1 HZS C2BRNE DIARY – May 2021 www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com 2 HZS C2BRNE DIARY – May 2021 HZS C2BRNE DIARY– 2021© May 2021 Website: www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com Editor-in-Chief BrigGEN (ret.) Ioannis Galatas MD, MSc, MC (Army) PhD cand Consultant in Allergy & Clinical Immunology Medical/Hospital CBRNE Planner & Instructor Senior Asymmetric Threats Analyst Manager, CBRN Knowledge Center @ International CBRNE Institute (BE) Senior CBRN Consultant @ HotZone Solutions Group (NL) Athens, Greece Contact e-mail: [email protected] Editorial Team ⚫ Bellanca Giada, MD, MSc (Italy) ⚫ Hopmeier Michael, BSc/MSc MechEngin (USA) ⚫ Kiourktsoglou George, BSc, Dipl, MSc, MBA, PhD (UK) ⚫ Photiou Steve, MD, MSc EmDisaster (Italy) ⚫ Tarlow Peter, PhD Sociol (USA) A publication of HotZone Solutions Group Prinsessegracht 6, 2514 AN, The Hague, The Netherlands T: +31 70 262 97 04, F: +31 (0) 87 784 68 26 E-mail: [email protected] DISCLAIMER: The HZS C2BRNE DIARY® (former CBRNE-Terrorism Newsletter), is a free online publication for fellow civilian/military CBRNE First Responders worldwide. The Diary is a collection of papers/articles related to the stated thematology. Relevant sources/authors are included and all info provided herein is from open Internet sources. Opinions and comments from the Editor, the Editorial Team, or the authors publishing in the Diary do not necessarily represent those of the HotZone Solutions Group (NL) or the International CBRNE Institute (BE). www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com 3 HZS C2BRNE DIARY – May 2021 www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com 4 HZS C2BRNE DIARY – May 2021 Editorial Brig Gen (ret.) Ioannis Galatas, MD, MSc, MC (Army) Editor-in-Chief HZS C2BRNE Diary Dear Colleagues, May was stigmatized by the ongoing pandemic, the removal of Americans from Afganistan, and the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. It seems that the virus is still winning and that vaccines are not the silver bullet able to kill the beast. Global vaccination is not progressing according to plans even in the most developed countries. In any case, the pathogenesis of the rapid production of all vaccines currently on the market is demonstrated, while the reservations and reluctance of the people to be vaccinated are justified. The classification of all the people who are concerned about the dangers, which the scientific research itself reveals every day, in the field of conspiracy theories and paranoia is certainly an immoral practice on the part of the governments, but also of the propaganda mechanisms that have undertaken their support. Pandemic and infodemic proceed hand by hand and we have to get used to that. The same applies regarding the politics involved in vaccination. EU still does not have access to the Sputnik V vaccine because of some stupid excuses covered with a scientific cape. To the left, there is a recent Internet poll on what Greeks believe about available and non-available vaccines. The only lesson we learned for good is the fact that public health is not above profits and diplomacy and this is something we must fix as soon as possible. Americans decided to withdraw from Afghanistan mainly because they finally realized that they can answer the question “what we are doing here?” The Taliban (and the Chinese) must be very happy with that mainly because they proved that in conflicts patience is the hidden weapon. And they are expressing their joy with hundreds of IEDs and armed attacks. Poor Afghani people! Your history does not deserve this and your future will be dark and medieval once more… But who cares about an entire nation? The only thing is to bring our boys back home – a very good point for the next elections! The Middle East conflict between Hamas and Israel proved that problems are not solved if there is no desire to solve them. As of the covid infodemic was not enough we have the www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com 5 HZS C2BRNE DIARY – May 2021 additional propaganda in favor of Hamas and against Israel who is killing innocent children and women. I am confident that shortly there will be smart ammunition of all kinds that they can identify the person they are going to hit before penetrating the body or explode. In that way, there will be no collateral damages and only the real enemy will be eliminated. In the meantime, it is wise not to launch missiles and rockets from the top of apartment buildings or schools, or markets because the enemy might like to strike back and innocent people might be killed. And please, do not target the nuclear power plant of Dimona – keep in mind that your neighbor has nuclear weapons and that can very easily turn Gaza into a radioactive ghost area. Yes, this is inhuman but this is why certain countries have nuclear weapons and other countries are looking to have one or two of them. To use them if there is no alternative or if the threat against their people is difficult to handle despite military superiority. On top of this conflict guess who is trying to benefit from the overall adverse situation? The usual aggressor Turkish president. If I am not wrong, the only case that Turkey is not involved in is the drug cartels’ war in Latin America. Syria, Libya, Armenia, Iraq, Lebanon, Kurdistan, Gaza, Kashmir, Greece – you name it, they are there. Sometimes, I am just wondering how peaceful our part of the world would be if there was no Turkey, no Hamas, no Hizbollah, and no Kim Jong-un (surprised?). Not that the rest of us are angels but I think that we do have the brain capacity to solve our problems without threats, bullying, or armed disputes. Other issues of interest? The Colonial pipelines (USA) hacking was very impressive and a strong warning of what we might experience again in the future. The debate between the Japanese government and the healthcare sector regarding the Olympic Games in Tokyo – another fine example indicating that money talks despite the warning of the medical community about something called “public health”. And last but not least, the resurgence of illegal immigration in Spain (Ceuta), Italy (Lampedusa Island), and Greece Evros and Aegean islands). The countermeasure issued by Spanish board authorities was quite innovative: “you swam here; you will swim back home” (Morocco). It will come a day that the Mediterranean European countries will stop been so polite and humanitarian and nobody would like that. Countries of origin should stop exporting immigrants and seriously manage the problem to avoid consequences. First Responders be prepared. The unexpected always happens! The Editor-in-Chief www.cbrne-terrorism-newsletter.com 6 HZS C2BRNE DIARY – May 2021 Humanity Now Lives in The Anthropocene. But What Does That Actually Mean? Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/there-is-more-than-one-anthropocene-scientists-argue-here-s-why-that-s-important Apr 24 – In the last two decades, the Anthropocene has become an informal buzzword to describe the numerous and unprecedented ways humans have come to modify the planet. The Anthropocene is an unofficial label for the dawn of a new human epoch. While the idea remains contentious among scientists, colloquially, it refers to a block of time in which our species has permanently altered Earth's geology. Today, we are currently living in the Holocene epoch, which has persisted since the last Ice Age. Yet in the face of a modern climate crisis, a mass extinction and widespread pollution, some geologists think we have entered a whole new time, and it deserves a whole new name. As the concept has become more widely adopted, however, definitions have begun to blur. Today, the very meaning of the Anthropocene and its timeline differs considerably depending on who is doing the talking. To geologists and Earth system scientists, the Industrial Revolution is often considered the dawn of the Anthropocene – when human influence on Earth's systems became predominant worldwide. Many anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists, however, consider the 18th century as more of a sunrise, when the era of humans truly began to heat up in some regions. Before that, there were already glimmers of human domination. Since the Late Pleistocene, right through to the Holocene (our current epoch), humans have been producing "distinct, detectable and unprecedented transformations of Earth's environments," states a new paper on the subject. And while these changes might not be enough to be technically defined as a new geological epoch, we need terms to describe this earlier influence, too. Because right now, people from various disciplines are using the term with subtly different meanings. "Dissecting the many interpretations of the Anthropocene suggests that a range of quite distinct, but variably overlapping, concepts are in play," says geologist Colin Waters from the University of Leicester in the UK. Thousands of years before the boom of industrialization, globalization, nuclear bombs, and modern climate change, humans were already in the first stages of becoming a dominant planetary force. The rise of crop domestication and hunting, the spread of livestock and mining, and the move to urbanization, for instance, have all caused great changes to Earth's soil signature and its fossil record, setting us on a course to the modern day. As far back as 3400 BCE, for instance, people in China were already smelting copper, and 3,000 years ago, most of the planet was already transformed by hunter-gatherers and farmers. While these smaller and slower regional changes did not destabilize Earth's entire system as more modern actions have, some researchers think we are underestimating the climate effects of these earlier land-use changes. As such, some have considered using the terms "pre-Anthropocene" or "proto‐Anthropocene" to describe significant human impacts before the mid‐twentieth century.