|
Avoiding Armageddon
by
Martin Schram
Posted June 18, 2003 thepeoplesvoice.org
Published by basicbooks.com
(Basic Books, 0-645-07255-0)
$26.00 US / $40.00 CAN
Since the end of the Cold War,
the threat of nuclear biological or chemical attacks - the "weapons of
mass destruction" in today's headlines - being unleashed against
civilian populations has loomed ever larger. A deadly combination of
shortsighted mistakes by Western governments, chaos in the former Soviet
Union, and virulent international terrorism has succeeded in making us all
far more vulnerable than any would like to admit. Avoiding Armageddon is a
world citizen's guide to the worst possible threats to our individual and
national security - from easily accessible uranium to smallpox outbreaks to
a new breed of suicide bombers - and what we can do to save ourselves, our
country and the planet.
Published in conjunction with the eight hour PBS series, Avoiding
Armageddon focuses our attention like never before on threats posed by
terrorism and unsecured weapons of mass destruction. It delves into an
exploration of those who endanger our national interest, the forms their
threats might take, and what can be done to avert the kinds of disasters
likely to ensue.
Drawing on numerous interviews with world leaders, experts, former
terrorists and would be nuclear thieves, Martin Schram explains how and why
biological chemical and nuclear warfare may very well be our next nightmare.
Reporting from hot spots around the globe, Avoiding Armageddon is a riveting
and sober story of America's - and the world's - vulnerability in an age of
terrorism.
Impeccably researched and compellingly written, it offers an original
assessment of how a the threats and solutions are intertwined and how world
leaders and citizens must act boldly to insure our personal national and
global security.
"Shortly after
midnight on November 27, 1993, on the grounds of the Sevmorput shipyard just
outside Murmansk, a respected Captain in the Russian Navy...easily slipped
through one of the many holes in the unsecured fence that was intended to
safeguard Fuel Storage Area 3-30. It had been no problem finding the holes
in the fence; they were right where his younger brother...had told him they
would be - easy to spot and unguarded. Once inside the grounds he had no
difficulty in finding the storage building, sawing off the padlock and
prying open the door with a metal pole that he found lying obligingly on the
ground next to the building that was his intended target. Inside, he found
the area where the submarine fuel is kept and then located Container Number
23. Next he simply lifted off the lid, ripped away pieces of three
assemblies of a VM-4-Am reactor core, and slipped the broken pieces - which
amounted to 4.5 kilograms of enriched uranium - into a bag...
"Looking back, the chief investigator for the Northern Fleet Military
Procuracy, Mikhail Kulik, had no doubts about how the theft had occurred.
And he had no excuses and minced no words in talking about the security
problems that allowed it to occur. Potatoes were guarded better than
naval fuel, kulik said." - From Avoiding Armageddon
Martin Schram has been a
Washington-based journalist and editor for more than three decades. The
author of four books, he writes a column for the Scripps Howard News Service
that is distributed nationally to more than four hundred newspapers. He
lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
-------------------------------------------
|
