« Redstone Arsenal Rocket Goes Bada Boom, Scares 5 Counties | Main | Veronica Belmont, Jonathan Coulton, Leo Laporte, and Merlin Mann. "Still Alive" »
February 22, 2008
Huntsville Reopened Nuclear Fallout Shelters, Raises My Eyebrow a Smidge
Some old news brought to my attention just now.
"If Huntsville is in the blast zone, there's not much we can do. But if it's just fallout ... shelters would absorb 90 percent of the radiation," said longtime emergency management planner Kirk Paradise, whose Cold War expertise with fallout shelters led local leaders to renew Huntsville's program.
Huntsville's project, developed using $70,000 from a Homeland Security grant, goes against the grain because the United States essentially scrapped its national plan for fallout shelters after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Congress cut off funding and the government published its last list of approved shelters at the end of 1992.
After Sept. 11, Homeland Security created a metropolitan protection program that includes nuclear-attack preparation and mass shelters. But no other city has taken the idea as far as Huntsville has, officials said.
[...]
Plans call for staying inside for as long as two weeks after a bomb blast, though shelters might be needed for only a few hours in a less dire emergency.
Unlike the fallout shelters set up during the Cold War, the new ones will not be stocked with water, food or other supplies. For survivors of a nuclear attack, it would be strictly "BYOE" bring your own everything. Just throw down a sleeping bag on the courthouse floor or move some of the rocks on the mine floor and make yourself at home.
"We do not guarantee them comfort, just protection," said Paradise, who is coordinating the shelter plans for the local emergency management agency.
(via abc news, ponzu)
Posted by Groonk at February 22, 2008 09:05 PM | Ministry of Alabama, USA, War
