DHS stages secret gas test in Grand Central Station (NYC)

[iconoclastNYC]

From the administration that overruled the EPA's warnings and told New Yorkers the air at Ground Zero was non-toxic and safe to breathe comes this test of a 'non-toxic', unnamed gas in a public building.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/325980p-278531c.html

The Federal Department of Homeland Security released gas in Grand Central Terminal last month in a secret study of how dangerous chemicals might flow through the landmark in a terrorist attack.

Nontoxic "tracer gases" were released into the terminal between June 26-30, as scientists from four national laboratories observed, including physicists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

"If there was some kind of emergency - smoke or who knows what - released in Grand Central Terminal, we want to know how it's going to move around and how best to evacuate it," Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said. "Everybody knows that some kind of biological, chemical or radiological threat is something we have to plan for, and this is part of that planning."

The colorless, odorless gas was released at different times to determine, among other things, how the movement of people through the landmark building would affect the path of potentially harmful substances.


(on edit: spelling)

[KT2000]

1. there is a history of using

supposedly safe simulants for such testing only to find out they are indeed toxic and dangerous.
They should reveal the name of the gas they used.

(Clouds of Secrecy and The Eleventh Pague both by Leonard M Cole document decades of such testing on the population)

[Hell Hath No Fury]

3. That happened back in the...

50s or 60s here in San Francisco. FOI documents revealed thet secret tests had been done on the population -- supposedly the agent released was flu related, and the test was to see how it moved through a population.

Nice to find out, oh, twenty or thirty years later...

[KT2000]

6. Yes - a lot of info

came from that incident. Cole (who is a Rutger's professor and not really a tin foil hatter) takes us up to 1991 where so-called safe bacteria were released in Nevada (Dugway Proving Grounds). That was after a nerve gas experiment killed thousands of sheep in neighboring farms.
He also writes about the Army's projects of using mosquitoes to spread disease as a form of biological warfare.
Oh dear.

[WhiteTara]

8. you mean like west nile virus?

That would be about right. These guys are such clowns. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong.

[meegbear]

2. Wouldn't people be running and freaking out ...

thus disrupting the "flow" of the gas?

[iconoclastNYC]

4. Yeah i thought that too.

But you know someone pitched the project and got 5 million or so from DHS to do this test.

[StrafingMoose]

5. No...

Because as soon as they would been told "OMG It's Al-Qeada!!11" they would continue shopping and "stay strong" and not bow to the terrarists...

*sarcasm*

[Cronus Protagonist]

7. Not if they don't tell anyone when they let it off

And you know the BFEE doesn't like to warn people of its projects in advance.

http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13
Buttons for brainy people - educate your local freepers today!

[dchill]

9. Nontoxic -

like the air in NYC after 9/11...