WASHINGTON - A new study from the University of Georgia finds the region is not prepared for a nuclear attack.  A nuclear attack is the worst possible scenario -- and even though there are plans for disasters, the study suggests the aftermath would be devastating to relief efforts.
| Subnormal intellect alert here. We're discussing nuclear attack. He/she/it's categorizing it with really bad rainstorms. |
Even if the nuclear device was relatively small, hospitals from Baltimore to Fredericksburg would be non-functional. The study finds that with the local hospital infrastructure wiped out, there would be millions dead, and thousands wounded.
| Nagasaki has an estimated 39,000 dead and 25,000 wounded. Hiroshima had an estimated 66,000 dead and 69,000 injured. These were the first two primitive, relatively low-yield atomic weapons. The writer doesn't have the imagination to describe the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Washington D.C. with modern nuclear weapons. Neither do I. |
Kevin Harlan of the Northern Virginia Hospital Alliance says there are plans in place to bring in medical reserves from other regions. "We would certainly be reaching out to hospitals in the rest of the Commonwealth and of course further down into North Carolina and West Virginia," says Harlan.
| Making the assumption that noplace but Washington would be hit? |
However, the reserves could be hard to coordinate with guaranteed travel interruptions from such an event. The study also suggests that thousands of mobile hospital beds and supplies be stockpiled. However, Harlan says that the mobile hospitals aren't nearly as large and might not be able to handle the number of survivors and wounded that would result from such an event. The study also looked at a nuclear attack on New York, Chicago and Atlanta and predicted similar results.
An article in Scientific American a few years ago said many more would be killed in the panic following a dirty bomb explosion in NYC that by the radiation. I suspect the same would be true of a real nuke.
I suspect we'd find the panic factor no more serious than the Japanese did. The corpse counts would be sobering enough. |