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Welcome to Chernobyl, Do Not Enter (video) On the morning of April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear power accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant located in the Soviet Union near Pripyat in northern Ukraine. The "Chernobyl disaster" is the only instance so far of level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, resulting in a severe nuclear meltdown. Click here to watch the video Editor Coment: Twenty two years ago today, life in Pripyat came to a shuddering end. Before dawn on April 26, 1986, the Number Four reactor at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine, went out of control during a test at low-power, leading to an explosion and fire that demolished the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. The initial explosion resulted in the death of two workers. Twenty-eight of the firemen and emergency clean-up workers died in the first three months after the explosion from Acute Radiation Sickness and one of cardiac arrest. The destroyed hulk burned for ten days, contaminating tens of thousands of square miles in northern Ukraine, southern Belarus, and Russia's Bryansk region. It was the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen. The entire town of Pripyat (population 49,360), which lay only three kilometres from the plant was completely evacuated 36 hours after the accident. During the subsequent weeks and months an additional 67,000 people were evacuated from their homes in contaminated areas and relocated on government order. In total over 336,0000 people are believed to have been relocated as a result of the accident. The fallout, 400 times more radioactivity than was released at Hiroshima, drove a third of a million people from their homes and triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer in children. Over the years, the economic losses�health and cleanup costs, compensation, lost productivity�have mounted into the hundreds of billions of dollars. As evidence of government bungling and secrecy emerged in its wake, Chernobyl even sped the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Today the fiercely radioactive remnants of reactor four continue to smolder beneath the so-called sarcophagus, a decaying concrete-and-steel crypt, hastily built after the accident, that now threatens to collapse. Work is about to get under way on a replacement: an arched structure, the size of a stadium, that will slide over the sarcophagus and seal it off. With its completion the destroyed reactor will be out of sight. But for the region's people it will never be out of mind, as a slow-motion catastrophe continues to unfold.
On the morning of April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear power accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant located in the Soviet Union near Pripyat in northern Ukraine. The "Chernobyl disaster" is the only instance so far of level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, resulting in a severe nuclear meltdown. The station consisted of four reactors, each capable of producing 1 gigawatt (GW) of electric power, and the four together produced about 10% of Ukraine's electricity at the time of the accident. Construction of the plant began in the 1970s, It's first reactor went online in 1977, followed by no. 2 (1978), no. 3 (1981), and no. 4 (1983). Two more reactors, no. 5 and 6, capable of producing 1 GW each, were under construction at the time of the accident. The reactors at Chernobyl were RBMKs-1000, which moderate their fission processes with graphite and are cooled by water. Hence their common Western name: LWGR, or light-water graphite reactor. It was a type unusual in the West but was common throughout the old Soviet Union. Its design had an inherent weakness: the reactors needed to be managed with special care when at low power. The two year old Unit 4 was a version of the station's four Soviet-designed RBMK plant Though up-to-date, it was not built to the highest standards, and some of its safety devices (especially a particular emergency switch and its circuitry) were dangerous in that they did not do what their name implied.
But design flaws and faulty manufacture did not cause the explosion. The accident happened because a fatal dose of bad management was added.
On April 26, 1986 at 1:23:40 a.m. reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a catastrophic steam explosion resulting in a nuclear meltdown, Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Nearly thirty to forty times more fallout was released than Hiroshima. The plume drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. The Chernobyl accident was the result of a flawed Soviet reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel and coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators without proper regard for safety. The accident occurred after technicians attempted a series of poorly designed tests of reactor Unit 4 to determine how long turbines would spin and supply power following a loss of main electrical power supply. The test required the power being generated in the reactor to be greatly reduced and the safety systems disabled. A design flaw in the RBMK-1000 reactor used at Chernobyl, made operation at these low power levels dangerous. Similar tests had already been carried out at Chernobyl and other plants, despite the fact that these reactors were known to be very unstable at low power settings. A series of operator actions, including the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test. As the flow of coolant water diminished, power output increased. At 1:23:40 the operators pressed the AZ-5 ("Rapid Emergency Defense 5") button that ordered a "SCRAM" � a shutdown of the reactor. It is usually suggested that the SCRAM was ordered as a response to the unexpected rapid power increase, arising from previous errors, a peculiarity of the design caused a dramatic power surge and temperatures soared the chain reaction in the core went out of control. At this point nothing could be done to stop the disaster. By 1:23:47 the reactor jumped to around 30 GW thermal, ten times the normal operational output. The fuel rods began to melt and the steam pressure rapidly increased, causing a large steam explosion. Generated steam traveled vertically along the rod channels in the reactor, displacing and destroying the reactor lid, rupturing the coolant tubes and then blowing the lid off the reactor, releasing large amounts fission products in to the atmosphere. The roof of the building (never designed as a shield) was ripped off and a second explosion threw out fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the core and allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames. In the intense heat, a funnel of highly radioactive material was shot a mile high into the sky. A plume of radioactivity spread patchily, mostly north-west. There is some dispute among experts about the character of the second explosion. The graphite - there was over 1200 tonnes of it - burned for nine days, causing the main release of radioactivity into the environment. A total of about 14 EBq (1018 Bq) of radioactivity was released, half of it being biologically-inert noble gases (including uranium, plutonium, iodine 131, strontium 90, and others). This fire greatly contributed to the spread of radioactive material and the contamination of outlying areas.
According to the Nation on April 29, 1996, "...the reactor spewed out at least eight tons of radioactive poison, about 200 times more radioactivity than was released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The winds blew northwest that day, unequally distributing the radioactivity and reaching deep into Scandinavia, Western Europe and Great Britain. At the time of the disaster, the plant's staff were not aware of the true radiation levels, which led to severe misassessments of the situation. The radiation levels in the worst-hit areas of the reactor building have been estimated to be 5.6 r�ntgen per second (R/s), which is equivalent to 20,000 r�ntgen per hour (R/h). A lethal dose is around 500 r�ntgen over 5 hours, so in some areas, unprotected workers received fatal doses within several minutes. However, a dosimeter capable of measuring up to 1,000 R/s was inaccessible due to the explosion, and another one failed when turned on. All remaining dosimeters had limits of 0.001 R/s and therefore read "off scale". Thus, the reactor crew could ascertain only that the radiation levels were somewhere above 0.001 R/s (3.6 R/h), while the true levels were 5,600 times higher in some areas.
Because of the fallacious low readings, the reactor crew chief Alexander Akimov assumed that the reactor was intact. The evidence of pieces of graphite and reactor fuel lying around the building was ignored, and the readings of another dosimeter brought in by 4:30 a.m. were dismissed under the assumption that the new dosimeter must have been defective. Akimov stayed with his crew in the reactor building until morning, trying to pump water into the reactor. None of them wore any protective gear. Most of them, including Akimov, died from radiation exposure within three weeks. Shortly after the accident, firefighters arrived to try to extinguish the fires. The first one to the scene was a Chernobyl Power Station firefighter brigade under the command of Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik, who died on May 9, 1986. They were not told how dangerously radioactive the smoke and the debris were, and may not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire. The fires on the roof of the station and the area around the building containing Reactor No. 4 were extinguished by 5 a.m., but many firefighters received high doses of radiation. The fire inside Reactor No. 4 continued to burn. Some 5000 tonnes of materials like boron, dolomite, sand, clay and lead were dropped on to the burning core by helicopters in an effort to extinguish the blaze and limit the release of radioactive particles. The explosion and fire threw particles of the nuclear fuel and also far more dangerous radioactive elements like caesium-137, iodine-131, strontium-90 and other radionuclides into the air: the residents of the surrounding area observed the radioactive cloud on the night of the explosion. 28 people died within four months from radiation exposure or thermal burns, 19 have subsequently died, The main casualties were among the firefighters, including those who valiantly and conventionally fought the fires which had broken out around the plant and on the roof of the turbine building. All these were put out in a few hours, but radiation doses on the first day were estimated to range up to 20,000 millisieverts (mSv) and there have been around nine deaths from thyroid cancer apparently due to the accident: total 56 fatalities as of 2004.
An authoritative UN report in 2000 concluded that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed. This was confirmed in a very thorough 2005-06 study. At first the Soviet state tried to keep the news of Chernobyl from both its own people and the outside world. No news leaked out internationally on the 26th or 27th, and very little internally. The scale of the accident made sure that the silence couldn't be maintained. But after radiation levels set off alarms in Sweden, the Soviet Union did admit that an accident had occurred, but still tried to cover up the scale of the disaster. In order to evacuate the city of Pripyat, the following warning message was reported on local radio, "An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. One of the atomic reactors has been damaged. Aid will be given to those affected and a committee of government inquiry has been set up". This message gave the impression that any damage and radiation was localized, although it was not. The government committee formed to investigate the accident, led by Valeri Legasov, arrived at Chernobyl in the evening of 26 April. By that time two people were dead and 52 were hospitalized. During the night of 26 April / April 27 � more than 24 hours after the explosion � the committee, faced with ample evidence of extremely high levels of radiation and a number of cases of radiation exposure, had to acknowledge the destruction of the reactor and order the evacuation of the nearby city of Pripyat. The evacuation began at 14:00, 27 April. In order to reduce baggage the residents were told that the evacuation would be temporary, lasting approximately three days. As a result, Pripyat still contains personal belongings. Today it is a Ghost Town. Workers and their families now live in a new town, Slavutich, 30 km from the plant. This was built following the evacuation of Pripyat, which was just 3 km away The town of Chernobyl wasn't evacuated until May 2, six days after the explosion. Russia was slow to release any information about the accident. Slowly, with the passage of time, Russia realized it could no longer totally contain or control the news surrounding this event, and with time photos also began to appear showing efforts implemented to contain the damage as well as of the damage itself. In the seven months following the 1986 explosion, Soviet engineers hastily designed and built a massive concrete-and-steel "sarcophagus" to enclose the reactor building and its smoldering core to allow continuing operation of the other reactors at the plant. The sarcophagus, once estimated to last for 30 years, has begun to rapidly deteriorate. Some major work on the shelter was carried out in 1998 and 1999. Some 200 tonnes of highly radioactive material remains deep within it, and this poses an environmental hazard until it is better contained.
Work is set to begin soon on a New Safe Confinement structure will be built by the end of 2011, and then will be put into place on rails. It is to be a metal arch 105 meters high and spanning 257 metres, to cover both unit 4, the hastily-built 1986 structure and the radioactive material within for at least a hundred years. The Chernobyl Shelter Fund, set up in 1997, has received EUR 810 million from international donors and projects to cover this project and previous work. It and the Nuclear Safety Account, also applied to Chernobyl decommissioning, are managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The next task was cleaning up the radioactivity at the site so that the remaining three reactors could be restarted, and the damaged reactor shielded more permanently. The "Liquidators" were recruited or forced to assist in the cleanup, or the liquidation of, the consequences of the accident. As a totalitarian government, the Soviet Union provided many young soldiers to assist with the cleanup of the Chernobyl accident, but did not provide many of them with adequate protective clothing...or with any explanation of the dangers involved. Over 650,000 liquidators were involved in the Chernobyl disaster cleanup during that first year. This group included those who built the containment building called the "SARCOPHAGUS" over destroyed Reactor No. 4. Soldiers on the roof of Reactor No. 3 pick up deadly pieces of radioactive graphite from the explosion and toss them down into the cauldron of the demolished reactor core. First, they tried to use robots, but technics have been disabled either by high radiation or have been entangled in debris. They then sent thousands of soldiers...biorobots...to do the work machinery couldn't.
Work on the roof was the shortest job of all, and lasted only two minutes. Many soldiers were offered a choice of how to fulfill the tour of duty requirements necessary to retire from the Army. One choice was to spend two years in a hellish rain of bullets, rockets and bombs in Afghanistan, the other to spend two minutes in a tranquil, silent, and invisible rain of gamma rays on the roof of Unit No. 3. Following the accident, questions arose on the future of the plant and its eventual fate. All work on the unfinished reactors 5 and 6 was halted three years later. However, the trouble at the Chernobyl plant did not end with the disaster in reactor 4. The damaged reactor was sealed off and 200 metres (660 ft) of concrete was placed between the disaster site and the operational buildings. The Ukrainian government continued to let the three remaining reactors operate because of an energy shortage in the country. A fire broke out in the turbine building of reactor 2 in 1991; the authorities subsequently declared the reactor damaged beyond repair and had it taken offline. Reactor 1 was decommissioned in November 1996 as part of a deal between the Ukrainian government and international organizations such as the IAEA to end operations at the plant. On December 15, 2000, then-President Leonid Kuchma personally turned off Reactor 3 in an official ceremony, effectively shutting down the entire plant transforming the Chernobyl plant from energy producer to energy consumer. The Chernobyl disaster caused a few tens of immediate deaths due to radiation poisoning; a few thousand premature deaths are predicted over the coming decades. Since it is often not possible to prove the origin of the cancer which causes a person's death, it is difficult to estimate Chernobyl's long-term death toll, which is still a hotly-debated issue. According to the IAEA only 4000 deaths were related to the disaster, but new studies challenge this report and say that up to 90,000 deaths and casulties can be attributed to radiation fallout from Chernobyl. Prypiat and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries to come. The most deadly radioactive isotope (caesium-137) released by the accident (external gamma exposure has a short biological halflife in humans) will take 300 years to decay to one thousandth of its present level. The strontium-90 will decay over a similar time. Strontium is a beta emitter with a long biological halflife in humans, which can cause disease through internal exposure. After the caesium activity has decayed to this level, the area may be used for most human activities again. A natural concern is whether it is safe to visit Prypiat and the surrounding area. The Exclusion Zone is considered relatively safe to visit, and several Ukrainian companies offer guided tours of the area. The radiation levels have decreased from the high levels of April 1986 due to the decay of the shortlived isotopes released in the accident. Prypiat and the Exclusion Zone are now bordered with guards and police, but obtaining the necessary documents to enter the zone is not considered particularly difficult. A guide will accompany visitors to ensure nothing is vandalized or taken from the zone. There are 187 small communities in the exclusion zone that remain virtually abandoned to this day. A few inhabitants chose to return to their homes in the exclusion zone, but children are not allowed to live in this area. The evacuated population lives mainly in newly constructed towns such as Slavutich in areas with very little or no contamination. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant closed on Friday, December 15, 2000. The event made front-page news worldwide, as people reminisced about the world's worst nuclear disaster. The news was dark - so dark, in fact, many of the news reports filed on the event included a Bible reference--an ominous prophecy from Revelation in that the very name of the power plant, Chernobyl, appears in the 8th Chapter of the book of Revelation. And the event described fits what happened when the accident occurred.
And the phase of decommissioning began. This involves the removal and disposal of fuel and wastes, decontamination of the plant and the area surrounding it, including any soil and water that may be radioactive. There are three retired reactors to be decommissioned on site, a project expected to take several decades. The project will be conducted under the supervision of the Ukrainian government. The IAEA will assist by providing planning, engineering and administrative advice. The fate of the fourth reactor where the tragic accident occurred in 1986 is as yet undetermined. Several organisations have reported on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, but all have had problems assessing the significance of their observations because of the lack of reliable public health information before 1986. In 1989 the World Health Organisation (WHO) first raised concerns that local medical scientists had incorrectly attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposure. An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) study involving more than 200 experts from 22 countries published in 1991 was more substantial. In the absence of pre-1986 data it compared a control population with those exposed to radiation. Significant health disorders were evident in both control and exposed groups, but, at that stage, none was radiation related. Subsequent studies in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were based on national registers of over one million people possibly affected by radiation. By 2000 about 4000 cases of thyroid cancer had been diagnosed in exposed children, which is far higher than normal. Among these, nine deaths are attributed to radiation. However, the rapid increase in thyroid cancers detected suggests that some of it at least is an artifact of the screening process. Thyroid cancer is usually not fatal if diagnosed and treated early. The average radiation doses for the general population of the contaminated areas over 1986-2005 is estimated to be between 10 and 20 mSv, and the vast majority receive under 1 mSv/yr. These are lower than many natural levels. Some people have moved back into the exclusion zone, which remains contaminated, and this is allowed as long as annual dose rate (mainly from diet) is projected to be below 15 mSv/yr - a bit less than the internationally-accepted maximum occupational dose rate. An increased risk of leukaemia due to radiation exposure from Chernobyl may become evident in future among the higher-exposed liquidators. There is some evidence already of this and possibly solid cancers among Russian liquidators exposed to more than 150 mSv. No effect is expected in populations of contaminated areas. There is no evidence nor any likelihood of an increase attributable to Chernobyl in birth defects, adverse pregnancy outcomes, decreased fertility or any other radiation-induced disease in the general population either in the contaminated areas or further afield.
The psychological affects of Chernobyl were and remain widespread and profound. Leaving aside the verdict of history on its role in melting the Soviet iron curtain, some very tangible practical benefits have resulted from the Chernobyl accident . The main ones concern reactor safety, notably in eastern Europe. (The US Three Mile Island accident in 1979 had a significant effect on western reactor design and operating procedures. While that reactor was destroyed, all radioactivity was contained - as designed - and there were no deaths or injuries).
A repetition of the 1986 Chernobyl accident is now virtually impossible, according to a German nuclear safety agency report.
CHESTERFIELD, S.C. - The parents who called police after discovering their teenage son had ordered bomb-making materials on the Internet likely averted disaster at his high school, a sheriff said Tuesday. Ryan Schallenberger, 18, was arrested Saturday after his parents called police because he had ordered 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate, which they retrieved after getting a delivery notice from the postal service.
Police said they discovered a hate-filled journal lauding the Columbine killers, an audiotape to be played after Schallenberger died during his rampage and a year's worth of plans for the bombing.
What we've got here is "intent to commit." But not like you're thinking. The layperson's "intent" is equivalent to "thinking about it." For example, "I'd really like to kill my annoying spouse." If all you do is think about it, you haven't actually broken any laws. LEGAL intent, i.e. intent to commit murder, means you've actually gone beyond thinking about it and actually done something towards committing the act. You thought about killing your annoying spouse AND you assembled the equipment you needed to do so. Say, ordered 10 lbs of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and got the other components necessary to build an ANFO bomb. What this kid did, then, is a) had an intention of committing a crime (in this case, homicide); b) specified his plans (in his journal) - still no crime - and c) acquired the items needed in part (b) to carry out the plans in part (a). Now we have a crime. Or in legalspeak, we have the mens rea "guilty mind" and the actus reus guilty action. I consider myself a good parent... But there has to be some point in time where you say, "You know what, Im not equiped to handle this". The instant ten pounds of bomb making material shows up on the front porch, and the journal is found I think I can admit I failed and need help. This was a plan to kill other people, a plan he was already in the process of carrying out. Calling in the authorities is the right thing to do. I wish the parents of the Columbine shooters were half this attentive. To all the people doubting the lethal capacity of this: "You are morons. 10 lbs of ANFO is not going to take out a high school. The REF of ANFO is much lower than that of c4 tnt or any number of other military explosives commonly used, but 10 lbs. of ANFO is enough to break about 20 TONS of limestone. Also, ANFO won't reliably detonate with just a cap unless it is a component of 2 part binary explosives that contain a different type of fuel. I'm not telling you what it is, but if you go on some of the links to YouTube, you'll figure it out. You typically need a larger charge of a high explosive to set garden variety ANFO off reliably. Unless it gets wet. Then you have pinkish mud. Good luck getting THAT to go off. That same charge in a crowded lunchroom, wrapped in nails, marbles, ball-bearings, or lead dungeons and dragons characters would probably have a lethal blast radius of around 200ft. And you don't need more than 10 lbs to hurt a lot of people. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be within 100 yards of it when it went off. Procuring ammonium nitrate is easy. Getting the blasting caps necessary to detonate it is not so easy.
//That being said, this kid needs help
One of the most prolific songs ever created by one of the worlds great musicains / peace activists .This song has stood the test of time and is an anthem for peace . Click here to watch the video Editor Coment: John Lennon was an incredibly creative musician. A believer in karma and eastern mysticism who was committed to peace & human dignity. He trancended popular music and expressed a profoundly universal vision. He and his message of Peace and Harmony were ahead of his time. "Imagine" is a utopian song performed by Lennon, which appears on his 1971 album Imagine. Although originally credited solely to Lennon, in recent years Yoko Ono's contribution to the song has become more widely acknowledged. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine voted "Imagine" the third greatest song of all time. The lyrics were thought to be inspired solely by Lennon's hopes for a more peaceful world. In reality, the song's refrain was coined by Yoko Ono, in reaction to her childhood in Japan during World War II. According to The Sunday Times, the song's refrain can be found in several of her poems written in the early 1960s, before she met Lennon, and in her 1965 book Grapefruit. "Imagine" reflects a Marxist's Philosophy, that we are just material beings with no Transcendent value. It sends a message of philosophy. Not that he doesn't believe in God or offends his creator, it is the fact that he examines his life, can you prove their is a God? If not, you can "Imagine" their is no heaven. It's a song with a very powerful message, and its relevance is very strong today. Could the world be a free place of brotherhood? One big commune with no boundries or borders. Who knows? This is all about the peace we all dream of..... whether we are religious or atheist. In the book Lennon in America, written by Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon commented the song was "an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song, but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted." Lennon's claims against property and religion, as well as his repeated use of "the people," have led some to post the song as being advocative of humanism, communism, and anarchism. Some say John was a dreamer... but dreamers are the ones who change the world. He made the difference for good, inspiring all who want peace. Making Lennon a martyr for peace has brought more attention on his message, not less.
His world is a real world! RIP
Two sets of confidential blueprints for the planned Freedom Tower, which is set to rise at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, were dumped in a city garbage can on the corner of West Houston and Sullivan streets, according to the New York Post.
The report said "Secure Document - Confidential," warns the title page on each of the two copies of the 150-page schematic that a homeless man discovered in the public trash can. The detailed, floor-by-floor schematics contain enough detail for terrorists to plot a devastating attack.
So the plans could have given garbage riffling terrorist the ability to destroy a building that doesn't exist.... eh, that's where they belong, anyway. If you're going to throw confidential material into a garbage can, at least shred the page that says "confidential". I'm assuming that by confidential, they simply mean proprietary and not DoD confidential.(which isn't much of a security classification anyway). Big difference there. The obvious answer is to outlaw being homeless. Clearly homeless people are a threat to the United States! Don't build a fucking memorial. Build another functional building and get back to work. The best thing we can do as a nation is to stop with the parade of politically inspired tears and get on with life. Rebuild the WTC, fix the damn skyline and call it Capitalist Tower? Sounds cooler than freedom. (And more honest.) Calling it the "Freedom Tower" is an attempt at rallying up patriotism while ignoring the fact that we have less freedom now then we did before September 11th and that Osama bin Laden is still free. The September 11th attacks had nothing to do with our freedom. So what motivated these 'Islamic Extremist' to Hijack four aircraft and use them as missiles? I would venture to say US interference in political and economic relationships in the Middle East. This situation caused religious leaders who also happen to be politically militant to trick individuals who were directly or indirectly affected by that meddling to give their lives to attempt to hurt the US. I'd really like to hear the "freedom" theorists chime in and tell me we weren't attacked because of our foreign policy and that it was our freedom. We are force fed this crap because it's not politically convenient to discuss what really motivates these thugs to do these heinous crimes. FTA The detailed, floor-by-floor schematics contain enough detail for terrorists to plot a devastating attack, the report said.
History has shown you don't need schematics to plot a devastating attack
Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley new book, "Wealth, War and Wisdom," he says people should "assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure." Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down." The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of "An Inconvenient Truth," if not "Mad Max."
Popular culture also provides reinforcement, in films like "I Am Legend," which stars Will Smith as a survivor of a man-made virus wandering the barren streets of New York. At any moment, any of the major geological faults could give way, resulting in am 8.0 magnitute earthquake. Might not happen in this lifetime. But it will happen, someday. Anyone who believes that such an event won't occur in their life, or or that their particular location won't face such a fate as that of New Orleans, or Sarajevo, or Pripyat, are fools. Historically complete and near complete collapses have occurred i.e. the sack of Rome, the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, the aftermath of wars and revolutions in France, Russia and China and the world wide Great Depression of the 1930s. These happened without the benefit of modern methods of production and distribution. They were terrible times but human society survived and prospered. The simple fact is that disaster (natural or man-made) can occur anywhere at anytime. The entire world isn't going to end and all of the human population isn't going to revert to a nomadic lifestyle. Most disasters occur in localized areas, and the majority of the planet continues a normal life. Katrina was a microscopic example of that effect. Survivalism as a mindset and hobby isn't just about believing that civilization will collapse. It's about being prepared and self-sufficient in your life, for unplanned outcomes small and large. Sadly, some people have been preparing for it for so long, that they actually look forward to it happening. They pray for a breakdown. They're up to their asses in canned goods and racist literature, and they're getting bored. I won't mention any names, but they know who they are. Marginalized loners, fantasy gamers and comic book fans who have lost the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. These poor folk, men mostly, outcasts in real society, spend their time fantasizing about an apocalyptic future in which they will be appreciated for their imagined "skills". The sad reality is that these people would be marginalized and outcast in any society. Unfortunately, a lot of people these days are very Hollywood educated. Their conception of a national breakdown is based entirely on some movie they watched and couple that with a general lack of historical perspective in a large percentage of them. This is where you get people who have a Mad Max concept of life after a national collapse. The way the federal government is structured (thanks to the Clinton and Bush admins), you'll have martial law, national guard patrolling the main street, "work reassignment camps" for special persons, and public executions of looters in the cities. It'll be more like 1920s - 30s Germany than Beyond Thunderdome. This is not fiction and is widely documented and demonstrated. During governmental and social breakdown after a man-made or natural disaster. If you want to see what a breakdown in society looks like, there are plenty of places that can show you. (I hear that the beaches in Somalia are lovely this time of year) FTFA: a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices. None of this is anything that will sneak up on us. A tanking economy: As bad as the Great Depression was, the world didn't even backslide civiliationally-speaking, much less devolve into anarchy. Assuming we get another Depression, life will suck, people will even die, generally life may devolve back to the 1920s - hardly the end of Western Civilization. A housing crisis: Are they serious? If anyone seriously thinks people not finding housing buyers will totally destroy 8K years worth of civilization, you are delusional. Some people will go back to renting instead of owning, housing prices will fall until they are realistic, and then life will stabilize. "We just got an eviction notice from the bank, Dear; lock and load, here comes the apocolypse!" is just pure bullshit. Sharp spike in oil prices: Coal, steam-power, and horse-drawn carts. We did this a hundred years ago. And it isn't like oil will stop 3 days from now - we'll slowly adapt as the supply loses steam long before oil goes. Looming environmental disasters: Again, this is something that will flog us over the next century, not the next week - people will generally adapt to the new situation (even if the adaptation leads to a "downturn" in the population). Why worry about just an economic breakdown, or the government collapsing? There are so many other ways to die. People forget how absolutely critical our power grids and computer networks are. Just look at the localized chaos something as simple as a power outage or network failure can cause? Now imagine something like that covering half the country, or more? If the local megamarts stopped getting deliveries for a few weeks there would be bloody riots over the last bag of Cheetos. Fuck, most Americans get into an angry panic when the wireless internet goes down at their local coffee shop. We had a power outage for three days in our downtown area a few years back, and I swear people were already showing signs of a breakdown. Three days. Three goddamned days and people had already started to crack. And that was with things like power and running water, and stocked supermarkets just a few miles down the road. Then you have real disasters like Katrina, and you watch everything fail in real-time. What the fuck is wrong with this country? And why do survivalist invest in Gold and Silver. Are they predicting a breakdown of the US system or the world? People mistakenly think "gold" is inherently valuable. It's not, it has a perceived value like anything else. Aka, they're morons. If it is just the US I would imagine having a basket of Yen, Euro and pounds would be better. If it is the world what good are shiny things going to do? Things that will have real trade value include clean water, food, ammunition, medical supplies, coffee, cigarettes, tools, and the like. In the event of a disaster that lasts for more than a few days, those are goods that have a purpose. In the event of total anarchy, what can I do with gold? Nothing
When currencies collapse, people resort to the barter system, not gold.
Legendary actor, civil-rights leader and political activist Charlton Heston passed away today, at 84. Editor Coment: Another sad celebrity loss. Sad to see such a prominent man go like that (Alzheimer�s). Or anyone for that matter. (I wonder if George Clooney is going to make any more off-color jokes about the guy). Those quick bastards at Wikipedia already changed all the verbs from "is" to "was." DAMN they are quick! I want to know who updates Wikipedia so damn fast! Do they have dorks that sit around waiting to update that crap? Heston had a big career boost in the 1950s when he was one of the few leading men not blacklisted by the McCarthy Communist witchhunts. All those big budget biblical movie roles would have gone to others. How many actors got to play so many legendary characters: Moses, Judah Ben-Hur, El Cid, Michelangelo, John the Baptist, Cardinal Richelieu, Marc Antony (three times), Sir Thomas More, Long John Silver, and Sherlock Holmes. That�s one hell of a filmography. There will never be another actor that embodied the term "EPIC" for the movies as much as he did. With that said, everyone should check out Chuck in El Cid. Underrated epic and just as awesome as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. Heston was not only a great actor, but also a great American. Got nothing but respect for Heston. He stood up for what he believed in. I look up to a man like Heston who fought for civil rights and the second amendment. Charlton Heston was a strong advocate in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s... when almost no other actors were. He picketed outside one of his own movies because it was segregated. He opposed the Vietnam War, Mccarthyism, and promoted environmentalism when there was no such thing. He was one of Martin Luther King�s biggest supporters back in the 1960�s, he marched with Martin Luther King during the civil rights marches, and was standing on stage with him during the I have a Dream speech. All of those things he did in stark contrast to the rest of Hollywood. He supported Democrats and Republicans. He didn�t hide or make his political opinions based on what was convenient. As president of the NRA, he was perhaps best known, while raising a hand made Brooks flintlock rifle over his head at the 2000 NRA convention, for saying that presidential candidate Al Gore would take away his Second Amendment rights "from my cold, dead hands." I think some Americans forget how important the principle behind the 2nd amendment is to preserving our the other freedoms. No gun law has ever stopped a determined criminal from getting a gun. Therefore the only use for gun laws is to disarm this nation so those in power can control us. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot were all believers in gun control. People might of disagreed with him, but few have I ever heard say bad things about him as a person. Say what you will about his NRA involvement (which is a proponent of responsible firearm use and the second amendment), but I can�t think of anyone more worthy of having a day named after him. Rest in Peace Mr. Heston... you were an inspiration to civil rights activists and gun owners alike...
//oh, and SCREW YOU Michael Moore for being such a dick to him!!
Despite the sharp rise in our standard of living in recent decades, Americans today are little or no happier than earlier generations. Why not? Editor Coment: Because my neighbor has a 48 inch flat screen tv set. I saw him drag the box out. Bastard waited until I was washing the car. "Hey Mike. Check it out. Like a home theater." He yells. So garbage night, I sneak over and steal the box. I change the 48 inch to 88 inch and I wait for him to come outside. I start dragging the box down the driveway. "Hey Jerkington. I just got an 88 inch flat screen. Like a freaking drive-in in there." He says "How�d they get an 88 inch tv set in a box that big? Looks like it could hold a 48 incher tops." So I killed him and stuffed his corpse in the box. Now the cops are asking me how my neighbor wound up in a landfill. "How should I know? I recycle everything. I�m so green I shit chlorophyll." But they�re still hanging around. To top it off, the widow is holding on to that tv set. You don�t need 48 inches to watch Wheel of Fortune. Are they going to start spelling longer words? That�s why I�m unhappy. The article makes it seem like this is only something applicable to the people currently living. If you looked at the 1800s, their standard of living far surpassed that of people in the 1700s, and they weren�t any happier. Life is always hard, it�s always going to suck a lot, and you�re always going to have problems. It�s always been this way, and it�s always going to be this way. Why this person decided to try and make it seem like the current batch of Americans are just being whiny is beyond me. An advanced standard of living has never made people happier throughout history, and I don�t know why it should be expected to now. Although the standard of living has increased, the quality of living is in the gutter. Because we�ve elevated our expectations of what happiness is to the point that very few people can attain them. Everyone thinks that everybody else is happy. That makes people feel inadequate,because, they can�t understand why they can�t be as happy as everybody else looks to be. Add in media harping and people feel vindicated in their internal depression. The real secret comes from within oneself. Possessions are not the cause of, or the answer to the problem. There are always new things around the corner. Stuff does not make you happy. In fact, busting your ass to acquire it can have the opposite effect. Be happy with what you have. It�s probably more than you parents had, and DEFINITELY more than your grandparents had. The one who dies with the most toys, still dies.
I think the Bush administration has shown us that this problem (like any problem) can only by solved with more government.
Students across the state are feeling the pressure as they start taking the Pennsylvania state standardized test assessments, or PSSAs. One district is taking an unusual approach to help students prepare. Teachers in Ephrata, Lancaster County, wrote, produced and starred in a series of movies called "PSSA Wars." The faux films were modeled after Star Wars and include characters like "Math Solo" and "Princess Reada."
The videos give students hints on how to handle the test.
Personally, I think making fan films is a great idea. George Lucas has said on many many occasions that he will not sue those who make Star Wars fan films or spoofs. In fact Lucasarts actually encourages fan films and spoofs. As long as the work is not-for-profit. (He doesn�t really have a choice...it�s Fair Use). I�m all in favor of strict copyright infringement enforcement (as long as it prevents Lucas from ever modifying the first three Starwars movies or making another one). Copyright holders must defend their work when disputed in all instances or it creates precedent. Someone can blatantly impede(?) a work and show that others have done similar without recourse. It is the responsibility of the copyright holder in exchange for the exclusivity. All within fair use of course. George Lucas and J.K. Rowling are the two greediest assholes on the planet. Rowling sues the pants off of anyone who even so much as writes "Harry Potter" on their school notebooks. Seriously. She is currently engaged in a massive multi-million dollar lawsuit against an author who compiled and published a Harry Potter glossary and reference work. Doesn�t matter to her that works of reference do not violate copyright. Rowling does not have control over reference works with Harry Potter in them. Reference works (unless they stupidly and blatantly reproduce more than 30% of the original text without referencing the text�s original author) do not violate copyright. She cannot sue for copyright violation. While there is some opinion in this article, that fact remains clear. If there was any precident at all on this issue, the bazillion different "Guides to Middle-Earth" would not exist, there would be only one published by Tolkein�s estate. Same for the Jordan "Wheel of Time" guides. And the Dune guides, etc etc.
She can�t even claim that she would have lost income from her own "not yet written but maybe one day after I finish counting my millions and filing frivolous lawsuits definitive guide".
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