The Threats We Face

2001-9-30 03:14:00

The first plan of action must be taking preventative steps. We covered some of them in the last article dealing with airlines.

In addition to this there are several other measures we can take. In doing this we must place ourselves into the mind of the terrorists and attempt to look through their eyes. First, we know Osama Bin Laden is somewhat of a Hitler type evil genius just to have pulled off the 911 attack. Thus in attempting to discover his next move we must look in a direction that would be planned by a cunning mind.

Unless there is some unexecuted terrorist plan left over from the 911 disaster I would guess that they will leave the airlines alone for a while. But if they have a couple lackeys from the original plan ready to meet Allah they could very well use them even if success is slim because of the fear it would generate in American citizens.

Barring this I believe Osama Bin Laden will move on to greener pastures. He would love to explode a suitcase nuclear bomb. One of the few good things to come out of the 911 disaster is that the suitcase bomb was not used. Since we know that he would use one if he could then we assume that as of September 11th that he did not have one in his possession.

Unfortunately, it will just be a matter of time before the terrorists achieve the capability to explode a small nuclear bomb on our soil unless we take every possible precaution as well as every measure to eliminate their organizations.

As if that is not enough there are numerous other possibilities to worry about.

(1) Sabotaging or crashing a plane into a nuclear power plant. Some alarmists were surprised that such a nuclear power plant wasn't one of their prime targets to begin with. Couldn't they have killed many times more people than with the destruction of the Twin Towers?

The answer is no. The terrorists are smart enough to realize that anything less than an exact hit would have released no nuclear radiation at all and only a few people would have been killed by the impact itself. It would take a very successful hit even for commercial plane to penetrate the thick concrete and steel protecting the reactor.

Suppose the reactor was penetrated - what would the damage have been?

It would produce a radiation death toll similar to the Chernobyl accident. And what was that? The death toll there from a combination of fire caused by the explosion and the radiation exposure was a grand total of 31.

Afterwards there were many dire predictions about babies being born with deformities, but as time has passed the deformities in babies being born to those in the area has been unchanged from what it was before the accident.

This explains why the terrorists did not dive a plane into a nuclear reactor. They wanted the maximum possible number of immediate deaths for the sake of impact and most of the deaths from a nuclear reactor hit would have been from the impact of the plane itself and not the radiation.

The secretive Soviet Union did not evacuate the Chernobyl area for three days which greatly added to the number of people being overexposed to radiation. Taking all this into consideration, scientists are not in agreement as to how many will suffer early deaths during the next fifty years because of the exposure. The estimates vary between 1000 and 75,000. Around 16,000 is the most widely accepted number.

Whatever the number is, it is not comparable to an instant death for many of these will be people who will die at the age of 65 rather than 70 and 70 rather than 75 up to fifty years after the accident. Unlike the 911 victims, many of these people will lead a fairly full life, many into old age.

If we minimize the possibility of another airline hijacking then there is nothing short of a nuclear explosion or an insider sabotage that could cause major loss of life through a nuclear power plant.

But keep in mind that this will probably not be on the top of a terrorist list because of the lack of sensationalism of many instant deaths.

(3) Releasing a dangerous virus or bacteria in a crowded area, such as a stadium of 50,000 fans at a ball game or even the Super Bowl.

They may not have this technology available yet, but if and when they do we could be very vulnerable. This is something that we must do all in our power to prevent. We will discuss the prevention aspect shortly.

(4) Pollute or poison our water supply. We get our water from so many sources it is impossible to guard them all. This is a much greater danger than posed by a nuclear power plant for with the right chemicals it would be easy to achieve.

(5) Use a truck or U-Haul bomb to attack important buildings or landmarks. I would guess that this will be the next type of attack on their agenda. Unlike Timothy McVeigh who merely attacked one building, their plan could include the attacking 4-6 or more buildings in various parts of the country all on one day as they did with the airplane attack. If they were able to pull off three or more bombings all on one day then the fear they would strike into the hearts of the people would do more damage than the physical destruction.

(6) The Olympic Games coming in Salt Lake could be a major target that should be considered by authorities.

(7) Kidnap or assassinate important political figures. It is therefore of extreme importance that our leaders have tight security until this threat is diminished.

The Source of the Threat

(1) The emotionally unstable person. This person is does not pose a major threat, but with either a bomb or guns he could take out a dozen people or so.

Every country has always had to deal with this type of person and are doing what they can to be on the top of this type of situation.

(2) A cult or group of religious fanatics who are U.S. citizens. We have seen this danger with fanatics bombing or shooting abortion doctors and in Japan the people were attacked by poison gas released by cult members of Aum Shinrikyo composed of their own citizens. Fortunately only five people were killed, but over 500 were hospitalized.

(3) On the right we have white supremacists and anti-government groups that pose a danger. Timothy McVeigh belonged to this category. This group is not likely to strike out at a capitalistic center as the Twin Towers or the military such as the Pentagon. Instead they may go after the IRS and law enforcement buildings since these agencies are seen as a thorn in the side. Some white supremacists may attack blacks or Jews, but the danger of this type of attack has lessened thanks to diligent law enforcement.

(4) On the left we have individual threats by crazed individuals such as the Unabomber. Then there is Earth First which has spiked trees in order to injure of kill lumberjacks as well as making bomb threats. On one occasion justice was served when several members had a bomb blow up in transport killing themselves. Perhaps the most insidious of them all is ELF (Earth Liberation Front). This is a shadowy terrorist group which seeks to save the environment by burning down housing developments, ski lodges and other encroachments on mother earth. Interestingly, the effect of their work is to cause more trees to be cut down to rebuild that which they have destroyed.

Loosely associated with this category are militant environmentalists who seek to turn anti-capitalists protests into violent confrontations.

(5) Moslem Fundamentalists who seek to stop the encroachment of modern civilization and democracy into their way of life.

A few weeks ago we would have equated this group as a similar danger to some of the above, but September 11th changed all that. Not only have they moved to the top of the list, but they have moved into a league of their own which has eclipsed any terrorist threat we have had in the past.

The threat of this group is so stark that we have shifted almost our whole attention to them feeling we must solve it before we can even muster the will to deal with much else.

So what can we do to solve this, the greatest terrorist threat we have faced so far? That will be our next topic in this series.


"The visionary dreamer or the well-intentioned but impractical person whose ideas and world plans and suggestions as to the new world order litter the desks of world leaders and of those groups and organizations who are attempting practically to blueprint the future. Their dreams and ideas deal with projects for which the world of today is not ready and will not be ready for several thousand years. It is an easy thing for them to present impossible Utopias which have not the faintest relation to things which are needed today and which could be made possible. The name of these people is legion, and at this time they constitute a definite hindrance. A vision of the impossible is not the type of vision which will keep the people from perishing. Because of an inability to compromise and to face up to things as they are, these people and those whom they influence are landed in despair and disillusionment."
Djwahl Khul The Externalization of the Hierarchy