It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The Utah Thyroid Disease Study hardly seems like a financial burden on the federal purse. In seven years, the investigation into thyroid cancers linked to radioactive fallout has cost the federal treasury only $8,049,988, roughly the amount the Pentagon spends every two hours in Iraq. Or consider this: from 1990 to 1995, the federal government spent more than $90 million in legal fees to fight off claims from downwinders and workers at nuclear weapons plants over the health consequences of bomb-making and testing.
Lyons believes, with good reason, that the study was axed for political reasons. "The only interpretation I can put on it is that the Bush administration doesn't want to know the health effects of fallout on American citizens," Lyons told the Desert News.
The scientist also said it was an extremely rare occurrence for the CDC to pull funding in the middle of a major study. "I've never know it to happen before," says Lyons, who has been researching the links between cancer and fallout since 1977.
Located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the Nevada Test Site, established in 1951, sprawls over 1,500 square miles of desert basin and range country. Between 1951 and 1992, the Pentagon and Department of Energy conducted at least 925 nuclear blasts at the site, more than 100 of the explosions were above ground, open-air tests, which cast a radioactive pall over much of the American West. Even the underground tests vented plumes of radiation.
www.counterpunch.org...
More information can be found at: www.downwinders.org...
Originally posted by Simulacra
The puzzling move by the Bush administration could be tied in with the recent move to further develop implication of nuclear weapons within the US military. As to why they don't want to know the effects and the striking correlation with radiation and thyroid cancer, who knows?
But don't be surprised if a nuclear explosion surfaces on US soil within the next few years and is downplayed as having 'little to no effect on the American people'.
Originally posted by AlwaysLearning
All's I can say is take your Vitamin C and lots of it! I read somewhere it can help counter the effects of radiation.
Scary times ahead for sure.
Originally posted by sexygeek
Vitamin C Potassium Iodate
Is their any thing besides them that can help counter act nucular fallouot?
Total Exposure Visible Effect
0-50R No visible effects
50-200R Brief periods of nausea on day of exposure. 50% may experience radiation sickness (nausea and vomiting), 5% may require medical attention, no deaths are expected.
200-450R Most members of the group will require medical attention because of serious radiation sickness. 50% deaths within two to four weeks.
450-600R Serious radiation sickness in all members of the group, medical attention required. Death to more than 50% within one to three weeks.
Over 600R Severe radiation sickness. 100% deaths in two weeks
UN committee adopts draft treaty against nuclear terrorism
1 April 2005 – After seven years of negotiations, a United Nations committee today adopted a draft international treaty to fight nuclear terrorism, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan calling on all states to sign on to pre-empt what he called "one of the most urgent threats of our time" that with one attack could change the world forever.
The draft adopted by consensus defines acts of nuclear terrorism and strengthens the international legal framework to combat it, requiring those who threaten or commit such crimes to be extradited or prosecuted and encouraging exchange of information and cooperation among states and a broad range of mutual assistance obligations.
"The Nuclear Terrorism Convention will help prevent terrorists from gaining access to the most lethal weapons known to man," Mr. Annan told the Ad Hoc Committee established by the General Assembly in 1996 to draw up an international convention for the suppression of terrorist bombings and entrusted in 1998 with drafting an international convention for the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism.
www.un.org...
Originally posted by smallpeeps
Sim, I've thought this since mid-last-year. A disaster like that will It'll also provide a great smokescreen for global rationing of oil. Have you read the report that a "temporary" spike will drive prices up to $100 a barrel? Oh but don't worry, they'll come back down once the demand slows down. Oh that demand for oil! ...Shyea right!
We are in for some dark years.
Since America has insured the corporate interest with the War on Iraq, they now have complete control on the last remaining oil reserves in the world. Need I remind you that it is predicted that the planets oil will run out about 40-50 years (maybe even less).
Lyons believes, with good reason, that the study was axed for political reasons. "The only interpretation I can put on it is that the Bush administration doesn't want to know the health effects of fallout on American citizens," Lyons told the Desert News.
The scientist also said it was an extremely rare occurrence for the CDC to pull funding in the middle of a major study. "I've never know it to happen before," says Lyons, who has been researching the links between cancer and fallout since 1977.
The idea that any nuclear conflict would eventually escalate into MAD was a challenge for military strategists. This challenge was particularly severe for the United States and its NATO allies because it was believed until the 1970s that a Soviet tank invasion of Western Europe would quickly overwhelm NATO conventional forces, leading to the necessity of escalating to theater nuclear weapons.
A number of interesting concepts were developed. Early ICBMs were inaccurate which led to the concept of counter-city strikes -- attacks directly on the enemy population leading to a collapse of the enemy's will to fight, although it appears that this was the American interpretation of the Soviet stance while the Soviet strategy was never clearly anti-population. During the Cold War the USSR invested in extensive protected civilian infrastructure such as large nuclear proof bunkers and non-perishable food stores. In the US, by comparison, little to no preparations were made for civilians at all, except for the occasional backyard fallout shelter built by private individuals. This was part of a deliberate strategy on the Americans' part that stressed the difference between first and second strike strategies. By leaving their population largely exposed, this gave the impression that the US had no intention of launching a first strike nuclear war, as their cities would clearly be obliterated in the retaliation.
The US also made a point during this period of targeting their missiles on Russian population centers rather than military targets. This was intended to reinforce the second strike pose. If the Soviets attacked first, then there would be no point in destroying empty missile silos that had already launched; the only thing left to hit would be cities. By contrast, if America had gone to great lengths to protect their citizens and targeted the enemy's silos, that might have led the Russians to believe the US was planning a first strike, where they would eliminate Soviet missiles while still in their silos and be able to survive a weakened counter attack in their reinforced bunkers. In this way, both sides were (theoretically) assured that the other would not strike first, and a war without a first strike will not occur.
This strategy had one major and very possibly critical flaw, soon realised by military analysts but highly underplayed by the US military: Conventional NATO forces in the European theatre of war were considered to be outnumbered by similar Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces, and while the western countries invested heavily in high-tech conventional weapons to counter this (partly perceived) imbalance, it was assumed that in case of a major Soviet attack (commonly perceived as the 'red tanks rolling towards the North Sea' scenario) that NATO, in the face of conventional defeat, would soon have no other choice but to resort to tactical nuclear weapons. Most analysts agreed that once the first nuclear exchange had occurred, escalation to global nuclear war would become almost inevitable.