TED | 如何在核袭击中生存

00:12

我们现在面临一个大问题，这个问题已经持续了很多年：，我们是否处于遭受核袭击的危险之中呢？现在，有一个更大的问题，这个问题可能比刚刚提到的那个问题更重要，那就是，我们能不能永久地消除，核袭击的可能性，能不能将这种威胁完全消除，我想给大家举个例子，从核武器被发明以来的这些年间，直到此时此刻，我们其实一直生活在一个危险的核世界，这可以分为两个阶段，我现在和大家一起来回顾一下。

00:51

首先，我们从1945年开始正式进入核时代，美国通过曼哈顿计划，成功研制出了核武器，目的非常明确，我们将动用核武器的力量，来结束无休止的二战，所带来的残暴与恐惧，我们当时被卷入了欧洲和太平洋战场，在1945年，我们是唯一的有核国家，我们有一定数量的核武器，其中一枚投在了日本广岛市，另一枚几天之后扔在了长崎，这些发生在1945年8月，这两枚原子弹一共造成25万人死亡。

01:25

之后的一些年间，我们一直是地球上唯一的有核国家，但是1949年，苏联认为，只有美国拥有核武器是一件无法接受的事情，他们开始和美国一样发展核武器，从1949年到1985年，这是一个特殊时期，一个核武器逐步发展的时期，如果是在40年代，没有人可能会想到，到1985年的时候，地图上每一个红色炸弹标志，都代表着1000枚核弹头，整个世界，一共有65000枚核弹头，有7个国家先后拥有了核武器，成为了一个叫做“核俱乐部”组织的成员。

02:10

这是一个特殊时期，我一会儿将讨论一下，美国人以及其他国家的人对此的思考，但我想先向大家指出，自1985年以来的任何一个时间点，全世界百分之九十五的，核武器被储存在，美国和苏联的军火库中，从1985年到苏联解体的这段时间，我们在核武器这方面，开始削减军备，我们开始反核扩散，我们全世界的核弹头数量减少到了，大约21000枚，这是一个非常难理解的数目，因为我们所做的，只是使一些核弹头“退役”了，它们可能还可以使用，并且可以“再次服役"，但是军方用一种很复杂的技术方法统计得出结论：，我们以为全世界只留有相比以前，三分之一的核武器，但与此同时，我们的，”核俱乐部“又新增了两个成员，巴基斯坦和北朝鲜。

03:06

因此我们今天仍处于一个，很多国家都拥有核武器的时期，但情况却和以前非常不同，我接下来会分两个时期讨论，关于核威胁的历史，第一个时期从1949年到，1991年苏联解体，我们要关注的是在这些年间，有一场超级大国之间的核军备竞赛，这场核军备竞赛最主要的特点就是，国家之间的对立导致，核战争一触即发，基本上，可以毫不夸张地说，我们那些年就像走在，世界末日的悬崖边，有些人认为，直至今日情况仍然如此，我们能活到现在简直是难以置信。

03:53

这些年我们（之所以能活下来）完全是依赖于，这个神奇的叫做MAD的东西，它是“确保相互毁灭”的缩写，它的意思是，如果...，如果你袭击我，我也会袭击你，双方几乎同时发动袭击，这样做的结果就是，你我两国同时被摧毁，因此由于担心我自己被毁灭，我不会发射（核武器），来对你进行核打击。这就是我们为什么能活下来，不过这么做的危险就是，雷达的一次误报，就可能引发一次反击，即使另一个国家事实上根本没有发射任何东西，在这个时期，民众很清楚地意识到，确实可能发生潜在的核灾难，一个难以抹掉的画面出现在，每个人的脑海中，那就是一次核灾难，将带来全球性的毁灭，而且，从某个角度来说，这也意味着人类文明将走到尽头，这就是第一个时期。

04:51

不过奇怪的是，即使，我们知道可能会发生，这种文明灭绝，我们美国人正忙于一系列－，事实上苏联也一样－，一系列应对措施，这简直让人难以置信，一方面是我们随时都可能毁灭世界，另一方面我们却在考虑如何为此做好准备？，所以，我们－，我们提出了，一堆方案。我将只回顾其中的几个，只是为了唤起你们的回忆，如果你是1950年之后出生的，你可以把这些，当作娱乐，或者是怀旧。

05:24

这是那只叫贝尔的乌龟，这个算是尝试着，教正在上学的孩子们，如果我们真的被卷入，一次核冲突或者核战争，我们希望我们的孩子们，迅速躲到桌子下面，这就是基本的原则，核突击袭来时，如果你趴在桌子底下，一切就没事了。

06:05

我在医学院的时候，“精神病学”学得并不是很好，但是我很感兴趣，而我真的认为这样的措施完全是患有妄想症的表现。

06:14

另外，我们告诉人们，躲到地下室去，把那里作为一个放射性微粒掩蔽所，也许我们可以好好研究研究，如果没有发生核战争，我们也许可以把那里当作看电视的房间，又或者，很多青少年会发现，这一个绝佳的和女朋友呆在一起的私密环境，事实上，这个防空洞可以又很多用处，或者你可以买一个组装式的防空洞，你需要的只是把它埋到地里，说到防空洞，假如你买了一个组装式的，这可能要花几百美元，如果你买一个好点儿的可能要花掉500美元，但是你们认为有百分之多少的美国人，曾经在他们的房子下面建有一个防空洞呢？，有百分之多少的人住在有防空洞的房子里呢？

06:50

少于总人口百分之二，只有大概百分之一点四的人，就我们目前所知，曾采取过措施，不管是腾出地下室作为避难所也好，或者是真的建了一个防空洞也好，很多建筑－全国各地的公共建筑，这是在纽约－有这样的民防系统标志，这个想法是说如果大家，跑到这些避难所里就会安全，不会受到核武器的威胁，政府有史以来，最大的幻想之一，是由早期的，联邦紧急情况管理署（FEMA）提出的，我们在卡特里娜飓风的时候已经领教过FEMA的本事了，这就是第一次，大范围的公告，政府提出，事实上他们给出了一个长达六本书的预案，一个应急转移计划，这个预案的前提是，美国能够提前三到四天得知，苏联将要对我们发动袭击，预案的目标是从这些可能遭到袭击的城市中撤离，将这些城市的居民转移出来，转移到乡村。

07:51

我可以告诉大家，我曾经在参议院作证，对于这个荒谬至极的想法，如果我们真的有能力疏散群众，并且可以提前三到四天预警，这也太扯了吧，其实政府有另一个目的，虽然对公众说，这是为了保护大家，其实真正的目的是逼迫苏联，重新设定核袭击的目标－这是一笔非常大的开销－，甚至逼迫他们将核武器数量提升一倍，从而（使核武器的攻击范围）不仅覆盖以前就覆盖到的地方，还覆盖到那些人们前往避难的地方，这显然就是这个计划背后的目的，这实在是太可怕了。

08:27

我主要想说明的一点是：我们一直都在做一些，和现实情况不相关的事情，民防系统和一场全面爆发的核战争，完全不相符合，因此，一些组织，比如“社会责任医师组织”（PSR），在1979年左右，开始向公众进行宣传，他们会做轰炸演习，比如来到你的城市，给你一张城市的地图，如果我们被核弹袭击了这里都会发生什么”，告诉你：如果真的发生一场全面的核战争，医疗救援将根本不可能实现，而且也无法实现进行有效的准备，所以我们必须避免发生核战争，如果我们想活命的话，这个方案与现实脱节的问题一直没有得到根本解决，而现实是，当我们进入1945年开始的，核威胁时期的第二阶段。

09:14

第二个阶段是从1991年开始的，当苏联解体之后，美国实际上上失去了竞争对手，这个长久以来潜在的袭击者基本不复存在了，但苏联的威胁也不是完全消失了，我一会儿会再提到这一点，从1991年开始，直到现在，尤其是2001年的”9.11“事件说明，全面爆发的核战争的可能性，已经逐渐减小，取而代之的，是单独的核恐怖袭击活动，情况虽然和以前大不一样，但事实是，我们头脑里对于核战争的理解，并未改变，我一会儿会说明这意味着什么，那么，什么是核恐怖袭击呢？，它有四个关键组成部分。

09:58

第一个是全球范围内核武器，就是我之前给大家看的那张地图所显示的核武器储备，其实并不是全部都处于安全状态，尤其是那些前苏联所拥有的核武器，现在这些核武器在俄罗斯手中，这些核弹头储存在很多地方，可事实上，这其中又很多地方对于储存，如高浓缩铀和钚这样的裂变物质而言，并不安全，这些核弹头可能被贩卖或是被偷窃，换句话说，它们可以被其他人得到，从1993年到2006年，国际原子能机构，记录在案的核失窃案件就有175起，其中18起和高浓缩铀和钚有关，这些是制造核武器的关键原料，全球的高浓缩铀储备，大约为1300吨，到2100吨之间，其中至少有100吨，储存在非常不安全的，俄罗斯的储备设施中，大家觉得造一个一万吨级当量的核弹，大约需要多少高浓缩铀呢？你需要大约75磅高浓缩铀。

11:07

所以，我想给大家展示一下，那就是，75磅高浓缩铀，大约是多少呢？，我这可不是在做软广告。这只是...事实上，如果我是可口可乐公司，我一定为此非常郁闷，笑声，但是，基本上，就是这么多。

11:30

你只要从那100吨没有被安全储存的原料中，偷取或者购买这么多就够了，储存设施偷取的高浓缩铀总量，从而制造出一个核弹，威力相当于在广岛爆炸的那枚核弹，现在你们可能想看看如果是钚，另一种可用于制造核弹的裂变物质，你需要10到13磅钚，钚，10到13磅，这是这么多，这些钚足以，制造一个威力相当于在长崎爆炸的那枚原子弹，对于这个情况，你们知道，我并不愿意去想这个问题，虽然我阴差阳错地得到了一份工作，使我不得不去想，重点是，我们发展这些裂变物质是，非常非常不安全的，第二个组成部分是，制造技术。

12:18

有很多关于恐怖组织，是否真的掌握了，核武器制造技术的争论，好吧，其实到处都能找到制造技术，而且关于这些制造技术的资料多得令人难以置信，这其中有如何将各个部件组装起来，成为一个核武器的详细信息，有教你如何制造核弹的书籍，甚至还有建造一个“恐怖农场”所需的详细计划，在那儿你可以加工制造，所有的部件并进行组装，所有这些信息都是相对而言容易找到的，只要你有一个物理学本科学历，我猜-，虽然我没有...所以我说也不一定对－，不过我想有一定物理水平的人，在这些可获得的信息帮助下，事实上是可以制造出核武器的。

13:04

第三个核恐怖袭击的要素是，谁可能会做出这样的事情？，我们现在面对的是恐怖主义已经进入一个新的阶段，他们有严密的组织，他们极具献身精神并且异常忠诚，他们没有国籍，有人曾说，“基地”组织，并没有一个“回信”地址，那么如果他们向我们发射核武器，我们怎么反击？反击谁？，他们不怕报复，因为要对他们进行有效的惩罚，事实上是非常困难的，由于有人愿意牺牲自己，去摧毁别人，情况变得显而易见，“确保相互毁灭”这个概念，将不再适用。

13:48

这是苏莱曼·阿布·吉斯，苏莱曼是乌萨马·本·拉登的左膀右臂，他发表过很多言论说：，”我们有权利杀死四百万美国人，其中两百万是儿童。”，我们不用出国门都能找到，愿意发动袭击的人，不管是他们这么做的目的是什么，麦克威和尼克斯，俄克拉荷马城恐怖袭击，发生在90年代，这是一个很好的关于在美国长大的恐怖分子的例子，如果他们手中有核武器会发生什么？，第四个要素，那就是袭击对美国而言重要的目标，这些目标不仅可以靠近，而且脆弱，数量众多。

14:20

这可以作为另外一个演讲来讨论，但只在如何应对这个层面上来说，美国在2001年“9/11”之后，所做的努力，简直是难以置信的不足，我们所看到的在“卡特里娜”飓风过后的情况，就能很好地说明，美国的准备是何等地不充分，在面临任何大规模地袭击的时候，每年有七百万集装箱货船，驶入美国，其中只有百分之五到七接受了检查－，百分之五到七。

14:47

这是亚历山大·列别德，他是和叶利钦时代的将军，他向国会介绍并展示了，俄罗斯设计的一种方案，这些手提箱炸弹似乎并不厉害，每个只有0.1到1千吨当量，在广岛爆炸的那枚可是一万三千吨当量的，但它们还是足以造成难以想象的破坏，列别德曾来到美国，告诉我们有很多很多的－，超过80个这样的手提箱炸弹，事实上是不受控制的，它们看起来就是这个样子。本质上来说结构非常简单。你把这些部件放进一只手提箱，炸弹就变得非常便携。这些手提箱非常容易就能放入，你的汽车后备箱，你可以把它带到任何你想去地方然后引爆它。

15:30

如果你不想制造这种手提箱炸弹，而你又碰巧得到了一个因为安全措施没做好，而被人偷出来的核弹头，这是那枚在广岛爆炸的，“小男孩”核弹的大小，长3米，重达4吨。你可以联系，你周围的卡车出租公司，花大概50美元，租一辆容量正好的卡车，你带上你的核弹，把它装进卡车，然后你就可以出发了，这些是可能发生的。但重要的是这意味着什么，以及谁可以逃过这一劫，你没法得知这件事的可能性究竟是多少，但是我要说的是，以上所说的所有要素现在其实都满足了，任何对自己说，核武器不会被恐怖分子使用的人，其实是在欺骗自己。

16:13

我想很多情报部门的人，那些经常和这些工作打交道的人，都认为这些袭击是不可避免的，除非我们采取某些措施，去尽可能地规避危险，比如更好的管制，更好的防范，更好的监测－或者说，更好的筛查，那些进口货物集装箱等等，许许多多能让我们变得更安全的举措有待实施，此时此刻，我们完全有可能，目睹核弹在我们的城市中爆炸，我不认为我们在近期内会遇到全面爆发的核战争，虽然这也不是完全不可能，各个超级大国里的军火库里，有足够的核武器，可以毁灭地球很多很多次，印巴冲突一触即发，在中东，在北朝鲜，或者其他地方，虽然刚开始可能只在区域范围内使用核武器，但有可能很快地，发展并上升到，一场全面核战争，非常让人不安。

17:15

好的，我们来亲眼看看吧，回到我刚才提到的卡车，我们把它开到布鲁克林大桥，我们一路开往市中心，我们把车开到，你刚看到的，金融区的某个地方，有一个一万吨级当量的核弹，只比广岛爆炸的那枚核弹小一点，我希望通过下面这个总结，提供给大家一些信息，我想－，可以说是一些“实用新闻”，首先，这可能听上去有些吓人，这可能超越了我们能够想象的范围，这是终极的危险，如果你位于距离爆炸中心，半英里的范围内，你面临的将是九死一生的情况，如果你就位于爆炸中心，你会被汽化，而这，我不得不说，非常遗憾。

18:13

假设，在半径两英里的范围内，你有百分之五十的机会生还，如果把范围扩大到八英里－，我现在讨论的是立刻死亡的情况－，估计死亡的概率，在百分之十到百分之二十之间，事情是这样的，关于核弹爆炸，首先，爆炸中心温度高达，数千度，并且以，极高的热能，强烈的辐射，以及剧烈的爆炸等形式扩散，在这个黄色区域内会产生，一股像龙卷风一般的风暴，所有建筑将几乎被全部摧毁，在这个总结中我要重点强调的是，如果你在这儿，将会发生什么，如果我们说的是以前，所面临的那种全面核战争，你，如果站在这儿，和黄圈里的人一样难逃一劫。所以，（但对于现在而言）这是一个值得讨论的地方，我现在所讲的重点是，如果你身处这个区域内并在最初的爆炸中生还，我有很多可以教你的东西，当爆炸过后－，顺便说一句，如果这些真的发生了，千万别用肉眼去看。

19:20

如果你用肉眼去看，你将会失明，不管是暂时性的还是永久性的，因此，如果可能避免的话，比如，把目光移开，那将是一个很好的选择，如果你发现自己还活着，但是，你处在一个核武器爆炸中心的附近，你有－在爆炸发生之后－，你有10到20分钟的逃生时间，具体时间取决于爆炸规模以及爆炸地点，在升起的蘑菇云所带来的，致命的强辐射到来之前，逃离那个区域，在这10到15分钟内，你唯一需要做的－，我说真的－，就是跑一英里，远离爆炸点，接下来将要发生的－这是－，我现在要向大家演示放射性坠尘。在20分钟内，坠尘直线下落；24小时内，致命的辐射将随着盛行风飘散，基本上沿着某一特定方向，向东北方飘去。

20:08

如果你在这附近，就得设法逃离，如果你感觉到了风，感觉到这股强劲的风，你就应该，沿着垂直与风向的方向逃走，[不是侧风或顺风的方向]，如果你能看到爆炸发生的地方的话，你必须赶快离开那儿，如果你没有迅速离开，你很快就会近距离，暴露在致命的辐射中，如果你无法离开那里，我希望你能找一个避难所躲起来，躲在城市里的避难所指的是，要么躲在地下室，越深越好，要么躲在楼上，越高越好，如果是爆炸发生在地面上（通常都是如此），辐射尘可能会到达9楼。所以，你需要跑到10楼或者更高的楼层，或者躲到地下室，但总的来说，你需要尽快离开这座城市，越快越好，如果你这么做了，你其实是可以在一次核爆炸中生还的。

21:01

在之后的几天到一周内，如有辐射云－，同样随着风，然后下落，继续往前推进15到20英里，在这个例子中会飘过长岛，如果你处于放射性坠尘经过的区域，你真的需要躲进避难所或者尽快离开，这很明显。但那是如果你能躲进避难所，你确实可以生还，每个人是否知道，应该如何逃生，所带来的区别，影响了最终的死亡人数，是15万还是20万，在这个例子中，将意味着死亡人数，能否从70万减少到50万。

21:37

所以，21世纪的核应急预案，不仅是可能的而且是必须的，但是直到2008年，全美国没有一个城市，拥有有效的应急预案，来应对一次核爆炸灾难，部分原因是，应急预案的制定者，他们自己，都已经被核灾难这一想法，从心理上击溃了，他们不知所措。你如果和他们说起“核”，他们会想，“天啊，我们全都得死。还有什么可说的呢？这都是徒劳。”，我们所尝试的就是告诉他们这其实并非徒劳：，我们可以通过做一些常识普及的工作，来提高生还比例。

22:13

我们的目标是将死亡人数降至最低，我希望留给大家一些个人的看法，我认为你们可能会感兴趣的。在核爆炸中生存的关键，就是逃出去，并且不要误入危险区域，这基本上就是我们接下来要讨论的全部内容，你距离爆炸点的距离越远越好，距离爆炸的时间，越长越好，尽可能地将自己，和外界隔绝开来，所以，与外界隔绝隔绝－最好是用泥土和水泥隔绝，或者躲在地下室－，保持距离，长时间远离，这些可以拯救你。

22:47

这些是你应该做的。第一，正如我所说的，不要用肉眼看爆炸发出的光，如果可能的话－我其实不太相信你们能忍住不看。让我们假设，从理论上而言，你会很想看。你最好让嘴巴保持张开的状态，这样你的鼓膜，不会在压力下破裂，如果你距离爆炸发生的地方很近，你需要迅速低头并且找掩体躲起来，正如贝尔告诉你的那样－就是那只叫贝尔的乌龟，可能的话，你最好躲在某些东西下面，避免受伤或致死，你需要远离最初爆炸形成的放射性坠尘蘑菇云，我刚刚说过，这些必须在几分钟内完成，并且躲到合适的地方。你需要沿着风的方向，或者垂直于风的方向跑1.2英里。

23:19

你们知道，如果你看到在那边的建筑，发生严重的损毁，但是这边的建筑损毁得没有那么严重，那么你就可以知道爆炸发生在那边，而你应该朝着这个方向走，同时注意垂直于风的方向走，每当你在户外或者在转移过程中，你需要尽可能地用东西盖住自己的皮肤，以及口鼻，只要这些覆盖物，不会影响到你的移动和撤离，最后，你需要尽快去除身上的放射性污染，如果你穿着衣服，最好找个地方把衣服脱掉，并且洗个澡，从而去除辐射污染，这些辐射物质这时候可能已经附着在你身上，之后你需要在避难所里呆上至少48到72小时，接下来就是等待了，最好的情况你能有个小型的，不需要电池的发条式收音机，一直等到有人告诉你，什么时候外面已经安全了。然后再走到外面来。

24:05

总结一下，核战争已经不想以前那样了，从前的核战争是几乎不能从中生还的。现在的核恐怖袭击是可能发生的，甚至可以说很有可能发生的，但是我们是有可能生还的，这是杰克·盖格，他是美国公众健康界的英雄之一，杰克说解决核问题的，唯一方法，不管是核战争还是核恐怖袭击，就是废除核武器，如果你想在全球变暖被解决后找点事情做，我强烈建议你思考一下这个事实，我们必须采取一些行动来解决，这些不能被容忍的不人道的核武器给我们这个世界所带来的问题。

24:43

这是我最喜欢的民事防御的宣传画，我不想成为一个粗鄙的人，不过……这个……他已经不在任了，所以我们没必要认真，对吧。这是某个人给我的，这个人非常热衷于民事防御建设，但真正重要的事实是，美国已经经历了一段非常艰难的时期，我们没有能够专注地去完成那些我们必须完成的事情，而现在我们面对的是，可能将人间变成地狱的潜在危险，谢谢大家。

00:12

So, a big question that we're facing now and have been for quite a number of years now: are we at risk of a nuclear attack? Now, there's a bigger question that's probably actually more important than that, is the notion of permanently eliminating the possibility of a nuclear attack, eliminating the threat altogether. And I would like to make a case to you that over the years since we first developed atomic weaponry, until this very moment, we've actually lived in a dangerous nuclear world that's characterized by two phases, which I'm going to go through with you right now. 

00:51

First of all, we started off the nuclear age in 1945. The United States had developed a couple of atomic weapons through the Manhattan Project, and the idea was very straightforward: we would use the power of the atom to end the atrocities and the horror of this unending World War II that we'd been involved in in Europe and in the Pacific. And in 1945, we were the only nuclear power. We had a few nuclear weapons, two of which we dropped on Japan, in Hiroshima, a few days later in Nagasaki, in August 1945, killing about 250,000 people between those two. 

01:25

And for a few years, we were the only nuclear power on Earth. But by 1949, the Soviet Union had decided it was unacceptable to have us as the only nuclear power, and they began to match what the United States had developed. And from 1949 to 1985 was an extraordinary time of a buildup of a nuclear arsenal that no one could possibly have imagined back in the 1940s. So by 1985 -- each of those red bombs up here is equivalent of a thousands warheads -- the world had 65,000 nuclear warheads, and seven members of something that came to be known as the "nuclear club." 

02:10

And it was an extraordinary time, and I am going to go through some of the mentality that we -- that Americans and the rest of the world were experiencing. But I want to just point out to you that 95 percent of the nuclear weapons at any particular time since 1985 -- going forward, of course -- were part of the arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union. After 1985, and before the break up of the Soviet Union, we began to disarm from a nuclear point of view. We began to counter-proliferate, and we dropped the number of nuclear warheads in the world to about a total of 21,000. It's a very difficult number to deal with, because what we've done is we've quote unquote "decommissioned" some of the warheads. They're still probably usable. They could be "re-commissioned," but the way they count things, which is very complicated, we think we have about a third of the nuclear weapons we had before. But we also, in that period of time, added two more members to the nuclear club: Pakistan and North Korea. 

03:06

So we stand today with a still fully armed nuclear arsenal among many countries around the world, but a very different set of circumstances. So I'm going to talk about a nuclear threat story in two chapters. Chapter one is 1949 to 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, and what we were dealing with, at that point and through those years, was a superpowers' nuclear arms race. It was characterized by a nation-versus-nation, very fragile standoff. And basically, we lived for all those years, and some might argue that we still do, in a situation of being on the brink, literally, of an apocalyptic, planetary calamity. It's incredible that we actually lived through all that. 

03:53

We were totally dependent during those years on this amazing acronym, which is MAD. It stands for mutually assured destruction. So it meant if you attacked us, we would attack you virtually simultaneously, and the end result would be a destruction of your country and mine. So the threat of my own destruction kept me from launching a nuclear attack on you. That's the way we lived. And the danger of that, of course, is that a misreading of a radar screen could actually cause a counter-launch, even though the first country had not actually launched anything. During this chapter one, there was a high level of public awareness about the potential of nuclear catastrophe, and an indelible image was implanted in our collective minds that, in fact, a nuclear holocaust would be absolutely globally destructive and could, in some ways, mean the end of civilization as we know it. So this was chapter one. 

04:51

Now the odd thing is that even though we knew that there would be that kind of civilization obliteration, we engaged in America in a series -- and in fact, in the Soviet Union -- in a series of response planning. It was absolutely incredible. So premise one is we'd be destroying the world, and then premise two is, why don't we get prepared for it? So what we offered ourselves was a collection of things. I'm just going to go skim through a few things, just to jog your memories. If you're born after 1950, this is just -- consider this entertainment, otherwise it's memory lane. 

05:24

This was Bert the Turtle. (Video) This was basically an attempt to teach our schoolchildren that if we did get engaged in a nuclear confrontation and atomic war, then we wanted our school children to kind of basically duck and cover. That was the principle. You -- there would be a nuclear conflagration about to hit us, and if you get under your desk, things would be OK. 

06:05

I didn't do all that well in psychiatry in medical school, but I was interested, and I think this was seriously delusional. 

06:14

Secondly, we told people to go down in their basements and build a fallout shelter. Maybe it would be a study when we weren't having an atomic war, or you could use it as a TV room, or, as many teenagers found out, a very, very safe place for a little privacy with your girlfriend. And actually -- so there are multiple uses of the bomb shelters. Or you could buy a prefabricated bomb shelter that you could simply bury in the ground. Now, the bomb shelters at that point -- let's say you bought a prefab one -- it would be a few hundred dollars, maybe up to 500, if you got a fancy one. Yet, what percentage of Americans do you think ever had a bomb shelter in their house? What percentage lived in a house with a bomb shelter? 

06:50

Less than two percent. About 1.4 percent of the population, as far as anyone knows, did anything, either making a space in their basement or actually building a bomb shelter. Many buildings, public buildings, around the country -- this is New York City -- had these little civil defense signs, and the idea was that you would run into one of these shelters and be safe from the nuclear weaponry. And one of the greatest governmental delusions of all time was something that happened in the early days of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, as we now know, and are well aware of their behaviors from Katrina. Here is their first big public announcement. They would propose -- actually there were about six volumes written on this -- a crisis relocation plan that was dependent upon the United States having three to four days warning that the Soviets were going to attack us. So the goal was to evacuate the target cities. We would move people out of the target cities into the countryside. 

07:51

And I'm telling you, I actually testified at the Senate about the absolute ludicrous idea that we would actually evacuate, and actually have three or four days' warning. It was just completely off the wall. Turns out that they had another idea behind it, even though this was -- they were telling the public it was to save us. The idea was that we would force the Soviets to re-target their nuclear weapons -- very expensive -- and potentially double their arsenal, to not only take out the original site, but take out sites where people were going. This was what apparently, as it turns out, was behind all this. It was just really, really frightening. 

08:27

The main point here is we were dealing with a complete disconnect from reality. The civil defense programs were disconnected from the reality of what we'd see in all-out nuclear war. So organizations like Physicians for Social Responsibility, around 1979, started saying this a lot publicly. They would do a bombing run. They'd go to your city, and they'd say, "Here's a map of your city. Here's what's going to happen if we get a nuclear hit." So no possibility of medical response to, or meaningful preparedness for all-out nuclear war. So we had to prevent nuclear war if we expected to survive. This disconnect was never actually resolved. And what happened was -- when we get in to chapter two of the nuclear threat era, which started back in 1945.

09:14

Chapter two starts in 1991. When the Soviet Union broke up, we effectively lost that adversary as a potential attacker of the United States, for the most part. It's not completely gone. I'm going to come back to that. But from 1991 through the present time, emphasized by the attacks of 2001, the idea of an all-out nuclear war has diminished and the idea of a single event, act of nuclear terrorism is what we have instead. Although the scenario has changed very considerably, the fact is that we haven't changed our mental image of what a nuclear war means. So I'm going to tell you what the implications of that are in just a second. So, what is a nuclear terror threat? And there's four key ingredients to describing that. 

09:58

First thing is that the global nuclear weapons, in the stockpiles that I showed you in those original maps, happen to be not uniformly secure. And it's particularly not secure in the former Soviet Union, now in Russia. There are many, many sites where warheads are stored and, in fact, lots of sites where fissionable materials, like highly enriched uranium and plutonium, are absolutely not safe. They're available to be bought, stolen, whatever. They're acquirable, let me put it that way. From 1993 through 2006, the International Atomic Energy Agency documented 175 cases of nuclear theft, 18 of which involved highly enriched uranium or plutonium, the key ingredients to make a nuclear weapon. The global stockpile of highly enriched uranium is about 1,300, at the low end, to about 2,100 metric tons. More than 100 megatons of this is stored in particularly insecure Russian facilities. How much of that do you think it would take to actually build a 10-kiloton bomb? Well, you need about 75 pounds of it. 

11:07

So, what I'd like to show you is what it would take to hold 75 pounds of highly enriched uranium. This is not a product placement. It's just -- in fact, if I was Coca Cola, I'd be pretty distressed about this -- (Laughter) -- but basically, this is it. 

11:30

This is what you would need to steal or buy out of that 100-metric-ton stockpile that's relatively insecure to create the type of bomb that was used in Hiroshima. Now you might want to look at plutonium as another fissionable material that you might use in a bomb. That -- you'd need 10 to 13 pounds of plutonium. Now, plutonium, 10 to 13 pounds: this. This is enough plutonium to create a Nagasaki-size atomic weapon. Now this situation, already I -- you know, I don't really like thinking about this, although somehow I got myself a job where I have to think about it. So the point is that we're very, very insecure in terms of developing this material. The second thing is, what about the know-how? 

12:18

And there's a lot of controversy about whether terror organizations have the know-how to actually make a nuclear weapon. Well, there's a lot of know-how out there. There's an unbelievable amount of know-how out there. There's detailed information on how to assemble a nuclear weapon from parts. There's books about how to build a nuclear bomb. There are plans for how to create a terror farm where you could actually manufacture and develop all the components and assemble it. All of this information is relatively available. If you have an undergraduate degree in physics, I would suggest -- although I don't, so maybe it's not even true -- but something close to that would allow you, with the information that's currently available, to actually build a nuclear weapon. 

13:04

The third element of the nuclear terror threat is that, who would actually do such a thing? Well, what we're seeing now is a level of terrorism that involves individuals who are highly organized. They are very dedicated and committed. They are stateless. Somebody once said, Al Qaeda does not have a return address, so if they attack us with a nuclear weapon, what's the response, and to whom is the response? And they're retaliation-proof. Since there is no real retribution possible that would make any difference, since there are people willing to actually give up their lives in order to do a lot of damage to us, it becomes apparent that the whole notion of this mutually assured destruction would not work. 

13:48

Here is Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, and Sulaiman was a key lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden. He wrote many, many times statements to this effect: "we have the right to kill four million Americans, two million of whom should be children." And we don't have to go overseas to find people willing to do harm, for whatever their reasons. McVeigh and Nichols, and the Oklahoma City attack in the 1990s was a good example of homegrown terrorists. What if they had gotten their hands on a nuclear weapon? The fourth element is that the high-value U.S. targets are accessible, soft and plentiful. 

14:20

This would be a talk for another day, but the level of the preparedness that the United States has achieved since 9/11 of '01 is unbelievably inadequate. What you saw after Katrina is a very good indicator of how little prepared the United States is for any kind of major attack. Seven million ship cargo containers come into the United States every year. Five to seven percent only are inspected -- five to seven percent. 

14:47

This is Alexander Lebed, who was a general that worked with Yeltsin, who talked about, and presented to Congress, this idea that the Russians had developed -- these suitcase bombs. They were very low yield -- 0.1 to one kiloton, Hiroshima was around 13 kilotons -- but enough to do an unbelievable amount of damage. And Lebed came to the United States and told us that many, many -- more than 80 of the suitcase bombs were actually not accountable. And they look like this. They're basically very simple arrangements. You put the elements into a suitcase. It becomes very portable. The suitcase can be conveniently dropped in your trunk of your car. You take it wherever you want to take it, and you can detonate it. 

15:30

You don't want to build a suitcase bomb, and you happen to get one of those insecure nuclear warheads that exist. This is the size of the "Little Boy" bomb that was dropped at Hiroshima. It was 9.8 feet long, weighed 8,800 pounds. You go down to your local rent-a-truck and for 50 bucks or so, you rent a truck that's got the right capacity, and you take your bomb, you put it in the truck and you're ready to go. It could happen. But what it would mean and who would survive? You can't get an exact number for that kind of probability, but what I'm trying to say is that we have all the elements of that happening. Anybody who dismisses the thought of a nuclear weapon being used by a terrorist is kidding themselves. 

16:13

I think there's a lot of people in the intelligence community -- a lot of people who deal with this work in general think it's almost inevitable, unless we do certain things to really try to defuse the risk, like better interdiction, better prevention, better fixing, you know, better screening of cargo containers that are coming into the country and so forth. There's a lot that can be done to make us a lot safer. At this particular moment, we actually could end up seeing a nuclear detonation in one of our cities. I don't think we would see an all-out nuclear war any time soon, although even that is not completely off the table. There's still enough nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the superpowers to destroy the Earth many, many times over. There are flash points in India and Pakistan, in the Middle East, in North Korea, other places where the use of nuclear weapons, while initially locally, could very rapidly go into a situation where we'd be facing all-out nuclear war. It's very unsettling. 

17:15

Here we go. OK. I'm back in my truck, and we drove over the Brooklyn Bridge. We're coming down, and we bring that truck that you just saw somewhere in here, in the Financial District. This is a 10-kiloton bomb, slightly smaller than was used in Hiroshima. And I want to just conclude this by just giving you some information. I think -- "news you could use" kind of concept here. So, first of all, this would be horrific beyond anything we can possibly imagine. This is the ultimate. And if you're in the half-mile radius of where this bomb went off, you have a 90 percent chance of not making it. If you're right where the bomb went off, you will be vaporized. And that's -- I'm just telling you, this is not good. 

18:13

You assume that. Two-mile radius, you have a 50 percent chance of being killed, and up to about eight miles away -- now I'm talking about killed instantly -- somewhere between a 10 and 20 percent chance of getting killed. The thing about this is that the experience of the nuclear detonation is -- first of all, tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit at the core here, where it goes off, and an extraordinary amount of energy in the form of heat, acute radiation and blast effects. An enormous hurricane-like wind, and destruction of buildings almost totally, within this yellow circle here. And what I'm going to focus on, as I come to conclusion here, is that, what happens to you if you're in here? Well, if we're talking about the old days of an all-out nuclear attack, you, up here, are as dead as the people here. So it was a moot point. My point now, though, is that there is a lot that we could do for you who are in here, if you've survived the initial blast. You have, when the blast goes off -- and by the way, if it ever comes up, don't look at it. 

19:20

If you look at it, you're going to be blind, either temporarily or permanently. So if there's any way that you can avoid, like, avert your eyes, that would be a good thing. If you find yourself alive, but you're in the vicinity of a nuclear weapon, you have -- that's gone off -- you have 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size and exactly where it went off, to get out of the way before a lethal amount of radiation comes straight down from the mushroom cloud that goes up. In that 10 to 15 minutes, all you have to do -- and I mean this seriously -- is go about a mile away from the blast. And what happens is -- this is -- I'm going to show you now some fallout plumes. Within 20 minutes, it comes straight down. Within 24 hours, lethal radiation is going out with prevailing winds, and it's mostly in this particular direction -- it's going northeast. 

20:08

And if you're in this vicinity, you've got to get away. So you're feeling the wind -- and there's tremendous wind now that you're going to be feeling -- and you want to go perpendicular to the wind [not upwind or downwind]. if you are in fact able to see where the blast was in front of you. You've got to get out of there. If you don't get out of there, you're going to be exposed to lethal radiation in very short order. If you can't get out of there, we want you to go into a shelter and stay there. Now, in a shelter in an urban area means you have to be either in a basement as deep as possible, or you have to be on a floor -- on a high floor -- if it's a ground burst explosion, which it would be, higher than the ninth floor. So you have to be tenth floor or higher, or in the basement. But basically, you've got to get out of town as quickly as possible. And if you do that, you actually can survive a nuclear blast. 

21:01

Over the next few days to a week, there will be a radiation cloud, again, going with the wind, and settling down for another 15 or 20 miles out -- in this case, over Long Island. And if you're in the direct fallout zone here, you really have to either be sheltered or you have to get out of there, and that's clear. But if you are sheltered, you can actually survive. The difference between knowing information of what you're going to do personally, and not knowing information, can save your life, and it could mean the difference between 150,000 to 200,000 fatalities from something like this and half a million to 700,000 fatalities. 

21:37

So, response planning in the twenty-first century is both possible and is essential. But in 2008, there isn't one single American city that has done effective plans to deal with a nuclear detonation disaster. Part of the problem is that the emergency planners themselves, personally, are overwhelmed psychologically by the thought of nuclear catastrophe. They are paralyzed. You say "nuclear" to them, and they're thinking, "Oh my God, we're all gone. What's the point? It's futile." And we're trying to tell them, "It's not futile. We can change the survival rates by doing some commonsensical things." 

22:13

So the goal here is to minimize fatalities. And I just want to leave you with the personal points that I think you might be interested in. The key to surviving a nuclear blast is getting out, and not going into harm's way. That's basically all we're going to be talking about here. And the farther you are away in distance, the longer it is in time from the initial blast; and the more separation between you and the outside atmosphere, the better. So separation -- hopefully with dirt or concrete, or being in a basement -- distance and time is what will save you. 

22:47

So here's what you do. First of all, as I said, don't stare at the light flash, if you can. I don't know you could possibly resist doing that. But let's assume, theoretically, you want to do that. You want to keep your mouth open, so your eardrums don't burst from the pressures. If you're very close to what happened, you actually do have to duck and cover, like Bert told you, Bert the Turtle. And you want to get under something so that you're not injured or killed by objects, if that's at all possible. You want to get away from the initial fallout mushroom cloud, I said, in just a few minutes. And shelter and place. You want to move [only] crosswind for 1.2 miles. 

23:19

You know, if you're out there and you see buildings horribly destroyed and down in that direction, less destroyed here, then you know that it was over there, the blast, and you're going this way, as long as you're going crosswise to the wind. Once you're out and evacuating, you want to keep as much of your skin, your mouth and nose covered, as long as that covering doesn't impede you moving and getting out of there. And finally, you want to get decontaminated as soon as possible. And if you're wearing clothing, you've taken off your clothing, you're going to get showered down some place and remove the radiation that would be -- the radioactive material that might be on you. And then you want to stay in shelter for 48 to 72 hours minimum, but you're going to wait hopefully -- you'll have your little wind-up, battery-less radio, and you'll be waiting for people to tell you when it's safe to go outside. That's what you need to do. 

24:05

In conclusion, nuclear war is less likely than before, but by no means out of the question, and it's not survivable. Nuclear terrorism is possible -- it may be probable -- but is survivable. And this is Jack Geiger, who's one of the heroes of the U.S. public health community. And Jack said the only way to deal with nuclear anything, whether it's war or terrorism, is abolition of nuclear weapons. And you want something to work on once you've fixed global warming, I urge you to think about the fact that we have to do something about this unacceptable, inhumane reality of nuclear weapons in our world. 

24:43

Now, this is my favorite civil defense slide, and I -- (Laughter) -- I don't want to be indelicate, but this -- he's no longer in office. We don't really care, OK. This was sent to me by somebody who is an aficionado of civil defense procedures, but the fact of the matter is that America's gone through a very hard time. We've not been focused, we've not done what we had to do, and now we're facing the potential of bad, hell on Earth. Thank you.