Word: oklahomas
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Exotic weapons get a lot of attention, but conventional explosives and suicide bombers in pizza parlors, discotheques and shopping malls can spread terror with stunning effectiveness. Fertilizer bombs like the one that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 1995 could wreak havoc with bridges, tunnels and buildings. Nuclear-power and chemical-manufacturing plants make even more horrifying targets. The 1984 leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, may have killed 3,000. Estimates of the final death toll from the 1986 explosion in the Chernobyl nuclear plant run as high...
...despair. The hijackers didn't need sophisticated technology. Nor may their successors. The East Coast power grid, for example, has less than half a dozen key switching points. Six truck bombs, packed with nothing more sophisticated than the fertilizer that blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City six years ago, could disrupt the economy of half the nation...
...dialogue between federal and state officials? Ask Governors that question, then duck. Governor Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho says that the adjutant-general of his state National Guard is not allowed to share intelligence with him. Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma, a former FBI agent who took part this summer in a disastrous war game of a smallpox attack, says he was "stunned" at the level of ignorance displayed by the feds about what goes on at a state and local level. And Philadelphia police chief John Timoney says, "The feds actually think that the locals, you can't trust them...
Says Gray with a chuckle: "People think I've gone off the deep end, but I feel like the luckiest guy in the world because now there's the opportunity to give back." The empathy springs from his own youth in Oklahoma City, where he spent five years living on the streets. "I know what it's like to be hungry," he says. And because of him, this is a knowledge that some kids might not have to share...
Unfortunately, America may not be adequately prepared against a biological attack. This June, American military experts gathered for a mock germ-warfare exercise termed “Dark Winter.” The simulation began with a single case of smallpox virus in Oklahoma. Despite the best efforts of the trained personnel involved, 16,000 Americans were infected in the simulation and 6,000 ultimately died...