Papers of General Interest

Urban Emergency Pedestrian Based Relocation Study,” by Lee Knoper. Assume that a serious, widespread threat to public safety emerges in your area – for example, a pending use of chemical, biological or radiological weapons by malevolent operatives. You still have some time to react and are anxiously considering whether to “shelter in place” or evacuate to a safer area. In a worst case situation, you might even have to accomplish all or part of your evacuation on foot.  Is a pedestrian based relocation even a realistic option? The author conducted a lengthy study to examine the principal variables.  From the draft Abstract:

"Pedestrian based relocations for fictional emergencies in a large metropolitan area were peformed under diverse operational conditions over a 30 month period.

"Aproximately 250 exercises were conducted, covering a total distance of well over 1,000 miles. These drills were performed along routes with different crime profiles, at various times of day and night, in all seasons and under all weather conditions common to metropolitan Tucson, AZ [USA]. Special efforts were made to deploy during unusual circumstances, such as severe weather, loss of public utilities, or law enforcement developments. The study included one period in which no drills were conducted, and a second in which few drills were conducted, to subjectively gauge the impact on physical readiness and relocation dynamics.

"This report summarizes these exercises and the lessons learned, and identifies possible followup projects.”

Detailed text file, currently about 160 KB long. Impatient readers might want to skip down to Sections 4.0 (Observations) or 5.0 (Conclusions). Work in process.

"Another Threat From Offshore," by Lee Knoper. This collection of three articles reviews the balloon based strategic bombing campaign that Japan waged against North America in late World War II, and asesses whether a similar weapon system could be used to conduct a terrorist attack from offshore. The Japanese balloons were known as fusen bakuden (“fire balloons”), usually just shortened to fugos. About ten meters in diameter and filled with hyrdrogen, they carried high explosive (HE) and incendiary ordnance, an ingenious altitude control mechanism, and were conveyed to the intended target zones via the jet stream. At least a few specimens were known to also carry a cannister of mystery liquid – possibly a biological agent in an aqueous solution, although the results of forensic analyses were never released to the public. The incendiary ordnance was intended to cause widespread wildfires in Canada and the U.S., thereby diverting critical wartime production resources to fire suppression. The HE ordnance likely was intended primarily as an antipersonnel measure, and did in fact cause several deaths when a family in Oregon found a downed fugo and moved it, setting off the explosive. Thousands of fugos were launched. They landed anywhere from Alaska in the north to Sonora (Mexico) in the south, and from the Pacific Coast on the western edge of the continent to as far east as Michigan and Ontario (Canada).

Although fugos were innovative and intriguing, the bombing campaign is not generally considered to have been very effective in terms of physical damage. Certainly Japanese hopes for uncontrolled U.S. wildfires didn't materialize.  However, the fugos did force the U.S. to spend far more for a protective response than Japan spent to construct them in the first place. Thus, force multiplier was evident. Moreover, it is important to note that nuclear materials production for the Manhattan Project was disrupted for three days when a fugo tripped a high voltage transmission line running from the Bonneville Dam hydroelectric facility to the Hanford Works in Washington state.

Heavily footnoted with mostly online sources.  The article is made available for download as a concatenation of a three part series originally posted to USENET in the summer of 2004.  Text file, about 116 KB long.

"A Cursory Examination of Pre- and Post-11 Sep 2001 Crime Incident Data for Tucson, AZ [USA]," by Lee Knoper.  Text file, about 60 KB long.  Lots of statistical data – pretty dry stuff.  It is suggested that impatient readers skip down to Section 3.2 (General Observations) or 4.0 (Conclusions).  From the Abstract:

"The effects of a terrorist attack on crime incident patterns may provide useful insights into the reaction of the general public.  In turn, this information may influence decisions often made in personal preparedness endeavors.

"The stimuli for this study are the terrorist attacks that occurred on 11 Sep 2001 in New York City and Washington, DC.  As a gauge of public reaction, this study peforms a cursory examination of crime incident data for Tucson, Arizona [USA] before and after those attacks.  It treats those incidents as a paradigm shifting spike on the timeline.  Pre- and post-11 Sep 2001 crime incident data in four classes of sociological phenomena are examined in three separate time frames.  The four classes are: a) Despair / Depression, b) Fear / Suspicion, c) Anger / Frustration, and d) Aggression / Predation.  The three time frames are: a) eight months before and eight months after 11 Sep 2001, b) one month before and one month after 11 Sep 2001, and c) three days before and three days after 11 Sep 2001.

"The conclusions support some of the assumptions often made in preparedness planning, and provide additional insights for emergency relocation decisions."

Text file only (no graphs in this release), about 60 KB long.

"The Marine Corps Management Principles."  “Fair use” excerpts from Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines, by David H. Freedman, HarperCollins, New York, 2000, pp 207-209 (ISBN 0-06-661978-5).  Text file, about 5 KB long. Sources for the book here.

"The Nine Rules of War," as summarized by Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr. (USA, Ret.), looking back at Operation Desert Storm (Gulf War I, c. 1990).  This short article is a concise presentation of the the nine classic principles of war, reflecting longstanding U.S. Army doctrine, and contrasting in particular the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars.  To prevail in a military conflict it is essential that these principles be applied.  Text file, about 5 KB long.

"The Art of War," by Sun Tzu (Project Gutenberg version).  Sun Tzu was a Chinese philosopher and keen military strategist who, around 400 B.C., documented the principles of war.  His work tersely describes the basic principles of conflict, most of which have withstood the test of time.  Text file, about 74 KB long.

“An Overview of Spirulina as an EPDR Foodstuff,” a report by yours truly that originally was posted to FTN Net 9 in early 2000. This updated version includes a few recipes. Text file, about 20 KB long.

"Uniform Content Index (UCI)."  This document summarizes the keywords and preliminary syntax for UCI, a vintage 1995 development project to facilitate automated processing of e-mail and documents for large projects.  UCIs are intended to complement URLs in the Internet world.  While URLs are essentially location descriptors, UCIs are content descriptors that can be added to RFC822 and RFC1036 headers for UCI-aware post-processing applications.  UCI was backburnered after being overshadowed by other projects and the rapid evolution of the Net.  Text file, about 10 KB long.