Homeland Security to conduct gas tests in Midtown, subways

[JackieO]

Amid heightened anti-terrorism vigilance concerning New York City's subway system, a mammoth Department of Homeland Security-sponsored research effort starting as early as Saturday will seek to answer how harmful gases might disperse through Midtown's busy streets and through the warren of subway tunnels beneath them.

The simulation, which will use colorless, odorless and harmless "tracer" gases, follows a smaller effort in March that focused on a section of Manhattan around Madison Square Garden. This time around, a team of more than 150 researchers and volunteers working on the Urban Dispersion Program's second major field study will fan out over a much larger section of Midtown, ranging from 37th to 59th Streets and from 10th Avenue to 3rd Avenue and including stations along the Broadway subway line and other lines in the area.

Paul Kalb, a senior research engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory, said scientists will release the gases at four locations aboveground, within an office building, and on a subway platform of the Broadway line at 50th Street and 7th Avenue.

Six separate experiments are planned over the next three weeks, with specific dates dependent on the weather, and the subway portion planned for the final three release dates.


http://www.nynewsday.com/news/health/ny-hsgas0805,0,6618996.story?coll=nyc-homepage-breaking2

[Generator]

1. If there is a real gas attack at the same damn time

Will it be a coincendence? You heard it hear first, folks. Gas attacks for September 11th. I think anybody that lives or works in NYC at this moment in time as more cojones and ovaries than I EVER will. I salute you. Bush at the ranch..his numbers down..God bless America away from this blight.

[NYC]

3. They're practicing for September.

Just a thought.

[HeeBGBz]

16. This is getting way creepy

I heard bits on the radio about this.

Too many similarities.

[davepc]

18. I'll be at Giants Stadium with about 80,000 other people.

[NYC]

2. Thanks, JO.

I guess I'll just hold my breath all day. I live within the guinea pig area.

They did the subway testing back in the 1950s. Threw lightbulbs filled with bacteria onto the subway tracks.

[JackieO]

4. Sorry for the creepy news

It's hard not to be paranoid about these things after the wargames on 9/11 and the terror drill on 7/7...

[NYC]

8. Damn.

I can't afford a fancy gas mask, and who knows how many hours it would take to dissipate anyway?

Yes, that 7/7 "exercise" was especially creepy. Visor Consultants. I wonder if the next "games" on the day of attack that we read about will involve the company, Giuliani Consultants. (or whatever name his bloodsucking company uses)

[wli]

5. I guess I can add this to the nuclear terrorism "exercise" in SC

I'm crossing my fingers they won't play any games where I live.

[uppityperson]

6. This is so totally not funny, why am I laughing?

oh my. I hate being paranoid, but think of it more as realistic. Practice is a good idea, but I just don't believe anything they say.

[Eloriel]

24. I wouldn't call it paranoid....

personally. Just "informed."

[Warren Stupidity]

7. That's odd

They already have that information. The CIA ran this test in the 60's or 70's. Why would they do it again? Oh, that's right, they have to keep us paralyzed with fear.

[brainshrub]

9. If we have a gass-attack this week, I'll flip out.

[Mnemosyne]

10. .

:kick:

[KurtNYC]

11. This really makes no sense

There is a ton of data from the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks available. Releasing a nerve agent in an unenclosed space would do far less than the Tokyo attacks which killed 12.

http://www.japan-101.com/culture/sarin_gas_attack_on_the_tokyo_su.htm

Also, there hasn't been anything from HS or the NYPD about what to do in the event of an attack on the subway. More people could be killed by panic than a real or failed attack because of a lack of communication with the riding public.

[StrafingMoose]

12. Yea right..

Six separate experiments are planned over the next three weeks, with specific dates dependent on the weather, and the subway portion



Six separate, conflicting, overlapping experiments that will confuse people who want to do their job right, are planned over the next three weeks, with specific dates dependent on the weather, and the subway portion


Fixed.

[lonestarnot]

13. Rugh ro!

[JackieO]

14. starts August 6th

tomorrow

[Just Me]

15. I confess,...this really freaks me out.

:scared: I swear to the Almighty that, if something bad happens, I will be pointing my finger at the neoCONfreaksfromhell!!!

[lostnfound]

17. DN!: How the U.S. Govt Exposed 1000s of Americans to Lethal Bacteria

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/13/1357237&mode=thread&tid=25

How the U.S. Government Exposed Thousands of Americans to Lethal Bacteria to Test Biological Warfare

The Homeland Security Department last month released what they said was nontoxic gas into New York's Grand Central Station to trace how chemicals might flow through the terminal in a terrorist attack. We speak with biological and chemical terrorism expert Leonard Cole, who asks what this "nontoxic gas" actually was. He wrote a book about how - in the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. government scientists ran a series of tests to determine how easy it would be to expose large numbers of people to a lethal bacteria.
....snip

In the 1950s and sixties, scientists from the Fort Detrick biological weapons program ran a series of tests to determine how easy it would be to expose large numbers of people to a lethal bacteria. Containers of nontoxic bacteria (in lightbulbs) were planted in the New York subway, bacteria was secretly pumped into the Pentagon ventilation system and clouds of bacteria were released in San Francisco. And germs that were meant to sicken but not kill humans were tested on conscientious objectors in the military.
....snip
LEONARD COLE: The test in the subways was in 1966, and it was part of an experimental program that lasted 20 years, beginning in 1949, ending only in 1969. During that period, the army acknowledged that some 239 vulnerability tests had been conducted in which large numbers of people, of human citizens of this country, were exposed. They emphasized that the materials that were used to simulate anthrax and other deadly organisms were harmless. But in my research, and in the work that was published in the book, it was very clear that some of the materials were not totally harmless, that when you expose a million or 2 or 3 million people to relatively harmless materials, you still have a certain segment of the population that would be at risk.

....snip

LEONARD COLE: Sure. This was perhaps the most dramatic and well-reported incident, which we learned about only decades after it was actually conducted. In 1950, another bacterium, and any doctors or microbiologists will recognize this immediately as not something that you should play around with, it was called serratia marcescens. These bacteria were released from the Bay of San Francisco, a boat was spraying trillions of these bacteria onshore. And this is very interesting, because in San Francisco in 1950, a major hospital, university hospital, Stanford University Hospital was located, and they had never recorded any infections from serratia marcescens. Unbeknown to the doctors or anybody in the hospital, the army released the bacteria. Three days later, a case of the serratia marcescens was discovered in the hospital. A dozen or so occurred in the subsequent months. One of the patients died of serratia infection.

[truthisfreedom]

19. what the hell is a "tracer gas?" something radioactive?

colorless, odorless, and harmless. why not make it green, smelly, and harmless?

isn't the idea of a tracer gas something everyone can trace?

[JackieO]

20. "safely used internationally by scientists and industry"

Perfluorocarbon and sulfur hexafluoride, according to http://urbandispersion.pnl.gov

[leesa]

21. Yikes. Here we go again?

[NYC]

22. I'm still breathing.

Just thought I'd update you. :)

[JackieO]

23. OK, let's keep it that way!

:hug: