On fear of terrorism

[Vympel]

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For Friday, February 28, 2003

Don't Worry About Terrorism

One of Brother Dave Gardner's routines involves someone asking him where he would like to be in the event of a nuclear war.

"Wherever," Brother Dave said, cupping his hand behind his ear, "I could say, 'What was that?'"

This little bit has relevance for Americans today who are periodically scared by the federal government. Acts of terrorism are point-specific. If there is an act of terrorism in New York and you're in Chicago, you don't have to do anything. If there is an act of terrorism in lower Manhattan and you're in the Bronx or Brooklyn, you're home-free.

The best thing Americans can do is not buy duct tape but go to the library and educate themselves about chemical and biological weapons. Some Americans seem to think that if nerve gas is released in New York City, people will drop dead in Key West, Fla. Chemical weapons have a limited range, and they quickly dissipate.

I hope no one thinks that the participants in World War II declined to use chemical weapons out of humanitarian concerns. Hardly. They managed to kill 55 million people with conventional weapons. Chemical weapons weren't used because everybody learned in World War I that they simply aren't that effective.

If you fire a conventional artillery shell, you know everybody within the burst radius will buy the farm. If you fire a chemical weapon and the wind shifts, you can be breathing your own poison. Gas has a limited range before it dissipates and becomes harmless. Some experts do not even classify chemical weapons as weapons of mass destruction.

Biological agents probably have a greater potential to kill a lot of people, but even these are no reason to panic. Mankind has been living with anthrax, smallpox, plague and whatever for thousands of years. Anthrax and plague can be treated today. Smallpox was still around when I was a kid, and we all got a vaccination. Today, there are no known cases of smallpox anywhere on Earth, and so far as anyone knows for a dead certainty, only Russia and the United States have smallpox viruses in storage.

I heard one moron on television recently say that smallpox could kill 25 million people. Well, only if 75 million people were infected, since smallpox's mortality is only about 30 percent. For a terrorist to infect 75 million people is impossible.

In 2001, 3,000 Americans died in the terrorist attacks; 91,000 died in accidents; and 19,000 were murdered by homegrown criminals. In addition, about 2 million Americans died of various natural causes. There are 6 billion people on this planet. Do you know how many were killed in 2001 by terrorists in addition to the 3,000? Just 409.

Of all the things you can worry about, being killed by a terrorist is one of the least. Gertrude Stein once described America as having "more places where people aren't than there are places where people are." That's still true. We are 268 million people living in 3 million square miles. The chances of any one of us being killed by a terrorist are infinitesimal.

Americans need knowledge, not duct tape. There is too much misinformation floating about, due mainly to the ignorance and low IQ of so many people in television. You don't need a gas mask. A gas mask will only help you if you have it with you when gas is detected. Americans are not going to walk around with a gas mask in a pouch on their sides. Ditto for atropine. Atropine is an antidote to nerve gas — if you inject it within 15 seconds of exposure. Are you going to walk around the rest of your life with a big hypodermic loaded with atropine? Of course not.

Chill out, folks. Despite the Washington hype, aimed at justifying big budgets, and television's moronic perpetual hysteria, terrorism is the very least of our problems. In fact, it's not worth thinking about.


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© 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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Now there's something you don't hear everyday: Forget about it.

Related question. Are these color-coded alerts any use?

[Dalton]

Anyone else but me find it odd that the government is risking all-out panic with these "terrorist alert" systems?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Figure how long have we kept that Nuclear Attack/Alien Invasion/Natural Disaster altert on every radio station/TV station, when in reality after the EBS is activated there is really nothing that can be done to prevent damage that has already happened (We can't exactly issue them before they happen)