What is the worst case scenario?
It’s not what you think…
Homeland security professionals have to dream up scenarios that create a realistic environment in which they can test their response skills. Some are reasonable (7.2 earthquake along the San Andreas Fault), others are outlandish (41 bombs going off at once in an urban area) and others are meant to be unrealistic (shark hurricane) so participants focus less on the details of the scenario (which is obviously fake) and more on how they would respond.
So when a group of HSE professionals get together, tip one back (or several) and discuss worst case scenarios the results weren’t what you would think. The discussion quickly went to nuclear weapons, arguably the most devastating of all Weapons of Mass Destruction. We talked generally about these devices, nuclear strategy, and the potential impact. We also mused about Iran’s efforts to proliferate in this area, but the conversation also included North Korea Pakistan. (One guy went on and on about a highly contagious genetically-engineered self-replicating biological agent so that was the last beer we allowed him to order.) We eventually settled on the monograph by the National Defense University (NDU) in DC — it looks at four potential scenarios involving the use of WMD.
- Collapse of the Nonproliferation Regime
- Failed WMD-armed State
- Biological Terror Campaign
- Nuclear Detonation in a U.S. City
We talked about the four scenarios, and when considered individually, each have their own issues with coming to fruition; however, but here’s where it got interesting. We decided that it wasn’t any single one of them, it was the combination of simple verations of each that really worried us:
Low-grade material obtained from a non-proliferation country in crisis or WMD-armed state that is released into the atmosphere like a biological agent via an explosion.
We tried to red team the concept (look at it from the bad guy’s point of view). We asked ourselves, what is success when thinking of a WMD scenario? Is it number dead? Fear? Change in behavior? Economic collapse? If terrorists want to have the biggest impact they need to start by having SOME impact. Large-scale attacks are hard to plan and complicated. In order to be successful, start simple and build from there. In Physics for Future Presidents, Muller says gasoline-based attacks would provide the most cost efficient explosive with material that is easily obtained and transported. If the vehicle containing the gasoline had packets of radioactive material that was detonated at the same time there would be low-level radiation exposure over a significant blast area and down-wind from the detonation site. The thought of something can be worse than the actual thing; because radiation can’t be sensed (i.e. seen, tasted or felt) the public would need to rely on the government to give them updates and direction for how to respond. If the radiological exposure was significant enough it would be economically unfeasible to clean the impacted areas and insurance would not pay due to the cause (act of war). Thus, large urban areas may be laid to waste not because of the bomb’s destruction, but because of the public’s hesitation to return to an area (fear) and the financial market’s inability to recover from this event.
We were on a roll..another round of beverages (except for the nano-robot guy, he was still cut off).
Assuming that the dirty-bomb is the weapon of choice, Iran and North-Korea are joined by other rogue nations or non-state actors who could attempt an attack of this nature. Of course, the current enrichment underway in Fordow or Natanz and any in North Korea make access to yellowcake a possibility. One of the guys in the group works for LAPD and he was always talking about the ease that Ponga boats from Mexico enter the US with drugs (almost 70% est success rate) so we figured a similar delivery method could be used to move some of the low-enriched uranium they possess.
By now we were scaring ourselves — we had source, construction and delivery all lined out (and the hotel security had come by second time telling us to beat it). So we finished our musings, packed it in and hit the hay, all after coming up with our idea of the worse-case.
But you never know….maybe it will be a 9.0 on the San Andreas fault as it erupts from SF to LA…and only one man can save us….
So what’s your worse case?
