vaccine to cover a third of the population?? I'm going to feel a bit of a twat with my gas mask, wind up radio and copy of Z is for Zebediah if the governments trying to solve smallpox with vitamin C supplements and tidy up radiation with a dyson and some febreeze.

What do you guys think on it all?

 

[dysfunction]

You can never underestimate the power of Febreeze

I generally dont worry about things until they become a real threat. I dont see the point getting all worked up about something that might not ever happen

So I guess I'll be the one running around like a chicken without a head when they start dropping bombs on us.

 

[GDW]

Having grown up in a country terrorised for years it doesnt phase me tbh....kinda used to it.

Oh, and dont forget those rolls of duck tape to seal off all air vents

 

[PhaZeY]

If your numbers up, it's up - no point hoarding beans really...

Good book choice tho..

./P

 

[Damini]

I know Grandadwinkle, I was twat enough to stand and natter next to an IRA bomb (planted by the Irish Underachievers Wing, in Bognor Regis of all places) and luckily my attention span waned and I wandered off before I blew up. But there's something a lot more sinister about radiation and chemical/biological warfare. The IRA may be very determined and very pissed off, but they aren't stupid enough to do something that could possibly be followed by three men on horses and all things biblical.

 

[GDW]

Its all about psychological fear, the threat of what they might be able to do, which is the terrorists greatest weapon, rather than the actual WMD.

 

[PhaZeY]

Yes, radiation is horrifying.

I've always wanted to see that movie "The Day After" that was shown on television years and years ago - i spose now cos i could understand it better. It was quite scary tho (at that age)

I would seriously consider not suffering any further.

./P

 

[Lester]

Originally posted by PhaZeY
If your numbers up, it's up - no point hoarding beans really...

Good book choice tho..

./P

If you are in a bunker you do NOT want to start eating your hoarded beans.


And this...

"Mr Blunkett said he understood the public's need to know more about the terrorist threat.

But he said often the government was not able to answer all their questions because it might pose a security threat."

...is just bloody typical.

Gov - You're in terrible danger
Me - Really? Is there anything I can do ?
Gov - Yes but we can't say.

The government are a bigger threat than the terrorists.

 

[PhaZeY]

At least we have the knowing all the politicians will be secure and tucked away should something terrible happen.

Joe Public will always be the last to know - usually by a big bang or salty air.

./P

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Damini
Only enough small pox vaccine to cover a third of the population

This is normal, smallpox was treated successfully using containment procedures before vaccination became popular, you only need total vaccination to eradicate.

Any terrorist attack using smallpox would easily be contained, you certainly would not want to vaccinate everyone.

 

[Lester]

Originally posted by PhaZeY

Joe Pubic will always be the last to know - usually by a big bang or salty hair.

./P

Sigh, yes it's always the way.

 

[Damini]

But that was outbreaks that followed predictable trends of occurence (to a degree) because they were not caused by terrorist attack, they were traceable. If you are faced with simultaneous or staggered exposure in different locations, with no obvious traceble carrier because the host has not been previously exposed to the virus and is not displaying symptoms, then I think that having a limited supply may very well be an error.

Scenario: On the last day of term (and two days prior, as a staggered exposure at different locations) five different universities are infected. These students then return to their homes prior to displaying symptoms. You then get numerous outbreaks country wide. There is no Typhoid Mary to connect all of the occurences, because they were carried out by seperate people who displayed no symptoms prior to the outbreak. You can't ward off these areas easily because they are communities that have fragmented, dividing the infection, and there is no way to predict which areas have been infected until people start displaying symptoms. By the time you identify the first source, a second has manifested, two create a trend and you then have to begin sourcing all similar locations.

Yes, I'm doom and gloomy, and I doubt very much it would happen, but it just strikes me as stupid to only have enough for a third of the country (especially since the vaccination we do have isn't even guaranteed against the strain most likely to be used in a hostile attack)

 

[Trem]

I'm not worried at all to be perfectly honest.

Now if the good old US of A turns its attention to North Korea, then I will worry as its a real possibility that they will send some nukes over.

On a side note, if your local video shop has Michael Moores Bowling For Columbine in stock rent it, one of the best docu-films I've ever seen.

 

[PhaZeY]

Yeah, I'd be worried if it went off in North Korea.

./P

 

[danger]

This dirty bomb lark is media hysteria tbh.... they're not gonna bring about the apocalypse or anything close, why? They're standard bombs with a small amount of unrefined radiological waste in, so you get boom... one building is blown to shit and and maybe a few hundred people at most contract some form of radiation sickness.... now yeah that's pretty screwed up... but it's a terrorists weapon not an "I can destroy the entire world with a click of a button"* to put that into perspective one of Israels many fusion bombs they have could quite comfortably level most of baghdad and kill pretty much everyone there and leave the place uninhabitable for 80 years! one of Dubyas... well I don't wanna think about it!


*"I can destroy the entire world with a click of a button" is copyright (c) G.Dubya Bush. All rights to bomb your puny county to shit reserved.

 

[danger]

Originally posted by Trem
I'm not worried at all to be perfectly honest.

Now if the good old US of A turns its attention to North Korea, then I will worry as its a real possibility that they will send some nukes over.

On a side note, if your local video shop has Michael Moores Bowling For Columbine in stock rent it, one of the best docu-films I've ever seen.

How do you propose they nuke us? They don't have missles capable of reaching anywhere NEAR britain from NK now America might be a different story...


*sorry I might be turning this into a for or against war thread here... not my intention so I'll shut up now

 

[stu]

Re: the smallpox vaccine. I wouldn't worry about it. There are loads of different strains, and no hint whatsoever which particular strain would be deployed, if any. So even if you got vaccinated, it would likely be for the wrong one.

If you look at the real-world implications of actually effectively use chemical or biological weapons - they are extremely difficult and expensive to produce, transport, contain, and deploy on anything but the tinyest scale. Added to which there is no established link between Iraq and terrorist organisations, and the fact that we haven't found any stuff yet means that either 1) they don't have any, or 2) they do have it, but they'll have to uncover it and transport it out of the country under occupation, and I don't think we need to break the gas masks out just yet.

 

[Trem]

I am hoping that North Korea was mentioned as one of the countries that is a "terrorist threat" because it is a non Muslim country and therefore making people think that this isn't a Muslim hate type thing...............basically its gonna get bad if we invade North Korea.

 

[Trem]

Originally posted by danger
How do you propose they nuke us? They don't have missles capable of reaching anywhere NEAR britain from NK now America might be a different story...


*sorry I might be turning this into a for or against war thread here... not my intention so I'll shut up now

Nuking USA is what bothers me my friend, they will go all gung-ho if that happens then we are fucked.

 

[xane]

Originally posted by Damini
...

Interesting scenario, but it still would not necessitate the vaccination of the entire population, 1/3 population stock sounds about right for immediate use.

Containment implys immediate identification, there is a huge network of doctors in this country and a viable public communications system, within 24 hours of the first outbreak the alert would be on and awareness alone would serve to contain it, i.e. I'd be shit scared to go out myself once I heard it on the TV.

In countries like India, where eradication of smallpox was especially difficult due to the lack of doctors, remoteness of the population and religious views, you _would_ need the entire population to be vaccinated, but in the UK it would be a different situation entirely.

Vaccination also carries a small risk itself, you might cause more problems by unnecessary mass vaccination.

If, by chance, the situation did not improve then making more vaccines is easy, but there is simply no case to have an entire population stock on standby.

 

[danger]

Trem: good point, TBH i don't know even if they have the missles range to nuke America... I mean they could try sending in some planes or something but they'd probably get shot down I guess!

 

[xane]

The other point is how you could infect an entire univeristy before the symptoms are displayed, a case for armed guards around the Pot Noodle factory I suppose

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Originally posted by danger
I mean they could try sending in some planes or something but they'd probably get shot down I guess!

Ohmhoololololololololololololololol

Superb

 

[PhaZeY]

And then there is the "stolen" russian suit-case nuke.
You dont need missiles or planes to transport WMD's
Just people....

./P

 

[dysfunction]

except the new security measures at Heathrow can now detect if you have handled explosives...

But I guess you could go to a diff airport

 

[ECA]

Originally posted by dysfunction
except the new security measures at Heathrow can now detect if you have handled explosives...

But I guess you could go to a diff airport

No heathrow trips for wij.

 

[PhaZeY]

Or sea....or for that matter land (tunnel?)

./P

 

[Ash!]

Originally posted by PhaZeY
And then there is the "stolen" russian suit-case nuke.
You dont need missiles or planes to transport WMD's
Just people....

./P

That is not necessarily true Phazey. The thing that makes the NUKE inhernintly dangerous is the war head that goes with it. When the bomb explodes, the more firepower in the war head then the greater the dipertion rate of the Radiation. The nuclear material in itself is not explosive. The more firepower in the delivery device gives a greater area of destruction. The radioative material gets carried along in the blast

 

[Testin da Cable]

my work is on full alert :/


*feel really tired*

 

[rynnor]

Bah smallpox is for amateurs - gimme a mutated strain of the 1918 influenza virus - that raged around the globe wiping out a fair percentage of the global population.

Flu is far more contagious than smallpox and has a variety of possible sources for transmission (vectors) - migratory birds carry most of the worlds influenza.

Nothing terrorists are likely to do can be more destructive than what already happens in the world - Chernobyl released huge clouds of radioactive particles into the atmosphere which unluckily for the UK coincided with a rainy front - welsh lamb was destroyed as too radioactive and no one knows how many deaths/cancers/birth abnormalities it caused.

UK nuclear reactors such as windscale (later renamed sellafield after the fire in 1957 created too much bad publicity) have released a lot of radioactive contaminents - interesting to note that the core of the 57' reactor is still molten to this day and gives off a gentle heat...

Life goes on - terror has no power in the longer term - it merely shocks.