I'm not on about "footnoting technique" or something being a "scholarly essay". I am driven by curiousity and a healthy amount of skepticism. I want to know where material comes from, how accurate it is, and if the writer is a real person, if they did their research and can show references, or if it's all made up. As it turns out, Google gives over 1380 hits on the author's name referencing this material.
I appreciate your posting this material, and I understand and applaud your motives. I also want to salute Sergeant Thomas for his service to our country and honor him for writing this material in an effort to share his experience and knowledge.
However, one of the things that disturbed me about the accuracy of his material was his reference to: "Blister agents (distilled mustard)". Mustard gas has nothing to do with mustard itself and is not distilled from mustard. The term simply comes from the yellow color of the gas. Also, his allegations are incorrect in many other areas. For Instance "If you do get large, painful blisters for no apparent reason, don't pop them, if you must, don't let the liquid from the blister get on any other area, the stuff just keeps on spreading." Wrong, the liquid contents of a blister are not toxic, they're your own bodily fluid.
There was an article on this material from The Washington Post titled "Take This, Terrorist Boogeyman, By Don Oldenburg, a Washington Post Staff Writer. It appeared on Thursday, December 13, 2001; on Page C01.
Link To Article In that article is the following passage:
"The Army itself took a look at "The Real Deal," and "nitpick" is not exactly the word for its response. "He is trying to minimize the dread and terror associated with these weapons. However, many of [Thomas's] claims are incorrect," reported Maj. William King, Maj. Keith Carroll and R. Scott Farrar, experts from the Army's 84th Chemical Battalion based at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., in an e-mail to The Washington Post.
Thomas's conclusions about why the 1995 sarin attack in Tokyo killed so few people were flat-out wrong, they said. Thomas wrote that only 12 people died, a fact that he believes disproved expert predictions that one drop could kill a thousand people and demonstrated that biochem weapons aren't that effective in real life.
His comparison of nerve gas to household bug killers like Raid is "wrong info," they said, as was his stating that the fluid in blisters caused by mustard gas is dangerous. Thomas's take on nukes and biological weapons ignores their potential catastrophic consequences, they say.
Furthermore, the Army's experts said they "absolutely disagree that an attack with military-grade agents is 'incredibly hard to do.' Two months ago, any one of a dozen experts would have told you that the use of anthrax was beyond the means of even the most sophisticated terrorists."
Still, the Army experts call his advice to "put space between you and the attack" generally "reasonable for unprotected persons." And his "editorializing" on the low odds of an individual becoming a victim of terrorism wasn't bad either: "Individually, we are in more danger of traffic accidents than getting hit with chemical attack. However, as drivers we can take precautions to lessen that probability."
The Army's last word: "Retired SFC Red Thomas's article offers some common sense advice for unprotected victims of a NBC [nuclear/biochemical] attack. However, his article doesn't reflect the U.S. Army's position for individual defense and contains an overwhelming amount of incorrect material. . . ."
It is also listed in the Snopes website at this link:
Urban Legends Their synopsis is:
For those who care about such things, Red Thomas is indeed a real person who lives in Mesa, Arizona, and who says that he retired from the Army several years ago after twenty years' service which included his receiving training in nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons. (NBC training is not uncommon, as the Army requires that "every company, battery, or troop have a chemical NCO, a school-trained NBC officer, and a school-trained enlisted alternative.")
As for the substance of this piece, although it may be full of sober information and advice -- even if chemical attacks don't kill as many people as widely believed, biological warfare is harder to wage than we might think, and terrorists probably only have "low-yield" nuclear weapons that won't level entire cities -- we're not sure the message people are taking from it is the one intended. The typical civilian isn't trained to deal with dangerous situations, doesn't enter into his daily routine with the expectation that he might be the target of an attack, and doesn't think of human life in terms of acceptable losses. He doesn't much care whether a particular form of terrorist attack is going to kill two people or two hundred thousand; he just doesn't want to be one of the victims himself. Much of the reaction we've seen to this piece is from people taking it as a "Don't worry -- this won't happen to you" reassurance, and that's the wrong message.
Chemical agents may be difficult to use effectively, but the Aum Shinrikyo cult still managed to kill a dozen people by releasing nerve gas into Japanese subways at rush hour in 1995. Some simple precautions might blunt much of the danger posed by bioterrorism, but an outbreak of smallpox could still wreak deadly havoc on a population. A one-kiloton bomb may not create "fifty foot tall women or giant ants," but we know all too well how much death and destruction even the crudest of bombs can deliver. That any of these methods might not be as effective at killing people as we fear doesn't mean that terrorists won't use them, and that people won't die when they do. (History has long demonstrated that terrorists willing to engage in acts such as suicide bombings of civilians or flying airliners into office buildings aren't dissuaded by thoughts that their actions "aren't much fun" and "do them little good," and it's unlikely that any of the recent anthrax victims succumbed because they failed to be "clean of person and home" or "eat well and be active.")
This isn't to say that Mr. Thomas' overall points -- that many potential dangers are greatly exaggerated, that these exaggerations can make it all too easy to paralyze a nation through fear and panic, and that the average citizen can best help himself and his country by being well-informed -- aren't well-taken. They are. But don't fall into the comfortable trap of thinking that "things aren't as dangerous as I feared" is the same as "there is no danger."
That's what I wanted to know when I first read what you posted, and that's all I'd like people to understand about it.