When I scan the papers for how the feds, state and locals are deal­ing with ter­ror­ist CBRN [Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear] inci­dents, I cringe. We seem to swing from pan­der­ing to our worst fears to get a few more bucks to blind rote rep­e­ti­tion in haz­ard response that doesn’t match logic to the threat. Here’s a few exam­ples that I hope are not typ­i­cal, but I won­der…

In Denver, there was a “white pow­der” scare on Sunday - actu­ally, it wasn’t even a pow­der scare, it was a num­ber of cap­sules hold­ing a yel­low pow­der which were deliv­ered to a bank. It tested pos­i­tive for a bio­log­i­cal organ­ism (pro­tein) but not anthrax. There was no threat in the enve­lope, no return address, no vis­i­ble signs of ill effects on the employ­ees han­dling the mail. So of course the locals did the rou­tine thing — quar­an­tine the seven bank employ­ees and the police offi­cer who answered the 911 call, call the feds, let the WMD Civil Support Team con­firm it’s not anthrax, and strip and wash the employ­ees in the bank’s park­ing lot. Yep — routine.

But as a pre­cau­tion, the employ­ees were scrubbed in a puffy orange tent and sent home in a haz­ardous– mate­ri­als suit because the sub­stance was still unknown Sunday evening. One of the female employ­ees cried on her way out of the decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion tent, where she was required to strip naked and get scrubbed down by a hazardous-​​materials team.
The police offi­cer also was decon­t­a­m­i­nated because he came in con­tact with the employ­ees when he answered the 911 call.

Okay, is it ask­ing too much for some­one — between FEMA, the FBI, the Army (assum­ing the 20th SUPCOM), the WMD CST, and the Denver fire­fight­ers and haz­mat team — to think, hmmm, doesn’t test out as a BW agent or any typ­i­cal white/​yellow pow­der, no weird mes­sages in the enve­lope, maybe we don’t have to recre­ate the decon scene from “Silkwood” for what is prob­a­bly a false alarm and obvi­ously not a chem­i­cal or radi­o­log­i­cal haz­ard that might cause an acute lethal reac­tion. Idiots.
Let’s flash over to Kansas City, where Kansas State University is plan­ning to open up a Bio-​​Security Research Institute, which will study food safety. About $54 mil­lion is being invested in the facil­ity. The uni­ver­sity has a pro­gram called “Making America Safer” which includes sev­eral projects funded by DHS. They’re look­ing for­ward to helping…

Now, under the cen­ters purview, hun­dreds of researchers and stu­dents are engaged in projects aimed at keep­ing America safe. The cen­ter works with the depart­ments of Agriculture, Defense and Justice and other fed­eral, state and local agen­cies to facil­i­tate an effec­tive strat­egy for rapid response to emerg­ing agri­cul­tural threats, Vanier said.
The cen­ter is even devel­op­ing plans for train­ing police and fire­fight­ers who would be early respon­ders in the event of a bioter­ror­ist attack.

No, it’s not the sci­en­tists’ job to limit or halt bioter­ror­ism attacks, con­trary to the article’s cheery tone. Intelligence pro­fes­sion­als find out where the ter­ror­ists are and coun­tert­er­ror­ism units grab the bad guys. All the sci­en­tists do is preach how deadly the bugs are and why they need more money to research the haz­ards. Although I should take it easy on K-State’s asso­ciate vice provost for research and com­pli­ance, Jerry Jaax - he paid his dues as an Army MRIID doc work­ing at the Reston Ebola break­out in 1989 — he’s still a typ­i­cal medic: “a bioter­ror­ism attack could crip­ple the agricultural-​​based econ­omy of the [Kansas] region. Jaax said a ‘sig­nif­i­cant risk’ of such an attack does exist.” Yadda yadda. Where’s the intel assess­ment?
Last, let’s jump up to the Fed level. ABC News gets Richard Clarke (its paid con­sul­tant) and the FBI’s WMD Division to hype up the spinach E. coli inci­dent into a poten­tial agro-​​terrorism incident.

Government inves­ti­ga­tors say there’s no evi­dence link­ing the cur­rent E. coli out­break in which tainted spinach has caused at least 171 known cases in 25 states, accord­ing to the FDA to ter­ror­ism. But those same inves­ti­ga­tors are keenly aware that America’s food sup­ply is vul­ner­a­ble to attack. An inter­na­tional meet­ing on how to fight agro-​​terrorism starts Monday in Kansas City.
Government agen­cies have held mock exer­cises to see what would hap­pen if the food sup­ply was com­pro­mised. The results were cat­a­strophic.
“What hap­pened was utter chaos,” said Sen. Patrick Roberts, R-​​Kan. “We lost almost the entire live­stock herd of the United States, all export stock. We had panic at the gro­cery stores.”

What a shock. A national exer­cise which went for the “worst case sce­nario” route to test the lead­er­ship responses, despite all lack of any evi­dence of a cur­rent ter­ror­ist threat and the com­plete lack of any past his­tory of agro-​​terrorism. But it jus­ti­fies the USDA’s research bills.
Is it too much to ask for some san­ity? Some logic and com­mon sense? Natural dis­as­ters, acci­dents and indige­nous dis­eases are still the major killers out there, peo­ple. I’m not against some funds for coun­ter­ing CBRN ter­ror­ism — it pays my bills — but cer­tainly we could be spend­ing it smarter, and more impor­tantly, talk­ing about the topic more intel­li­gently.
UPDATE: Offices in Denver got four “anthrax” envelopes Monday — some copy­cat with a sick sense of humor. We need FEMA or the state EOCs to develop pro­ce­dures that will min­i­mize panic and not auto­mat­i­cally go to four-​​alarm mode, assum­ing that every white pow­der is anthrax unless oth­er­wise proven. These hoaxes and false alarms are going to con­tinue — bet­ter fig­ure out a sane way to face that fact.
– Jason Sigger, cross­posted at Armchair Generalist