Yesterday’s NYT op-ed by Secretary William Perry, Ash Cater, and Michael May at first seemed rather boring to me. What should the government do to prepare for the day after a nuclear terrorist attack? All I really picked up was the tone of, “something must be done.”

Good thing I read their full report, because there are a number of interesting and curious points in there worth noting in more detail. Below are few of those which caught my attention.

The report recommends that more efforts should be made to integrate “modern media” (text messages to cell phones, blackberries, etc) into the federal response. This recommendation brings to mind some very interesting research being done at MIT on using cell phone activity to track areas where people are concentrated. If there are ways to track people during a Madonna concert, then I can only imagine how such information would be useful in identifying concentrations of people in danger areas or even sending targeted instructions based on location.

The authors also argue that post-attack response must accommodate for a worst case scenario – that there are more attacks coming. Such planning is important for two reasons: first a multi city attack is just as likely as a single attack (if terrorists can get one bomb, maybe it is not much harder to get two or four) and second, it is likely that people in other cities will expect and fear additional attacks, causing chaos if there is no plan to manage their reactions. This second point is important because it suggests that from the point of view of response, we don’t need to argue about the exact likelihood of one bomb vs. many; it is better to plan for many.

Perhaps the most interesting recommendation in the report is for a fallout shelter program. (No, this is a serious shelter comment, for once.)

SHORT-TERM SHELTERING VERSUS PROMPT EVACUATION. Fallout
shelters deserve a comeback. Radioactivity, and in particular radioactive fallout, poses a problem peculiar to nuclear terrorism. For most people in the city struck, their best bet to avoid serious radiation exposure would be to shelter below ground for three or so days until radiation levels had subsided and only then to evacuate the area.

[snip]

In view of these facts, a new type of fallout shelter program – very different and much more practical than the 1950s-style civil defense program – should be promoted by the federal government as a cheap and effective way to minimize the radiation exposure of most people downwind of a nuclear terrorist attack. The Cold War “civil defense” shelter program was mocked because it could not offer realistic protection against an attack of thousands of warheads from the Soviet Union. But against one or a few terrorist nuclear weapons, sheltering in place is the best way for most people to protect themselves.

The rate at which people are exposed to radiation (the dose rate) subsides in inverse proportion to the time after the blast. People outside the immediate downwind hot zone will receive a smaller dose of radiation if they shelter themselves for a period of three days or so (the recommended sheltering period can be determined and communicated by federal authorities at the time). If they try to leave on the first day when the radiation is strongest, they will receive a larger dose because they will be exposed to intense radiation as they walk or wait in traffic on clogged roads to evacuate. Shelters that will only be occupied for a few days do not need to be equipped with large stocks of food, water, and other supplies.

I am not exactly clear whether the report is recommending that the federal government build fallout shelters in key locations or encourage citizens to build their own.

Or perhaps, should some existing structures be amended to also serve as temporary shelters? I am sure I am not the only one who has only half-jokingly noted that the Woodley Park metro is awfully deep and cave-like.