TED2008
Irwin Redlener: How to survive a nuclear attack
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The face of nuclear terror has changed since the Cold War, but disaster-medicine expert Irwin Redlener reminds us the threat is still real. He looks at some of history's farcical countermeasures and offers practical advice on how to survive an attack.
Irwin Redlener - Physician, disaster-preparedness activist
Dr. Irwin Redlener spends his days imagining the worst: He studies how humanity might survive natural or human-made disasters of unthinkable severity. He's been an outspoken critic of half-formed government recovery plans (especially after Katrina). Full bio
Dr. Irwin Redlener spends his days imagining the worst: He studies how humanity might survive natural or human-made disasters of unthinkable severity. He's been an outspoken critic of half-formed government recovery plans (especially after Katrina). Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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So, a big question that we're facing now
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and have been for quite a number of years now:
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are we at risk of a nuclear attack?
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Now, there's a bigger question
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that's probably actually more important than that,
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is the notion of permanently eliminating
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the possibility of a nuclear attack,
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eliminating the threat altogether.
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And I would like to make a case to you that
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over the years since we first developed atomic weaponry,
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until this very moment,
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we've actually lived in a dangerous nuclear world
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that's characterized by two phases,
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which I'm going to go through with you right now.
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First of all, we started off the nuclear age in 1945.
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The United States had developed a couple of atomic weapons
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through the Manhattan Project,
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and the idea was very straightforward:
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we would use the power of the atom
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to end the atrocities and the horror
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of this unending World War II
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that we'd been involved in in Europe and in the Pacific.
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And in 1945,
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we were the only nuclear power.
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We had a few nuclear weapons,
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two of which we dropped on Japan, in Hiroshima,
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a few days later in Nagasaki, in August 1945,
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killing about 250,000 people between those two.
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And for a few years,
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we were the only nuclear power on Earth.
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But by 1949, the Soviet Union had decided
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it was unacceptable to have us as the only nuclear power,
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and they began to match what the United States had developed.
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And from 1949 to 1985
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was an extraordinary time
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of a buildup of a nuclear arsenal
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that no one could possibly have imagined
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back in the 1940s.
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So by 1985 -- each of those red bombs up here
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is equivalent of a thousands warheads --
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the world had
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65,000 nuclear warheads,
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and seven members of something
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that came to be known as the "nuclear club."
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And it was an extraordinary time,
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and I am going to go through some of the mentality
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that we -- that Americans and the rest of the world were experiencing.
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But I want to just point out to you that 95 percent
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of the nuclear weapons at any particular time
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since 1985 -- going forward, of course --
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were part of the arsenals
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of the United States and the Soviet Union.
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After 1985, and before the break up of the Soviet Union,
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we began to disarm
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from a nuclear point of view.
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We began to counter-proliferate,
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and we dropped the number of nuclear warheads in the world
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to about a total of 21,000.
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It's a very difficult number to deal with,
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because what we've done is
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we've quote unquote "decommissioned" some of the warheads.
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They're still probably usable. They could be "re-commissioned,"
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but the way they count things, which is very complicated,
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we think we have about a third
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of the nuclear weapons we had before.
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But we also, in that period of time,
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added two more members to the nuclear club:
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Pakistan and North Korea.
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So we stand today with a still fully armed nuclear arsenal
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among many countries around the world,
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but a very different set of circumstances.
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So I'm going to talk about
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a nuclear threat story in two chapters.
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Chapter one is 1949 to 1991,
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when the Soviet Union broke up,
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and what we were dealing with, at that point and through those years,
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was a superpowers' nuclear arms race.
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It was characterized by
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a nation-versus-nation,
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very fragile standoff.
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And basically,
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we lived for all those years,
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and some might argue that we still do,
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in a situation of
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being on the brink, literally,
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of an apocalyptic, planetary calamity.
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It's incredible that we actually lived through all that.
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We were totally dependent during those years
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on this amazing acronym, which is MAD.
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It stands for mutually assured destruction.
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So it meant
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if you attacked us, we would attack you
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virtually simultaneously,
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and the end result would be a destruction
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of your country and mine.
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So the threat of my own destruction
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kept me from launching
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a nuclear attack on you. That's the way we lived.
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And the danger of that, of course, is that
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a misreading of a radar screen
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could actually cause a counter-launch,
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even though the first country had not actually launched anything.
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During this chapter one,
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there was a high level of public awareness
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about the potential of nuclear catastrophe,
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and an indelible image was implanted
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in our collective minds
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that, in fact, a nuclear holocaust
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would be absolutely globally destructive
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and could, in some ways, mean the end of civilization as we know it.
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So this was chapter one.
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Now the odd thing is that even though
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we knew that there would be
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that kind of civilization obliteration,
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we engaged in America in a series --
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and in fact, in the Soviet Union --
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in a series of response planning.
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It was absolutely incredible.
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So premise one is we'd be destroying the world,
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and then premise two is, why don't we get prepared for it?
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So what
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we offered ourselves
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was a collection of things. I'm just going to go skim through a few things,
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just to jog your memories.
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If you're born after 1950, this is just --
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consider this entertainment, otherwise it's memory lane.
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This was Bert the Turtle. (Video)
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This was basically an attempt
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to teach our schoolchildren
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that if we did get engaged
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in a nuclear confrontation and atomic war,
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then we wanted our school children
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to kind of basically duck and cover.
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That was the principle. You --
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there would be a nuclear conflagration
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about to hit us, and if you get under your desk,
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things would be OK.
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(Laughter)
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I didn't do all that well
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in psychiatry in medical school, but I was interested,
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and I think this was seriously delusional.
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(Laughter)
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Secondly, we told people
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to go down in their basements
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and build a fallout shelter.
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Maybe it would be a study when we weren't having an atomic war,
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or you could use it as a TV room, or, as many teenagers found out,
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a very, very safe place for a little privacy with your girlfriend.
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And actually -- so there are multiple uses of the bomb shelters.
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Or you could buy a prefabricated bomb shelter
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that you could simply bury in the ground.
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Now, the bomb shelters at that point --
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let's say you bought a prefab one -- it would be a few hundred dollars,
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maybe up to 500, if you got a fancy one.
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Yet, what percentage of Americans
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do you think ever had a bomb shelter in their house?
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What percentage lived in a house with a bomb shelter?
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Less than two percent. About 1.4 percent
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of the population, as far as anyone knows,
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did anything,
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either making a space in their basement
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or actually building a bomb shelter.
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Many buildings, public buildings, around the country --
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this is New York City -- had these little civil defense signs,
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and the idea was that you would
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run into one of these shelters and be safe
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from the nuclear weaponry.
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And one of the greatest governmental delusions
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of all time was something that happened
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in the early days of
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the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, as we now know,
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and are well aware of their behaviors from Katrina.
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Here is their first big public
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announcement.
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They would propose --
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actually there were about six volumes written on this --
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a crisis relocation plan
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that was dependent upon
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the United States having three to four days warning
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that the Soviets were going to attack us.
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So the goal was to evacuate the target cities.
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We would move people out of the target cities
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into the countryside.
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And I'm telling you, I actually testified at the Senate
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about the absolute ludicrous idea
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that we would actually evacuate,
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and actually have three or four days' warning.
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It was just completely off the wall.
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Turns out that they had another idea
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behind it, even though this was --
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they were telling the public it was to save us.
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The idea was that we would force the Soviets
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to re-target their nuclear weapons -- very expensive --
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and potentially double their arsenal,
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to not only take out the original site,
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but take out sites where people were going.
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This was what apparently, as it turns out, was behind all this.
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It was just really, really frightening.
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The main point here is we were dealing with
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a complete disconnect from reality.
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The civil defense programs were disconnected
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from the reality of what we'd see in all-out nuclear war.
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So organizations like Physicians for Social Responsibility,
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around 1979, started saying this a lot publicly.
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They would do a bombing run. They'd go to your city,
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and they'd say, "Here's a map of your city.
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Here's what's going to happen if we get a nuclear hit."
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So no possibility of medical response to,
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or meaningful preparedness for
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all-out nuclear war.
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So we had to prevent nuclear war
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if we expected to survive.
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This disconnect was never actually resolved.
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And what happened was --
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when we get in to chapter two
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of the nuclear threat era,
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which started back in 1945.
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Chapter two starts in 1991.
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When the Soviet Union broke up,
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we effectively lost that adversary
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as a potential attacker of the United States, for the most part.
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It's not completely gone. I'm going to come back to that.
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But from 1991
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through the present time,
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emphasized by the attacks of 2001,
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the idea of an all-out nuclear war
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has diminished and the idea of a single event,
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act of nuclear terrorism
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is what we have instead.
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Although the scenario has changed
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very considerably, the fact is
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that we haven't changed our mental image
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of what a nuclear war means.
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So I'm going to tell you what the implications of that are in just a second.
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So, what is a nuclear terror threat?
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And there's four key ingredients to describing that.
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First thing is that the global nuclear weapons,
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in the stockpiles that I showed you in those original maps,
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happen to be not uniformly secure.
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And it's particularly not secure
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in the former Soviet Union, now in Russia.
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There are many, many sites where warheads are stored
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and, in fact, lots of sites where fissionable materials,
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like highly enriched uranium and plutonium,
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are absolutely not safe.
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They're available to be bought, stolen, whatever.
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They're acquirable, let me put it that way.
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From 1993 through 2006,
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the International Atomic Energy Agency
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documented 175 cases of nuclear theft,
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18 of which involved highly enriched uranium or plutonium,
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the key ingredients to make a nuclear weapon.
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The global stockpile of highly enriched uranium
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is about 1,300, at the low end,
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to about 2,100 metric tons.
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More than 100 megatons of this
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is stored in particularly insecure
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Russian facilities.
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How much of that do you think it would take
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to actually build a 10-kiloton bomb?
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Well, you need about 75 pounds of it.
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So, what I'd like to show you
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is
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what it would take to hold 75 pounds
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of highly enriched uranium.
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This is not a product placement. It's just --
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in fact, if I was Coca Cola, I'd be pretty distressed about this --
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(Laughter)
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-- but
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basically, this is it.
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This is what you would need to steal or buy
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out of that 100-metric-ton stockpile
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that's relatively insecure
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to create the type of bomb
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that was used in Hiroshima.
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Now you might want to look at plutonium
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as another fissionable material that you might use in a bomb.
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That -- you'd need 10 to 13 pounds of plutonium.
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Now, plutonium, 10 to 13 pounds:
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this. This is enough plutonium
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to create a Nagasaki-size atomic weapon.
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Now this situation, already I --
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you know, I don't really like thinking about this,
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although somehow I got myself a job
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where I have to think about it. So
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the point is that we're very, very insecure
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in terms of developing this material.
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The second thing is, what about the know-how?
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And there's a lot of controversy about
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whether terror organizations have the know-how
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to actually make a nuclear weapon.
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Well, there's a lot of know-how out there.
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There's an unbelievable amount of know-how out there.
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There's detailed information on how to assemble
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a nuclear weapon from parts.
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There's books about how to build a nuclear bomb.
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There are plans for how to create a terror farm
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where you could actually manufacture and develop
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all the components and assemble it.
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All of this information is relatively available.
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If you have an undergraduate degree in physics,
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I would suggest --
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although I don't, so maybe it's not even true --
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but something close to that would allow you,
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with the information that's currently available,
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to actually build a nuclear weapon.
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The third element of the nuclear terror threat
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is that, who would actually do such a thing?
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Well, what we're seeing now is a level of terrorism
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that involves individuals who are highly organized.
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They are very dedicated and committed.
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13:19
They are stateless.
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13:21
Somebody once said, Al Qaeda
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does not have a return address,
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so if they attack us with a nuclear weapon,
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what's the response, and to whom is the response?
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And they're retaliation-proof.
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Since there is no real retribution possible
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that would make any difference,
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since there are people willing to actually give up their lives
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in order to do a lot of damage to us,
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it becomes apparent
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that the whole notion
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of this mutually assured destruction would not work.
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13:48
Here is Sulaiman Abu Ghaith,
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13:50
and Sulaiman was a key lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden.
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He wrote many, many times statements to this effect:
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13:55
"we have the right to kill four million Americans,
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13:58
two million of whom should be children."
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14:00
And we don't have to go overseas
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to find people willing to do harm, for whatever their reasons.
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14:04
McVeigh and Nichols, and the Oklahoma City attack
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in the 1990s
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was a good example of homegrown terrorists.
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14:11
What if they had gotten their hands on a nuclear weapon?
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14:13
The fourth element
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is that the high-value U.S. targets
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are accessible, soft and plentiful.
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14:20
This would be a talk for another day, but the level of the preparedness
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14:22
that the United States has achieved
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since 9/11 of '01
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is unbelievably inadequate.
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14:28
What you saw after Katrina
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is a very good indicator
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14:32
of how little prepared the United States is
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for any kind of major attack.
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14:37
Seven million ship cargo containers
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come into the United States every year.
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14:41
Five to seven percent only are inspected --
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five to seven percent.
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14:47
This is Alexander Lebed,
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who was a general that worked with Yeltsin,
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14:52
who talked about, and presented to Congress,
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this idea that the Russians had developed --
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these suitcase bombs. They were very low yield --
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0.1 to one kiloton,
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15:03
Hiroshima was around 13 kilotons --
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15:05
but enough to do an unbelievable amount of damage.
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15:08
And Lebed came to the United States
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15:10
and told us that many, many --
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15:13
more than 80 of the suitcase bombs
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15:15
were actually not accountable.
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15:17
And they look like this. They're basically very simple arrangements.
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15:19
You put the elements into a suitcase.
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It becomes very portable.
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15:24
The suitcase can be conveniently dropped
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15:26
in your trunk of your car.
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15:28
You take it wherever you want to take it, and you can detonate it.
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15:30
You don't want to build a suitcase bomb,
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15:33
and you happen to get one of those insecure
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15:35
nuclear warheads that exist.
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15:37
This is the size of
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15:39
the "Little Boy" bomb that was dropped at Hiroshima.
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15:41
It was 9.8 feet long,
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15:43
weighed 8,800 pounds. You go down to
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15:45
your local rent-a-truck
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15:48
and for 50 bucks or so,
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15:50
you rent a truck that's got the right capacity,
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15:52
and you take your bomb,
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15:54
you put it in the truck and you're ready to go.
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15:57
It could happen. But what it would mean and who would survive?
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16:00
You can't get an exact number for that kind of probability,
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16:03
but what I'm trying to say is that
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we have all the elements of that happening.
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16:07
Anybody who dismisses the thought
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16:09
of a nuclear weapon
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16:11
being used by a terrorist is kidding themselves.
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16:13
I think there's a lot of people in the intelligence community --
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16:16
a lot of people who deal with this work in general
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16:19
think it's almost inevitable, unless we do certain things
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16:22
to really try to defuse the risk,
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16:25
like better interdiction, better prevention,
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16:27
better fixing, you know, better screening
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16:29
of cargo containers that are coming into the country and so forth.
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16:32
There's a lot that can be done to make us a lot safer.
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16:35
At this particular moment,
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16:37
we actually could end up
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16:39
seeing a nuclear detonation in one of our cities.
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16:42
I don't think we would see an all-out nuclear war
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16:45
any time soon, although even that is not completely off the table.
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16:48
There's still enough nuclear weapons
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16:50
in the arsenals of the superpowers
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16:52
to destroy the Earth many, many times over.
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16:55
There are flash points in India and Pakistan,
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16:58
in the Middle East, in North Korea,
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17:00
other places where the use of nuclear weapons,
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17:03
while initially locally,
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17:05
could very rapidly
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17:07
go into a situation
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17:09
where we'd be facing all-out nuclear war.
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17:12
It's very unsettling.
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17:15
Here we go. OK.
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17:17
I'm back in my truck, and we drove over the Brooklyn Bridge.
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17:20
We're coming down,
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17:22
and we bring that truck
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17:24
that you just saw
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17:26
somewhere in here, in the Financial District.
416
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3000
17:40
This is a 10-kiloton bomb,
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17:43
slightly smaller than was used
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17:45
in Hiroshima. And I want to just conclude this
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17:48
by just giving you some information. I think --
420
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17:50
"news you could use" kind of concept here.
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17:53
So, first of all, this would be horrific
422
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17:55
beyond anything we can possibly imagine.
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17:57
This is the ultimate.
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17:59
And if you're in the half-mile radius
425
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18:01
of where this bomb went off,
426
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18:03
you have a 90 percent chance of not making it.
427
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18:05
If you're right where the bomb went off,
428
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18:07
you will be vaporized. And that's --
429
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18:09
I'm just telling you, this is not good.
430
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18:11
(Laughter)
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18:13
You assume that.
432
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18:15
Two-mile radius, you have a 50 percent chance
433
1083000
3000
18:18
of being killed,
434
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18:20
and up to about eight miles away --
435
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18:22
now I'm talking about killed instantly --
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18:24
somewhere between a 10 and 20 percent
437
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18:26
chance of getting killed.
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18:28
The thing about this is that
439
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18:30
the experience of the nuclear detonation is --
440
1098000
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18:34
first of all, tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit
441
1102000
3000
18:37
at the core here, where it goes off,
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18:39
and an extraordinary amount of energy
443
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18:41
in the form of heat, acute radiation
444
1109000
3000
18:44
and blast effects.
445
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2000
18:46
An enormous hurricane-like wind,
446
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2000
18:48
and destruction of buildings almost totally,
447
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3000
18:51
within this yellow circle here.
448
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18:53
And what I'm going to focus on, as I come to conclusion here,
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18:55
is that, what happens to you
450
1123000
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18:58
if you're in here?
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19:00
Well, if we're talking about the old days
452
1128000
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19:02
of an all-out nuclear attack,
453
1130000
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19:04
you, up here,
454
1132000
1000
19:05
are as dead as the people here. So it was a moot point.
455
1133000
3000
19:08
My point now, though, is that there is a lot
456
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19:10
that we could do for you who are in here,
457
1138000
2000
19:12
if you've survived the initial blast.
458
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19:14
You have, when the blast goes off --
459
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19:16
and by the way, if it ever comes up, don't look at it.
460
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19:18
(Laughter)
461
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2000
19:20
If you look at it, you're going to be blind,
462
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19:22
either temporarily or permanently.
463
1150000
2000
19:24
So if there's any way that you can avoid,
464
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19:26
like, avert your eyes, that would be a good thing.
465
1154000
3000
19:29
If you find yourself alive, but
466
1157000
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19:31
you're in the vicinity of a nuclear weapon,
467
1159000
3000
19:34
you have -- that's gone off --
468
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19:36
you have 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size
469
1164000
2000
19:38
and exactly where it went off,
470
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2000
19:40
to get out of the way before
471
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19:42
a lethal amount of radiation
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19:44
comes straight down from the mushroom cloud that goes up.
473
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3000
19:47
In that 10 to 15 minutes, all you have to do --
474
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19:49
and I mean this seriously --
475
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19:51
is go about a mile
476
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19:53
away from the blast.
477
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2000
19:55
And what happens is -- this is --
478
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19:57
I'm going to show you now some fallout plumes. Within 20 minutes,
479
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19:59
it comes straight down. Within 24 hours,
480
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20:01
lethal radiation is going out with prevailing winds,
481
1189000
3000
20:04
and it's mostly in this particular direction --
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20:06
it's going northeast.
483
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20:08
And if you're in this vicinity, you've got to get away.
484
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3000
20:11
So you're feeling the wind --
485
1199000
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20:13
and there's tremendous wind now
486
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20:15
that you're going to be feeling -- and you want to go
487
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20:17
perpendicular to the wind
488
1205000
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20:19
[not upwind or downwind].
489
1207000
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20:21
if you are in fact able to see where the blast was in front of you.
490
1209000
3000
20:24
You've got to get out of there.
491
1212000
2000
20:26
If you don't get out of there, you're going to be exposed
492
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2000
20:28
to lethal radiation in very short order.
493
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2000
20:30
If you can't get out of there,
494
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20:32
we want you to go into a shelter and stay there.
495
1220000
3000
20:35
Now, in a shelter in an urban area means
496
1223000
3000
20:38
you have to be either in a basement as deep as possible,
497
1226000
3000
20:41
or you have to be on a floor -- on a high floor --
498
1229000
3000
20:44
if it's a ground burst explosion, which it would be,
499
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3000
20:47
higher than the ninth floor. So you have to be tenth floor or higher,
500
1235000
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20:49
or in the basement.
501
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2000
20:52
But basically, you've got to get out of town as quickly as possible.
502
1240000
3000
20:55
And if you do that,
503
1243000
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20:57
you actually can survive a nuclear blast.
504
1245000
4000
21:01
Over the next few days to a week,
505
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21:03
there will be a radiation cloud,
506
1251000
2000
21:05
again, going with the wind, and settling down
507
1253000
2000
21:07
for another 15 or 20 miles out --
508
1255000
2000
21:09
in this case, over Long Island.
509
1257000
2000
21:11
And if you're in the direct fallout zone here,
510
1259000
3000
21:14
you really have to either be sheltered or you have to get out of there,
511
1262000
2000
21:16
and that's clear. But if you are sheltered,
512
1264000
3000
21:19
you can actually survive.
513
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2000
21:21
The difference between knowing information
514
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21:23
of what you're going to do personally,
515
1271000
2000
21:25
and not knowing information, can save your life,
516
1273000
2000
21:27
and it could mean the difference between
517
1275000
2000
21:29
150,000 to 200,000 fatalities
518
1277000
2000
21:31
from something like this
519
1279000
3000
21:34
and half a million to 700,000 fatalities.
520
1282000
3000
21:37
So, response planning in the twenty-first century
521
1285000
3000
21:40
is both possible and is essential.
522
1288000
2000
21:42
But in 2008, there isn't one single American city
523
1290000
4000
21:46
that has done effective plans
524
1294000
2000
21:48
to deal with a nuclear detonation disaster.
525
1296000
3000
21:51
Part of the problem is that
526
1299000
2000
21:53
the emergency planners themselves, personally,
527
1301000
2000
21:55
are overwhelmed psychologically by the thought
528
1303000
2000
21:57
of nuclear catastrophe.
529
1305000
2000
21:59
They are paralyzed.
530
1307000
2000
22:01
You say "nuclear" to them, and they're thinking,
531
1309000
2000
22:03
"Oh my God, we're all gone. What's the point? It's futile."
532
1311000
3000
22:06
And we're trying to tell them, "It's not futile.
533
1314000
2000
22:08
We can change the survival rates
534
1316000
2000
22:10
by doing some commonsensical things."
535
1318000
3000
22:13
So the goal here is to minimize fatalities.
536
1321000
3000
22:16
And I just want to leave you with the personal points
537
1324000
2000
22:18
that I think you might be interested in.
538
1326000
2000
22:20
The key to surviving a nuclear blast
539
1328000
2000
22:22
is getting out,
540
1330000
2000
22:24
and not going into harm's way.
541
1332000
3000
22:27
That's basically all we're going to be talking about here.
542
1335000
2000
22:29
And the farther you are away in distance,
543
1337000
3000
22:32
the longer it is in time
544
1340000
2000
22:34
from the initial blast;
545
1342000
2000
22:36
and the more separation between you
546
1344000
2000
22:38
and the outside atmosphere, the better.
547
1346000
2000
22:40
So separation -- hopefully with dirt or concrete,
548
1348000
3000
22:43
or being in a basement --
549
1351000
2000
22:45
distance and time is what will save you.
550
1353000
2000
22:47
So here's what you do. First of all,
551
1355000
2000
22:49
as I said, don't stare at the light flash,
552
1357000
2000
22:51
if you can. I don't know you could possibly resist doing that.
553
1359000
2000
22:53
But let's assume, theoretically, you want to do that.
554
1361000
2000
22:55
You want to keep your mouth open, so your eardrums
555
1363000
2000
22:57
don't burst from the pressures.
556
1365000
3000
23:00
If you're very close to what happened, you actually do have to duck and cover,
557
1368000
3000
23:03
like Bert told you, Bert the Turtle.
558
1371000
2000
23:05
And you want to get under something so that you're not injured
559
1373000
3000
23:08
or killed by objects, if that's at all possible.
560
1376000
2000
23:10
You want to get away from the initial fallout mushroom cloud,
561
1378000
2000
23:12
I said, in just a few minutes.
562
1380000
2000
23:14
And shelter and place. You want to move [only]
563
1382000
3000
23:17
crosswind for 1.2 miles.
564
1385000
2000
23:19
You know, if you're out there and you see buildings horribly destroyed
565
1387000
3000
23:22
and down in that direction,
566
1390000
2000
23:24
less destroyed here,
567
1392000
2000
23:26
then you know that it was over there, the blast, and you're going this way,
568
1394000
2000
23:28
as long as you're going crosswise to the wind.
569
1396000
4000
23:32
Once you're out and evacuating,
570
1400000
2000
23:34
you want to keep as much of your skin,
571
1402000
1000
23:36
your mouth and nose covered, as long as that covering
572
1404000
2000
23:38
doesn't impede you moving and getting out of there.
573
1406000
3000
23:41
And finally, you want to get decontaminated as soon as possible.
574
1409000
3000
23:44
And if you're wearing clothing, you've taken off your clothing,
575
1412000
2000
23:46
you're going to get showered down some place
576
1414000
2000
23:48
and remove the radiation that would be --
577
1416000
2000
23:50
the radioactive material that might be on you.
578
1418000
3000
23:53
And then you want to stay in shelter for 48 to 72 hours minimum,
579
1421000
4000
23:57
but you're going to wait hopefully -- you'll have your little wind-up,
580
1425000
2000
23:59
battery-less radio,
581
1427000
2000
24:01
and you'll be waiting for people to tell you
582
1429000
2000
24:03
when it's safe to go outside. That's what you need to do.
583
1431000
2000
24:05
In conclusion,
584
1433000
2000
24:07
nuclear war is less likely than before,
585
1435000
2000
24:09
but by no means out of the question, and it's not survivable.
586
1437000
3000
24:12
Nuclear terrorism is possible -- it may be probable --
587
1440000
3000
24:15
but is survivable.
588
1443000
2000
24:17
And this is Jack Geiger, who's one of the heroes
589
1445000
2000
24:19
of the U.S. public health community.
590
1447000
3000
24:22
And Jack said the only way to deal
591
1450000
2000
24:24
with nuclear anything,
592
1452000
2000
24:26
whether it's war or terrorism,
593
1454000
2000
24:28
is abolition of nuclear weapons.
594
1456000
2000
24:30
And you want something to work on once you've fixed global warming,
595
1458000
3000
24:33
I urge you to think about the fact that
596
1461000
2000
24:35
we have to do something about this
597
1463000
2000
24:37
unacceptable, inhumane
598
1465000
2000
24:39
reality of nuclear weapons
599
1467000
2000
24:41
in our world.
600
1469000
2000
24:43
Now, this is my favorite civil defense slide, and I --
601
1471000
2000
24:45
(Laughter)
602
1473000
2000
24:47
-- I don't want to be indelicate, but
603
1475000
2000
24:49
this --
604
1477000
2000
24:51
he's no longer in office. We don't really care, OK.
605
1479000
3000
24:54
This was sent to me by somebody
606
1482000
2000
24:56
who is an aficionado of civil defense procedures,
607
1484000
3000
24:59
but the fact of the matter is that
608
1487000
2000
25:01
America's gone through a very hard time.
609
1489000
2000
25:03
We've not been focused, we've not done what we had to do,
610
1491000
3000
25:06
and now we're facing the potential of
611
1494000
3000
25:09
bad, hell on Earth.
612
1497000
2000
25:11
Thank you.
613
1499000
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Irwin Redlener - Physician, disaster-preparedness activistDr. Irwin Redlener spends his days imagining the worst: He studies how humanity might survive natural or human-made disasters of unthinkable severity. He's been an outspoken critic of half-formed government recovery plans (especially after Katrina).
Why you should listen
After 9/11, Irwin Redlener emerged as a powerful voice in disaster medicine -- the discipline of medical care following natural and human-made catastrophes. He was a leading face of the relief effort after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and is the author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now. He's the associate dean, professor of Clinical Public Health and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.
His parallel passion is addressing the American disaster that happens every day: millions of kids living without proper health care. He and Paul Simon are the co-founders of the Children's Health Fund, which raises money and awareness toward health care for homeless, neglected and poor children.
Irwin Redlener | Speaker | TED.com