The Bomb, or What Oregon Will Be Talking About At The Water Cooler — Oct 16th 2007

By Alexia Prichard

As nuclear attacks go, this one wasn't all that bad. For starters, it was live-blogged. But there were other reasons to be impressed. A real bomb was detonated at Portland International Raceway, producing a big, dramatic fireball; actors walked around playing radiation victims; and the Secretary of Homeland Security was in town! What's not to love? There was even fake media on hand, but that's such an oxymoron that I'm going to leave it alone.



The "attack" came at 9:06 AM PST, sharp! (The mere fact that something historic happened in my time zone was, to be honest, what got me interested in this story in the first place. Nothing really happens in Pacific Time.) The exercise went off without a hitch. Communications were solid, all relevant organizations worked well together, and--as I mentioned earlier--Michael Chertoff was there to oversee the whole thing. All in all, a good day for the USA.

Of course, the exercise did omit a few details from the scenario. Like traffic. And mass panic. And looting. And random acts of homicide. And, you know, fallout. There was plenty of room in the hospitals for radiation victims, but that was because the bomb affected only 300 citizens--even though approximately 2 million people live in the Portland metropolitan area. According to OregonLive.com, in fact, the real citizens of the real city of Portland had been "advised" to stay indoors and stop the flow of air circulating from outside. But otherwise they were unlikely to be inconvenienced by the attack: "You may hear a few extra sirens during the simulation or see actors covered in mock burns and blood being wheeled into local emergency rooms. But the fictional emergencies should mostly happen in the shadows."

Now, call me nitpicky, but shouldn't such an exercise be a little more convincing? Don't you want to really, truly test your federal, state, and municipal systems, so that in the unlikely event of an actual dirty bomb, everybody--including the American people--is ready to handle it? I mean, hell, back in the 1950s we had "duck and cover." What do we have? Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

Preparation is comforting, and I'm all for federal institutions getting their acts together. But at 25 million tax dollars per exercise, I think I'd like to be personally involved. Therefore I respectfully request that Los Angeles be chosen for the next summer exercise. And I'd like to be "burned," please. I want to see for myself what the rescue response times are. I'd also like Hollywood to be shut down, gasoline to be rationed, and the ban on air conditioning to be enforced. You want to see how well our agencies handle mass panic? Tell a bunch of movie stars they can't use their AC.

All kidding aside, there's no better way to prepare for a nuclear or dirty bomb attack than to do everything we can to avoid one. There are also plenty of more effective uses for our tax dollars than staging expensive, dubious exercises. We could make more flu vaccine, fortify our aging infrastructure, and educate our children. We no longer need to look outside our borders for possible problems, but rather inside them for probable solutions.

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