Wanna hear something REALLY scary?

Ask yourself this question: Who told New Yorkers to leave their buildings and walk home? Everyone saw all those pictures of millions of people streaming down the roads and highways, heading for home, but who out there (aside from me) thought this:

What if the power outage WAS a terrorist attack, but only PART of that attack? What if in that crowd of millions of people there are hundreds of people carrying smallpox and/or other bioweapons in their bloodstream? What if cars were driving around spraying biological weapons out their windows?

Now I am not saying this is actually what happened, but does sending all those people out into the street when they had no idea what was actually happening sound like a good idea to you?

I believe it was Bloomberg who sent this message out, but regardless of who, if anyone, sent it, was it such a good idea to let all those people congregate in such large crowds?

What if a chemical attack had followed? We know that bio and chemical weapons are not really that effective because they disperse too easily, but if you have a crowd of a millions people packed into the streets, can you imagine the death toll if only 1 in 10 people were affected?

Anyway, just a little something to think about when you ponder how well this event was handled...

On edit: Heck, what if this was caused by an accident at a nuclear power plant? Would having all those people in the streets, possibly downwind, be a good idea?

Nobody had to tell these people to leave work and go home, I think they just did because going home at the end of the day is normal.

that crowds like this happen every work day?

I saw one aerial shot of a ferry terminal that was so packed that streets running past it were filled to capacity with human bodies. Is that the normal rush hour?

Or, do all these people usually leave in dribs and drabs over a period of a couple of hours, instead of all at once?

That one ferry terminal could have resulted in far more deaths than occurred on Sept 11 if a dirty bomb, or chemical or biological bomb had been placed nearby, and this scened was replayed all over New York.

Seriously, I don't know about you, but I think it was a VERY BAD IDEA to let (or cause) an exodus such as this to happen.

usually they are taking trains/cars/busses/subway/etc. the walkers clogged the roads. and yes, maybe they normally have staggered times they leave work but what the hell are they gonna do at work with no power? so they all left for home at once. what would you have em do, sit sweating in a glass tower with no ac? in fact, no fresh air at all.

Tell all people to remain in their offices and other buildings until they receive word to evacuate. Then have police roaming the streets telling everybody to get off the streets until they are cleared to travel.

Then building by building, block by block, release them to travel in a piecemeal fashion, thereby ensuring that buses can cope with the flow, and that congestion is kept to an absolute minimum.

Seems pretty reasonable.

In fact, what if this had NOT been a blackout but a terrorist chemical attack? What would the authorities have said then? Run for your lives?

Tell all people to remain in their offices and other buildings until they receive word to evacuate...

And how would they do that...word of mouth?

First of all, with no power- How are you going to tell "all people" to remain in their offices and other buildings?
With no power, no lights, no AC, are the good little office workers all supposed to sit quietly and orderly at their desks(with absolutely nothing to do), with hands folded, until they are "dismissed"...?
Police roaming the streets telling everybody to get off the streets until they are cleared for travel??? I don't even know where to start with that one.

Ummmm...like, have you ever been to a big city?
and I don't mean any of the quaint little urban areas you have in New Zealand, I'm talking about a BIG City.

Being stuck in a dark, unventilated high rise building or walking through the streets of Manhattan in a crowd?

Frankly, I would prefer being outside.

I also can't even begin to fathom how long it would take to evacuate every building in New York one at a time. In '93, my roomates father was in an office on the 70th Floor of the WTC that was not bombed. The elevators were out so he had to use the stairs. It took one hour for him to get down with his sixty-year-old secretary. So for arguments sake, let's say it takes an hour to evacuate two square blocks. In Manhattan, you are probably talking 400 hours to evacuate the island. Even if it took ten hours, that's a hell of a long time to be in an unlighted, unventilated high-rise without food or water. (Remember that pumps are required to get water to the upper floors).

Still, nothing on the scale of New York.

But that is not the point.

Answer me this then (I'll repeat it because you seem to have overlooked it from my other post):

What would the authorities do in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear (dirty bomb included) attack on New York? Would they just tell everyone to hit the streets and hope for the best? Or do they have some plan to prevent THE ENTIRE POPULATION from being killed?

With no power- How are you going to tell "all people" to remain in their offices and other buildings?

Sitting around with their thumbs up their arses?

If you read my post you will see I dealt with this, already.

By the way, I asked you first: Why won't you answer it?

What would the authorities do if an NBC attack on New York occured? Answer that and you will answer the question you asked.

Look below.

And I believe there are only 2,000 (if that) Police Officers on duty at any given moment in Manhatten.

And I did see your post, and responded to it. As for the 40,000 figure, that is the figure that was given by Bloomberg as being the number of firefighters and police officers that had been mobilised under the Homeland Security plans. Of course this deals with the whole of New York, rather than just Manhatten, but I never narrowed my focus to just Manhatten.

By the way, your answer tells us that under a chemical attack, people would be told to stay in their buildings. Isn't that what I said should happen?

We would also have communication in the event of a chemical attack. And electricity. And water. And air.

None of those things existed yesterday in office buildings.

Here is a scary scenario. Terrorists knock out power to the Empire State Building. All the occupants go to "safe rooms" in the event of terrorist attack. Terrorists then set the building on fire. Now everyone is in a burning building without lights, water, a sprinkler system or communication to the outside world.

The point is, any plan can be turned against the user of the plan. Having lived in large cities, I believe that an orderly evacuation of cities of non-residents is almost always the best plan in these situations. Manhattan is massive. The risk of keeping people locked down on the Upper West Side while the Financial District is evacuated seems much greater than the risk of a chemical attack which could happen during any Rush Hour.

We would also have communication in the event of a chemical attack. And electricity. And water. And air.

How do you know this? Let's say some nasty Al Qaeda terrorists armed with chemical and biological weapons discover a way to knock out the power to New York. They makes sure to do it just before rush hour at the end of the day so that all those people who would normally take the subway are forced to walk or congregate at ferry and bus terminals.

Lets say they do this in an attempt to make as many people as possible congregate in very limited areas (the streets) at a time when the authorities were not expecting such huge croweds and therefore have taken no special security measures (as they would during the marathon or 4th of July).

Now they have the weapons and millions of people on the streets. What a juicy target!

Two days ago, that may have seemed like an inconceivable idea, but as we saw yesterday - not TOTALLY inconceivable.

In other words: disaster planning should ALWAYS assume the worst, not the best. What happens if all communications are knocked out? What happens if mass transit is knocked out?

These aren't obscure questions, they are straight forward and totally reasonable. So why did New York not have an answer to them yesterday?

massed off-shore, and protected by their heavy destroyers?
or will turban-clad terrorists suddenly pop-up out of manholes like so many C.H.U.D.S., AK-47's blazing away, and tossing grenades at the confused crowds, while other regiments of crack Al Qeada paratroopers drop from the skies?

If they want mass crowds in confined areas Manhatten to prey upon, they happen daily, and at the same time and same places. Just try going into a commuter rail station at 8:15 am, or trying to get out of one at 5:15pm...you're like a salmon trying to swim upstream against Niagra Falls.

We have no plan. There should be an emergency system, but it's impossible to even fathom how to implement such a plan on that large of a scale. What we saw was chaos that did not turn into anarchy and disaster yesterday. We are lucky.

Maybe there are things people in large urban areas can do, but I doubt it. They are sitting ducks.

Given the fact NYorkers did not know what had happened, whether they were in imminent danger, or simply experiencing a minor problem, they truly behaved in admirable fashion. The entire city deserves to be given good citizen medals for their actions.

Again, not very easy to secure large urban areas. I think most citizens know deep down that in case of REAL emergency, it's every man and woman for himself or herself. Everyone does the only thing they can think of--go home.

Again, I thought NYC did an absolutely amazing job. It had 9,000 officers on the street within an hour. It had some sort of traffic control in place. It cleared out the subways and elevators relatively quickly with apparently no injuries. There was no looting, like in Ottawa. There was no risk to the water supply, like in Cleveland (which really needs to look into that situation immediately). The hospitals all had power. All there was a massive line of people getting out of the city. The National Guard was available but was apparently not needed. I was incredibly impressed with how orderly everything happened. They learned a lot since 9/11.

The bottom line is this. Everyday in Manhattan, you have about three million people enter an island. At the end of the day, they must leave an island. Aside from Star Trek transporters, I don't see how you can do a better job protecting them than what happened yesterday.

The missing ingredient was Fear. Even though some people might have been a little jittery, there wasn't an overall sense of doom. People were inconvienenced, not endangered. Add a little terror to the mix, and you get a whole diffent story.
In the movie "Judgement Day", I thought it was entirely ludicrous that Jeff Goldblum's character would have been able to drive from Mid-town Manhatten to downtown D.C. in about 6 hours, amid the chaos of an alien invasion(one of many ludicrousities in that movie). for one thing, I thought it particularly ridiculous to show the highway OUT of D.C. as jam-packed, but the road IN was completely bare- as if people in an life-and-death emergency of that magnitude wouldn't just crossover and use the inbound lanes to get OUT of the city.

A quick and orderly evacuation of a major metropoloitan area in the face of a wide-spread cataclysm just wouldn't be possible, no matter how much planning went into it.

I'm sure that Sydney is a lovely city. I live in Chicago, and grew up here as well. It's a nice city as well, and I always thaought that it was a large city too, where skyscrapers were invented...until I went to New York City- there's really no comparison in size and scope between the two. New York City, Manhatten especially, is just skyscraper after skyscraper, block after block, in all directions as far as the eye can see.
And they are extremely dependent on power, for communication, transportation and control.
Just how do you propose getting word out simultaneously and instantaneously to all those people, directing them exactly what to do, where to go, how to do it, and in what order? and doing so without power? It's a completely un-realistic expectation.

As to what would happen in the case of some type of major attack?

Chaos most likely.
Every man for themselves, and survival of the fittest.
an orderly evacuation in the face of mass destruction?
Ain't gonna happen.
Hunker down, wait out the storm, and make preparations to meet your maker.

Well, this is just stuff I know from living in DC which has similar fears . . . .

1. In the event of chemical attack, the drill in my building is to seal the doors, move everyone into a centralized location away from doors and windows, distribute Power Bars and bottled water, and wait for the all-clear.

2. The plan for biological attack is similar, though frankly I am not sure how you even detect a biological attack.

3. As for nuclear attack, the plan is to die in the least disturning manner popular. Actually, there are evacuation routes and such I don't know how the hell you are going to get 4 Million people onto the Beltway in 15 minutes. I know that hanging around is not a good idea.

The thing is, if the power goes out, none of these plans are particularly effective. It's unsafe to stay in unventilated, unlit office buildings with no water. So, you would likely follow Plan 3 a directed evacuation. Of course, half your population would have used electric trains to get to work and the other half would be in cars and buses on streets without traffic lights.

The most important thing to remember is that chemical weapons are not a "Weapon of Mass Destruction." That's a bunch of horseshit used to scare people. They are not effecient and are not terribly effective in the outdoors. Saddam killed the Kurds with chemicals because it was part of a freaking artillery barrage. One terrorist with a hose on a city street is not nearly as menacing. I would much rather face a chemical attack on the Mall in DC than a gunman in a mall in the suburbs.

One terrorist with a hose on a city street is not nearly as menacing. I would much rather face a chemical attack on the Mall in DC than a gunman in a mall in the suburbs.

Unless of course 100,000 people walk past that hose...

I understand what you are saying. But what I'm trying to explain is that massive crowds are not unusual in New York or Washington DC. I mean, all a terrorist would have to do is choose the New York City Marathon or Cherry Blossom Festival and he would have tens of thousands of people in a tiny space.

But surely there is something to be said for the idea of treating an UNUSUAL occurance a bit differently to a normal occurance?

They had NO IDEA whether this was a terrorist attack or not, so why not assume the worst, just in case?

By the way, I would just like to point out the final fallacy in the "how would they tell people?" argument - They could easily tell people while the power is still on that if the power goes off to stay in their buildings until the all clear is given. You know, before the event.

What I am trying to point out is that the preparedness of the New York authorities for a major event such as this seems to be basically nil. They had no idea how to deal with this in advance and just went with the flow, even though "the flow" exposed millions of people to a heightened risk.

As I said, what if this HAD been a coordinated attack? Did they not consider the possibility? Did September 11 not teach them anything about disaster planning, or the neccessity of thinking outside the box?

I am not an expert, but I simply don't think staying in a high-rise is the best plan for every contingency.

99 times out of 100 I would think evacuating the island is the best plan for Manhattan in the event of emergency. The only time it wouldn't be is if terrorists were laying in wait for the second phase of an attack. And as we've pointed out numerous times, you could pick any point during a weekday in Manhattan and have your pick of hundreds of thousands of victims.

I don't see why yesterday was really any better than any weekday at 5:00. Is 200,000 people really THAT much better a target than, say, 75,000. In either case, you are talking death on a massive scale. Actually, the only difference is that you have 10,000 police on the streets yesterday as opposed to 1,000.

I completely see your point. But I just don't think you understand the dynamics high-rise living in general or of New York in particular.

You don't need to create a blackout to get millions of people on the streets of Manhattan.

:tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat:


:crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:

Somebody was on one of the cable news netwroks yesterday, forgot which one.. and was saying "well, the nuclear power plants, losing offsite power and that makes them vulnerable because yada yada yada.." I forgot the exact words but he layed out in some detail on national TV how you can cause a meltdown of a nuclear power plant that lost offsite power..

I'm thinking "Why not just fax the terrorist blueprints and detailed diagrams?"..

People need to watch what they say on TV.

-An

who wants to do anything doesn't need to watch tv to get ideas.

just in case something like this happens. They also run frequent drills to make sure that they can get this convention generator up and running in a timely fashion.

It was close time to going home anyway. But when I saw all those people in the streets and on the bridges I, too, thought to myself if this was planned...having all those people out like that made it easy for whatever it is that they wanted to do. It kind of scared me when I thought of it but I let that bad thought go away.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Its a free country - people do what they want...I cant imagine the NY crowd acting in such a sheep-like fashion as you suggest.

Between comments like this, and the repeated suggestion that the Windows blaster worm had caused this have made for a really poor showing by DU'ers this week...were starting to make the freepers seem credible!

Be patient!!!

There's no comparison. Besides, I think you shaming the entire board might carry more weight once you reach, say, 40 posts.

Are you saying all those people walking down the middle of highway lanes WEREN'T acting in a sheep like fashion? I tell you what, New Zealand has more head of sheep per capita than any nation on earth, so I can say this with some experience, all those people heading in the same direction in huge mobs were most definately acting in a sheep-like fashion.

1. That would be one HELL of a coordinated attack. Any organization that had the ability to first knock out the power of 40 million customers and then launch a massive biological attack at the same time . . .well, we're really really screwed.

2. It was Rush Hour in Manhatten. People were going to be outside in massive numbers regardless of what any government officials said. And I don't think anyone said anything. And even if they did, how could anyone in an office building hear them without power?

What if there had been terrorist groups with chemical weapons in New York trying to figure out how best to use those weapons? What if the power went down and they saw these huge crowds and had a spur of the moment idea?

Remember, the NYC council nearly banned that anti-war march saying it was a prime target for a terrorist attack. What would have been different about yesterday, except for the short notice?

supposedly one power plant is responsible for the entire blackout. I would argue that the events to 9/11 required a great deal more planning and co-ordination than what it would take to disable a single power plant. You are correct that the people would be outside in masses but they would be nowhere near as exposed as they were yesterday. I had to look away several times as I watched droves of people crossing bridges on foot and waiting at the ferry terminal. We cannot take anything for granted these days.

Jay

That's why our treasury-depleting Dept. of Homeland Security should have been on it big time.

that's all broadcasting systems should have reverted to Emer Broad. System.

And that's why Bush should be impeached TODAY for his reckless incompetence.

Millions of people were totally vulnerable and the feds did absolutely NOTHING. And it doesn't matter if the outtage was from a terrorist attack or not. The masses in the NE BECAME uncharacteristically vulnerable because of it.

and it proves that Bush and Asscroft are lying about this country being FILLED with plotting terrorists with active operations. If that were true, the feds would have responded to this. But it was no big deal. And with their surveillance powers......they'd kind of know for sure if it was a vulnerable situation.

Our military can knock out power grids. Was this a government test of a more advanced/powerful model? Would explain why there is no evidence of a lighning strike or fire. Would explain why the moron was told to use the word 'certainty' when no one outside of the government knew what happened.

THE GOVERNMENT IS ALWAYS DOING SOME 'DUMB STUFF' LIKE 9-11....:grr: FEEL ME, I WOULDN'T PUT IT PAST THEM, AND I WOULDN'T BE SURPRISED WHEN WE FIND OUT LATER...

What good is the Emergency Broadcast System going to do workers in office towers with no power?

The estimates yesterday were that 300,000 people were on trains around Manhattan when the power went down. You can't just leave them on planes and platforms.

And frankly, I believe that local authorities should be in charge until they ask for help. New York City looked more than capable of handling the situation yesterday without Tom Ridge paratrooping in to muck things up.

I was actually extremely impressed with how coordinated the city was.

What could the Feds have done differently?

and what about all those walkman's charged with batteries....

Basically.......if something goes awry, you tune into the radio.....and the word will get out.

What could the govt have done differently?

1. Not make the news media unravel what the heck was going on.

2. inform the rest of the country (all connected to electricity) about what was what, even if they didn't know the answers to what exactly happened. KEEPING us informed. If they want to shred the constitution and inundate us with all this "terrorists are under every rock" stuff......then it's a little odd that they don't come forward.

3. The national guard should have come right into the cities......to direct traffic, help people, keep the order, etc.

4. There should have been a contingency plan in place (and announced as such) for humanitarian relief were this to turn into a disaster of some kind.

The reason things worked out so well in NY is simply because of NEW YORKERS......not because of anything the state or feds did. And that is opined from the very distance hill on which I sit (in Oregon).

you are pointing out an area of vulnerability. It shows the impossibility of perfect security.

Most disasters depend on multiple things going wrong, creating a perfect storm. Planning usually takes one or two factors into account at a time.

I don't know if Al Qaida could both cause a power failure and spread a disease. But it might not be any more difficult than hijacking four planes simultaneously.

Bush is more then capable of attaching an oil drilling amendment of Alaska to an energy bill that would have prevented this problem. In fact, that is what happened.

We don't need terrorists. Bush and Ashcrack are more than capable of terrorizing the American people without them.

:kick:
J4Clark

I sure didn't mean to. What I am saying is that the outage has shown something rather worse than just a power outage COULD happen. What happens if crowds like this develop after a biological weapons attack?

A single bomb may infect a few hundred people. But if all those people take to the streets, how far could it spread? How many could be killed?

Do you see what I am getting at? Crowds the size of those we saw yesterday are a risk. Even if the power outage was totally natural (which is what I believe, if you consider corporate malfeasance to be natural) what if there was some Al Qaeda cell with vials of smallpox sitting in New York wondering how to infect the most people possible yesterday (not saying there was - just hypothesising)?

Can you not see the risk that was taken yesterday?

Or Penn Station at 5:00 on a Friday whent the Knicks have a home game? The crowd is not dissimilar.

Granted the crowds are quite that size but you still have a few hundred thousand people moving in a mass of humanity. Hell, the most effective place to launch a biological attack would be outside Yankee Stadium after a game.

If the possible acts of evil people are just as potentially blameworthy and just as circumstantially the likely cause, why shouldn't I blame them first? Are they embued with some special immunity?

I think evil repukes should blamed for everything, and left to defend themselves. They have lost the benefit of the doubt with me.

West Virginia's lights didn't go out but they did have a chemical spill last night.
WV is right in the path of the blackout and the blackout didn't effect them but they did have a spill isn't that kind of odd.

Say the truck carrying the chemicals tipped over on the way to NY or it was on the way to Detroit and it tipped over in WV.

It's 9:00pm and the blackout happened about 5 hours earlier and the truck was driving from NY then it would end up in WV around 9:00pm depending on how fast it was driving.


The truck that tipped over might not have been an accident.

Maybe the lights didn't go out in WV so people witnessed the spill.

There could have been spills in the areas that were blacked out and no one would have noticed.

I am having trouble explaining it but I think that you might be on to something.




http://www.wchstv.com/newsroom/wv/news2.shtml

In our building the weren't even able to come over the PA due to loss of power. I called my niece in Pennsylvania (because I couldn't reach anyone in NY on my cell) who relayed information to me that she was watching on CNN. If I'd had had a transitor radio on me I would have had some idea of what was happening locally.

If the gov. wanted to be really helpful they'd find a way to give out cheap battery operated transitor radios.

Though most people should have one anyway. I have a battery operated radio in my office. (Though now that I think about it, the batteries are probably dead).

Our office does have a pretty good emergency plan in place now and we've drilled a few times. Employees should demand that their employers do the same.