nuclear accidents kept from Americans

Reform Party of California Commentary

The consequences of keeping Americans in the dark

A point that the Reform Party of California (RPCA) occasionally mentions regarding normal two-party politics is its disturbing penchant to hide information from Americans. Hiding the truth was a factor in the start and conduct of the Vietnam War. It was a factor in the passage of major legislation, e.g., medicare. It may turn out to be a factor in the passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but it is too early to know that yet. It may have been a factor in the 2012 presidential election regarding the Benghazi embassy fiasco in 2012. It arguably was a factor in getting public support for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially Iraq. The list is long and depressing.

Almost nuked ourselves - lots of times

And, now it turns out that secrecy hid the risk of building and maintaining America's nuclear arsenal, especially in the 1950s, 1960s and the early part of the 1970s. During that time, and probably still today, the federal government felt it was best to not bother the American public with information about just how close and how often we were to the accidental detonation of American nuclear warheads on American soil. It turns out that we have darn near nuked ourselves a few dozen times and the government had no intention of even mentioning any of it. Maybe they thought it was too trivial to merit a paltry press release. Or maybe, they did not trust the American public enough to be honest about the close calls and risk of a nuclear accident incinerating a U.S. city.

Investigative reporter Eric Schlosser has just published results of a long investigation into nuclear accidents in his book "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" and what he describes is sobering to say the least.[1] If Schlosser's findings are basically true, sheer blind, dumb luck has kept us safe so far. To be fair, it appears that modern nuclear weapons are much safer than the earlier weapons. However, putting some faith in that assertion requires some trust in the federal government. Is such trust warranted?

Why the secrecy?

The RPCA assumes that the federal government chooses to keep such critically important information secret from the public for two main reasons. The first is to protect national security secrets. The second is to hide risk and embarrassment from the public. Obviously, the government will strenuously deny that it would ever do the second, but that denial carries no weight. The federal government has had no compunction about calling everything from illegal activities to staggering incompetence and waste a "secret". It took 25 years of Freedom of Information Act requests just to force the FBI to reluctantly release John Lennon's secret files.[2] There were no national security threats there, but there was a great deal of embarrassment and wasted time and money. Unfortunately, the government uses secrecy to hide all kinds of failure and waste.

No basis for trust

Discouraging as it is, there is no reliable basis for the public to trust the government in matters like this. Sometimes claims of secrecy are valid. Sometimes they are not. If the two-party system had a better track record over recent history, having some sympathy for nonsense might be justified. Unfortunately, the track record is not good.[3]

What happens if we nuke ourselves?

Since the 9/11 attacks, there has been a push to develop defenses against biological and radiological weapons. Radiological weapons included thermonuclear weapons, not just dirty bombs. In 2004, congress passed Bioshield legislation and appropriated $5 billion to develop defensive measures.[4] To date, the development of any measure for treatment of survivors of a nuclear blast has yielded nothing. The Bioshield and BARDA programs were intended to incentivize the private sector to development treatments, but implementation has been a dismal failure, with politics trumping serious private sector effort. The program for nuclear weapons mitigation has been in essence, converted into a long term government research program with the full knowledge and acquiescence of congress. What happens to survivors of a nuclear blast is simple: They crawl out of the high-radiation portion of the blast zone on their own. Official policy is to not send first responders in to rescue survivors unless they are in a low radiation area.[5]
In short, what will happen after a nuclear blast in a U.S. city is that thousands or tens of thousands will die (slowly and miserably) of radiation sickness, assuming they survive the initial blast. Treatment for that kind of biological insult requires intensive care (intravenous lines, antibiotics, platelet and/or blood transfusions) and such medical facilities in any region of the U.S. can treat a few hundred survivors at the very most. That assumes they are not vaporized in the nuclear blast. Platelet supplies are good for only a few days, so intensive care will be impaired or limited to whole blood transfusions. The situation represents yet another dismal failure of the two-party system.[6]

The irony is that all along, the chance of a nuclear blast from terrorists has appeared to be very low. An accidental launch by the Russians or Chinese appeared to be more likely, but still very low. Now, with the revelations from Schlosser's book, the real threat appears to be from the nuclear arsenal of the U.S. itself. Given the revelations from Schlosser, it is reasonable to think that the chance of a nuclear blast in a U.S. city is 100-fold to 1,000-fold more likely to come from our own nuclear arsenal than from any murdering terrorist or an accident by a nuclear power such as Russia. If the public had known all along the risk that Schlosser describes, the RPCA is confident that Bioshield, BARDA or earlier efforts, e.g., the Armed Forces Radiobiological Research Institute[7], would not have been so dismally moribund and would have been real, serious efforts. In that scenario at least one or more drugs with a meaningful impact on saving lives after a nuclear blast would very likely be available today.

This situation is a direct consequence of what happened, or didn't happen, because the U.S. government did not trust its people to be able to handle truth. It is time for regime change in Washington. Both parties need to go. The Reform Party offers a real difference, if you do not know where to go.

Footnotes:
1. Links: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=230075256; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tavis-smiley/eric-schlosser_b_4081050.html; http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/09/30/130930crbo_books_menand?currentPage=all.
2. Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-lennon-files-the-fbi-and-the-beatle-429429.html; https://www.aclu.org/national-security/after-25-years-fbi-finally-releases-last-10-documents-john-lennon-fbi-file.
3. Link: http://reformparty.org/reform-party-of-california-essays-two-party-politics-and-recent-history/.
4. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Bioshield_Act; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomedical_Advanced_Research_and_Development_Authority.
5. Links: http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/outreach/pdf/planning-guidance.pdf; http://hps.org/homeland/documents/Planning_Guidance_for_Response_to_a_Nuclear_Detonation-2nd_Edition_FINAL.pdf.
6. Rest assured, the government will claim great progress and success, e.g., they deploy useless, overpriced iodine tablets and let people think that has any relevance to a nuclear attack. The federal posture here is simply impossible to square with the reality of a nuclear blast in a populated area. What the government is working on is (i) stockpiling medicines (e.g., filgrastim) that need to be used in intensive care facilities (which are not available to more than a few dozen people) and (ii) drugs that work only if they are administered before a nuclear blast. How any of that has any relevance is far beyond the RPCA's capacity to reconcile the hideous reality of a nuclear blast with the government's proposed nonsense solutions. The whole Bioshield/BARDA approach for nuclear blast mitigation has been smoke, mirrors, gas, vapor and a waste of tax dollars.
7. Link: http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/.