Fixed and Mobile Bodies: Mass Casualty Plans and Survivalism for ‘Dirty Bomb’ Attacks

CHAPTER 7

FIXED AND MOBILE BODIES: MASS CASUALTY PLANS AND SURVIVALISM FOR ‘DIRTY BOMB’ ATTACKS

INTRODUCTION In a post cold-war world CBRNe (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and explosive) weapons and devices are considered to be one of the greatest challenges facing emergency planners. Although the consequences of these weapons and devices are very different the grouping of them together in one category is significant. The shifting of acronyms from ABC (Atomic, Biological and Chemical) to NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) with more powerful devices in the Cold War gave way to CBRN and CBRNe with a Millennial focus on terrorism and the search for WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction). The grouping of the latter two is significant in that the deployment of CBRNe does not necessarily imply mass destruction. In the polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvenenko (2006) which was certainly ‘R’ and the Aum Shinrikyo attacks on the Tokyo underground with Sarin gas (‘C’) there were significant casualties, contamination and risk but certainly not the mass destruction which has been associated with conventional explosives, military equipment and civil nuclear disasters (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and, most recently, Fukushima). However, they have gained a level of moral asymmetry in the enterprise of ‘Homeland Security’ and CBRNe weapons and devices are considered to be one of the greatest challenges facing emergency planners. In discourse on CBRNe linguistic tensions exist. On the one hand emergency planners consider the scientific principles behind dealing with CBRNe incidents in a rational and technicist fashion but on the other they use forms of rhetoric signifying that the effects and consequences of CBRNe are beyond description and beyond the usual form of words requiring new grammars and vocabularies (‘Hot Zones’, ‘Gold Commanders’ and CBRNe itself). CBRNe incidents are beyond the ‘ordinary’. For example, the Department of Health (2007) defines such incidents as extraordinary, overwhelming and excessive:- …a disastrous single or simultaneous event(s) or other circumstances where the normal major incident response of several NHS organisations must be augmented by extraordinary measures in order to maintain an effective, suitable and sustainable response. By definition, such events have the potential to rapidly overwhelm - or threaten to exceed - the local capacity available to respond, even with the implementation of major incident plans.

(Department of Health, 2007, p. 9) Masco (2006) considers that such language is an example of policy makers adopting the rhetoric of the ‘Kantian sublime’ (that such events are beyond human

John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access CHAPTER 7 experience). For Clarke (1999) this means that plans around CBRNe must always be considered ‘fantasy documents’ that are not of substantive use in a particular event but are meant to be of rhetorical value, not in terms of deceiving the general public, but in terms of a narrative account that allows policymakers and practitioners to tell a story to themselves around possibility and manageability. These procedures reduce lives to calculations, using techniques of operational research, economic forecasting and cost-benefit analysis. The major theorist of thermonuclear war and, by implication, civil defence Herman Khan (on whom the eponymous character of the film Dr. Strangelove, discussed in chapter 4, was based) was one of the major instigators of this type of reductive theorising, using game theory to map out various war plans. These operational research and econometric techniques were also utilised by the RAND corporation in terms of planning civil defense and reconstruction activities following nuclear war. However, aside from mathematical / reductive techniques for planning, emergency planning also developed alongside and with other social science disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and psychology. These theories were employed in such a way as to enhance the survival of the ‘population’ as a whole. There is therefore a tension between ‘fantasy’ and ‘science’ in these documents. As shown in chapter four, for example, the extent to which ‘Protect and Survive’ (HMSO, 1980) can be considered a scientific document can be questioned. Evidently, some science was involved. Scientific officers from the Home Office gave their opinions on considerations on blast, structural damage and the potential for human survival. The content was factual, sometimes starkly so, with references to sanitation, fighting fires and the disposal of bodies. However, the media campaign was inflected with the tropes of science fiction. The use of animation and sound to make ‘visible’ the invisible fallout (like snow with sound) and the familiar (to viewers of science fiction) sound effects and music of the BBC Radiophonics Workshop gave the appearance of pseudo-science. Indeed, ‘Protect and Survive’s’ eerie ambience and uncanny sense of horror have given it a new lease of life on the internet and in popular culture. ‘Protect and Survive’ was a ‘fantasy documents’ for purposes other than the survival of the majority of the population (Clarke, 1999) but also a ‘fantasy’ akin to science fiction. In this chapter I consider more contemporary ‘fantasy documents’ to consider how certain bodies are presented as fixed, whereas others are presented as ‘static’ in disaster education. One category of ‘fantasy documents’ around CBRNe is mass casualty plans which are plans for the consideration of bodies following an event such as a CBRNe attack on the United Kingdom or pandemic flu. Interestingly, the National Register of Civil Emergencies (2010) does not consider either an attack on crowded places or transport (using perhaps CBRNe) or pandemic flu as ‘black swan’ events but rather as events which are of high likelihood and impact (see figure 5, below). They therefore enter the realm of the possible and practicable in policy discourse.

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Figure 5: Likelihood and impact of risks facing the UK (National Risk Register, 2010: Crown Copyright)

FIXING BODIES: RACE AND CBRNE IN MASS CASUALTY PLANS

Despite the fact that CBRNe and mass casualty plans are within the scope of policy discussion they have rarely been considered in terms of their racial dimensions. Following CRT where racial discourses of white supremacy permeate every policy and practice we cannot consider that CBRNe is outside of this sphere of oppression. It is not a racially ‘neutral’ enterprise. In order to explore these themes two mass casualty plans from UK cities (London and Birmingham) were considered as well as the national advice issued by the Home Office in terms of mass casualties. What was striking about these plans was the rhetorical consideration and ‘sensitivity’ to multiculturalism. The Home Office (2005) as part of its national advice includes very specific and detailed planning entitled ‘The Needs of Faith Communities in Major Emergencies: Some Guidance’, Given its title one might expect that this would deal with advice in terms of preparedness or civilian response during emergencies but the document concerns mass casualty incidents. In this document, the Home Office considers the needs of various different ‘faith’ communities who are rarely

John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access CHAPTER 7 considered in evacuation, or preparedness plans, unless as a potential ‘threat’ (see Preston, 2009a). For example, the Home Office publication warns against stereotyping:- Emergency planners and responders should avoid making assumptions about religion and ethnicity. For instance, not all Asian people will be Muslim, Hindu or Sikh and not all black African people will be Christian.

(Home Office 2005, p. 6) The Home Office guidance considers the ‘cultural’ needs of faith groups in terms of diet and medical treatment. However, the majority of the document is concerned with detailing for each group ‘dying’ and ‘death customs’. The tag cloud generated for the home office document (below, using ‘Wordle’, wordle.net) shows the predominance of these categories in the guidance. As can be shown the terms ‘death’ (n=31), ‘deceased’ (n=29) and ‘dying’ (n=34) are substantive categories.

Figure 6: Tag cloud generated from Wordle showing preponderance of 50 major words in Home Office (2005) guidance

Tuning to the London mass casualty plan (London Resilience, 2009) we find a detailed consideration of command and control procedures alongside the types of triage and treatment that should be employed. This is very much in line with other analysis of ‘London Resilience’ which is a highly demonstrative and publically accessible portal to access emergency plans and procedures. This plan makes no reference to ‘faith’ or ‘culture’. However, the London mass fatality plan (London Resilience, 2010) does consider these issues by referring to the Home Office guidance and to the need for local faith and community groups to be included in consultations:-

2.46: The religious cultural and ethical considerations of the main religious faiths and ethnic groups in the UK are included in the Home Office document

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The Needs of Faith Communities in Major Emergencies: Some Guidelines (2005).’

5.11: Key stakeholders to be consulted and informed include: Category 1 and 2 responders, the voluntary sector, the faith community, local community groups/leaders and businesses.

(London Resilience, 2010) In terms of Birmingham, the Major Incident Plan has been subject to an ‘equality audit’ (2007) which produces some interesting conclusions in terms of ‘faith’ and ‘culture’. Whilst the general advice covers a range of ‘vulnerable groups’ the equality audit considers ‘death’ as an area where it is important for discrimination not to occur:- Issue about coping with numbers of dead bodies, may disadvantage people who have specific beliefs / religion (City – wide plan).

Risk of discrimination as above

Communication including support to families

May not be possible to avoid the impact’

(Birmingham NHS Trust Equality Audit, 2007) In previous analysis of emergency plans and preparedness we have found an absence of reference to ‘race’, ethnicity, faith or culture (or where it is mentioned it is taken to be a special case, or even a threat). What is interesting about the analysis is how perceived ‘difference’ emerges significantly only in terms of fatality rather than from preparedness or casualty. Bodies in mass casualty plans are ‘fixed’ through death and only then are considerations of culture through to be paramount by emergency planners.

MOBILE BODIES IN ‘POPULAR SURVIVALISM’

To contrast ‘death’ in mass casualty plans and the way it ‘fixes’ raced bodies in place I examine another kind of fantasy document from ‘popular survivalism’. Specifically, in order to illustrate how hypermasculine discourses are orientated around the transcendence of white corporeality I will consider how preparedness for catastrophic emergency situations is being reinterpreted as an individualistic act. Preparedness for emergency situations has penetrated popular culture and individual consciousness. It has become a form of public pedagogy that infuses not only historical public information campaigns such as those considering survival against nuclear attack (‘Duck and Cover’, 1952, ‘Protect and Survive’, 1980) as previously discussed but most recently initiatives in the US by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and in the UK by the Home Office as part of what has

John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access CHAPTER 7 become ‘Homeland Security’. It has been noted throughout that these campaigns make use of racial themes, in particular in terms of their promotion of white, middle class hetronormativity. Books on preparing oneself for emergencies have become part of a wider genre of social science blockbusters. In other work with Namita Chakrabarty (Chakrabarty and Preston, 2007) we have discussed the role of social science as science fiction and also the popularising of social science (in the above reference Putnam’s ‘Better Together’) as a form of highbrow airport novel, a pop-soc rather than a pop-psych book. Recently there have been a slew of books promoting forms of ‘popular survivalism’. These books promise self improvement through hidden knowledges of body language and human behaviour. Unlike earlier types of preparedness education (which operated through national and civil defence programmes) preparedness has become individuated, not even familial, in nature. Whilst ‘Duck and Cover’ focused on survival at the level of the school and ‘Protect and Survive’ at the level of the family preparedness education is much more individuated making use of websites and popular survivalist literature. Preparedness calls forth new forms of subjectivity and new forms of bodily transformations and incorporations. Moreover, this new ‘personal preparedness literature’ is economically and culturally orientated around discourses of transcending corporeality and embodiment. Popular survivalists consider that both primitivism and post-humanity is necessary for survival and the new genre of preparedness literature considers the same. In becoming a survivalist genre is transcended in terms of not being ‘man’ or ‘white’ but being ‘primitive’ and ‘animalistic’. Genres are transcended and simultaneously embraced – whiteness and masculinity are paradoxically reinforced by their attempted transcendence. Humanity is rejected as to survive it is necessary to become animalistic. Survivalism, then, is not just about ‘preservation’ of whiteness but also about ‘transcendence’ of embodied whiteness. Survivalists have an experimental function in white supremacy in terms of ‘how far can the white body go’ in terms of the flesh (prosthetic) being stretched beyond its limits. One of the most recent and salient examples of popular survivalism is Neil Strauss’ (2008) best selling book ‘Emergency’. Strauss is a journalist who is best known as ‘Style’ a Pick Up Artist and member of the almost universally Caucasian ‘seduction community’. PUAs are men who use a mixture of pop-psychology, routines and scripts to attract desirable women. In Strauss’ hugely misogynistic best-selling book ‘The Game’ (2005) and in his follow up ‘The Rules of the Game’ (2008) Strauss supplies the reader not only with an introduction to the world of the PUA but also an insight into how ‘The Game’ is played. The aim of ‘The Game’ is transcendence of what the PUA’s see as the limitations of traditional masculinity. They see modern men as over-civilised AFC’s (‘Average Frustrated Chumps) and recommend that PUAs read books such as Dawkin’s ‘Selfish Gene’ (and others) to understand female psychology. The Game is concerned with the conception that AFC’s have become overtly polite and willing to act in ways which they expect women to ‘like them’. In doing so they (infrequently) get to the objectives of The Game in terms of achieving a #close (number close), kclose (kiss close) or fclose (fuck close) with a HB (Hot Body). Many of the PUA’s (Pick Up Artists) in the game are white and the ‘seduction community’ could be described as a

John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access FIXED AND MOBILE BODIES micropolitical movement for white genetic survival. Strauss’ himself acts the cultural omnivore, putting distance between himself and the PUAs whilst simultaneously embracing their lifestyle and identity. The PUA is positioned both as primitivist and post-human, exploiting the (supposed) natural origins of heterosexual desire and transforming their body, mind and behaviours to be a PUA. In his latest book ‘Emergency’ Strauss employs a similar body project to preparedness. Although in both ‘The Game’ and ‘Emergency’ Strauss portrays himself as a liberal naïf, he uses familiar right wing tropes, portraying the world as anti-American and the economic infrastructure as vulnerable:- ‘How long will it be before someone is visiting American ruins’ (Strauss, 2009, p. 7). Indeed, he considers that the survivalist movement must enter the mainstream of American preparedness ‘Thanks to the catalysts of 9/11 and Katrina, the escapist meme had clearly spread from the minds of fringe extremists to early adopters in mainstream society’ (Strauss, 2009, p. 110). For Strauss there is no difference between survivalism and preparedness ‘…many of the tips I’d been given by neo-Nazis, gun nuts, and fringe weirdos were actually the same things the government recommended doing’ (Strauss, 2009, p. 234). Strauss mutates himself into a survivalist, primitive but always with a culturally omnivorous perspective on reality. Strauss can move within and between various locations to meet survivalists in the familiar trope of the white explorer of exotic and ultra-masculine whiteness. Strauss even spends some time with a neo-Nazi white supremacist, skins a goat and chides his girlfriend for being overtly obsessed with materialism. Following a survivalist weekend in the woods with the knife expert Mad Dog, Strauss comments ‘It was the manliest day of my life. Even the day I lost my virginity didn’t feel nearly this masculine’ (Stauss, 2009, p. 282). The survivalist training becomes a body project for Strauss who transcends the corporeality of pain, in following a harsh survival regime he writes that:- ‘I felt more healthy, alive and comfortable in my skin than I ever had’ (Strauss, 2009, p. 304). There is a relationship between Strauss’ work and the Mythopoetic men’s movement updated for a time of crisis. ‘Emergency’ is little different in purpose from ‘The Game’ as Strauss’ themes are those of personal and genetic survival. However, it expresses clearly that for ‘white’ people to survive an apocalypse they must reach beyond traditional corporeality in terms of becoming animalistic, spiritual and primitive.

THE ZOMBIE PREPAREDNESS INITIATIVE (ZPI)

‘Emergency’ is not just about Stauss but he foregrounds his journey as being part of a wider narrative between those who have the personal but primitive qualities to survive and those who do not. More generally in the personal preparedness literature there is a setting of those who have the ability to transcend corporeality and genres of conventional masculinity and whiteness against those who are inert and inactive or in need of protection. I will give two examples to illustrate this. Firstly, in the preparedness literature terms such as ‘walking wounded’, ‘living dead’ and ‘zombies’ are used in describing those who do not have the ability to survive. The use of the latter term is particularly interesting as the historical relationship between ‘zombies’, ‘zombie films’ (and monster movies generally) and ‘race’ has been very well documented in a number of academic and popular

John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access CHAPTER 7 accounts (McIntosh and Leverette, 2008). In terms of the personal preparedness literature there has recently been an explosion in films, graphic novels and other media depicting a fictional ‘zombie apocalypse’ that is, rather than an isolated or localised outbreak of zombies, a catastrophic event which brings the status of the survival of humanity into question occurs e.g. 28 days Later (2002), Shaun of the Dead (2002), Zombieland (2009) and remakes of zombie films such as Dawn of the Dead (2004). In these zombie apocalypse films, ‘preparedness’ frequently appears as a trope. The ‘Zombie Protection Initiative organise preparedness activities in the United States and there are a number of (tongue in cheek) ‘survival manuals’ which are available (Brooks, 2004). The ZPI also cross over to the mainstream in that they take part in FEMA preparedness and survival activities in the US. Newitz (2006) links monster films with the ‘monstrous’ nature of capitalism, but there are racial as well as capitalist themes in these movies and events. There is an obvious congruence between fears of global terrorism, pandemic or other major crisis and these films build on white fears concerning immigration (the threats often come from ‘outside’), biotechnology (from within a laboratory which modifies genetics) and globalisation (as the zombie pandemics are frequently on a global scale). Zombies and the zombie metaphor also play a role in official simulations of preparedness. In preparedness exercises in the Cold War the zombie was used as a term for sub-humans who would ‘contaminate’ local residents (Preston, 2007, p. 149). The zombie metaphor is also used in disaster simulations for those people who are inert and in air crashes / radiological incidents for those ‘walking dead’ who were already contaminated. The zombie apocalypse is doubly coded in that although horrific in every sense zombies are not responsible for their actions and they are completely innocent. Although lacking in consciousness they are only amoral in terms of the contamination of others or of simply getting in the way. No ‘sane’ human wants to become a zombie and in many films they state ‘if I become like that then kill me’. Humans find this difficult to do at first (to emphasise their empathy) but they do the humane thing by killing the zombie. So zombies would ‘want to die’ without necessarily being ‘amoral’. Hence survival and preparedness are contextualized against a passive (and racially coded) ‘other’. As media and official accounts of Hurricane Katrina show, people of colour were classed as being amoral, subhuman and helpless whilst white people were labeled as heroic and humanistic (Marable, 2008). Secondly, there is a hetronormative drive in preparedness to control the bodies and activities of white women and children. Preparedness as an initiative frequently requires the bodies of women and children to be under the control of white masculinity. Homeland security and civil defence are concerned with the genetic security of white men and their desire to extend material property rights over women. Much of the literature on fallout shelters, for example, is connected with the maintenance of the family unit with the male taking control of the bodies of women and children in a Fritzl-esque fantasy of control and basement holding. In Occupying a public shelter (1965) there are many references to the fear of promiscuity and the need to maintain gender separation (aside from married couples) as well as strict racial segregation. Shelter is concerned with entrapment by the male and by the masculinist state. Additionally, the idea of ‘shelter in place’

John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access FIXED AND MOBILE BODIES makes assumptions regarding substantive private property (a shelter) and extensive private resources which can be used to secure and inhabit such a property for some time. In doing so, the ‘outside’ is constructed as unsafe, insecure and wild. Outside of private property contamination cannot be controlled. In the case of the recent swine flu pandemic geography is used to construct local and national conceptions of safety and anxiety – that people are only safe inside their own homes. The figure of the white child is predominant in survivalist literature which uses the child as the reflection and fear of the demise of all whites.

CONCLUSION

This chapter has considered that disaster education, both of the state and privatised forms, considers racialised bodies to be ‘fixed’ in place where only in (literal) death their culture is acknowledged by the state whereas other bodies are considered to be hypermobile, even transcending genres (masculinity, whiteness) that make their mobility in the first place. Fundamentally even ‘aliveness’ and ‘deadness’ are racialised constructs and even these existential constructs are ‘raced’ in disaster education.

REFERENCES

Clarke, L. (1999). Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Darder, A., & Torres, R. (2004). After Race: Racism After Multiculturalism. New York: New York University Press. Delgado, R. (1996). The Coming Race War. New York: New York University Press. Department of Health. (2007). Mass Casualty Incidents: A Framework for Planning. London: Department of Health. HMSO. (1980). Protect and Survive. London: Stationery Office. Home Office. (1963). Advising the Householder on Protection Against Nuclear Attack. London: Home Office. Home Office. (2005). The Needs of Faith Communities: In Major Emergencies: Some Guidelines. London: Home Office. Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). Foreword: They’re trying to wash us away: The adolescence of critical race theory in education. In A. Dixson & C. Rousseau (Eds.), Critical Race Theory in Education (pp. v– xiii). London: Routledge. Leonardo, Z. (2009). Race, Whiteness, and Education. New York: Routledge. Marable, M. (2008). Introduction: Seeking higher ground: Race, public policy and the Hurricane Katrina crisis. In M. Marable & K. Clarke (Eds.), Seeking Higher Ground: The Hurricane Katrina Crisis, Race and Public Policy Reader (pp. ix–xvi). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Marx, G., & Steeves, V. (2010). From the beginning: Children as subjects and agents of surveillance. Surveillance & Society, 7(3/4), 192–230. Masco, J. (2006). The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princton University Press. Nuclear Explosions Explained - Protect and Survive, Unknown Director, Central Office of Information. (1974). Preston, J. (2008). Protect and survive: ‘Whiteness’ and the middle class family in civil defence pedagogies. Journal of Education Policy, 23(5), 469–482. Preston, J. (2009a). Preparing for emergencies: Citizenship education, whiteness and pedagogies of security. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 187–200

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Preston, J. (2009b). White apocalypse: Preparedness pedagogies as symbolic and material invocations of white supremacy. In J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz, & J. Burdick (Eds.), Handbook of Public Pedagogy. London: Routledge. Preston, J. (2010a). Prosthetic white hyper-masculinities and ‘disaster education. Ethnicities, 10, 331–343. Sharp, P. (2007). Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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