Dr. Gregory B. Saathoff is Associate Professor of Research in Psychiatric Medicine at the University of Virginia's School of medicine, and Executive Director of the University of Virginia's Critical Incident Analysis Group. Since 1996, Greg has also served as the Conflict Resolution Specialist to the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group. In this role he consults with the Crisis Negotiation Unit and the National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime.
This is the guy who headed the team of American doctors who diagnosed Victor Yushchenko with dioxin poisening. I was looking up more about him, and though I didn't find anything that hinted of any conflict of interest, I didn't look too long either, because I got sidetracked.
It turns out that a discussion that Dr. Saarthoff led under a RAND national security research commission got me thinking about the concept of defense and domestic security...
In the discussion, Saarthoff starts off with an anecdote:
For those of you who know Kuwait, you will know that they have an extensive telecommunications sector and a great education. There was one man who discussed the occupation of Kuwait with me. He remembers the day that the Iraqis invaded with tanks and I asked him what he did when he saw that the Iraqis were invading and he said he got dressed and went to work. As he was on his way to work he came face to face with an Iraqi tank and had to turn around and go home. He went home and said to himself `you stupid idiot, you saw on TV what was going on and you still went out and confronted it.' This guy did not panic and you might see that what he did was illogical. I would like to discuss this issue of shielding with you today. Terrorism has a basis in psychology. "Panic in and of itself is becoming the terrorist tool."
Now I just want to throw out an idea here and see how you react. This has nothing at all to do with what weird shit (if there is any) surrounding the secret involvement of US doctors in the treatment of a foreign presidential candidate who is preferable to the US, and who also may have been poisoned via proxy by his opponent who is preferable to Russia. Instead it has to do with the whole universal policy approach to threats of biochem-terrorism and nuclear fallout (it's an approach that does not involve preemptive attacks).
However, I would like to preempt your attacks by stating that one of my favorite songs is, "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" by Bob Dylan.
What I'm thinking of is spending more defense money on proactive planning for internal crisis management and panic attenuation. Everyone knows that, as of now, the US is not fully prepared for a large scale biological attack.
Bush's version of a bioshield is aimed at vaccination and drug availability, and that is a great thing (a bill for this was passed overwhelmingly in his first term). But if I heard on the news tonight that my city was under such an attack, the first thing I might do is hop in my car, roll the windows up tight, and hope that I knew the most obscure route to the countryside. That is a big problem because it is this instinctual human panic reaction that is the real source of the power behind this type of terrorist attack.
What if, instead, every person in the city simply walked quickly to a properly sized neighborhood clean room? In this lead coated room would be vaccinations for dozens of germs and enough food to last out the typical malnourished life span of the biohazard or the duration of severe radiological threat.
Does anyone know if this is a feasible proposal and how much it would cost? Keep in mind that if you take away the panic, you cripple the potency of the attack, and therefore minimize incentive. How much money are we spending on deterrents of a more brutish nature (NMD, wars against leaders who are engaged in WMDRPA)?
Are there those who are working on the technological aspects of this problem? would it have the added benefit of stimulating economic activity as multiple cleanroom manufacturers get contracts with cities that would have grants funded by the national government (who would enforce a set of criteria)? Interestingly, one website, www.bioshield.com, that in its google description claims to be a private company that makes "concentrated antiviral and antimicrobial products", is a blank page.
I live next door to a church that has the fallout shelter logo on the face of the building. I didn't live through the height of the cold war scare, so I don't often think about the mood of the country when it was built. It seems to me that if something could be built that would double as a cleanroom and as a fallout shelter, the mood of the country today could use the comfort and the defense against potential panic (lootings, loss of civil order) that the investment in that kind of infrastructure might provide.