emergency supplies

[allatsea]

Did anyone else see the article on the front page of the Sunday Times yesterday? Apparently all councils will be required to publish advice to the public in the event of a biological or chemical attack. The article said that advice offered may include building up reserves of water and baked beans. Is it just me, now that I have a dd, or does this sort of thing send anyone else into a panic?

Yes, the thought of an entire country living on water and baked beans? The resulting smell alone will be enough to send any enemy back to where they came from.

The only thing I think, this kind of emergency advice has never needed to be issued before (well, since I came of voting age in 1980!). What do they know that we don't know? Now that I am a mum, its made me panic that I am old enough to have had a smallpox jab but my son hasn't. Nor have younger friends of mine, even, come to think of it has my DP who's 32!

I can't remember the exact year it came out - maybe '82, '84 but the book When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs kind of brought home how unprepared anyone would be in case of - the book is about - nuclear attack. But biological terrorism seems worse because any advice on how to protect from those will come from the government via the council - and how trustworthy do we think those institutions are??

I do remember the Protect and Survive films during the Cold War. Designed to put the fear of god into you and believe the 'enemy' to be some faceless terror and that the govt does indeed know more than it's letting on. All seems completely laughable now. Like hiding behind a door will prevent radiation sickness!

It's all part of the propaganda machine and, to be honest, I've become much more blase about this as I've got older. Probably because I am getting older and have less life.

My biggest fear about a nuclear attack would be surviving it. I'm 38 and have never had a smallpox jab. From what I read, most adults who had them when young will no lonnger be protected against smallpox now anyway. Just feel it's a situation I can't really control and therefore can't worry about too much.

LOL SofiaAmes, it does bring a whole new perspective to the term 'chemical' weapon!

on the one hand i am quite taken aback by things on a personal level - i have to travel into london very occasionally and i have to cross to the isle of wight occasionally too. and the terrorists are threatening to let chemicals out in london somewhere and also to do damage to the ferries (although hubby kindly pointed out that they wouldn't bomb from portmouth to the isle of wight they would pick a bigger crossing - isnt he sweet!). and i must admit when i lived up north it didnt bother me half as much because i was so far away!
on the other hand i subscribe to paranoia theories. so when the gulf war was on there was radio play lists that wouldnt play things like "in the army now" by status quo and many hundreds of others. so even tho we are not at war we have the threat of these terrorist attacks - why was that film on the telly last night about biological weapons staring dustin hoffman about a monkey who spead a biological disease that was made as a weapon to use against enemies by the Govt - i mean nice film to show at this time isnt it? - so i think we may be being purposefully scared into believing the governments agenda to blow up saddam and wherever else america feels like bombing this week - that on top of the major advances that the car industry is making on electric cars - u know so we dont have to dependent on anyone for oil - well considerably less oil anyway!

yes i am insane - and there wasnt a moon landing either!!!

Actually that's a good theory Custdie! I too believe that the Government are trying to scare us into backing a war with Iraq. There have been plenty of talk of possible terrorist attacks over here, advice on how to cope with a biological attack and how we don't have the resources to cope with it, and also an increase in films such as 'Outbreak' showing. And what about that footage showing cruelty in Iraq? That was handed over to the British and American governments years ago by Justice groups and ignored, now that they want a war they dig it out as 'fresh evidence of atrocities'! The Government have already proved themselves to be very manipulative when it comes to the media, and I do think that they are trying to scare the public into being on their side.

Personally I find America and George Bush much scarier than Iraq and Saddam. Still more than half of all Americans don't know where Iraq is on a map - I just hope their soldiers do!

I don't think that is at all paranoid Custardo. I think there is a high probability that the govt and certain factions of the press are peddling various propoganda in order to swing public opinion in favour of war with Iraq. I even find myself not quite so violently anti a war as I was so I've obviously been subliminally affected.

But Outbreak was shown on ITV not BBC. The govnt has no juresdiction over what is shown. Its much more likely that ITV were cashing in on the current climate of peoples fears and so that's why they are showing these type of films. More viewers therefore more cash thru' advertising.

As most civil servants would be the first to admit, conspiracy theories are clearly nonsense, when the govnt is too inefficient to deal with everyday problems let alone create big complex webs of lies which rely on the thousands of employees to keep quiet. Come off it. The first skint public servant would sell any story to the Sun!!

Lil, I was wondering when someone was going to point that out re Outbreak!!

Didn't see the article but I wouldn't trust councils to get any disaster recovery programme together either. Agree that propaganda could be useful and scare us all into supporting a war. If I believed it I suppose I might be scared but I'm a bit like Tinker - think it's something I can't control so what's the point in worrying? I was worried about Y2k at the time I seem to remember because I don't particularly trust the government or big business (a la Centrica!) to properly consider all the possibilities. Although I wasn't so worried that I could be arsed to stock up on water and tinned goods then either. On the electric car thing, anyone read the Ben Elton novel on this subject? Can't remember what it's called but some interesting conspiracy theories there about the oil and motor business. I'm not entirely convinced the moon landings happened either

lol www
LiL you make a very good point still, maybe ITV has BBC spies? or even more credible that ITV bosses are hugley symathetic to the govt - and want to cash in at the same time. i can just imagine it now... tony blair some high ranking ITV bass discussing it over wine - i mean tony has lots of other people to do the mundane stuff like run the country - he can concentrate on playing army games - bit like battleship - on a larger scale - imagine that on xmas day whilst the rest of us play trivial persuit he has a much better toy!

WWW Typical conspiracy paranoia. Look you just said... 'I was worried about Y2k at the time I seem to remember because I don't particularly trust the government or big business (a la Centrica!) to properly consider all the possibilities' ... and yet the bells went at midnight 1999 without a single Y2K bug. So there you go then, you should have been more trusting. The media hyping everyone up and scaring us all!!

I'm certainly not saying the govnt never lie or 'spin' the truth but its the media with the more power to manipulate us rather than the govnt. Ever since their overdoing of the whole Diana death thing, I have become extremely cynical. Non-stop TV and press for weeks and weeks - and then the papers turn around and say we're a 'nation in mourning'. Bollocks we didn't have a choice with it in our faces. I resent being manipulated to mourn someone I couldn't give a XXXX for.

And look at this vilifying of Cherie Blair at the moment. If Tony can't stop the press doing that then I can't believe he can make them put on more doomsday films!!

Lil, that was what I was saying though - it's media hype encouraged by the government. Not that I believe it all or can do anything about it (i.e y2k, didn't do anything about that either) but I do believe the govt have a certain amount of power over the media. I'm not saying it's all a huge conspiracy, not at all, just that I don't believe everything I read and that I do think a certain amount of it is influenced by spin. The y2k worry was more to do with talking to people at the time who worked in computing (sad to say I've been out with my share of computer programmers!) rather than wholly influenced by the view from the press. True, Tony can't stop the press vilifying Cherie, but I don't think he had anything to do with the doomsday films either!

As a computer programmer who did a lot of work on Y2K (am I really that dull www? )- most of it totally unnecessary and overkill - I was not at all worried about it as I thought it was overhyped by the computer industry who made loads of money out of it and also the govt. Re war with Iraq/terrorist threat - I believe in this instance the govt and most of the media have a similar agenda so we are getting a lot of propoganda backing war - ie the media is accepting/promoting the govt spin.

Nothing liken a good war to sell a few million papers eh?

Do you remember the last James Bond film (Pierce Brosnan, yummy). The one where the media mogul starts a war with China to sell more papers/TV etc Spooky eh.

On the back cover of phone books in New Zealand is a list of all the equipment you need to survive a major earthquake, including how to disinfect water. It's just a fact of life there, and I don't ever remember being disturbed about it as a child.

Just move to the Outer Hebrides. No-one will bother about you as we are too far away and it is so windy that the biological agents will just blow away!!

oh i do find this interesting. but why emergency supplies for a biological war, i mean wouldnt we just be sick before we knew it -and then die? what supplies were the papers refering to? cos i dont read them ( unless its left on the train seat or something)