When a building is being demolished, demolition experts are called in to apply the minimum amount of shaped charges in just the right places to make the building collapse in upon itself from its own weight in one neat smoking pile of rubble. They never go for a single earth-shattering Kaboom.
When we think of how someone might try to destroy Civilization As We Know It (CAWKI), we tend to think like Marvin the Martian. We just can't imagine anyone able to make a Kaboom big enough! So we sleep well.
But what if our enemies view us more like a condemned building? What if they wanted to take us out using a minimum number of pinpricks surgically applied in just the right places? What might they do? (Note: If a retired Sunday School teacher can conceive of what follows in one evening, how much more fiendishly diabolical will be strategies developed with the combined resources of the rogue nations and hate groups currently arrayed against civilization?)
The only defense against the following strategy is a prepared people. We are not prepared.
For the sake of discussion, lets assume that some combination of Enemies of Civilization (EoC) is able to cobble together a mere dozen weapons of mass destruction and smuggle them across our borders to strategic emplacements around one or more target countries. A few might be actual nukes supplied from rogue nations of various kinds. Most could be simply “dirty bombs” where conventional explosives disperse radioactive material, perhaps salvaged from old medical equipment. One might contain the same small mount of anthrax released in 2001.
A plan to deconstruct Civilization with such a rag-tag arsenal would rely upon its ability to make us to destroy ourselves. The simple goal would be to force the evacuation of our cities for an indefinite period of time. We would take care of the rest.
In my next two posts I'll outline this threat in two stages:
Post 009: A Few Well-Placed Pricks.
Post 010: Do-it-Yourself Demolition Derby.
Sleep well