L.A. dry run shows urban nuke attack 'a survivable event'

[bemildred]

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Al-Qaeda played no part in planning the July 28 attack. The conspirators were the leaders of a dozen state, local and federal agencies who were taking part in a simulated L.A. County security exercise code-named Operation Golden Phoenix. Their mission: to assure that if a terrorist does detonate a nuke in Los Angeles, first responders will be prepared to wade into the devastation and rescue survivors suffering from traumatic injuries, radiation sickness, shock and flash-blindness.

"This is a survivable event," says Brendan Applegate, of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Asymmetric Warfare, who helped design and carry out the exercise. "L.A. isn't going to fall into the ocean and be gone forever. It will be a really bad day, but we need everyone to show up to work and save lives."

Operation Golden Phoenix offers a rare public glimpse of the government's behind-the-scenes effort to bolster national preparedness. Few places take the threat more seriously than Los Angeles and post-9/11 New York.

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For many people, nuclear weapons conjure up Cold War bomb shelters, civil defense drills and mutually assured destruction. That threat faded in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, says Irwin Redlener, of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness. The new nuclear threat, he says, is a terrorist blowing up an improvised bomb in a U.S. city.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-12-15-nuclear-fallout-test_N.htm?csp=34news

[Newest Reality]

1. Keep ramping-up the Carnival of Terror!

The DHS needs more lubrication so that it can insert our way of life into the ominous aura of Fusion Centers.

Prepare to be fused.

[bemildred]

2. I took it as an admission that our "security" people cannot in fact protect us much.

But whatever, I knew that, it's just interesting when the "News" media unintentionally admit it.

[Taverner]

3. It's budget time. They need to justify their existence

Or at least more of it

[Sherman A1]

9. Bingo

We have a winner

[obxhead]

self delete, dupe.

really weird dupe bug. double post, first post has no post # while second does.

[obxhead]

4. This country and it's people could survive multiple nuclear attacks

in multiple cities. It would be traumatic. It would be devastating. It would end so much for so many.

The worst of the damage would be the end of the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees though.

They could hit us a lot harder without blowing up a single building though. Likely avoiding capture as well.

[Newsjock]

7. Just one will be sufficient

The fabric of our nation has become so frail that exploding a tiny, tiny suitcase nuke at a strip mall in rural Arkansas would be sufficient to "end the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees." If that were to happen, I would seriously consider whether life was still worth living, knowing the hell that would follow.

[Webster Green]

5. Wrong!

Bullshit!

They can't respond to anything. 9/11, Katrina, the BP gusher.....all massive cluster-fucks.

The government is lying to us again. That's what they do best.

[msongs]

6. tobacco kills 400.000 Americans EVERY YEAR nt

[saras]

8. All it takes...

"The worst of the damage would be the end of the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees though."

It doesn't take a nuke to do that. All it takes is a flashing LED in a garbage can.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

10. interesting because even if it's in its normal state it's barely "survivable. n/t