The Preparedness and Survival Site

Darrell Darnell, director of the District of Columbia’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, says there would be “a lot of panic, a lot of chaos” if a small nuclear bomb detonated near the White House, which would most likely prevent an evacuation of the city as radiation spread.

In an hour long interview, Darnell also said the major lesson from June 13, when a power substation failure shut off traffic lights, a fire broke out in a Metro station and massive gridlock stymied D.C. police and emergency crews, is that “we need to do a better job coordinating agencies.”

“We didn’t do a very good job of getting MPD (Metropolitan Police Department) and DDOT (District Department of Transportation) there,” he said.

“We’ve also got to communicate better.”

Darnell, however, could not name a single alternative his office has come up with to prevent a repeat of the chaos that enveloped downtown for several hours on June 13.

Darnell also said the official in charge of a similar emergency would not be him.

“It usually depends on who is first on the scene,” he said. “The first person on the scene is the incident commander, until someone else comes on the scene, who’s most qualified. And that’s how the incident command is determined.”

Source: http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2008/07/19/dc-homeland-security-chief-predicts-chaos-in-event-of-nuke-attack/

Some observations :

Mr. Darnell said “we need to do a better job coordinating agencies.”

While I applaud Mr. Darnell’s commitment and sense of responsibility, were I in his shoes my comment would have been “We, each individual resident and citizen, need to take personal responsibility for organizing ourselves and our families and coworkers and friends into mutual self help groups with clearly thought out and rehearsed plans of how we will work individually and together to calmly and purposely execute an orderly evacuation and resettlement in the event of an emergency.”

Unfortunately as we individuals and citizens have abdicated our responsibility for ourselves our elected officials and our civil servants have been forced by the need of self preservation and the preservation of society, to pick up the burden that we have walked away from. Today when emergencies happen the average urban population mill about aimlessly and purposely like so much dumb livestock waiting for their handlers to come and take charge. People who behave like that are a greater danger to society than the emergency itself and the civil authorities, following their mandate to protect society, and their rational desire to protect their own families, are compelled to establish and practice complex systems of social control to do what we as citizens ought to be doing ourselves.

It is not “they” – an overbearing, tyrannical, repressive government – trying to herd all the nice people into camps. It is WE who have refused to stand our rightful post in the civic body, being responsible for ourselves and taking an adult’s responsibility for each other, who have made such elaborate and restrictive measures necessary for the good of us all.

Those who cannot or will not police themselves, discipline and order themselves, will ultimately be policed and ordered by some external authority; be it nature, society or government. That’s how you deal with children until they’ve grown up enough to operate independently and that’s how the universe deals with you. Like it or not, it IS the way it IS.

Darnell also said the official in charge of a similar emergency would not be him.

This is a realistic assessment of the complex nature of a real world crisis and how it unfolds, and a implicit admission of a sad truth; that there is no one and no organization that is able to unify all the people into a coordinated and purposeful response to a future emergency. It is the tacit surrender to the fact that the majority of Americans can no longer be counted on to act responsibly and for the good of their community. It is a testimony to the pervasiveness of the “Me First!” ethos that has reduced citizenship to a retail consumer mentality; “I paid my taxes so I am ENTITLED to [insert social demand here]”.

Suppose for a moment that it was possible to elevate everyone to a level of self sufficient preparedness such that everyone was his or her own Rambo; no one needing anyone else. You wouldn’t have friends, only “useful associates” of varying degrees of pre calculated value and utility. Everyone else would be “them”, on the suspect watch list. Is that how you want to live? Is that the society in which you want to raise your precious children? Is that the society to which you are willing to entrust your wife, daughter, sister, mother?

Just as the helpless “deer in the headlights” mentality is, just as worthless as is the entitlement mentality, so too is the lone survivor who has no sense or appreciation of his or her connection and obligation to the rest of us. That path of Social Darwinism has lead us to today and leads in tomorrow’s emergency to the death of society and ultimately to the death of us all.

This site and its forums emphasize self reliance and individual responsibility, but the flip side of that coin is accountability. Accountability? To whom? To everyone who ever gave you the hand of kindness to lift you up. To all those whom you can never repay. To those who are coming up behind you and who are depending on your leadership and courage not only to carry them until they can carry themselves, but more importantly to be their guide in modeling the decision making skills and behavior that they need to learn.

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.”

Benjamin Franklin

As true today as it was in the hour of our greatest emergency.

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