For those who love life in the Mountains.
threat assessment for our area.
What are the Greatest Threats in our Region?
I thought I would start off a topic that might interest everyone in the region. What are the greatest threats in our area? They can be naturally occurring, or man made. How likely is it to have a chemical attack in our area? Is it more likely to have a biological attack or an epidemic occur? List them in order of greatest threat to lowest threat, and give reasons for why you think so. I think this will be fun and enlightening. My purpose behind this is to distinguish our biggest threats in our region so we can more adequately prepare.
Top Natural Threats
Tornadoes
Flooding
Fires (Resulting from drought)
Our particular region has a problem with a lot of natural threats from tornadoes. A secondary threat, a result of hurricanes, is flooding.
A few years of drought in our area and it may cause fires. I am just trying to get the thread started and see where everyone takes it. I think it will be educational.
Top Man Made Threats
1) Nuclear
2) Embargo (For lack of a better term for cutting off our imports)
3) Biological (Flu or otherwise)
4) Mainland attack via weapons other than mentioned above.
5) Chemical
Let me get a little more specific here. I am speaking about man made threats if we at war on the home front or even from terrorists. Do I think we are at a great risk for a nuclear attack? No. http://www.insc.anl.gov/pwrmaps/map/north_america.php
there are nuclear plants to the West in our region. We have quite a few. Needless to say, just one of these blowing up is going to cause an area of fallout big enough to cover an entire state. Now, I am not against having these plants, and I am not saying more than one will blow up. However, in these times they are targets.
Then there is embargo on America. This is quite possible from a variety of sources that could suffocate our ability to fight back. Since most of our food is imported, and almost all of our oil is, this could be a real problem. There are probably things I am not even thinking of that this could include.
Next is Biological. Now, this can be man made or natural, depending on how you look at it. I can see the release of a disease to cause an artificial epidemic. The way I can see it released is mostly airborne.
I say chemical is last. Perhaps we could have attacks in more urban areas that are chemical, but most of us live in more rural and country areas. It would not be effective to attack those areas with Chemicals. I could see this being more likely in a smaller place like one building - say an airport. Why even list it then? Chemical spills. I 40 is a major corridor form industrial chemicals and who knows what else. There has been more than one story of a train derailing, trucking accident and chemicals leaking out. Then the entire area has to be evacuated. Several times this has been chlorine. Even then, there is not a big threat there.
Anyone have any ideas? Tourists don't count.
I thought I would start off a topic that might interest everyone in the region. What are the greatest threats in our area? They can be naturally occurring, or man made. How likely is it to have a chemical attack in our area? Is it more likely to have a biological attack or an epidemic occur? List them in order of greatest threat to lowest threat, and give reasons for why you think so. I think this will be fun and enlightening. My purpose behind this is to distinguish our biggest threats in our region so we can more adequately prepare.
Top Natural Threats
Tornadoes
Flooding
Fires (Resulting from drought)
Our particular region has a problem with a lot of natural threats from tornadoes. A secondary threat, a result of hurricanes, is flooding.
A few years of drought in our area and it may cause fires. I am just trying to get the thread started and see where everyone takes it. I think it will be educational.
Top Man Made Threats
1) Nuclear
2) Embargo (For lack of a better term for cutting off our imports)
3) Biological (Flu or otherwise)
4) Mainland attack via weapons other than mentioned above.
5) Chemical
Let me get a little more specific here. I am speaking about man made threats if we at war on the home front or even from terrorists. Do I think we are at a great risk for a nuclear attack? No. http://www.insc.anl.gov/pwrmaps/map/north_america.php
there are nuclear plants to the West in our region. We have quite a few. Needless to say, just one of these blowing up is going to cause an area of fallout big enough to cover an entire state. Now, I am not against having these plants, and I am not saying more than one will blow up. However, in these times they are targets.
Then there is embargo on America. This is quite possible from a variety of sources that could suffocate our ability to fight back. Since most of our food is imported, and almost all of our oil is, this could be a real problem. There are probably things I am not even thinking of that this could include.
Next is Biological. Now, this can be man made or natural, depending on how you look at it. I can see the release of a disease to cause an artificial epidemic. The way I can see it released is mostly airborne.
I say chemical is last. Perhaps we could have attacks in more urban areas that are chemical, but most of us live in more rural and country areas. It would not be effective to attack those areas with Chemicals. I could see this being more likely in a smaller place like one building - say an airport. Why even list it then? Chemical spills. I 40 is a major corridor form industrial chemicals and who knows what else. There has been more than one story of a train derailing, trucking accident and chemicals leaking out. Then the entire area has to be evacuated. Several times this has been chlorine. Even then, there is not a big threat there.
Anyone have any ideas? Tourists don't count.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by James Lowe on -
Glenn, thanks for the info and what is happening. It looks like we need to prepare for it all. Gonna be at Strange Brew Friday and we can exchange ideas then.
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Permalink Reply by Ning The Merciless on -
I think you've covered it. I have some comments on each threat. For example yes we have an entire hardwood forest drying out catastrophically, AND we have lots of dead dry pine killed by pine beetles, a lightning strike or arson (such as we had a few years ago up in Grassy Forks that burn about 3000 acres) could cause a fire that would be hot enough to fuse topsoil and move faster than a man could run. I'd say forest fire is a big issue. Attack on a nuke facility and bio/chemical attack are less likely but there is an insidious element to each of these and that is the manner in which industry does business currently. As the economy tanks various cost cutting measure will progressively put us at risk of accidents. For example the coal waste release we underwent recently has been estimated to be five time larger and more dangerous than the Exxon Valdez disaster. An accident at Brown's Ferry could potentially be catastrophic. Add to that the animal and crop diseases that arise merely from poor farming practice and industrial agriculture at large and you will understand that our biggest threats aren't from "enemies" as such. Finally tourism brings much needed cash into the region but it also brings in diseases from great distances and many parts of the world. We can't assume that some distant plague won't show up here. Personally I'll be very interested to hear what we can do to protect ourselves, because so far my conclusion is "not much." On the other hand there is probably plenty we can do to mitigate the disaster once it happens.
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