RCD in the news: “Duck and cover 2.0: How North Korea is prompting new efforts to prepare for a nuclear attack”

The Reinventing Civil Defense project was featured in a news story by Ralph Vartabedian and W.J. Hennigan in the Los Angeles Times,Duck and cover 2.0: How North Korea is prompting new efforts to prepare for a nuclear attack.” An excerpt is below.

“The North Korean government this month launched a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile, which U.S. experts said has enough range to reach Alaska. (Korean Central News Agency)”

Fleets of big black trucks, harbor boats and aircraft, equipped with radiation sensors and operated by specially trained law enforcement teams, are ready to swing into action in Los Angeles for a catastrophe that nobody even wants to think about: a North Korean nuclear attack.

American cities have long prepared for a terrorist attack, even one involving nuclear weapons or a “dirty bomb,” but North Korea’s long-range missile and weapons programs have now heightened concerns along the West Coast over increasing vulnerability to a strike. […]

As tension rises, the inevitable question is: How well prepared are Los Angeles and other U.S. cities for a nuclear strike? The answer is somewhat unexpected. After two decades of fighting terrorism, law enforcement agencies and the federal government today are better equipped and trained to handle the aftermath of a limited nuclear attack than they ever were during the Cold War. Yet generations of Americans have grown up without learning how to protect themselves in the aftermath of a detonation. […]

This month, Wellerstein and other researchers launched Reinventing Civil Defense, a nonprofit project that over the next two years will examine how best to reeducate the American public on the nuclear threat — one that never went away. It is being funded by a $500,000 grant from Carnegie Corp. of New York.

“If we live in a world where a nuclear detonation is possible, and we do, then people should be informed on what that means,” he said. “It’s something that’s been nonexistent in our society since the late 1980s.”

Click here for the full story.