The first article in this series focused upon the social and legal constraints we face in "normal" times, preparing to defend our communities against potential violent threats under future, "off-normal" conditions. Here we'll present representative examples of a variety of threats - some historical, and some hypothetical - that would provide a rationale for community defense, distinct both from individual or family preparedness, and from engagement in the never-ending political process that shapes the resilience in crisis of our larger institutions and governments.
Let's be clear about our choice of terms. "Security" is a different (though related) topic and one that ST addresses at length from a variety of perspectives. Security is a broad topic and defense is a subset of it. We are speaking here of defending our communities against humans and their organizations and agendas that mean to do us harm.
Nature can threaten our well-being but does so without intent. Protecting ourselves at any level against purely natural threats and events is certainly an aspect of security, but stockpiling candles and batteries and fuel is not what we are discussing in this series. Natural disasters get a lot of attention here, but not because of their direct effects, no matter how dire those can be. It is too often true that natural disasters trigger bad human behavior from looting, general lawlessness, and waves of displaced persons to more or less organized violence arising from pre-existing grievances and divisions. Those are the second-order consequences that concern us here. As one novelist memorably put it, "people get cranky when they're hungry." Or cold, or homeless, or threatened or abandoned by the governments that serve them.
These will not be detailed case studies, because details are readily available for those who want to delve deeper. We also will not predict the likelihood or repeatability of any of these events, or their applicability in our own state of Wyoming or elsewhere. For instance, we'll discuss hurricanes and tsunamis, even though Wyomingites are too high above sea level and too far inland to be concerned about the first order effects of either type of event.
This article is just an introduction, "painting the picture" as the saying goes, to provide a basis for the planning and preparation we'll recommend in later installments. It is necessarily incomplete: you can fill in the gaps in a disciplined, locally relevant Threat Assessment that will identify and characterize the most likely and most dangerous threats your community might face.
ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS
First, we'll take a look at some natural events and conditions that do not have their origin in human action. They include natural disasters of all sorts, such as extreme weather events, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Some of these are limited in scope, impacting a small area, while others can have a broad regional, national, even global impact. Depending on their nature and severity, and how early the threat is detected and communicated, the lead time available for preparation ("filling the sandbags") may vary from minutes to hours to days or weeks. Because the world does not often lend itself to tidy characterization, some threats can represent a mixture of natural events with human action, such as the prolonged drought conditions in the Rocky Mountain states that, combined with growing human consumption, have led to a crisis of water availability in the Colorado River watershed.
Hurricane Katrina
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, and within hours 80% of the city of New Orleans suffered some degree of flooding. The majority of residents evacuated; along with many more from other affected areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, hundreds of thousands of people relocated to neighboring states, dependent upon governments at all levels and upon local communities for food, shelter, clothing and other basic necessities, some for many months. The impact on receiving communities was sometimes extreme.
Tens of thousands remained behind in the city. Widespread looting and a near-total breakdown in law and order began the next day. Local police were quickly overwhelmed; many abandoned their posts, and of those who remained, several officers were later convicted of excessive use of force and a host of civil rights violations.
Law enforcement assistance was sent from all 50 states. There was a massive deployment of state and federal military forces in support of civil authority, peaking on September 10 with 46,838 National Guard and active-duty military troops on duty in Louisiana. Law and order were slowly restored, but "normalcy" by whatever definition took months to re-establish. Public utilities and
A single Class III hurricane caused this, with a healthy nation poised to respond., prompting a question about the state of emergency preparedness, and law enforcement readiness in those donor communities while their resources were away.
Arkansas Ice Storm, 2000
In late December of 2000, four days of sleet and freezing rain followed by a precipitous drop in temperature created the worst icing in almost 70 years across western and central Arkansas, and portions of eastern Oklahoma. Forecasts gave individuals and public and private entities time to prepare, but the crisis was still severe and protracted. Local suppliers sold out of generators, space heaters, kerosene, propane, and candles before the storm even hit. Ice as much as 4" thick collected on trees and power lines; tree limbs fell on houses and blocked roadways. Power lines were downed by fallen trees, or snapped due to the weight of the ice, leaving over 500,000 customers without electricity. Water systems failed due to lack of electricity, and communications were disrupted statewide. National Guard troops were mobilized, and utility companies from all over the central United States responded with repair crews to help restore electrical service and clear the roads. Many areas did not see utilities restored and roads cleared for two weeks or more, with temperatures in the single digits.
Many other natural events in the United States in recent decades have had serious and sometimes long-lasting effects on a local or regional scale - from the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980 to the 1994 Northridge earthquake in southern California, to the annual impact of tornados and severe thunderstorms across the central United States. A consistent theme across many of these is the one mentioned in both examples above. America's resources for emergency response, for providing law enforcement, medical care, infrastructure repair, and reconstruction assistance, are considerable. However, they have seldom been tested in high consequence events affecting broad areas; or in the event of simultaneous or overlapping but unrelated events. The regional and national response to localized disasters is gratifying and impressive, but what happens if the power grid disruptions that occurred during Katrina or the 2000 ice storm are nationwide instead of regional? Power restoration capabilities that require government and utility resources from all over the country to address a regional event would be seriously challenged if the effect were nationwide. The lights might be out for more than just a week or two, and in midsummer or midwinter, the direct consequences could be severe, and the indirect consequences on supply chains, transportation, communications, and civil order could be extreme and long lasting.
Hypotheticals
Now we'll consider some hypothetical but fact-based, large-scope natural disaster scenarios posing the question just raised: what if effects were so widespread that recovery assets (including law enforcement and security) from outside your area were committed elsewhere and unavailable, or their capacity was simply overwhelmed by the magnitude or footprint of the disaster, or they were unable to reach you due to damage to critical infrastructure like roads, bridges, and airports?The Cascadia Subduction Zone
Just off the North American coast from British Columbia to Northern California runs a fault system where several smaller offshore tectonic plates are being subducted (overridden) by the North American plate moving to the southwest. These plates lock together for centuries until the stress is relieved by a megathrust earthquake that can exceed 9.0 on the Richter Scale and generate massive tsunamis. The last one is known to have occurred in the year 1700, and they repeat on average every 300-500 years. Volcanic activity along the Cascade Range is also caused by this subduction - the view of Mt. Hood from downtown Portland reminds one that most of the volcanoes of the Cascade Range present eruption threats on the order of Mount Saint Helens in 1980.
Oregon takes seismic threats seriously. Its Emergency Operations Center in Salem is mounted on shock absorbing springs, similar to the underground national command post inside Cheyenne Mountain outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The state's Office of Emergency Management catalogs the generic effects of major earthquakes:
Destructive fires:
Earthquakes and tsunamis are often followed by fires because gas lines may break, electrical shorts cause sparks, damaged water tanks and broken pipes limit water for firefighting, and damaged roads prevent firefighter access.
Surface rupture:
Fault movements can break the ground surface, damaging buildings and other structures and breaking pipelines.
Hazardous material releases:
Chemicals, pesticides, and other hazardous materials can be released when industrial plants, laboratories, and other facilities are damaged in an earthquake.
Dam failures:
Earthquake shaking and fault rupture can sometimes cause dams to fail, potentially creating catastrophic downstream flooding, reduced water supply, and contamination. Having an emergency plan that deals with an upstream dam is a good idea.
Damaged infrastructure:
Earthquakes often damage roads and bridges, which can hinder rescue and recovery efforts and may cause accidents. Ruptured pipelines result in water loss and can cause "sinkholes" that undermine roads and buildings. Damage to gas and electrical systems can cause fires, as well as major service outages. Communications can also be disrupted for long periods of time.
A quantification of these effects, and their likelihood in the near future, is offered by an informative Wikipedia article:
In 2009, some geologists predicted a 10% to 14% probability that the Cascadia Subduction Zone will produce an event of magnitude 9.0 or higher in the next 50 years. In 2010, studies suggested that the risk could be as high as 37% for earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 or higher.
Geologists and civil engineers have broadly determined that the Pacific Northwest region is not well prepared for such a colossal earthquake. The earthquake is expected to be similar to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, because the rupture is expected to be as long as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The resulting tsunami might reach heights of approximately 30 meters (100 ft). FEMA estimates some 13,000 fatalities from such an event, with another 27,000 injured, which would make it the deadliest natural disaster in American, and North American, history. FEMA further predicts that a million people will be displaced, with yet another 2.5 million requiring food and water. An estimated 1/3 of public safety workers will not respond to the disaster due to a collapse in infrastructure and a desire to ensure the safety of themselves and their loved ones. Other analyses predict that even a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Seattle would result in 7,700 dead and injured, $33 billion in damage, 39,000 buildings severely damaged or destroyed, and 130 simultaneous fires.
The significance for the United States and Canada, of course, is the level of sustained effort required to respond to a disaster of this magnitude. A particular impact on states and provinces just outside the affected zone would be the flood of displaced persons. Of the 15 million in the affected zone who were not immediate casualties or physically isolated and unable to leave, how many would self-evacuate? How many million could reach Wyoming and other nearby states, and what would be their potential impact on local communities?
These slides are part of an Oregon Office of Emergency Management presentation warning of the probable impacts of the inevitable megathrust earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
A New Madrid Earthquake.
The New Madrid Seismic Zone covers an area roughly 200 miles long and 150 miles wide, extending from the northern suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee to Marion, Illinois. In 1811 and 1812, a series of powerful earthquakes occurred, centered on the small settlement of New Madrid, Missouri; they are believed to be among the worst to have occurred in North America in historical times. The highest magnitude in the series is estimated conservatively by the US Geological Survey at 7.5 on the Richter scale, while other credible sources speculate that it may have been more severe. There were at least three aftershocks of similar magnitude. The Mississippi River changed course in several locations, and the quake was felt many hundreds of miles away. A well-documented quake of 6.8 Richter magnitude struck the same area in 1895, and smaller tremors are not uncommon.
The fault system involved, like the Cascadia Subduction Zone, is locked, loaded and ready to release, generating a quake or quakes of similar magnitude. Unlike the early nineteenth century, a major New Madrid earthquake now would impact at least two major metropolitan areas (St. Louis and Memphis) with a combined population of approximately 3 million, in addition to many smaller towns, cities, and rural areas. According to FEMA, it would impact a total of 12 million in the high-risk area, and 44 million in an eight-state region, with magnitudes rivaling that of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Unlike the earthquake-prone West Coast, building codes in the heartland have only recently addressed the seismic hazard and a high percentage of buildings are not designed to ride out earthquakes. The Corps of Engineers' flood control dams and levees throughout the Mississippi delta region between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, and up major tributaries including the Arkansas, Tennessee, and Red Rivers, were not engineered to withstand major earthquakes.
Generic effects of a major quake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone would be similar to those listed in the State of Oregon presentation quoted above. Additionally, the potential for severe damage or failure of highway and rail bridges, pipelines, and transmission lines across the central Mississippi and lower Ohio Rivers and their tributaries introduce a whole new dimension: infrastructure and the flow of goods and services across the entire middle third of the United States could be crippled, and the national electric grid would be at risk.
FEMA considered the threat of a New Madrid quake real enough to use it as the basis for its annual National Level Exercise in May, 2011, which involved a total of 10,000 federal, state, regional, local, and non-governmental participants at 135 sites nationwide, in addition to 7,800 more private sector individuals who participated virtually.
According to FEMA, "In the scenario, the southwest segment of the NMSZ ruptured at a magnitude of 7.7 from near Marked Tree, AR, to near Ridgley, TN. The shaking from this event triggered a magnitude 6.0 event in the WVSZ [Wabash Valley Seismic Zone] near Mt. Carmel, IL. The event caused widespread casualties, displaced households, and damage to major infrastructure across eight States—Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee."
An early report listed many serious shortcomings identified by the exercise in the areas of communications, incident management, sheltering, feeding, and care of evacuated persons, critical resource distribution, medical capacity for casualty transport and care, and multiple recovery issues such as debris removal, long-term sheltering of survivors, and reestablishment of supply chains for vital goods.
Despite several positive outcomes of the NLE 2011 exercise, and the corrective actions that have hopefully followed, these reports provide a candid look at the depth and duration of such a crisis. From what this and other sources tell us about the impact and consequences of a major New Madrid earthquake, it is not hard to visualize the conditions facing communities in the affected zone or on its periphery, for an extended period of time in the effective absence of outside support and response.
Security, law and order, and public safety in the aftermath of the earthquake were not modeled in NLE 2011, but would be issues of great magnitude.
Human Threats
These differ from environmental threats only in their root cause or origin. It is the failed or misguided human responses to natural events (governmental, collective, and individual) that create threats that we must defend our families and communities against. This category differs only in that the events described are consequences of human actions, decisions, or policies without a direct natural/environmental trigger.
We will cite only two historical examples, although there are many. There are also many potential human threats arising from a wide variety of causes emerging in the post-COVID era, and likely to be repeated in worsening degree. These include:
- Supply chain disruptions, such as the bottleneck in maritime commerce off Los Angeles in 2021-2022, continuing consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and mismanaged response, the nationwide railroad strike imminent in late 2022, and dependence on unreliable foreign sources and shipping of vital manufactured goods.
- Fuel shortages and price increases above and beyond the general rate of inflation, due to the U.S. administration's war on fossil fuels and the international situation, affecting the agricultural sector and the movement of goods and services.
- Food shortages and price increases, and the civil unrest that results, caused by the fuel crisis, by global disruption in the production and distribution of petroleum-based fertilizers, and by a reduction in global exports of grain from producing nations to those that cannot feed themselves.
- Tensions along racial and political divides, exemplified by the nationwide riots of 2020-2021.
- Threats of war resulting from what George Washington characterized as "entangling foreign alliances" and from globalist agendas and foreign aggression.
Argentina's Economic Collapse, 2001
Following several years of deepening economic crisis, Argentina – a formerly prosperous first-world nation - defaulted on its national debt in late 2001. Banks closed, the currency was devalued, citizens' savings were wiped out, and the economic life of the nation sputtered to a halt. Rioting was widespread, and law and order broke down in many areas, with life-threatening consequences. Although the crisis was limited to a single mid-sized nation, in a fundamentally stable global economic order, rebuilding economic and political stability – and restoring civil order and the rule of law – still took years.
Los Angeles Riots, 1992
Also known as the Rodney King Riots, this was an outbreak of civil disturbance over a six-day period in Los Angeles County, California, after the acquittal of police officers in an alleged police brutality incident.
A more recent example along the same lines was the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri and surrounding suburban communities that resulted from the perception of an unjustified police shooting of a teenager in August, 2014. In Ferguson, initial protests and rioting continued for over two weeks after the original shooting, and recurred after a grand jury declined to indict the officer involved.
Although neither the LA nor the Ferguson riots were of especially long duration, we present them as examples of the civil unrest that could occur in any large urban area. 2020 -2022 provides scores of more recent examples, exemplified by the widespread destruction in downtown Minneapolis that included $500 million dollars in property damage, second only to 1992 Los Angeles in American history. Political violence there has continued sporadically throughout 2021 and 2022.
In Los Angeles, the rioting spread rapidly, with four deaths, over 100 reported injuries, and widespread arson before the end of the first day. The initial police response was delayed by field leadership for hours, out of fear that police presence would further enflame the situation, a decision that offered cold comfort to the people dragged from their cars and beaten, or injured by rocks thrown through auto glass, with no police or EMS response. This delayed response was also seen when renewed rioting, looting, and arson broke out in Ferguson in November, 2014. A state of emergency and a sunset to sunrise curfew were declared in Los Angeles, and traffic was routed around the affected area, which continued to grow. By the next morning, bus service and mail delivery ceased across the city. Over 2,000 National Guard troops were deployed by noon of the second day; over the next 24 hours their numbers grew to 6,000, augmented by 4,000 active-duty soldiers and Marines. The riots continued for several more days, with continuing assaults, looting, arson, power outages, bank and business closures, and other cascading effects. [http://timelines.latimes.com/los-angeles-riots/, accessed 10/23/2014]
Korean-American businesses in Central and South Los Angeles were a primary target of the looters, and many owners, receiving no help or response from the police, posted armed personnel on their roofs and storefronts to protect themselves and their property.[http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/10/us/korean-shop-owners-fearful-of-outcome-of-beating-trial.html?pagewanted=all, accessed 10/23/14]
Islands of Disorder in a Sea of Calm
We reiterate again a characteristic common to all four historical cases discussed above: each crisis affected a limited geographical area during a time of general good order and stability.
Despite early problems in organization and implementation, assets and assistance flowed into Louisiana from federal, state, local, and private entities all over the United States; and the broader areas of Mississippi and Alabama which were also impacted by Katrina required far less outside assistance.
Argentina's economic crisis lasted much longer, but recovery was enabled by the fact the international political and economic order was relatively stable.
Electric power was restored in western Arkansas as quickly as it was only because the ice storm was narrowly regional in effect, and unaffected areas were able to dispatch crews to assist in recovery.
The Los Angeles riots took place while the rest of the state and nation were calm; parts of LA and Orange County were not involved, and assistance from outside local, county, and state law enforcement agencies, as well as the California National Guard and active-duty military, arrived quickly to assist the police in suppressing disorder.
As if these were not enough
The foregoing examples, as bad as they are, are by no means worst-case scenarios of either environmental or human-origin threats. The big ones would include:
- A deliberate electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or its natural equivalent, an X-Class solar flare.
- Regional or global nuclear war.
- Bioterrorism or a natural outbreak of disease in the form of a truly untreatable pandemic of an agent like Marburg, smallpox, or Ebola, with known fatality rates of 30, 50, and 90% respectively.
- Global economic collapse, triggered by any of a dozen scenarios including the sort we've discussed.
ST addresses some of these scenarios in other postings, as do other responsible sources, but for now we offer two observations.
First, individual and community preparedness for the sort of troubles that can be seen more clearly and closely, and with a higher probability of occurrence, establish a solid foundation for weathering even more severe crises. Without such a foundation, you cannot build anything that will stand in stronger winds.
Second, the concept of regression to the mean speaks to the resilience and adaptability of our species. Humans are creative, reactive, and adaptable, and respond to threats and crises by modifying their behavior – not always, and not always successfully, but their responses have a tendency to slow or reverse negative trends, avert disasters, and alter destructive courses of action.
For instance, Argentina in 2001 did not collapse into savagery and cannibalism. The US and USSR did not immolate each other in nuclear fire. Dire predictions of US economic collapse in the mid-1970s did not come to pass - although some believe that the longer the "correction" is delayed, the longer and harder the fall, when it comes.
We shall see. In the meantime, we can prepare as best we can for present threats and the more likely futures. In Part 3 of this series, we will begin a serious exploration at what community defense will require in any of these scenarios.