Cbrne-terrorism-newsletter

December 2014CBRNE-Terrorism NewsletterArchitecture of doom: DIY planning for global catastropheBy Lee StickellsSource: tropheEnvironmentalcatastrophe,economiccollapse, global pandemic does it feel likethe world is ending? If you think Armageddon isnear and are trying to get ready, you arenot alone.National Geographic Channel‘s DoomsdayPreppers — a reality TV series that profilesvarious ―survivalists‖ readying themselves tosurvive a range of apocalyptic circumstances— is the network‘s most-watched series. It hasprompted a slew of similar programming suchas Discovery Channel‘s rival DoomsdayBunkers.Of course, even after an apocalypse one needsa place to live.Since it first aired in 2012, Doomsday Preppershas featured survival retreats ranging from prefabricated steel shelters and decommissionedmissile silos, to hand-built forest cabins andburied shipping containers. What has emergedis a picture of the ideal survival retreat (or ―bugout location‖ to use prepper slang) as rural,secluded, self-sufficient, and fortified.The show has even spawned an app thatchallenges you to ―design a multi-level dreambunker complete with everything you need forpost-apocalyptic bliss.‖The roots of the survivalist industryThe idea of a domestic structure for emergencyprotection is not new. The Cold War nuclearfall-out shelter programs of the late 1950s andearly 1960s provide an example of this as amass phenomenon.The kind of survival retreat we can see inDoomsday Preppers emerged a bit later. Itsolidified around the concept of a dedicated,self-sufficient (―off-grid‖), secluded, andsecure home.The late-1960s saw a surge in publishing andcommunication networks that disseminateddiscussion and advice on designing for thisideal. These networks also helped establish theroots of the present-day survivalist industry.In the late 1960s, the American architect DonStephens ran seminars on how to build andequip a remote survival retreat. Publicationssuch as Joel M. Skousen‘s The Survival HomeManual: Architectural Design, Construction andRemodeling of Self-Sufficient Residencies andRetreats (1977) also appeared.Today, an Internet search will find dozens ofsimilar titles, such as Dirt Cheap SurvivalRetreat (2011) and The Everything Guide toLiving Off the Grid (2011).There are also any number of survivalist (orprepping) blogs, forums, expos, equipmentsuppliers, consultants, and even celebritiessuch as bestselling author James WesleyRawles (who wrote the Patriots novel series),editor of SurvivalBlog.A thriving industry has grown up aroundplanning for apocalypse, with the design andequipping of the ideal home as a key element.Discussion of survival retreat design focuseson issues such as strategic location, energyself-sufficiency, water supply, waste treatment,food production, and home security.Survivalists and preppers spend a lot of timearguing over the virtues of stainless steelversus plastic water drums, the best way tofortify a house, whether to use a passive solarheater or wood stove, and what size basementis required for all that canned food.The effect is something like Swiss FamilyRobinson with methane-harvesting septicsystems and electrified fences. It is the wilderexamples of survival retreat design that tend tocatch our eye.Rawles sees the ―crushroom‖ (akind of foyer ―mantrap‖) as a keyelement of retreat architecture.One Doomsday Prepper episodefeatured a family who, fearing thewww.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com8

December 2014CBRNE-Terrorism Newsletterfallout from a nuclear event, retreated to areplica medieval castle (and gained their ownTV series, Doomsday Castle).Survivalists can easily be caricatured as lonelylunatics sitting on piles of freeze-dried food andexotic armaments in their foil-lined bunkers.The typical TV survivalist rhetoric alsosuggests an intense pessimism aboutthe future.The New York Times critic Neil Genzlingerbemoaned in 2012 ―how offensively anti-lifethese shows are, full of contemptfor humankind‖.But is Doomsday Preppers simply a freakishversion of Grand Designs? Is there somethingother than voyeuristic smirking to be gainedfrom watching?DIY gone wildAnthropologist Richard G. Mitchell‘s Dancingat Armageddon (2001)is, I think, one of the mostlevel-headed studies ofsurvivalist culture. Hiswork points to the waysurvivalism is rarely aboutextremist action. Rather,it is more often abouttinkering with tools,exchanging ideas, andcreative storytelling.We can see the design ofthe survival retreat as awilder version of the morefamiliar impulse towardsDIYandhome renovation.Survivalists use these projects as a focus fordeveloping the personal skills, knowledge, andpraxis needed to embrace a radically changingworld. Potential chaos and crisis are embracedastheopportunityfordevelopingpersonal autonomy.Seen in this way — and put in the context ofglobal climate change, ongoing financial crises,and episodes such as the current Ebolaepidemic — the survival retreat starts to seemto be an eccentric but understandable reaction.Going further, survivalists may be moreconnected to the chaos of modern life many ofus experience than their reputation suggests.Discussions about the need for developingpersonal ―resilience‖ in communities facing theeffects of climate change often resonate withsurvivalist concerns. Preppers start to seemprescient rather than loopy.The new survivalismIn fact, something like the survivalist dream hasbecome a compelling vision of sustainablefuture living. Environmental concerns, risingpower prices, and the progress in alternativetechnologies have seen a growing number ofpeople opting to disconnect and live ―off grid.‖This trend often shares a common picture ofthe ideal retreat; including, for instance, microhydro power, methane digester, water tanks,passive solar design, and a vegetable garden.Rawles has suggested that his SurvivalBloghas ―an increasing number of stridently greenand left-of-center readers‖. Off grid housing iseven being talked of as the ―new normal.‖This can be read as liberating moves towardssustainability, personal, autonomy and selfdetermination. Survivalists also tend toprivilege privatized, self-regulated, individualistmodes of living.The Australian off-grid advocate MichaelMobbs has recently suggested rethinking thestate‘s responsibility for sewage. He arguesthat ―mature citizens‖ should take care of theirown waste.If it becomes the ―new normal,‖ what could thissort of thinking mean for the way welive together?Common services and cooperative socialinstitutions have helped form the city as apublic good. When looking at the overlappingdiscussions of being ―prepped‖ and ―off grid,‖ or―resilient‖ and ―sustainable,‖ we should perhapsbe wary. Who has the capacity to be off gridand who remains dependent?Exit from the grid challenges the collectiveinfrastructures that have been so vital to moreequitable urban environments. What, then, ofour public networks such as water, electricity,transport, and telecommunications?What of our common urban future?Lee Stickells is Associate professor at University of Sydney.www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com9

December 2014CBRNE-Terrorism NewsletterThe secret life of baggage: Where does your luggage go at theairport?By Ashley Halsey 14/11/24/16d168c6-69da-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc story.htmlMemo to the lady with the hot pink luggage tag:The six cans of Libby‘s pumpkin pie filling thatyou carefully knotted in that plasticsupermarket bag for your flight to Australia arenot going to explode.And to the Boise, Idaho-bound photographerwith the double-locked ―Golf Guard‖ casepacked with tripods, you couldn‘t havesqueezed a bomb or much of anything else inthere if you tried.By now you both know that your bags seemedsuspicious enough to be tested for explosivesby inspectors for the Transportation SecurityAdministration before you flew Delta Airlinesout of Baltimore-Washington InternationalMarshall Airport recently.The TSA leaves a calling card inside every bagit opens. Which isn‘t many, and that‘s a goodthing, given that about 14 million checked bagswill pass through TSA hands nationwide duringthe extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend,when an estimated 24.6 million people plan tofly.Many will feel a palpable tremor of trepidationas they crowd around the baggage carousel,praying that their bag appears and fearing avisit to the dreaded missing-baggage-claimoffice.Fewer bags go missing — and even fewer gettouched by the TSA — than was the casebefore bar-coded tags. And the slick newsystems to keep terrorist explosives offairplanes have reduced the need for agents toopen them for further scrutiny.―The TSA isn‘t even touching the vast majorityof these bags,‖ the TSA‘s spokeswoman, LisaFarbstein, says.The question of how the TSA goes about itsbusiness behind the scenes at airports aroselast month with an e-mail from an angry doctor.He had flown home to Mumbai via Los Angelesand Hong Kong. When his bag tumbled ontothe carousel in India, his TSA-approved lockhad been torn off and the bag was heldtogether with packing tape.Though he had flown about 10,000 miles —and there was no TSA card indicating that hisbag had been opened by American screeners— he pointed the finger at the TSA, chargingagency personnel with ―arrogance borne of thecertainty that no one will question them.‖Federal data shows that every month anaverage of 352 people question the TSA aboutreal or perceived sins against their luggage.What happens in Hong Kong or Mumbai maybe a different story, but once you wave bye-byeto your bag at the ticket counter at BWI, and inmost large U.S. airports, here‘s where it goes:After trundling along the conveyor belt for a bit,it descends into the labyrinthine system of theTSA.And into the clutches of the Dickensian pack ofthieves imagined by Dr. Mumbai?Not likely. Sensors placed on the belt every fewfeet track the progress of a bag, setting off analarm if a bag goes missing in the second ortwo that elapses between one sensor and thenext.The machinery has identified some bags thatare too big (this might be your golf clubs) forwhat comes next. Those it sends down anotherbelt to a TSA inspector with a bomb-detectingwand. Still bigger boxes (like the one with yourbike in it) go down a different belt and arewrestled onto a steel table, where they areopened.Most likely, however, your bag rumbles alongtoward a boxy beige device that looks a bit likethe scanners you put your carry-on bagthrough, only about twice as big. As the bagapproaches, something that looks like a rubberrumble strip gets it

such as Joel M. Skousen‘s The Survival Home Manual: Architectural Design, Construction and Remodeling of Self-Sufficient Residencies and Retreats (1977) also appeared. Today, an Internet search will find dozens of similar titles, such as Dirt Cheap Survival Retreat (2011) and The Everything Guide to Living Off the Grid (2011).