Glenn Reynolds
Instapundit
2/7/2011
FIRST, THEY BRING BACK DUCK AND COVER. Now it’s this: FCC: Presidential emergency alerts to be tested.“The primary goal is to provide the President with a mechanism to communicate with the American public during times of national emergency.” So do they know something we don’t? They seem awfully interested in a new experimental anti-radiation medicine, as I noted in my Atlantic piece. More here.
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Excerpt:
If the likelihood of a nuclear attack is hard to judge, what’s beyond dispute is that we are in many ways much less prepared to deal with one than we used to be. Fallout shelters in public buildings are no longer marked and stocked, and public knowledge about nuclear weapons and their effects isn’t what it was during the Cold War era. In the course of teaching nuclear-related cases in my Administrative Law and National Security Law courses, I’ve observed that most of my students (military veterans and a few emergency-services types excepted) know next to nothing about A-bomb related things that were common knowledge a couple of decades ago. Replenishing that popular knowledge base seems worthwhile, as long as there are nuclear weapons on the planet.
