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

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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 85 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. 86 John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access FIXED AND MOBILE BODIES 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 87 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 88 John Preston - 9789460918735 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:22:04AM via free access FIXED AND MOBILE BODIES The Needs of Faith Communities in Major Emergencies: Some Guidelines (2005).’ 5.11: Key stakeholders to
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