What's Your Story?

Ah, W's redemptive story is what won the 2004 election. Who knew? Poor little rich boy from Midland, TX got mixed up with dope and booze. Then, he married a good woman and found the Lord. Praise Jesus! If this is (fair & balanced) hypocrisy, so be it.

[x The Chronicle of Higher Education]
Redemption and American Politics
By DAN P. McADAMS

Democrats woke up November 3 to see that they no longer lived in the America they had always imagined. They hoped a well-informed and self-interested citizenry would oust an administration whose tax reform favors mainly the rich, whose foreign policy has cost friends and made enemies abroad, and whose faith-based approach to leadership has exalted conservative ideology over rational discourse and scientific evidence. But President Bush's decisive victory in the popular vote combined with the sea of red spilling across the Tuesday-night electoral map suggests that blue-state Democrats are now out of touch with much of the rest of the country.

What explains this disconnect? Already pundits and pollsters have suggested many different possibilities -- from religiosity to gay marriage to the fear of Osama bin Laden. From my standpoint, however, the key factor is narrative. Put simply, the Republicans are better storytellers.

More precisely, the Republican Party has groomed candidates and honed messages that resonate deeply with a story of life that Americans hold dear. It is the narrative of redemption -- a story about an innocent protagonist in a dangerous world who sticks to simple principles and overcomes suffering and hardship in the end. This is a story that many productive and caring American adults -- Democrats, Republicans, and Independents -- love to tell about their own lives. Republicans, however, have found ways of talking about public life and political issues that reinforce this story. And to the extent that politics is personal, many Americans may vote their story, rather than their pocketbook.

As a research psychologist, I study how people tell stories about their own lives. My students and I collect these stories and analyze them as if they were works of literary fiction. Indeed, they are fiction, to a certain extent. People selectively remember the past and imagine their own futures to produce coherent narratives of the self that will provide their lives with some sense of unity and purpose. Stories give us our identities.

In our research, we focus on the life stories told by those adults who score very high on both objective and self-reported psychological measures of social responsibility and productivity. We want to understand especially well-adjusted people who are making the most positive contributions to their work, families, and society at large. Be they liberal or conservative, these highly productive and caring American adults tend to describe their own lives as variations on a general script that we call the redemptive self.

The story of the redemptive self in American life has two key themes. The first is the belief that as a young child, I was fortunate, blessed, or advantaged in some manner, even as others around me experienced suffering and pain. I am the innocent protagonist, chosen for a special, manifest destiny. As I journey forth in a dangerous world, I hold to simple truths, basic values of goodness and decency.

Research shows that highly productive and caring American adults, especially in their midlife years, are much more likely than other people to remember their past in this way. They are also more likely to claim that they have always operated according to deep personal values that are clear and true. While their values may not be those of George W. Bush, they tell stories about their lives that, like the president's own, underscore the power of moral clarity.

Visiting the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans "have an immensely high opinion of themselves and are not far from believing that they form a species apart from the rest of the human race." Tocqueville realized that the Americans' sense of special destiny lay partly in their celebration of the individual self. "One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person," proclaimed Walt Whitman. And, "Is not a man better than a town?" asked Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Self-Reliance. (The fact that a town is made up of individual men -- and women -- seems strangely absent from Emerson's thinking.) Not only are we the chosen people, Emerson suggested, but each individual man (or woman) is chosen for a special destiny. That individual destiny is inscribed within an inner self that is always true and good. In Emerson's uniquely American brand of romantic individualism, the good and productive life is the heroic actualization of the inner self.

Flash forward 150 years or so. In interviews, highly productive and caring American adults tend to begin the stories of their own lives in the same way. They speak the language of chosen-ness and manifest destiny, albeit in contemporary and personal ways. To a significantly greater extent than adults who score lower on measures of care and productivity, they will identify a specific incident from childhood as symbolic of their enhanced status, as if to suggest that they have known they were special, that they were chosen, for a very long time.

At the same time, productive and caring American adults are especially likely to say that they held an early awareness that the world is not fair and that many other people suffer greatly. The juxtaposition of inner blessing and hardship in the outside world sets up a moral contrast. I need to use my goodness to make the world a better place. I need to use my gift in a positive way. The sense of individual mission that runs through the redemptive self is often linked to life principles consolidated in the teenage years, be the formative influences Ayn Rand, Maya Angelou, Tuesdays With Morrie, or Jesus. (While many cringed, Bush's fans ate it up when he identified Jesus Christ as his "favorite political philosopher" in a 2000 debate with Al Gore.)

The protagonists in these stories are not the tormented souls or ironic drifters celebrated by European existentialist writers and postmodern literary critics. They don't wake up in the middle of the night wondering what the meaning of life is. They know what is right, more or less, and they strive to put their life principles into action. There is a decided lack of ambivalence about moral and ethical values in the life stories of highly productive and caring American adults, be they evangelical Christians or card-carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union. Instead, we witness clear-eyed, no-nonsense protagonists who have too many things to do and too little time to waste on a searching re-examination of what is good and true, who is God, and what they believe in their hearts to be right.

From Benjamin Franklin to Michael Jordan, prototypical American heroes and heroines are more pragmatic than reflective. They are too restless for prolonged philosophical debate. They brush aside nagging doubts, ignore complexities. They attach themselves to a few simple principles in life and then they move forward with vigor and confidence.

The second major theme in the story of the redemptive self is overcoming hardships and adversity. Especially caring and productive American adults often tell stories about their lives in which emotionally negative events lead directly to reward. These stories take many different forms. Stories of atonement describe a religious move from sin to salvation. Stories of upward social mobility depict the socioeconomic move from rags to respectability and riches. Stories of recovery tell how sick or addicted protagonists regained their health or sobriety. Stories of liberation chart the move from feeling enslaved to feeling free. From Franklin to Oprah, from Horatio Alger to 12-step programs, American folklore and culture have provided a treasure trove of redemptive narratives from which we all (unconsciously) borrow in fashioning the stories of our own lives.

The burgeoning popular literature on self-help offers a cornucopia of redemption tales, as do television talk shows, People magazine, and Hollywood. Politicians often celebrate their own redemptive journeys: Ronald Reagan rose from a dysfunctional family; Bill Clinton (nicknamed "the Comeback Kid") recovered from childhood poverty (as well as many self-inflicted wounds); George W. Bush turned his life around in his 40s, after years of drifting and drinking; John Edwards started out "the son of a mill worker," but he rose from there. Surveying American novels and short stories from recent years, the New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote, "There is no public narrative more potent today -- or throughout American history -- than the one about redemption."

George W. Bush's personal story follows closely the script of the redemptive self. Born with a special blessing, he came close to squandering it all before he gave up alcohol, found the Lord, and rededicated his life to public service. It is a powerful recovery narrative, starring the kind of guileless protagonist that many Americans love.

In this kind of story, moral clarity trumps worldly sophistication (and debating skills). His detractors may call him stupid, simple-minded, and stubborn. But many voters see Bush as sincere and well meaning. They like that he does not seem to obsess over the complexities of the world. They find assurance in his commitment to simple principles. And even those who are not born-again Christians may admire his recovery story. We are all sinners, after all. Yet in the eyes of many people, Bush really seems to have redeemed his sinful past. For the past 10 years or so, he has kept his eyes on the prize. He has remained steadfast, unwavering. He has lived out a destiny to which he feels he has been called.

More important than the president's own story, however, is the way in which optimistic (if sometimes simplistic) Republican messages about "values," faith-based initiatives, individual freedom and responsibility, and the "ownership society" reinforce a grand narrative about a good and innocent protagonist who takes charge of his own life, stays focused through adversity, and ultimately triumphs in the end.

The heroes in this story are the small-business owners, the entrepreneurs, the soldiers, the preachers, and the un-self-conscious individualists who, like Emerson, trust the good and simple "man" over the ambiguous and complex "town." The enemies are ambiguous and complex collectives of various kinds -- "big government," for example, bureaucracies, the United Nations, and programs and policies that potentially compromise the innocent strivings of the good inner self.

It does not matter much that Republicans have actually grown the government (to say nothing of the deficit) rather than shrunk it, that they also advocate certain kinds of government programs and policies. It does not matter because politics is as much about stories as it is about anything else. Republicans are masters at simplifying the world into upbeat narratives about good protagonists who will find redemption in the end. By reducing taxes, empowering faith, and assuring national security, they promise to clear away the many obstacles and complexities that clutter up the world and stand in the path of the redemptive hero's quest.

The attacks of September 11 and the "war on terrorism," furthermore, play perfectly into the story of the redemptive self. Terrorism and war show us that the world is a dangerous, unredeemed place. In times of crisis, the good American protagonist must call upon the deepest reservoir of unwavering conviction and hope.

A dangerous world is indeed the kind of world that the good and strong hero of the redemptive self seems unconsciously to expect. Under conditions of adversity, he will fight the good fight. He will keep the faith. In the end, his suffering will give way to redemption. And along the way, he may even help to redeem others.

Dan P. McAdams is a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University and author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Count Me In, Kinkster!

I read the following in the Kinkster's Web site.

One of the great political stories in generations is about to unfold, as Richard (Kinky) Friedman, humorist, performer, mystery writer and Texas Monthly columnist, threatens to run for the governorship of the state of Texas in 2006. Friedman certainly would bring a whole new ballgame into Austin 's capitol building, and he would do so as an Independent candidate and political amateur.

"The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark. Career politicians are ribbon cutters. They see the governor's office as a job; I see it as an opportunity to make that Lone Star shine again.”

“I'm an Independent, which is the party of George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett.”

As Governor, Kinky, or “the Kinkster”, would:

• Legalize casino gambling to fund education
  
• Abolish political correctness “We didn't get to be the Lone Star state by being politically correct”
  
• Take a good look at death row. “We need to make sure that we're not putting innocent people to death, which I believe we are”
  
• Outlaw the de-clawing of cats
  
• Bring young people into his administration. “Young people are less corrupt. They are the future of Texas ; it's theirs to win or lose.”

"I'm a Jew, I'll hire good people."

“If elected, I would ask Willie Nelson to be the head of the Texas Rangers and Laura Bush to take charge of education in the state. I'd ask my Palestinian hairdresser, Farouk Shami, to be Texas ' ambassador to Israel . We've worked together to create Farouk & Friedman olive oil. The oil comes from the Holy land and all of the profits go to benefit Israeli and Palestinian children.”

One thing is for sure: this is not going to be politics as usual and Kinky's campaign, or anti-campaign, is not expecting to have a massive war chest from which to buy the Governor's office. Rather, “the coin of the spirit” will sweep Kinky into the Governor's office.

Next, I signed up as a volunteer for the Kinkster for Governor 2006 campaign. If this is (fair & balanced) preposterousness, so be it.

[x Texas Monthly]
Keep Gomorrah Weird
by Richard (Kinky) Friedman

The rest of Texas vilifies Austin as a breeding ground for long-haired hell-raisers. To me, it’s an open-minded, open-hearted, magical little town—and always will be.

IN THE FIFTIES I MOVED from Houston to Austin, which didn’t seem like that much of a cataclysmic cultural leap at the time. Compared with Houston, Austin was a sleepy, beautiful little town in which I went to high school and formed my first band, the Three Rejects. It would take another decade or two for Austin to become fully vilified by the rest of Texas as the long-haired, hippie, pot-smoking, hell-raising Gomorrah of the Western world. I never felt this way about Austin. All I knew was that the music was great, the drugs were cheap, and the love was free.

When I enrolled at the University of Texas, Willie Nelson was still a struggling songwriter and a pig farmer in Nashville and the Armadillo World Headquarters was just a gleam in Eddie Wilson’s eye. In college I distinguished myself by managing my friend Ken Jacobs’s nearly successful campaign for head cheerleader, in which our slogan was “I can jump high.” I also formed my second band, King Arthur and the Carrots. I met folksingers, poets, political radicals, and women who loved other women. None of these life choices were in mainstream fashion, of course. (Back then I never could have used one of the slogans for my white-hot gubernatorial campaign: “No lesbian left behind.”)

In my bright college days we pretty much took for granted that Austin was far more progressive than the outlying provinces. Looking back, I’m not so sure that was entirely true. In the early sixties there was a place called the Plantation Restaurant at the corner of the Drag and what was then Nineteenth Street. It was open 24 hours, many of which were spent by me and my friends drinking endless cups of blue coffee and solving the problems of the world as we knew it—and I think that, at times, we very possibly knew the world better then than we know it now. One thing that didn’t really seem to register at the ol’ Plantation, however, was that, among the bikers, fraternity boys, and square-dance clubs, there were no black patrons. It took me awhile, but as a card-carrying member of Students for a Democratic Society, I finally lamped upon this inequity. With my fellow SDSers, we picketed night after night, at last forcing the restaurant to change its policies. Today the Plantation, which I both loved and protested against, is gone, and the street where it used to be is no longer known as Nineteenth Street. It is now called Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. In a world of shopping malls and glass towers, that, my friends, is real progress.

After graduation, I left Austin for three years to work for the Peace Corps in the jungles of Borneo. By the time I returned there was an almost palpable new spirit in the air, what Jack London might have called the “smoke of life.” Not that Austin wasn’t an exciting place before I left, but now it really seemed to rock. I blame this transformation mostly on Willie. He likes to say that he just “found a parade and jumped in front of it.” The truth is that when Willie began playing the Armadillo in the early seventies, the union was finally consummated between the long-haired, dope-smoking hippie and the cowboy, giving birth almost simultaneously to the cosmic cowboy and the “outlaw” movement and giving God-fearing folks who’d never trusted Austin in the first place a real reason to worry.

Willie was not alone. Other cosmic cowboys, like Waylon Jennings, Doug Sahm, Michael Martin Murphey, Billy Joe Shaver, Steven Fromholz, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Ray Wylie Hubbard, also led the charge. And somewhere in there was a wiry little band called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. But it was ten minutes after “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” exploded on the national consciousness that everybody wanted to come to Austin to have his hip card punched. And the converted National Guard armory known as the Armadillo World Headquarters was just the place. No seats. No air conditioning. No pretense. It was too late to stop the train. And that was a good thing, because you never know which one might be the train to glory.

I have recently written a guide to Austin called The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic. It’s a big title for a rather small book, but in the process of researching and writing it, I once again discovered the reasons God made Austin the Live Music Capital of the World. I relived a moonlit night with a long-ago high school sweetheart, parked on top of Mount Bonnell in my 1953 green Plymouth Cranbrook convertible complete with wolf whistle and Bermuda bell. She left me for a quarterback even though I held the vaunted position of sports editor of the Austin High newspaper, the Austin Maroon, in which I once published a review of a football game in Latin. Poor girl never realized she could’ve been the future first lady of Texas.

Most of the old Austin, however, along with most of my mind, is gone like the now-extinct blue-buttocked tropical loon. Some of the greatest times of my life were lived right here in this open-minded, open-hearted, much-maligned, much-celebrated, magical town. In the jukebox of my dreams I have vivid early memories of Willie and Jerry Jeff and Doug, along with so many others—moments of fine madness, high lonesome nights, running and playing together like the kids we were, when all the pearls were in the ocean and all the stars were in the sky.

Today, as I sit on the deck of my family’s home on Mountainclimb Drive, I can clearly recall a vanished vista of rolling green hills, replaced by a glut of new houses, the bigger the better, as far as the eye can see. The city has become more high-tech now, more conservative, some say, more California-influenced. But underneath, I know the old DNA is still there. Since my father’s death two years ago, I find myself hanging around Austin even more than usual. Like the deer that now populate Mountainclimb, I relish those rare moments of peace that life and love and leaf blowers occasionally bestow. Like the deer, I’m caught in the headlights of the twenty-first century, somewhere between progress and the world we used to know.

In the meantime, I do my best to keep Austin weird. As longtime Austinites used to say: Onward through the fog.

Richard (Kinky) Friedman is a polymath: musician, novelist, humorist, and candidate for governor of Texas!

Copyright © 2004 Texas Monthly, Inc. An Emmis Communications company. All rights reserved.

Oh, Great! An Influenza Pandemic!

Just what I always wanted to see: 7 million people around the world buy the farm in one fell swoop. A pandemic occurs when an epidemic spreads throughout the world. I wonder what code alert Homeland Security will give this threat? If this is (fair & balanced) fear, so be it.

[x Free Internet Press]
U.N. Agency Warns Of Flu Pandemic

The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a dramatic warning that bird flu will trigger an international pandemic that could kill up to seven million people.

The influenza pandemic could occur anywhere from next week to the coming years, WHO said.

"There is no doubt there will be another pandemic," said Klaus Stohr, of the WHO Global Influenza Program, on the sidelines of a regional bird flu meeting in Bangkok, Thailand. "Even with the best case scenario, the most optimistic scenario, the pandemic will cause a public health emergency with estimates which will put the number of deaths in the range of two and seven million," he said.

"The number of people affected will go beyond billions because between 25 percent and 30 percent will fall ill."

Pandemics occur when a completely new flu strain emerges for which humans have no immunity.

With a human vaccine to the bird flu virus not expected until March 2005 at the earliest, urgency is being placed on containing the spread of the present bird flu virus.

"The countries that have the weakest health systems are in need of most support and clearly, usually it's together the poorest countries who have the least resources to invest in health," Dr. Bjorn Melgaard, head of WHO's Southeast Asia office, said.

The dire flu warning comes ahead of a two-day meeting of regional health ministers in Bangkok, looking at how to pool efforts to combat a future outbreak. It also comes just a few months after the first probable instance of human-to-human transmission of the bird-flu virus emerged.

The virus killed 32 people in Thailand and Vietnam earlier this year and led to the slaughter of millions of poultry birds across the region.

Pandemics usually occur every 20 to 30 years when the genetic makeup of a flu strain changes so dramatically that people have little or no immunity built up from previous flu bouts, CNN reports.

"During the last 36 years, there has been no pandemic, and there is a conclusion now that we are closer to the next pandemic than we have ever been before," Stohr told reporters. "There is no reason to believe that we are going to be spared."

Stohr said if bird flu triggers the next pandemic, the virus would likely originate in Asia.

"An influenza pandemic will spare nobody. Every country will be affected," he said.

Copyright © 2004 Free Internet Press

Bon Appetit?

Isaac Newton may have said it all about gravitation, but he didn't know diddle about cooking. If this is (fair & balanced) gastronomy, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
Isaac Newton in the Kitchen
By Julia Moskin

Any absent-minded scientist can let a saucepan of milk boil over. But it takes a true genius to do it twice in 20 minutes.

Harold McGee, who first bonded rigorous science to popular cookery in his 1984 book, "On Food and Cooking," was doing a run-through for Thanksgiving dinner. His culinary investigations did not end with the book's publication. He has spent the last 10 years working on a revision, just published by Scribner. Illustrating some of his new findings in his kitchen here, sliced apples for pie were dehydrating in a bowl, green beans were boiling in two pots of water (one salted, one not, to learn the difference), and a fat turkey sat on the counter with ice packs resting on its breasts.

Chilling the white meat, Mr. McGee explained, makes it cook slower than the rest of the turkey, preventing the breasts from drying out before the dark meat is done. "I used to strap the ice packs on with an Ace bandage," he said. "But my family found it too unappetizing."

Just then a pan of milk that was supposed to be caramelizing foamed over and spilled onto the stovetop, illustrating the peculiar behavior of milk proteins exposed to high heat. "They migrate to the inside of the steam bubbles and bond there," Mr. McGee said ruefully, looking for a kitchen towel. "Then they stretch and stretch, and when they can't get any bigger, they collapse."

The challenges of Thanksgiving have caused many an accomplished cook to crack like a pecan. Too many recipes to coordinate, never enough oven space and too many people underfoot seem the culprits. But Mr. McGee knows better. "What makes Thanksgiving food hard," he said, "is that you're trying to cook these bundles of different matter — white meat and dark meat, apples and pie crust — while they're all stuck together. You want some parts to be soft and moist and some to be crisp and dry. No wonder it's so hard to get them just right."

Insights like these, giving cooks new ways to think about what they do in the kitchen, have helped Mr. McGee gain renown and a cult following over the last 20 years, although his formal scientific training is minimal, and he has no university affiliation or laboratory access. When Mr. McGee began his research, he had a Bachelor of Science degree from the California Institute of Technology and a doctorate in English from Yale, where he was teaching literature.

"On Food and Cooking" has sold more than 100,000 copies, and the revised edition includes mostly new material, which reflects both Mr. McGee's further research and American food fashions. "I could never have anticipated that people would have this bottomless appetite for information about chocolate, coffee and tea," he said. "Not to mention foams, caramelization and trans-fats."

Gathering strands of botany, history, animal husbandry, genetics, chemistry, thermodynamics, physiology and physics, "On Food and Cooking" answered eternal kitchen questions: what makes hollandaise curdle, how onions make us cry, what causes cakes to fall. Some of Mr. McGee's findings challenged the strict rules that still governed cookery at that time, most based on traditional French methods. His assertion that searing meat does not actually "seal in" the juices rocked the culinary world.

"As a cook I wanted to believe that chefs were right, that their experience of doing these things over and over must prove something," he said. "But as a scientist I could see that the evidence didn't hold up." The point of searing, he said, is to create flavor through the browning of surface chemicals. Its only effect on the juices is to pull them out of the meat, making it drier.

The curiosity that fueled the experiments in Mr. McGee's first book is undiminished after 20 years, and his approach to cooking is still skeptical. He tries to take as little as possible for granted, asking at each step: Why am I doing this? Is there a better way? All this questioning has yielded conclusions, some more useful than others, and many of them heretical in culinary circles.

For example, although brining the turkey is now part of the Thanksgiving ritual for many cooks, Mr. McGee does not do it. "The bird does become juicier, but it's just absorbing tap water, not the true juices that make a bird flavorful," he said. "And the drippings become so salty that you can't use them." He says that his own experiments with turkey, though far from complete, show that drying the bird out, rather than infusing it with water, is more likely to make it flavorful and juicy with crisp skin. He unwraps his turkey a day or two before cooking, letting it air-dry in the refrigerator, and then cooks it at high temperature.

After our 13-pound bird had roasted for only an hour and half, the readings from four temperature probes attached to a Fluke 50 lab thermometer showed that the meat was perfectly done both in the thigh and the breast. "White meat and dark meat are completely different kinds of muscles in both birds and animals," Mr. McGee said. "White muscles store energy for sudden, rapid movements and dark ones for slow, sustained ones. That's why chickens, who only fly for a few seconds when they're startled, have white breasts, and ducks, who fly for long periods, have red ones."

But the skin was only golden, not as brown and crisp as we wanted. "Crispness is a matter of heating and dehydrating the proteins," Mr. McGee said, as he fired up an industrial-size blowtorch and began methodically stroking its blue flame over the turkey. Dissatisfied with the slow results, he switched to a heat gun, whose red-hot coils seemed to give a more concentrated heat. The skin turned from gold to clear and then to bronze, the juices visibly running out of it and through the turkey. "Caramelized has become a popular word since I wrote the first book," he said. "But everything browned is not caramelized."

Caramelization, he explained, is what happens to sugar — simple sucrose molecules — exposed to high heat. But the browning that takes place in savory foods like onions, potatoes, celery and turkey skin is a "Maillard reaction," the explosive meeting of a carbohydrate molecule (which may or may not be a sugar) and an amino acid in a hot, dry environment.

Maillard reactions take place when coffee or cocoa beans are roasted or when a bread crust turns brown. Mr. McGee said: "Maillard reactions contribute even more to the pleasures of eating than caramelization does. But of course it doesn't sound as good on a menu."

The alluring scent of Maillard reactions filled the kitchen as Mr. McGee's pie crust began to brown. Although it is almost impossible to do anything truly new in the kitchen — as Mr. McGee notes, it often turns out that even the most complex flavor combinations were routinely used by Roman cooks — his pie crust method seems revolutionary. "The goal of pie crust is to create thin, even layers of fat and flour," he said. "That's what makes them flaky. But the usual method isn't really optimal for that."

Instead of using his fingers to rub globs of fat into flour, then dribbling in ice water, Mr. McGee starts with square chunks of cold butter and a pile of flour on a board. With a rolling pin he presses and rolls the butter into the flour, flattening it into thinner and thinner flakes. Occasionally he scrapes the mixture into a bowl and freezes it for five minutes, to keep the butter from melting. Since the gluten is not activated until the water is added, there is no worry about overworking the dough, even though the process can take some time.

Finally, to add the water Mr. McGee fetched a plant mister. "I always found it was hard to get the water evenly into the dough" he said. "So I measured how many sprays of the mister it takes to get half a cup of water — it's 150, by the way — and I use that to get uniform droplets." Now working quickly, he lightly squeezed the mister over the dough 50 times, then turned the dough and folded it. After two repetitions the dough just held together. He divided it into two round discs and returned it to the freezer.

Hours later his careful work paid off in a golden-brown crust of unspeakable flakiness and buttery flavor: Mr. McGee's method means that there is no need to add shortening to ensure a good texture.

Although Mr. McGee is an excellent cook, and his work has many practical applications, his research has taken him into more ethereal realms of aroma and flavor.

Tracing molecular compounds through the universe of food, he is preoccupied with understanding why chestnut honey and corn tortillas smell almost exactly the same, how compounds called phthalides make celery and walnuts taste so similar and which terpenes are common to carrots and rosemary. "By the way, you can't do these kinds of flavor experiments with baby vegetables," he said politely, averting his eyes from some organic baby carrots I had brought along to roast. "Baby vegetables are completely undeveloped in terms of flavor, although they look nice."

At the end of the day the lab report was mixed. A successful dulce de leche was never achieved, though we had proved that an unwatched saucepan of milk always boils. Mr. McGee had the scientific explanation even for that. "You set the heat to boil a certain amount of liquid," he said. "Then as it boils down, you have less and less liquid and too much heat."

And for the record, as every cook knows, green beans cooked in salted water definitely have more flavor. "Somehow the salt must inhibit the osmosis of chlorophyll into the cooking water," Mr. McGee said. "Someday I'll figure out exactly how."

Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company

You Want Some Of Me?

This cartoon took me back in time to August 3, 1972, when I defended my dissertation before my 6-member committee: Dr. Colonel (USA retired) was my chair, Dr. Mexico was the department chair, Dr. Breadmaker was one of my non-US field members, Dr. Pipestem was a US-field member, Dr. English was my minor field member, and Dr. Verdo, was the last of my US-field members and my bête noire. I remember mumbling and stumbling through the cross-examination over my survey of the history of black people in Texas between 1930-1954. I was dismissed while the committee voted. Through the door, I heard the elevated voice of Dr. Colonel: "Verdo, are you going to sign it or not?" Uh, oh. Colonel's reference was to the signature page (following the title page) in the dissertation where each committee member has a signature line. Evidently, Verdo expressed reluctance to sign. Verdo and I had something of a history. In my second semester at Texas Technique, I had taken a course from him and received an A. During my preliminary exam, Verdo had—unlike the others—not assigned an additional course in his field. That meant that I had answered his questions to his satisfaction. However, on the qualifying written exam in his field, I refused to play his game of talking about books that I had not read; Verdo spent his time reading reviews of recent books and passed that off as the equivalent of reading the books themselves. As a result, Verdo failed me on his field exam and I was required to prepare for a semester and write essays on new questions. Verdo was on leave that semester and I had to wait on him in his living room. Supposedly, he was on leave to write a study of a minor Texas character at a major event in his field. Instead, Verdo used his leave to co-write an elementary school Texas history textbook. The weekend after I took Verdo's second exam, the department held a party. At the keg, I was standing there with Dr. Mexico and Verdo walked up to us and said, "You passed." At that point, Dr. Mexico asked Verdo how his "research" was progressing. Verdo turned scarlet and skulked away. He was pretty picky and jicky about my dissertation when he reviewed it, but he did not say that he would not sign off. Evidently, I was not obsequious enough during the defense. Since I received the degree, evidently Verdo caved in following my dissertation defense. I never spoke to him again. If Verdo had failed me and refused to sign? See the cartoon. If this is (fair & balanced) nostalgia, so be it.


"Ms. Jones, please remember that the term 'defense of your dissertation' does not imply the allowance of any weaponry or martial arts."
Copyright © 2004 David Williams & The Chronicle of Higher Education [Click on image to enlarge] 

First Erectile Dysfunction, Now Incontinence!

Huey and Riley are still at it. The boys see and hear media messages targeting aging males and Granddad Freeman is under seige. If this is (fair & balanced) gerontophobia, so be it.

More geriatric humor from "Boondocks"
Copyright © 2004 Aaron McGruder [Click on image to enlarge] 

What We Beheld In Falluja

The great literary critic, Northrop Frye, wrote—"They became what they beheld."—to illustrate the power of cultural images upon subsequent human behavior. We live in an age of virtual violence: film, television, fiction, news, sport, and computer games. The poor marine who murdered the defenseless Iraqi and was caught in the act by Kevin Sites' video camera has entered the realm of virtual violence. I heard the neo-fascist Pat Buchanan in a rant on MSNBC calling for an end to the practice of embedding journalists with military units in Iraq. Out of sight, out of mind. If we don't see it, it didn't happen. If this is (fair & balanced) conceptualism, so be it.

[x The Guardian]
"Something was not right": Cameraman tells Falluja marines why he broadcast controversial shooting
by Kevin Sites

The broadcast last week of footage showing a US marine shooting an injured Iraqi fighter in Falluja caused an international outcry. Yesterday the cameraman, Kevin Sites, published on his website this open letter to the marines with whom he had been embedded (for NBC News).

Since the shooting in the mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well.

As you know, I'm not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a "gotcha" reporter - hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.

This week I've been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read my dispatches on the web is fully aware of the lengths I've gone to to play it straight down the middle - not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right. But I find myself a lightning rod for controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling.

It's time for you to have the facts, in my own words, about what I saw, without imposing on that marine guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds. Here it goes.

It's Saturday morning and we're still at our strong point from the night before, a clearing between a set of buildings on the southern edge of the city. The advance has been swift, but pockets of resistance still exist. In fact, we're taking sniper fire from both the front and the rear.

Weapons Company uses its 81's (mortars) where they spot muzzle flashes. The tanks do some blasting of their own. By mid-morning, we're told we're moving north again. We'll be back clearing some of the area we passed yesterday. There are also reports that the mosque, where 10 insurgents were killed and five wounded on Friday, may have been re-occupied overnight.

I decide to leave you guys and pick up with one of the infantry squads as they move house-to-house back toward the mosque. Many of the structures are empty of people - but full of weapons. Outside one residence, a member of the squad lobs a frag grenade over the wall. Everyone piles in, including me.

While the marines go into the house, I follow the flames caused by the grenade into the courtyard. When the smoke clears, I can see through my viewfinder that the fire is burning beside a large pile of anti-aircraft rounds.

I yell to the lieutenant that we need to move. Almost immediately after clearing out of the house, small explosions begin as the rounds cook off in the fire.

At that point, we hear the tanks firing their 240-machine guns into the mosque. There's radio chatter that insurgents inside could be shooting back. The tanks cease fire and we file through a breach in the outer wall.

We hear gunshots that seem to becoming from inside the mosque. A marine from my squad yells, "Are there marines in here?"

When we arrive at the front entrance, we see that another squad has already entered before us.

The lieutenant asks them, "Are there people inside?"

One of the marines raises his hand signaling five.

"Did you shoot them," the lieutenant asks?

"Roger that, sir, " the same marine responds.

"Were they armed?" The marine just shrugs and we all move inside.

Immediately after going in, I see the same black plastic body bags spread around the mosque. The dead from the day before. But more surprising, I see the same five men that were wounded from Friday as well. It appears that one of them is now dead and three are bleeding to death from new gunshot wounds.

The fifth is partially covered by a blanket and is in the same place and condition he was in on Friday, near a column. He has not been shot again. I look closely at both the dead and the wounded. There don't appear to be any weapons anywhere.

"These were the same wounded from yesterday," I say to the lieutenant. He takes a look around and goes outside the mosque with his radio operator to call in the situation to Battalion Forward HQ.

I see an old man in a red kaffiyeh lying against the back wall. Another is face down next to him, his hand on the old man's lap - as if he were trying to take cover. I squat beside them, inches away and begin to videotape them. Then I notice that the blood coming from the old man's nose is bubbling. A sign he is still breathing. So is the man next to him.

While I continue to tape, a marine walks up to the other two bodies about 15 feet away, but also lying against the same back wall.

Then I hear him say this about one of the men:

"He's fucking faking he's dead - he's faking he's fucking dead."

Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi. There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging.

However, the marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another marine searches for weapons.

Instead, he pulls the trigger. There is a small splatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down.

"Well he's dead now," says another marine in the background.

I am still rolling. I feel the deep pit of my stomach. The marine then abruptly turns away and strides away, right past the fifth wounded insurgent lying next to a column. He is very much alive and peering from his blanket.

He is moving, even trying to talk. But for some reason, it seems he did not pose the same apparent "danger" as the other man - though he may have been more capable of hiding a weapon or explosive beneath his blanket.

But then two other marines in the room raise their weapons as the man tries to talk.

For a moment, I'm paralysed still taping with the old man in the foreground. I get up after a beat and tell the marines again, what I had told the lieutenant - that this man - all of these wounded men - were the same ones from yesterday. That they had been disarmed treated and left here.

At that point the marine who fired the shot became aware that I was in the room. He came up to me and said, "I didn't know sir - I didn't know." The anger that seemed present just moments before turned to fear and dread.

The wounded man then tries again to talk to me in Arabic.

He says, "Yesterday I was shot ... please ... yesterday I was shot over there - and talked to all of you on camera - I am one of the guys from this whole group. I gave you information. Do you speak Arabic? I want to give you information."

(This man has since reportedly been located by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service which is handling the case.)

In the aftermath, the first question that came to mind was why had these wounded men been left in the mosque?

It was answered by staff judge advocate Lieutenant Colonel Bob Miller - who interviewed the marines involved following the incident. After being treated for their wounds on Friday by a navy corpsman (I personally saw their bandages) the insurgents were going to be transported to the rear when time and circumstances allowed.

The area, however, was still hot. And there were American casualties to be moved first.

Also, the squad that entered the mosque on Saturday was different than the one that had led the attack on Friday.

It's reasonable to presume they may not have known that these insurgents had already been engaged and subdued a day earlier.

Yet when this new squad engaged the wounded insurgents on Saturday, perhaps really believing they had been fighting or somehow posed a threat - those marines inside knew from their training to check the insurgents for weapons and explosives after disabling them, instead of leaving them where they were and waiting outside the mosque for the squad I was following to arrive.

During the course of these events, there were plenty of mitigating circumstances like the ones just mentioned and which I reported in my story. The marine who fired the shot had reportedly been shot in the face himself the day before.

I'm also well aware from many years as a war reporter that there have been times, especially in this conflict, when dead and wounded insurgents have been booby-trapped, even supposedly including an incident that happened just a block away from the mosque in which one marine was killed and five others wounded. Again, a detail that was clearly stated in my television report.

No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone, would deny that a soldier or marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is about killing your enemy before he kills you.

In the particular circumstance I was reporting, it bothered me that the marine didn't seem to consider the other insurgents a threat - the one very obviously moving under the blanket, or even the two next to me that were still breathing.

I can't know what was in the mind of that marine. He is the only one who does.

But observing all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances - it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. According to Lt Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.

Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down.

I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation.

We all knew it was a complicated story and, if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation - providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.

For those who don't practise journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all - especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behaviour or character of an organisation as a whole.

The answer is not an easy one.

In war, as in life, there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both - though neither may be fully representative of those people on whom we're reporting.

But our coverage of these unique events, combined with the larger perspective, will allow the truth of that situation, in all of its complexities, to begin to emerge. That doesn't make the decision to report events like this one any easier. It has, for me, led to an agonising struggle - the proverbial long, dark night of the soul.

When NBC aired the story 48 hours later, we did so in a way that attempted to highlight every possible mitigating issue for that marine's actions. We wanted viewers to have a very clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the fighting on that frontline. Many of our colleagues were just as responsible.

Other foreign networks made different decisions, and because of that, I have become the conflicted conduit who has brought this to the world.

I interviewed your commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Falluja began. He said something very powerful at the time - something that now seems prophetic. It was this:

"We're the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman's war here - because we don't behead people, we don't come down to the same level of the people we're combating.

"That's a very difficult thing for a young 18-year-old marine who's been trained to locate, close with and destroy the enemy with fire and close combat. That's a very difficult thing for a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel with 23 years experience in the service who was trained to do the same thing once upon a time, and who now has a thousand-plus men to lead, guide, coach, mentor - and ensure we remain the good guys and keep the moral high ground." I listened carefully when he said those words. I believed them.

So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera - the story of his death became my responsibility.

The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.

I pray for your soon and safe return.

Kevin Sites is a pioneering, multi-media journalist who often works as a one-man unit, using portable, digital technology to report, write, edit and transmit his stories from conflict areas around the world. He has covered war zones in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Leave Granddad Freeman Alone!

Boondocks today (11/22/04): Huey, Riley, and Granddad Freeman on male enhancement.
Copyright © 2004 Aaron McGruder [Click on image to enlarge] 

If this is (fair & balanced) sleaze, so be it.

One Sorry Test

[Click on image to enlarge.] Answers below story.
Copyright © 2004 The Philadelphia Inquirer 

W couldn't 'fess up to a mistake. The Trickster went to his grave without ever apologizing for violating his oath of office. This a pretty sorry topic. If this is (fair & balanced) condonation, so be it.

[x {Philadelphia Inquirer]
Americans hate to apologize? Who can blame us?
By Alfred Lubrano

Yeah, you blew it.

You forgot the 2 p.m. meeting, you snapped at your honey, you ate the last doughnut.

So now it's time to say you're sorry.

Apologies are tricky things, though, and not everyone can dance the mea culpa. In a culture better at blame than contrition, sorry is, as Sir Elton John informs us, the hardest word.

"A general rule," says Denver psychologist and apology expert Susan Heitler, "is that the more mature somebody is, the more likely they are to say they're sorry."

Odd as it sounds, men may apologize to their spouses more often than women do, according to a recent survey by the Princeton-based Opinion Research Corp. The study is part of a publicity campaign to mark the 70th anniversary of the Parker Brothers game Sorry!

According to the survey, when asked whom they say sorry to most often, 56 percent of men said their wives. Just 41 percent of wives, on the other hand, said they apologize most to their husbands.

What are they sorry about? Well, fairly innocuous things, really: leaving a mess, forgetting to take out the trash, missing dinner and drinking from the milk carton. (If guys want to be forgiven for, say, stepping out with their secretaries, they haven't shared it with surveyors.)

Can it be that men, socialized to hunt and eat the tiger on the savannah, are superior apologizers to women, who are culturally programmed to accommodate and appease?

"This survey does not jibe with what I know about men at all," says Beverly Engel, a California marriage-family therapist and author of The Power of Apology: Healing Steps to Transform All Your Relationships (2001, John Wiley & Sons).

"Men have a very difficult time apologizing. They're supposed to be tough and are encouraged not to admit mistakes. And women tend to over-apologize," Engel says.

Yes, indeed, reports Cathy Knittweis, a 63-year-old retired nurse from Collings Lakes, in Atlantic County, N.J.

"I always apologize more than my husband," she says. "I don't really always mean it, but I'd rather apologize than have that feeling of us not talking to each other for a day or so."

In the frosty aftermath of an argument, only an apology can thaw the mood and warm the house.

"Apologies are powerful because they humble us before the other person," Engel says. "In a relationship, an apology makes the person being apologized to feel vindicated, and heard. And the couple will feel closer, and safer with each other."

Unfortunately, that same kind of vulnerability can be trouble in the corporate world, where apologies can be seen as weakness by hungry colleagues eyeing your corner office.

"Business is so cutthroat," Engel continues, "humbling yourself before a colleague is not a good idea."

The same is true in politics. Reporters practically did backflips trying to get President Bush to say whether he made any mistakes during his first term. The President just smiled and said he couldn't think of a thing to apologize for. Apparently, he was just being a typical American.

Obfuscation and non-acknowledgment of responsibility are simply part of our way of life, thanks to our legal system, psychologist Heitler says. "If you acknowledge a mistake, you're more likely to be punished," she adds.

Jonathan Cohen, a law professor at the University of Florida, agrees: "Our first instinct is to cover up." That's a sharp contrast to Asian nations, in which admitting mistakes is seen as a paramount virtue.

For decades, Cohen says, lawyers have advised their clients to shut up and never apologize, no matter how obvious their culpability was. Dollars were on the line.

That way of thinking appears to be changing, however. Within the last year, for example, five states (Pennsylvania and New Jersey not among them) have enacted laws that say that if a doctor makes a mistake and says he's sorry to a patient or his family, the apology cannot be used against him in court.

Similarly, more attorneys for corporations and universities are advising apologies after big mistakes are made, says Jennifer Robbennolt, a legal-apology expert at the University of Missouri.

Are lawyers suddenly growing hearts and sprouting consciences? Not necessarily. Apologies can stem lawsuits, or encourage settlements for smaller amounts, Robbennolt says.

In criminal cases, the trend is for prosecutors and defense attorneys to seek so-called restorative justice, in which perpetrators apologize to their victims, says Stephanos Bibas, a University of Iowa scholar of apology in criminal law.

Apparently, people want to hear that someone is sorry for their pain or loss. Of course, a good apology has to be sincere. Mumbling weak regrets just won't cut it.

The best apology, the pros say, includes conveying a sense of remorse; a sense of responsibility and acceptance of blame; and a willingness to never repeat the action that caused the hurt.

Ultimately, apologies keep relationships healthy, despite what Ali MacGraw tells Ryan O'Neal in Love Story.

We apologize for reminding you of the most famous - and the lamest - statement about apologies: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Sorry.

Alfred Lubrano writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

© 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.


Quiz Answers

A-11. Olympic swimming gold-medalist Michael Phelps, after his arrest earlier this month for drunken driving.

B-3. Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh's response to the uproar over his comments regarding the Eagles' Donovan McNabb being overrated because the media want to see a black quarterback succeed.

C-8. President George H.W. Bush in 1990, regarding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

D-4. The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, after saying in September he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically.

E-7. President Bill Clinton, apologizing for the Monica Lewinsky scandal in December 1998.

F-5. Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, after making allegedly racist remarks in December 2002.

G-1. Kobe Bryant, in a statement read by his attorney in September, regarding the basketball star's alleged rape of a Colorado woman.

H-6. Janet Jackson, after a wardrobe malfunction revealed the pop star's breast at the Super Bowl in February.

I-2. Comic Roseanne, after grabbing her crotch and screeching the national anthem at a baseball game in San Diego in 1990.

J-9. Amy Fisher, "the Long Island Lolita," apologizing to Mary Jo Buttafuoco for shooting her in the face.

K-10. Dr. J, apologizing to fans in 1977 after the Sixers lost to the Portland Trail Blazers in the NBA Finals.

© 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

Duck & Cover!

How can we die in an unthinkable fashion? Let me (actually the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) count the ways. Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge doesn't have a clue. The brain trust surrounding W doesn't have a clue. 9/11 was unthinkable (to everyone except Tom Clancy), but it happened. If this is (fair & balanced) scarifying, so be it.

[x Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]
Rethinking doomsday
By Linda Rothstein, Catherine Auer and Jonas Siegel

Loose nukes, nanobots, smallpox, oh my! In this age of endless imagining, and some very real risks, which terrorist threats should be taken most seriously?

This year, beginning with the January/ February 2004 issue, the Bulletin began a series of articles we dubbed "Rethinking Doomsday." The effort was in direct response to the remarkable proliferation of potential death-and-destruction scenarios about which so much has been made since 9/11.

There is no doubt that the attacks of September 11, 2001 made clear that Americans faced very real dangers at home that few had foreseen and even fewer had taken seriously. Three years later, many, if not most, of us remain frightened.

But so many doomsday scenarios have been paraded on TV, in the newspapers, and in the course of political campaigns, that we can't help asking: How many possible terrorist attacks with how many possible weapons can there be? Must we, while worrying about nuclear holocaust or about terrorists commandeering airplanes or detonating conventional explosives, also worry that tomorrow we will come in contact with an evildoer bearing live smallpox stolen from somewhere in Siberia, with which he intends to infect the entire unsuspecting United States? (Government officials blithely assure us that we are all safer than we were before 9/11, but also say a smallpox epidemic is a case of "not if, but when.") How much time should we have devoted to the idea that the United States faced a gathering threat from Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons? About a plot to poison the food supply? Or should we worry if foreign visitors are seen taking snapshots of the Flatiron Building?

Sometimes it seems as if the source of newly announced dangers must be the basement of the White House or a back room at a Washington think tank, where the thousands of monkeys who have yet to type out exact copies of the works of Shakespeare are nonetheless producing dozens of new ideas for attacks on America, to be trotted out on the news at 10.

The "rethinking" reader on page 39 lists the articles published in 2004 that led us to our own conclusions about rethinking doomsday. (Many are available at the Bulletin's web site, www.thebulletin.org.) The following is a recap of what we learned.

Chemical weapons

In "The Dew of Death," Joel Vilensky and Pandy Sinish recounted the strange story of lewisite, an arsenic-based chemical weapon developed by the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I.

By the end of the war, the United States was producing 10 tons a day of the stuff, yet it was never used in battle, where it would probably have flopped. Lewisite shares many of the problems that have prevented most chemical weapons from entering the world's armies' battlefield arsenals: Most chemicals are very hard to disseminate in sufficiently undiluted form, and might not work in weather that is too hot, too cold, too windy, or too wet. The dilution problem would also make it very difficult to carry out an attack involving the poisoning of a major city's water supply.

Nearly every article about terrorist uses of chemical or biological weapons begins by recalling Aum Shinrikyo's use of sarin gas in 1995 in the Tokyo subway. Employing five separate packages of poison, cult members managed to kill 12 commuters, although another 1,000 had to seek hospital treatment. The attack was shocking, yet fell short of the cult's ambitions. (Shoko Asahara, the leader of the group, aspired either to be Japan's prime minister or to kill as many of his countrymen as possible.)

Saddam Hussein's forces used poison gas at Halabja in the open air. Halabja, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq, is perhaps the best known of the several dozen towns and villages Saddam Hussein is thought to have gassed in 1987 and 1988. Some 5,000 of its population of 70,000 died as a result of being bombarded with what might have been a combination of mustard gas, nerve agent, and possibly cyanide.

The attack was a monstrous crime, but the Iraqi military succeeded by having complete control over the place, the time, and the choice of a day with ideal weather--and because it faced no danger of experiencing any resistance. Saddam's men were able to spread the poisons systematically (delivery might have been by a combination of dispersal from low-flying planes and attack with chemical shells). The Halabja massacre was not a demonstration of the unique power of chemical weapons, but of the fact that the population was defenseless.

Iraq, and probably Iran, also used poison gas during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). Even as thousands of young people were slaughtered in a war that ended in stalemate, the war's less-controlled, battlefield use of chemical weapons is customarily assessed as having lent neither side an advantage.

Today, few of the world's militaries would even consider using chemical weapons--they can contaminate the battleground and come back on the attackers if the wind takes an unexpected turn. The major militaries--including those of the United States, Britain, Russia, and Germany--have dumped old munitions (not always carefully) or have spent, or need to spend, billions of dollars to neutralize decaying munitions that could threaten civilians who live near storage sites. Some tiny amount of worry should probably be devoted to leaking chemical munitions.

If civilians do not need to fret too much about attacks from the air, they should perhaps worry a little more about chemicals deployed in enclosed or otherwise contained environments, where they can be delivered at concentrated levels. Somehow, though, it's hard to jump from the Aum Shinrikyo case to believing that overseas villains would find it easy to deliver deadly doses at will.

On the other hand, a domestic effort, with greater access to American ingenuity and reliable materials and work space in which to generate lethal chemical mixtures would be another matter (see "Homegrown Terror," by Michael Reynolds, page 48).

Let's recap. Chemical attack by international terrorists: Possible. Probable? No. Time spent worrying about it? Possibly wasted.

Domestic terrorists' use of chemical weapons? Possible. Probable? Best known potential case found by accident--and experts say that as a result of emphasis on international terrorism, domestic cases are being neglected.

Biological weapons

The Aum Shinrikyo cult recruited technical experts from around the world, had a net worth of more than a billion dollars, and is repeatedly mentioned as the most salient example to show that international terrorists will attack the United States with biological weapons. But all of Aum's attacks occurred in Japan, on its own turf, and the cult's attempts to poison Japanese citizens with botulin or anthrax--efforts it made between 1990 and 1995, before turning to sarin gas--were utter failures.

Conversely, the culprit (or culprits) who sent letters containing anthrax spores through the mail in September 2001 has not been apprehended, and his or her identity remains a mystery, at least to the public--this despite the fact that the perpetrator used a strain of anthrax known to be of U.S. origin, that it was milled in a highly sophisticated manner, also suggesting it was likely produced in one of a limited number of facilities, and that in all likelihood the perpetrator works or worked among a fairly limited universe of possible suspects in government or government-contract laboratories. Some worry might be devoted to why the attacks occurred, why they stopped, and whether they might start again.

An industry seems to have sprung up devoted to inculcating fear in Americans about contagious diseases, especially smallpox. In the run-up to Gulf War II, it was said that Iraq was likely to unleash smallpox on the American public. Promulgators of panic were less clear about how, where, or why it would do so. But they assured us there would be an epidemic. From what we can tell, they were wrong on nearly all counts.

Smallpox is a serious business. And although transmission seems somewhat avoidable--it occurs through close contact, often with someone who has visible signs of the disease, namely, pox--the great historical smallpox epidemics still had 30-50 percent mortality rates.

More than 200 years ago, Edward Jenner's development of a vaccine began to change the picture. Still, according to Richard Pilch ("Smallpox: Threat, Vaccine, and U.S. Policy," Center for Nonproliferation Studies) "in the twentieth century, smallpox killed more people than war." Accordingly, after World War II, a major global effort was undertaken to stamp out the disease. By 1980, when the entire world was declared smallpox free, the disease had been eradicated in the United States for some time. All samples of the virus were then destroyed, except for two, which were maintained at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and at the then-Soviet Union's State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector.

Although there have been no outbreaks in the United States for decades, a supply of vaccine remains--about which there is some controversy, because inoculation with live virus can pose a risk. There is one well-known supply of about 15 million doses, which is generally accepted as entirely usable, and another supply of approximately 80 million doses, which was mysteriously rediscovered in 2002. Because of its exotic provenance, this second supply has been generally considered unsuitable for anything but emergency use. In tests since its discovery, however, the second supply appears to be safe and effective. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has contracted with OraVax for the production of some 300 million additional doses.

Stalwart Cold Warriors have long insisted that Russia gave smallpox samples to Iraq, although there is no evidence to support such a claim. (It seems counterintuitive for Russia to eagerly share a deadly microbe if its reintroduction would endanger its own population.) Various U.S. intelligence agencies have also claimed that France, as well as Russia and Iraq, had illicit samples of smallpox. At various times they hypothesized that Iraq either was given smallpox samples by Russia, retained some virus from a 1971-1972 outbreak in Baghdad, or developed it in an indigenous program to adapt camelpox. Of course, no virus was found in Iraq, either during the 1991-1998 period of post-Gulf War I U.N. inspections, or during the pre-Gulf War II U.N. inspections, or as a result of the activities of U.S. search teams during and after the latest conflict since January 2003.

So we escaped an attack by Iraq. But would we all be doomed if Al Qaeda terrorists (perhaps bearing some of that rumored French smallpox) decided to infect the United States?

It seems unlikely. First, set aside the problems attackers would face in trying to deliver the disease other than through person-to-person contact. (Cold Warriors speculated that the Soviets would fill intercontinental ballistic missiles with the virus and send the missiles over the North Pole.) The key to preventing a major outbreak is a good public health system that can detect a handful of cases before the disease spreads. Meanwhile, helping to slow the spread are two surprising findings: A study by Oregon Health and Science University researchers, reported in the September 2003 issue of Nature Medicine, revealed that in contrast to conventional wisdom that the effects of vaccination lasted only a few years, "90 percent of those vaccinated 25 to 75 years ago maintain a substantial level of immunity." In other words, half the U.S. population (nearly everyone was vaccinated before 1972) has some degree of immunity, a considerable barrier to the rapid spread of smallpox. Simultaneously, if cases were detected, there would be time to vaccinate the unprotected population.

As for the vaccine's availability, there seems to be an adequate supply. Doctors at Vanderbilt University report in the September 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that the vaccine in the emergency supply can be diluted to as much as one-tenth and still provide an overall vaccination success rate of 99.4 percent.

Let's recap. There are no known smallpox stocks in the hands of evildoers. An antidote exists in plentiful supply. And half the population is already protected.

How much time should Americans spend worrying about attack-by-smallpox? Probably not as much as on the spread of naturally occurring nastiness like flu epidemics, Ebola, and hantavirus, and probably not as much as on laboratory concoctions like bioengineered new strains of anthrax.

And speaking of anthrax, the U.S. government seems to have learned little from the anthrax-in-the-mail experience. As Susan Wright explains in "Taking Biodefense Too Far," (see page 58), the government is responding to the newer, high-tech threat of specially engineered pathogens against which there may be no defense by spending billions to produce some, in the process creating a cadre of highly specialized germ weaponeers and constructing dozens of special laboratories where they will be able to work in comfortable secrecy. As other Bulletin authors have pointed out, some of these facilities are being placed behind the barriers of the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, all the better to make it less likely that their dangerous activities will be properly monitored.

Officials would no doubt respond that these U.S. facilities will be safe. Well, maybe. But that ignores a long history of poor judgment. The U.S. government conducted open air tests of dangerous biologicals in, among other places, the United States, Central America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean, leaving a trail of contamination behind.

Not that other countries have been any more responsible. The Soviets built a major test facility on Vozrozhdeniye Island. Now that the Aral Sea is drying up, it's just a matter of time before the pathogens in the island's soil and in insect and wildlife populations spread to the mainland. Cleanup, if it happens, won't be easy. Britain struggled to clean up its anthrax mess at Gruinard Island--eventually doing so with formaldehyde.

Nanotechnology

Nanotech is the new, high-tech wild-card of doomsday scenarios. The emerging science of manipulating the supersmall--molecules and atoms--has generated some popular scare stories, such as the "grey goo" scenario, in which a swarm of self-replicating nanobots smothers all life in its path. But is this really a threat? If the number of defensive measures developed to combat grey goo is any indication, not really. So far, there's no such thing as a grey-goo fighting wand or a nanobot-safe shelter.

Maybe it is too daunting a task to prepare for a threat that seems so futuristic. Or maybe the informed opinion of some scientists that the out-of-control self-replication of nanomachines is avoidable, if not entirely impossible, has kept the public, government, and industry from over-worrying.

The risk of nanomachines uncontrollably self-replicating is "very low," reported Margaret Kosal, now a fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, in the September/October Bulletin. But there's still room for concern: "To say that nanotechnology could never lead to self-replication, or that uncontrolled self-assembly would not have unintended consequences, would be presumptive," concluded Kosal.

Other researchers are convinced that "molecular manufacturing"--machines that could someday be able to construct precise atomic structures--has scary potential.

In his 1986 book Engines of Creation, K. Eric Drexler envisioned nanomachines capable of building structures from the atom up. He was the first to imagine the implications of a runaway self-replication process. Drexler recently sought to tone down speculation about the possibility of an accidental runaway replication and to legitimize research into molecular manufacturing. In a paper coauthored by Chris Phoenix, Drexler wrote that "the development and use of molecular manufacturing need not at any step involve systems that could run amok as the result of accident or faulty engineering." Still, Drexler and Phoenix were adamant that "no law of nature prevents [a runaway replication's] deliberate development."

As with biotechnology, the potential for the misuse of nanotechnology grows when esoteric technological expertise is coupled with access to sophisticated tools.

A greater nanotech threat than self-replicating nanobots, according to Drexler, is the potential that "a powerful and convenient manufacturing capacity could be used to make powerful non-replicating weapons in unprecedented quantity, leading to an arms race, war, terrorism, or oppression." Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are already making strides toward the mass production of nanostructures. In April, they announced that they had designed a way to transform a carbon nanotube into a "conveyor belt" capable of transporting a stream of atom-sized particles to a "construction site," where they could hypothetically be combined with other materials to create larger structures.

The scenario imagined by Drexler appears similar to those envisioned by Kosal, where nanotechnology could be used to enhance the effectiveness of existing chemical or biological weapons, or to create entirely new weapons. Considering the various factors that presently complicate the delivery of chemical and biological weapons, or the creation of miniature nuclear fusion bombs, this is perhaps one avenue where nanotechnology has the potential to play more than a wild-card role.

The U.S. government's message to the public has so far been full of praise for the potential benefits of nanotechnology and lacking in outward concern about potential dangers. Little has been done to guard against the potential for nanotechnology to contribute to mass destruction, or to protect against a less fear-inspiring, but more prescient concern. Only in June did the Defense Department announce that it was funding a five-year project to determine which, if any, characteristics of nanoparticles--the ones now showing up in tennis balls, clothing, and other commercial products--are toxic or have adverse effects.

Although there has been some research on the toxicity of nanoparticles and their potential effect on the environment and in the food cycle, scientists still do not know much about the implications and dangers of nanotechnology in general.

Let's recap. Death and destruction are unlikely to come at the microscopic "hands" of swarms of nanobots in the near future, but the possibility of such an event isn't likely to leave the public consciousness anytime soon and can't be dismissed out of hand. More immediate concerns should center on the potential misuse of nanotechnology and the dearth of information about the effects of nanoparticles on the environment and in the food chain.

Dangerous proliferation

In early 2004, President George W. Bush called nuclear weapons the "greatest threat to mankind." But his administration has pursued a broader arsenal, lifted the 10-year ban on RandD on new low-yield nukes, moved to shorten the preparation period for nuclear testing, and deployed an untested missile defense that many perceive as an offensive measure. As Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen reported in the September/ October "Nuclear Notebook," the U.S. arsenal's combined yield is about 1,800 megatons--still overwhelming, if reduced, firepower. The yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a mere 15 kilotons.

But no one in the administration seems worried about overkill. "The national laboratories, where weapons designers are eager for fresh challenges, are exerting tremendous pressure for a renewed mission complete with new weapons and programs," reported Andy Oppenheimer in "Mini-Nukes: Boom or Bust?" In the same issue, Bret Lortie wrote that the Energy Department looked to be gearing up for new nuclear responsibilities at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Critics called Energy's plan "a shocking blueprint for an increasingly aggressive and robust nuclear weapons program."

Speaking of robust, in the May/ June issue Jonas Siegel showed how Defense's proposed budget revealed its plans for pursuing the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Oh, and not to mention that the Bush administration is building a new plutonium pit fabrication plant capable of churning out 250-900 new weapon cores a year by 2018 (see "Dismantling U.S. Nuclear Warheads").

The United States has also gone back on its own proliferation rules, against the "long-standing prohibition against using commercial nuclear reactors to produce bomb materials--the so-called no-dual-use policy," Kenneth Bergeron reported in the January/February Bulletin. Critics of the administration's plan to produce tritium at Watts Bar are "concerned with the U.S. government's retreat from nonproliferation principles."

The United States seems to have a problem with proliferation principles. "It is ironic and hypocritical that the Bush administration has condemned both North Korea and Iran for their apparent efforts to develop nuclear weapons," wrote Ronald Powaski in the January/ February Bulletin. "Clearly, if the Bush administration were serious about halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it would accept the same standards of behavior that it is attempting to impose on non-nuclear weapons states."

Let's recap. The Bush administration warns about proliferation but is going forward with new nuclear plans, which prompts other nuclear weapon states to modify their arsenals (see "Nuclear Policy: France Stands Alone," and "Russian Nuclear Forces, 2004"), and prompts other nations to gain nuclear weapons status. Could proliferation alone be the end of the world? Not technically--you need someone to push the button. But think about this:

Who might be next to catch the nuclear fever? Terrorists, maybe?

The many nuclear maybes

Thinking for a moment about the many different ways in which the United States could come under some kind of nuclear-related attack is enough to make the eyes bulge, pulse race, and head swim. Terrorists could steal or buy an intact nuclear weapon and detonate it in the United States. Or they could steal or buy fissile material, make a crude nuclear weapon, and blow it up within our borders. Or they could couple fissile material to explosives and craft a radiological dispersion device--a "dirty bomb." Let's not forget the more than 100 U.S. nuclear power plants (which some like to call sitting ducks) that are potential targets of attack or sabotage.

Of these, the first is the least likely. It would be extremely difficult for terrorists to acquire an intact weapon from one of the eight nuclear weapon states. The security of these weapons, especially those in Russia and Pakistan, is a valid concern. But to detonate an intact, stolen Russian nuke, a terrorist would have to get past security safeguards built into the weapon, such as authorization codes. And Pakistani nuclear weapons (believed to number up to 50) are reportedly stored separately from the weapons' cores. Besides the difficulties associated with obtaining a ready-made, good-to-go nuke, there would be other barriers--such as transporting and preparing to deliver it undetected. This is perhaps the lowest probability, highest consequence scenario of nuclear terrorism.

Getting the core material

Could terrorists produce an entirely do-it-yourself nuclear bomb? Fabricating fissile material, highly enriched uranium (HEU) or separated plutonium, is exceedingly labor-and resource-intensive--and both activities present many opportunities for detection. Terrorist-produced fissile material is so extremely unlikely that it's safe to call it impossible.

But it is possible that a group of nuclear-minded evildoers would attempt to build their own nuclear weapon using stolen or black market fissile material. Al Qaeda's interest in nuclear weapons has been documented, as have meetings between Osama bin Laden and sympathetic nuclear scientists. As Morten Bremer Mærli and Lars van Dassen write on page 19, the major barrier to nuclear terrorism is acquiring fissile material. And there are thousands of tons of fissile material stockpiled around the globe, as David Albright and Kimberly Kramer report on page 14. Certainly, not all of it is a security concern; however, "Not only do nuclear thieves stand a chance in Russia (and elsewhere), they have repeatedly been successful, stealing weapons-usable nuclear material without setting off any alarm or detector," according to Matthew Bunn of the Project on Managing the Atom ("Securing the Bomb," Harvard University, May 2004). The CIA recognizes that there have surely been undetected cases of theft of fissile materials, in addition to nearly 20 documented (and intercepted) incidents. And as Albright and Corey Hinderstein reported in "The Centrifuge Connection," a nuclear black market--with possible state ties--can exist and thrive for years before detection.

If terrorists are able to buy or steal plutonium or HEU, could they be clever enough to build a crude nuclear bomb? The answer, according to many experts, is yes. Provided they had enough fissile material, resourceful and determined terrorists could fabricate both gun-style and implosion design nuclear weapons. Of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, HEU is more attractive to terrorists--easier to handle and transport, it's more easily diverted. As Mærli and van Dassen write, many believe that eliminating Russia's stocks at a faster pace would contribute greatly to Europe's increased security.

Dirty bombs

If terrorists lack the skills to build a crude nuclear bomb, but are able to acquire fissile material, they could construct a dirty bomb--conventional explosives coupled with fissile or other radioactive material. "An improvised terrorist device using highly enriched uranium could be smuggled into this country in virtually undetectable segments, and then assembled in any one of 50 million suburban garages," wrote Christopher Paine in "The Party of Preemption."

Detonated in a populated area, a dirty bomb would expose many people to radioactive particles dispersed by the explosion, but any immediate fatalities would be caused by the blast and not exposure to radioactivity (although exposure has the potential to cause eventual fatalities).

Among the many types of damage would be economic; analysts at the University of Southern California's terrorism center predict that a dirty bomb exploded at the Los Angeles and Long Beach port complex could cost $34 billion. That's just a best guess; no one really knows for sure the kind of damage a dirty bomb would do because it would depend largely on unpredictable factors such as bomb design, detonation location, and weather.

There has never been a dirty bomb attack. True, Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and accused of plotting, in the words of Attorney General John Ashcroft, "to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States."

But as Lewis Z. Koch explained in "Dirty Bomber? Dirty Justice," the evidence against the ex-gang member was thin. Plus, Koch reported, "Although some materials from hospitals, research universities, and other facilities are radioactive enough to be lethal, it would be very difficult to deliver high doses to more than a few people." One way a terrorist might do more damage is by using the extremely radioactive spent fuel from a power plant, but "Putting aside the controversy surrounding security at U.S. nuclear power plants, a would-be dirty bomber faces a Herculean task." The spent fuel is heavy, hard to access, and dangerously radioactive, Koch noted. If would-be dirty bombers were to somehow access a spent fuel pool and remove rods to another location, they would have been exposed to "enough radiation to make them burnt toast."

And the "ultimate dirty bombs"

That nuclear power plants are ripe targets is nothing new. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was forced to admit after 9/11 that U.S. nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand the force of a crashing jetliner, which some worry could cause either a core meltdown or a fire in spent fuel pools. "A single spent fuel pond holds more cesium 137 than was deposited by all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the Northern Hemisphere combined," Robert Alvarez reported for the Bulletin in 2002. The radioactivity released from a pool fire could render hundreds to thousands of square miles uninhabitable.

"Spent fuel pools present the most severe consequences and vulnerability at nuclear power stations," Alvarez told the Los Angeles Times (September 16). "They are the ultimate dirty bomb."

But the NRC has no plans to reinforce the plants. "The NRC has been in a state of denial," said Frank von Hippel (Los Angeles Times, September 16).

Could intruders force their way into a reactor to wreak havoc? Past incidents have demonstrated that one need not have sophisticated plans or skills in order to gain some level of access to a nuclear plant. In 1993, a mentally ill man drove his mother's station wagon past the guarded entrance at Three Mile Island (TMI). Although he was driving at about 35 miles per hour, the surveillance cameras couldn't swivel fast enough to keep up with his car. The intruder drove through a fence, then a roll-up door, and into the turbine building, where he got out of his car and hid before he was arrested four hours later. Fortunately, his intentions were not malicious.

Sure, that was more than 10 years ago, but at the time, the TMI plant had earned the NRC's highest security rating. In general, nuclear plant security teams have miserable reputations for failing to prevent even mock attacks for which they've been forewarned. After 9/11, it took the Energy Department nearly three years to revise its security standards--and the new standards fall short by many experts' measure, as Stephen Schwartz wrote in "A Slow Sort of Security."

Should one worry, too, about insider nuclear sabotage? There are no reported cases of this, but it's another scary possibility. Before September 11, 2001, the NRC reported several cases of nuclear power plant workers who were inappropriately granted "unescorted access" to sensitive areas at some plants. Employees are supposed to undergo background checks, which are done by outside contractors. Several contractors had falsified or not completed the checks.

How much damage could a terrorist group do by attacking a nuclear power plant? That's a big unknown. The accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 give some shaky indication, although as Joseph Mangano reported in the Bulletin earlier this year, questions about the health effects of TMI remain unanswered. The figures for fatalities caused by the Chernobyl meltdown are controversial and range from as few as 30 to as many as tens of thousands. The psychological, environmental, and economic impacts of potential nuclear terrorism are impossible to quantify.

Let's recap. Nuclear terrorism is not easy, but it is possible.

It's likely that nuclear-bent terrorists would take the path of least resistance, which makes theft or purchase of an intact nuke or self-fabrication of fissile material very unlikely. A dirty bomb would be perhaps the easiest, and least harmful, "nuclear" attack.

That the NRC has been inexplicably slow to improve security at nuclear power facilities is cause for concern. As long as nuclear power plants operate, they will be potential targets. To date, the scariest near-misses at U.S. plants involve human mistakes (such as allowing boric acid to eat almost all the way through the reactor lid at Davis-Besse in Ohio) and not malevolent actions. When it comes to nuclear facilities, perhaps both error and terror deserve equal amounts of worry.

There are too many different ways in which terrorists could perpetrate some kind of nuclear attack to mention in this limited space. But keep this in mind: There have been zero cases of nuclear terrorism--neither nuclear nor radiological. There are no known cases of theft or purchase of an intact nuclear weapon, so a terrorist attack with one is more than unlikely. There has not been any documented theft of enough fissile material for a crude nuke--although there have been attempts. There has never been a dirty bomb attack. There has never been a case of nuclear plant sabotage. If there were, it would be awful--but not the end of humanity.

The sum of all fears?

So far these nuclear doomsday scenarios have focused on terrorism. But the most destructive of all nuclear threats is nuclear war. After all, eight nations have nuclear arsenals, but a terrorist group would have to work feverishly to get their hands on a single warhead, or enough material to make one.

Is an incoming nuclear missile attack plausible? Yes, but unlikely. The Cold War is over, and the ballistic missile threat from nuclear-capable nations is extremely minor. In February 2001, the Defense Intelligence Agency listed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as "countries of concern" that might someday field long-range, WMD-capable missiles, and Russia and China as nations expanding their long-range missile programs. One presumes Iraq is now off the list. As to Iran and North Korea, both nations have decent missile capabilities, but Iran cannot strike the United States, and most analysts believe the same about North Korea, despite its boasts. On the other hand, North Korea has nuclear material, and Iran is believed to be working toward a nuclear weapons capability. China has a whopping 20 Dong Feng missiles that can reach America. (The United States has close to 6,000 operational strategic nuclear weapons, as the Bulletin's May/June "Nuclear Notebook" reported.) Russia's capabilities are more comparable to America's, and Russia is expanding its capabilities, according to the July/August "Nuclear Notebook," but a planned attack from Moscow is extremely improbable.

Boo-boo nukes

What's more likely is an accidental nuclear attack. Both Russia and the United States still maintain nuclear-armed ICBMs on high alert and adhere to "launch-on-warning" policies, as Alan Phillips and Steven Starr wrote in the May/June Bulletin. Launch-on-warning means that if either Washington or Moscow thinks it is under attack from the other, it will launch a retaliatory strike before the supposed incoming missiles can do any damage. A false warning could mean the start of an accidental nuclear war. Keeping launch-on-warning policies alive is "inexcusably dangerous," Phillips and Starr wrote. "Launch-on-warning has exposed the world, for at least 30 years, to the danger of a nuclear war caused by nothing but a coincidence of radar, satellite sensor, or computer glitch, and a temporary human failure to appreciate that the message signaling attack is false."

So far, there have been no false launches--but there have been many false warnings.

Nuclear terrorism would be horrific, but nuclear war would be far worse. As Lynn Eden reported in "City on Fire," fire damage from nuclear explosions has been vastly and systematically underestimated--a move that allowed early U.S. war planners to demand a much larger nuclear arsenal. As Eden wrote, a single 300-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated above the Pentagon on a clear day would engulf the surrounding 65 square miles in firestorms that would "extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else." And that's a conservative estimate.

Let's recap. An attack from a weapons state is highly unlikely; an accidental nuclear launch is far more worrisome. As remote as the possibility is, all-out nuclear war has the potential to end human life on the planet--still the true doomsday scenario.

Sidebar: The "rethinking" reader

January/February
"Nuclear Weapons: The Death of No-Dual-Use," by Kenneth Bergeron
"Bush's Nuclear Hypocrisy," by Ronald E. Powaski
"City on Fire," by Lynn Eden
"Dirty Bomber? Dirty Justice," by Lewis Z. Koch
"Nukes Without Borders," by Linda Rothstein
"Dismantling U.S. Nuclear Warheads," by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen
"The Party of Preemption," by Christopher Paine

March/April
"The Centrifuge Connection," by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein
"The Dew of Death," by Joel A. Vilensky and Pandy R. Sinish
"Weapons Labs Good to Go," by Jonas Siegel
"The Protection Paradox," by Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew G. McKinzie, and Robert S. Norris

May/June
"Let's Go No-LOW," by Alan Phillips and Steven Starr
"Schooling Iran's Atom Squad," by Jack Boureston and Charles D. Ferguson
"An NPT for Non-Members," by Avner Cohen and Thomas Graham Jr.
"Defusing the Nuclear Middle East," by Bennett Ramberg
"Pakistan: It's Déjà Vu All Over Again," by Leonard Weiss
"Fun and Games with the NPT," by Linda Rothstein
"Robusterererer," by Jonas Siegel
"U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2004," by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen

July/August
"A Slow Sort of Security," by Stephen I. Schwartz
"Nuclear Policy: France Stands Alone," by Bruno Tertrais
"Disposal in the Doldrums," by Jonas Siegel
"Russian Nuclear Forces, 2004," by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen

September/October
"Mini-Nukes: Boom or Bust?" by Andy Oppenheimer
"Nanotech: Is Small Scary?" by Margaret Kosal
"No Plans for New Nukes Here!" by Bret Lortie
"U.S. Nuclear Reductions," by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen

November/December
"Europe, Carry Your Weight," by Morten Bremer Mærli and Lars van Dassen
"Fissile Material: Stockpiles Still Growing," by David Albright and Kimberly Kramer
"Iran: Countdown to Showdown," by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein
"Homegrown Terror," by Michael Reynolds
"Taking Biodefense Too Far," by Susan Wright
"U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe, 1954-2004," by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen

- Linda Rothstein

Sidebar: Child's play

Preparing for a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack is fast becoming a national pastime (see "The New Bunker Mentality," page 42). And one of the best ways to be prepared for the coming doom, according to government officials and security experts, is to have an emergency plan and survival kit. On this front, there is no shortage of options. (Even mogul Steven Brill extols the virtue of emergency kits as part of his new organization, the America Prepared Campaign.)

Most kits recommend similar goods--food, water, medical supplies, radio (and extra batteries), flashlight, can opener, and important documents--to help citizens survive disaster or attack. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) seems concerned with entertainment, too. FEMA suggests that children assemble a survival activity kit containing:

• A few favorite books
• Crayons, pencils, or marking pens and plenty of paper
• Scissors and glue
• Two favorite toys, such as a doll or action figure
• One or two board games
• A puzzle ("One with lots of pieces is good--it takes a long time to do!")
• Small figurines and play vehicles--an ambulance, fire truck, helicopter, dump truck, police car, or small boat--that kids can use to role play what is happening during the disaster
• Favorite stuffed animal or puppet
• Favorite blanket or pillow
• Pictures of the family and any pets
• A "keep safe" box with a few treasures that make them "feel special"

- Jonas Siegel

Sidebar: (Not) following the leaders

Government officials have told us time and again to be "ready" in case of a terrorist attack. But what if, in a terrorist attack, the government isn't ready for reality?

A new study from the New York Academy of Medicine's Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health says that "current plans have been created in a 'top-down' style, telling people what to do in the event of an attack without considering all of the risks and concerns that drive people's actions."

In other words, there's a planning gap between what officials want people to do and how people would actually react. The study found that only 40 percent of Americans would follow instructions to head to a public vaccination center if told to do so after terrorists caused a smallpox outbreak. If officials directed people to shelter-in-place in an undamaged building (not their home) after a nearby dirty bomb explosion, about 60 percent would.

"It's not that the rest of the people want to be uncooperative," lead investigator Roz Lasker said in a press release. "The problem is that current plans unwittingly put them in extremely difficult decision-making predicaments."

The problems stem from a difference between what emergency planners are trying to protect citizens from and what the citizens are seriously worried about. In a smallpox attack, planners want people to get vaccinated right away, but according to the study, more people would be concerned about the safety of the vaccine than about contracting smallpox. And in the event of a dirty bomb attack, when planners want people to stay in their workplaces, many people would rather leave to see to the safety of their kids or parents.

The findings, write the investigators, "are cause for worry because they suggest that current plans to deal with smallpox and dirty bomb attacks will be far less effective than planners want or the public deserves."

Sounds like the government should get ready.

-Catherine Auer

Linda Rothstein is editor, Catherine Auer managing editor, and Jonas Siegel assistant editor of the Bulletin.

Copyright © 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.