From the Archives - A Moral Argument for Civil Defense: Advice to America’s Catholic Bishops (1983)

This article appeared exactly 35 years ago today, in the January 1, 1983, issue of Crisis Magazine, a Catholic journal of opinion (previously known as Catholicism in Crisis).

CRISIS MAGAZINE - JANUARY 1, 1983

A Moral Argument for Civil Defense: Advice to America’s Catholic Bishops

RICHARD E. SINCERE, JR.

“Justice demands that those who do not make war not have war made upon them.” This is a central teaching of the Catholic Church that is repeated emphatically in the second draft of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter on peace and war. Just war doctrine demands discrimination in battle and both the United States and the Soviet Union in part meet this moral requirement in their strategic plans, which do not target nuclear weapons against civilian populations as such. However, to meet it fully, both nations must also protect civilian populations from the effects of enemy weapons.

The bishops do not adequately address the question of civil defense in their draft letter, nor is it likely that they will do so in the final version next May. In spite of that oversight, I would like to set forth here the moral principles which compel a government to protect its people from weapons of mass destruction, principles drawn in part from the bishops’ own document.

Moral Foundations: Just War and Vatican II

Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, condemned indiscriminate warfare by saying: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” This moral judgment has obvious applications to gruesome examples of modern warfare: the obliteration bombings of Coventry and Tokyo, the blitz against London, the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg, the use of chemical weapons in Afghanistan, Laos, and Kampuchea. By extension we can apply it to the extermination policies of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao — even though these were not acts of war in the conventional sense.

A mistaken interpretation of the Council’s judgment maintains that any use of nuclear weapons would be “indiscriminate” and therefore damnable. Yet the evolution of modern technology made possible pinpoint attacks on purely military targets. Weapons such as the neutron bomb have been designed primarily with the principle of discrimination in mind: enhanced radiation warheads arrest the aggressive movement of tank forces without affecting innocent civilian populations nearby. Their lethal effects are short-lived and narrowly targeted.

However, intercontinental strategic weapons are still so destructive that even pinpoint bombings of missile silos can spread harmful radioactive fallout indiscriminately to civilian areas. Simple measures can be taken to protect against these effects. These must be examined in the light of moral reasoning.

Defense Against Nuclear Weapons

The American bishops write, contrary to the facts, that “the presumption exists that defense against a nuclear attack is not feasible.” They ignore extensive and presumably effective air defenses deployed by the Soviet Union, along with the available technology for ballistic missile defense (BMD) — whether in the form of antiballistic missiles (in place in the Soviet Union, abandoned by the United States), space-based laser — or conventional-BMD, or sophisticated anti-weapon weapons like particle beams. Moreover, the bishops all but overlook the possibility of passive civilian defenses — except in this passage:

“In discussing non-violent means of defense, some attention must be given to existing programs for civil defense against nuclear attack, including blast and fallout shelters and relocation plans. It is unclear in the public mind whether these are intended to offer significant protection against at least some forms of nuclear attack or are being put into place to enhance the credibility of the strategic deterrent forces by demonstrating an ability to survive attack.”

The bishops here unwittingly present two strong reasons to support civil defense: emphatically, significant protection against the effects of nuclear weapons is possible; secondarily, the ability to survive indeed increases the credibility of the deterrent strategy of the United States government. Clearly this is the most peaceful component of nuclear deterrence: it requires no weapons and possesses none of the moral ambiguity of nuclear weapons. If the bishops someday see fit to condemn the mere possession of nuclear weapons, they shall have no justification to condemn the peaceful means to protect innocent civilians against an aggressor.

The bishops recommend that an independent panel of scientists, engineers, and physicians examine the feasibility of civil defense as a means to survive a nuclear war. Yet many such studies have been done over the past thirty years. The consensus is that nuclear war is indeed survivable and, in the words of one of the latest studies, “no insuperable barrier to recovery exists.” It would indeed be horrible, but preparations for the potentially horrible can significantly mitigate its consequences. If targeting civilian populations in your enemy’s territory is morally unjustifiable, acquiescing in the unnecessary death of innocents in your own country is morally repugnant. It deserves unhesitating condemnation.

Civil Defense: A Life or Death Issue

“Questions of war and peace,” write the bishops, “have a profoundly moral dimension which responsible Christians cannot ignore. They are questions of life and death.” War is evil not in itself but because it is the cause of human suffering and death. To alleviate suffering and prevent death is ipso facto a moral good. That is why an increased American commitment to civil defense is a moral imperative. Every reason exists for the bishops to express their support for such a commitment: (1) Above all, civil defense saves lives. Estimates vary, but in the event of nuclear war some civil defense will save more lives than no civil defense. (The Swiss have a slogan: “Better civil defense without nuclear war than nuclear war without civil defense.”) (2) As I argued earlier, civil defense is an integral component of a deterrent strategy, the only component that is objectively peaceful. It is also, many experts argue, the most effective part of a deterrent strategy. Soviet military planners and their leaders in the Kremlin are cautious. If they have no guarantee of victory — that is, if the United States can demonstrate an ability to survive, recover, and challenge Soviet hegemony — they will not be as ready to risk a strategic conflict.

Nuclear war would no doubt be the most tragic disaster ever to befall mankind. There is no need to make it any worse by ignoring its consequences. There are, of course, some problems with civil defense as it exists today: crisis relocation is far from perfect, shelters are not invulnerable, panic and confusion may still occur. Yet to refuse to plan for these contingencies is as sinful as launching a nuclear weapon in the first place.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that “it is the concrete individual who lends meaning to the human race. We do not think that a human being is valuable because he is a member of the race; it is rather the opposite: the human race is valuable because it is composed of human beings.” The responsibility of the nation is to preserve and protect as many human beings as possible. To neglect that responsibility reveals a moral turpitude worse than the Nazi Holocaust, worse than the Stalinist purges, indeed worse than any conceivable use of nuclear weapons. To commit ourselves to civil defense is to reaffirm a choice God made available to us several thousand years ago: “I set before you life or death, a blessing or curse. Choose life then, so that you and your descendants may live in the love of Yahweh your god, obeying his voice, clinging to him; for in this your life consists …” (Deuteronomy 11:26)


Richard E. Sincere, Jr., is research assistant for church and society at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a member of the visiting faculty of the Georgetown University School for Summer and Continuing Education, and president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the American Civil Defense Association.

From the Archives: 'School Training for Civil Defense' (1981)

Some background may shed light on this 1981 article, retrieved from my paper archives.  Fortunately the story behind it has already been told, in a remembrance of celebrated debate coach James J. Unger, which I posted in April 2008:

The high school debate topic the previous year (1981-82) was "Resolved: That the federal government should establish minimum educational standards for elementary and secondary schools in the United States." I came up with the idea, based upon research I was doing in the real world -- if the world of Washington think tanks can be described as "real" -- that we should write a case about civil defense education in elementary and secondary schools.

The problem with this idea was that there was little, if any, information available about civil defense education. (There was some material from the 1960s, but nothing recent and little that was usable by debaters.) But I was convinced this could be a winning case.

So I asked Professor Unger, "What do you do when something is topical but so obscure that there is nothing written about it that you can use as evidence for inherency?" He replied that there was not much to do in that situation, other than to intensify your research and find the evidence you need.

My solution: since I had already had one article published on the topic of civil defense -- appearing in the Washington Star on October 10, 1980, months after I submitted it and based on research I did during the summer 1980 forensics institute -- and had subsequently become an officer in the American Civil Defense Association, I could just write another one, with a focus on education, that could be used as evidence to support our case.

And that's what I did. I submitted the article to several newspapers, and it was published in the New York Tribune (a sister newspaper to The Washington Times), just days before the institute tournament. We inserted the appropriate quotations into the case (not citing me by name), held others in reserve for second affirmative and rebuttals, and moved forward.

The case was relatively successful, with two of my teams making it into the elimination rounds. After the last round that one of the teams lost, they told me that my qualifications as a source had become an issue in the debate. The judge from that round added: "Your boys defended you valiantly, but they lost on other issues."

This is a long tale meant to be background of something that happened a couple of years later. As it was told to me, late one night while preparing for a tournament, members of the Georgetown debate team had hit a brick wall, unable to find the evidence they needed to complete a brief they were working on. Professor Unger popped up and said, "Well, why don't we just pull a Rick Sincere?" -- meaning, why not write an article and get it published in a reputable newspaper or journal? I don't think they ever followed through on that suggestion, but just the idea that my name became associated with a new debate tactic was enough to warm my ego.

This article was published in The News World, a New York City daily newspaper (later called the New York City Tribune), on July 28, 1981:

Richard Sincere

School Training for Civil Defense

Perhaps no aspect of the strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union is ignored more than civil defense and emergency preparedness. Americans waste too much effort in debates which obfuscate strategic issues by statistical manipulation of throw-weights, megatonnages, and MIRV capabilities. Public and policymakers alike are blind to the reality of the strategic balance: Deterrence of nuclear war depends as much on the willingness and ability to survive such a conflict as it does on the technical capacity to fight the battle.

Soviet political and military policies do not reflect a frightened belief in the universal destruction of nuclear war. Instead, they maintain that nuclear weapons are instruments for war-fighting. In many ways, Soviet leaders view nuclear weapons as extensions of conventional war-fighting techniques; Soviet military literature categorizes war by who does the fighting, not by the weapons which they use. Most importantly, Soviet military strategy is fundamentally a survival-oriented strategy.

One result of this thinking has been the establishment of a nationwide civil defense network. The chief of Soviet civil defense is an army general, filling an office equivalent to our own secretary of the Army. The Soviets treat civil defense as a co-equal branch of the military. On the other hand, in the United States responsibility for civil defense lies buried in an obscure bureau of the Department of Commerce called the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Which country takes its self-protection more seriously?

In accord with the principle of protecting their people from the ravages of nuclear war, the Soviets have launched an extensive training program in all public schools from elementary to university levels, and as continuing education industrial plants and communities. Towns and villages celebrate “civil defense days” as holidays, with sports competitions and games geared toward teaching the citizens survival techniques. And if some Soviet citizens scoff at these methods, they will at least have some skills to draw on in an emergency.

A widely-circulated Soviet civil defense manual state: “Civil defense training in the public schools occupies an important place in preparing the people of our country for protection against weapons of mass destruction.” In contrast, the editor of the Journal of Civil Defense told me recently that “civil defense education has been badly neglected in the United States in the past few years. With no initiative from the higher levels, it apparently has fallen off to almost zero.”

This attitude seems unlikely to change. The shame of this neglect is that civil defense survival methods are so easy to teach. Generally, Soviet schools spend no more than 15-20 minutes each week on it, mostly in conjunction with sportsmanlike competition. One civil defense game involves nearly 20 million children each summer. The final match of this game, called “Summer Lightning,” is played in Leningrad as an object of intense national interest.

In the United States, inaccessibility to civil defense literature is the greatest obstacle to survival training. A good beginning for civil defense instruction in America’s public schools would be for the Department of Education to sponsor distribution of survival handbooks (such as Dr. Cresson Kearny’s “Nuclear War Survival Skills,” published in 1979) to all school libraries. Such a minimum requirement would allow individual school districts to expand civil defense education as much as they like, especially if assistance from the Department of Defense and FEMA were available.

Civil defense education will immeasurably increase the maintenance of a peaceful deterrent to nuclear war. As long as no civil defense training is available to United States citizens, our country remains a willing hostage to Soviet weapons with little hope of survival or recovery. Survival plays a major role in Soviet strategy and plays almost no role in our own. To neglect such a vital aspect of the strategic nuclear balance is to assure our own destruction.

Richard Sincere is research assistant for church and society at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. A member of the American Civil Defense Association, he also holds a degree in international affairs from Georgetown University.

Subsequent to this and other newspaper articles on civil defense, I testified on the topic before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, discussed it on many television and radio shows, and published a journal article that was reprinted in pamphlet form by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which included a foreword by actor Lorne Greene. It was a central focus of my professional life in the 1980s but faded into the background after I finished my master's degree at the LSE and the Cold War came to an end. Civil defense and nuclear weapons policy took a back seat to Africa policy.

As an added bonus, here is a 1950s-era government training (propaganda?) video about school-based civil defense education.

Despite the jokes about it, civil defense in the schools was much more than "duck and cover."

My Brush with Greatness: Edward Teller (1908-2003)

Today would have been the 106th birthday of nuclear physicist Edward Teller, who has often been called the "father of the hydrogen bomb."  Teller was also an advocate against government secrecy who probably would have relished the opportunity to engage in the debate about the NSA that has resulted from the revelations of Edward Snowden.  He was also a principal advocate for the development of what came to be known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars."

When Teller died in 2003, I wrote an article for a local Charlottesville newspaper, The Hook, which at the time had been running a series called "My Brush with Greatness."  My piece appeared as a back-of-the-book commentary piece.

For some reason, I have not previously rescued this piece for re-publication in this space, although it has been available on The Hook's archives.  (Sadly, The Hook ceased publication late last year, so how long and how available its archives will be remains an open question. The photo of Teller and me, reproduced below, that accompanied the article is already missing from the paper's web site.)

This article appeared in the print edition of The Hook on September 18, 2003.

Edward Teller: My brush with greatness

While the entertainment world reels from the loss of Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash, and John Ritter, the world stage will long remember the controversial cold warrior bomb-builder Edward Teller, whose September 9 death got lost in the shuffle. One local remembers the man who built the horrifying "super." –editor

RICHARD SINCERE

It would be a lie for me to say that Edward Teller and I were friends. It would even be a stretch to call us acquaintances, although we were colleagues on one side of a vital public debate at the height of the Cold War.

Edward Teller and Rick Sincere, c. 1983

The best I can say is that Edward Teller and I crossed paths on about a dozen occasions in the 1980s, participating in conferences together, and engaging in short but substantive conversations on nuclear weapons policy, U.S.-Soviet relations, and international politics.

Teller, who died on September 9 at his home in California at the age of 95, was known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb." He participated in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb, and for many years was head of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which pursued fundamental research in nuclear physics and applied sciences.

My most memorable encounter with Teller was not the first one, in 1981. Rather, it was one of the last meetings we had, on November 16, 1988, at the Washington Hilton Hotel in the nation's capital.

On that occasion, Edward Teller, the American "father of the hydrogen bomb," met for the first time Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet "father of the hydrogen bomb." Sakharov, who as a dissident and human rights activist was forced by the Soviet regime to live in internal exile for many years, was in Washington on his first trip to the United States. (This was in the era of glasnost and perestroika-­ openness and reform-­ ushered in by former Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev.)

The meeting between the two famous physicists was arranged by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a think-tank for which I worked at the time. On that night, Teller was to receive the Shelby Cullom Davis Award for "integrity and courage in public life" at a dinner attended by some 750 people in government, business, the academy, and journalism. A few days before the dinner, we learned that Sakharov would be in town and that he had a desire to meet Teller.

As the crowd mingled at the cocktail reception several floors below, the president of the Center, Ernest Lefever, and I waited anxiously for Teller and Sakharov to arrive. Teller came first, accompanied by the massive walking stick he always carried with him. The three of us made some small talk when there was a knock at the door: Sakharov, accompanied by a Russian-English interpreter.

Andrei Sakharov and Edward Teller

They greeted each other like old friends, although the two had never met before. They sat together on a sofa and chatted amiably about the issues that motivated them: international stability, human rights, and, above all, nuclear physics. They spoke in soft tones, and we left them alone. What passed between them that night, in private, was known only to Teller and Sakharov.

Teller's career was a storied one, and he earned both scorn and accolades in his long life. Never one to mince words, he criticized government officials regardless of political party or ideology when he thought they were on the wrong path. He led a lonely but articulate crusade against U.S. government secrecy, arguing that it was pointless to classify, for example, reports on nuclear weapons research, because the Soviets were able to obtain these reports by stealth and espionage anyway.

The only people left in the dark were American voters, who were then unable to make sensible, fully informed decisions about public policy.

This approach was consonant with Teller's lifelong trust in democracy. In 1950 he wrote: "It is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives."

Teller earned the enmity of "peaceniks," appeasers, nuclear freezers, left-wing ideologues, and Communist fellow travelers. In the 1980s, he was hounded by operatives of Lyndon LaRouche's political cult, who heckled him at public speaking events and tried to embarrass him for his support of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the anti-missile project known derisively as "Star Wars."

It was said that the only human casualty of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 was Edward Teller: So exhausted by traveling around the country, speaking out calmly against the Chicken Littles who declared Three Mile Island a disaster, Teller suffered a heart attack and was incapacitated for several weeks.

Teller, of course, had his admirers, too-­ not least among them those who felt that a strong defense posture was necessary in the face of Soviet expansionism, and especially those who felt that true defensive strategies (including civil defense programs and anti-missile programs like SDI) were morally, strategically, and politically imperative.

On that November night in 1988, President Ronald Reagan said that Teller was "a sterling example of what scientific knowledge, enlightened by moral sense and a dedication to the principles of freedom and justice, can do to help all mankind." The President added that Teller was "one of the giants of American science, and one of the bulwarks of American freedom."

Richard Sincere is co-editor of Promise or Peril: The Strategic Defense Initiative, and author of Civil Defense: A Moral, Political, and Strategic Approach, both published in 1986 by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, as well as of other books.

It wasn't until I decided to write this blog post that I discovered how Edward Teller shared a birthday with my own father and also with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Same day, different years in all three cases, however.)

From the Archives: 'Act Now to Save Lives After a Nuclear War'

Thirty years ago tonight, ABC-TV broadcast The Day After, a movie about the aftermath of nuclear war set in the American heartland. Directed by Nicholas Meyer, the film featured John Cullum, Steve Guttenberg, Wayne Knight, John Lithgow, Amy Madigan, Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, and other familiar actors.

Henry Kissinger in 2006

That Sunday night, I was in the audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for a special screening of The Day After that was followed by a live post-broadcast discussion about the movie, hosted by Ted Koppel and featuring George P. Shultz, Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State at the time, as well as National Review founder William F. Buckley, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, astronomer Carl Sagan, and Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel.

I was seated in the auditorium next to a traditionalist Catholic who, when called upon to present a question by Koppel, asked the puzzled policymakers on stage whether nuclear war would be a fulfillment of the prophecies made by the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal, during the First World War. As I recall, none of the panelists made an attempt to reply to his question; I'm sure only Buckley actually understood it. I slunk in my chair, aware that the TV cameras were aimed in my direction at that moment.

Several days prior to the broadcast, because of my affiliation with the American Civil Defense Association (TACDA), I had seen a preview screening of The Day After, so I knew what to expect. The movie had been hyped in the weeks preceding its on-air debut, so I expected many people would be watching. (It turns out to have been seen by as many as 100 million home viewers, a record for a made-for-TV movie.)

At the time of the broadcast, USA Today invited me to submit an opinion piece about The Day After, which appeared a week later with the dateline of St. Louis, Missouri. (I was actually in Washington, D.C., when I submitted the draft but was about to leave St. Louis the morning the article was published, having attended a conference there on war and peace and nuclear weapons policy. The editor told me he did not like too many datelines from Washington on the same page, so it looked like I wrote from St. Louis.)

Here is "Act now to save lives after a nuclear war," which was published on Monday, November 28, 1983 -- almost 30 years ago -- in USA Today.  This is the first time the article has been made available on the Internet.

- - -

ST. LOUIS, Mo. – During the opening sequence of the ABC-TV movie, The Day After, the camera pans through scenes of Kansas City and its surrounding countryside. Then we see a plaque reading: “Be Prepared.”

To thinking and concerned citizens, that was the clear message of this film. The threat of nuclear war requires us not only to hope and work to avert war, but to prepare for the failure of nuclear deterrence and the consequences of nuclear devastation.

It is significant that, despite the attempts of some groups to persuade the public that no medical help would be available after a nuclear war, a hospital is still standing in The Day After – as would likely happen in real life.

Also, as in real life, the fictional doctors and nurses put forth better than their best efforts to treat an enormous number of patients – not only victims from near the hospital, but refugees from hundreds of miles away who come looking for help.

Dr. Oakes, played by Jason Robards, responds to the question, “What will we do with all those people outside?: by saying: “We're going to let them in … as many as we can.”

Rick Sincere with Helen Caldicott on CNN's 'Crossfire', 1983

The doctor's dedication, which he carries to his death, stands in stark contrast to the bleak attitude of doctors such as Helen Caldicott of Physicians for Social Responsibility, who argue against preparing ourselves for the horrid consequences of a nuclear war.

Towards the end of the movie, one character says: “We knew the score. We knew all about bombs. We knew all about fallout. We knew this could happen for 40 years. Nobody was interested.”

Those of us committed to increased civil defense preparations indeed “know the score.”

All the people you saw in the film who survived the initial blast did not have to suffer and die before the ened of the story. Simple preparations, elementary education about the effects of nuclear weapons, and caution could easily have prevented the sickness and death

People should be taught that they should not walk around in the fallout, but stay indoors. They should know that simple, everyday hygiene practices can prevent much of the sickness, both from radiation and germs, that would occur after a nuclear attack.

Above all, people should not be outdoors when an attack occurs, and they should not look at the blast or run towards it, like so many characters in The Day After seemed to do.

Civil defense is a moral obligation – it saves lives and alleviates suffering. Without it, all Americans are left vulnerable to deadly attack, if by accident or design nuclear war should occur. The Swiss have a slogan: “Better civil defense without nuclear war than nuclear war without civil defense.”

Richard E. Sincere Jr. is a member of the board of directors of the American Civil Defense Association.

Clean Talk about Dirty Bombs

When the concept of "dirty bombs" first came to public consciousness in the months following the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, I reached back in my memory to my years as an activist advocating civil defense preparations against nuclear attack in the 1980s and realized that a "dirty bomb" posed little or no threat.  (For several years, I was on the board of directors and a vice president of the American Civil Defense Association as well as a contributing editor to the Journal of Civil Defense.  I traveled around the country lecturing about civil defense policy and debating people who disagreed with me.)

At the time, I shared my opinion with friends in conversation but felt no need to write about it, since the idea of an explosive device used to disperse nuclear material seemed so absurd.

People took it seriously, however, because (sadly) most Americans' "knowledge" of nuclear radiation is based on B-movies of the 1950s and later fright propaganda like The China Syndrome.

I mention this because I just came across an excellent piece on this topic from STRATFOR, a respected provider of intelligence and strategic information based in Austin, Texas.  (Coincidentally, the Austin American-Statesman was the first newspaper to publish my 1996 article headlined "Not All Bombs Are Planted by Terrorists.")  STRATFOR's analysts believe, as I do, that the dirty bomb causes more fear than it should, that is more "hype" than reality.

In its analysis, titled "Dirty Bombs Revisited: Combating the Hype," STRATFOR's analysts write:

In spite of the fact that dirty bombs have been discussed widely in the press for many years now — especially since the highly publicized arrest of Jose Padilla in May 2002 — much misinformation and disinformation continues to circulate regarding dirty bombs. The misinformation stems from long-held misconceptions and ignorance, while the disinformation comes from scaremongers hyping the threat for financial or political reasons. Frankly, many people have made a lot of money by promoting fear since 9/11.

Just last week, we read a newspaper article in which a purported expert interviewed by the reporter discussed how a dirty bomb would “immediately cause hundreds or even thousands of deaths.” This is simply not true. A number of radiological accidents have demonstrated that a dirty bomb will not cause this type of death toll. Indeed, the panic generated by a dirty bomb attack could very well result in more immediate deaths than the detonation of the device itself. Unfortunately, media stories hyping the threat of these devices may foster such panic, thus increasing the death toll.

I might add, such panic could be especially troublesome in the absence of a good disaster-preparedness plan.

The STRATFOR analysis continues:

By its very nature, the RDD [radiological dispersal device] is contradictory. Maximizing the harmful effects of radiation involves maximizing the exposure of the victims to the highest possible concentration of a radioisotope. When dispersing the radioisotope, by definition and design the RDD dilutes the concentration of the radiation source, spreading smaller amounts of radiation over a larger area. Additionally, the use of an explosion to disperse the radioisotope alerts the intended victims, who can then evacuate the affected area and be decontaminated. These factors make it very difficult for an attacker to administer a deadly dose of radiation via a dirty bomb.

It is important to note that a dirty bomb is not a nuclear device, and no nuclear reaction occurs. A dirty bomb will not produce an effect like the nuclear devices dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. A dirty bomb is quite simply an RDD that uses explosives as the means to disperse a radioactive isotope, and the only blast effect will be from the explosives used to disperse the radioisotope. In a dirty bomb attack, radioactive material not only is dispersed, but the dispersal is accomplished in an obvious manner, and the explosion immediately alerts the victims and authorities that an attack has taken place. The attackers hope that notice of their attack will cause mass panic — in other words, the RDD is a weapon of fear and terror.

In a nice turn of phrase, STRATFOR says that a so-called "dirty bomb" is not a weapon of mass destruction (WMB) so much as it is a "weapon of disruption." Disruption is damaging in itself, of course, but it is not as damaging as the popular imagination has made it out to be.

I have to agree with STRATFOR's concluding paragraph:

As noted above, we believe it is possible that the panic caused by a dirty bomb attack could well kill more people than the device itself. People who understand the capabilities and limitations of dirty bombs are less likely to panic than those who do not, which is the reason for this analysis. Another important way to help avoid panic is to carefully think about such an incident in advance and to put in place a carefully crafted contingency plan for your family and business. Contingency plans are especially important for those who work in proximity to a potential dirty bomb target. But they are useful in any disaster, whether natural or man-made, and something that should be practiced by all families and businesses. Such knowledge and planning provide people with the ability to conduct an orderly and methodical evacuation of the affected area. This allows them to minimize their exposure to radioactivity while also minimizing their risk of injury or death due to mass hysteria. For while a dirty bomb attack could well be messy and disruptive, it does not have to be deadly.

I don't often make suggestions for "further reading," but this is an issue that, as STRATFOR says, requires education and solid information.

Let me first recognize a piece I wrote originally as congressional testimony that was later published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (with a foreword by Lorne Greene) as Civil Defense:  A Moral, Political, and Strategic Approach.

I would also like to recommend a book (which I reviewed here) by George Mason University physicist Robert Ehrlich called Waging Nuclear Peace:  The Technology and Politics of Nuclear Weapons.

Given the sorts of thinking that lead to misconceptions about "dirty bombs" and other weapons of less-than-mass-destruction, it might be instructive to read The Apocalyptic Premise: Nuclear Arms Debated, edited by E. Stephen Hunt and the late Ernest W. Lefever.

Although all these books were written in the 1980s, they have unusual relevance today, not only because of the insights they might bring to bear on the possible use by terrorists of "dirty bombs," but also because of current debates about the arms treaty recently negotiated between Russia and the United States, and calls by European nations for the United States to remove tactical missiles from their territory, calls that have a remarkable similarity -- mimicry? -- to the nuclear freeze movement of more than 25 years ago.

Is it any wonder that Hollywood is remaking that iconic movie of the 1980s, Red Dawn?

Note:  Excerpts of the STRATFOR report are reprinted with permission of STRATFOR.