The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is a little more than three months away. You’d assume this would be a time of heightened awareness and preparedness regarding potential threats to the U.S., but emergency management blogger Christopher Neuwirth says Americans are suffering from disaster amnesia.
“We are reminded how easily disasters are forgotten, how quickly memories fade, and how readily we return to our complacent ways of life,” he writes. “The United States is no safer today than it was a decade ago — and in fact some may argue we face more threats and hazards now than ever before.”
Neuwirth, a regular contributor to emergencymgmt.com, believes that after 9/11, our collective consciousness became fixated on terrorism as the most prominent, if not the only, threat to be wary of.
“This misplaced focus and understanding of hazards and vulnerabilities has left us exposed and vulnerable,” he writes. “We must fight terrorism — but we cannot ignore the other likelihoods while doing so.”
To Neurwirth’s mind, a cyber disaster is inevitable and biological weapons are a rising concern that isn’t given enough attention.
I polled 15 people to check Neuwirth’s assumptions about what threats occupy Americans’ minds.
I asked: If you were to name one disaster threat to the U.S. that worries you most, or you feel is most imminent, what would it be?
- Terrorist attack
- Biological weapon
- Cyber attack
- Natural disaster
- Man-made (i.e. oil spill)
I also asked what worries you least?
The results surprised me.
First of all, a terrorist attack was not the top concern. In fact, four people said they are least worried about a terrorist attack.
People were most concerned with Mother Nature—six people listed a natural disaster as their most pressing worry.
While Neuwirth recognizes the real threat of a biological weapon, four people of those I polled said that a biological weapon was their least concern, tying a terrorist attack for threats that people don’t worry about as much.
“I feel a biological weapon large enough to take out the entire country would be too difficult for an attacker to control,” said Justin Shields, a 25-year-old Lakeview resident. “It could spread all over the world.”
Casey Bennett of Dallas, Texas said, “Someone would have to be absolutely heartless and evil to use those weapons.”
Let’s hope so.
Still, one person—my older sister—said a biological weapon attack was her biggest fear.
“It seems like the easiest attack to pull off,” she said. “There are so many smart people who could make them and people are so greedy for money. A small dose could kill so many people.”
While one person I polled didn’t know what a cyber attack would look like—“What’s that, aliens?”—four people listed it as their top concern, second only in the worry department to a natural disaster.
“I always worry about people stealing information from me because of my Internet activity,” said Kathy Miller of Roseville, Minn.
Neuwirth writes about cyber attacks: “This is one domain of emergency management and homeland security that has yet to experience its ‘9/11’ and we are unprepared. Can you and/or your organization survive without Internet connectivity for days, weeks, or months? How resilient and sustainable are we for this type of disaster? Here me now and believe me later —when a cyber disaster occurs, it will forever change private-public partnerships in emergency management.”
All I know is that if I could choose between someone releasing anthrax in the air, or flying a plane into a skyscraper and someone shutting down our computer system and forcing us to, God forbid, interact with our surroundings how we did in 1960, my choice is obvious.
A cyber attack would be more complicated than that, I know, but given the options, I’d choose human life over computers any day.
