Wherever you stand, you go where you can, even if that means lying in the gutter in the street or crawling behind your car to see if you can survive that initial blast. “The bad news,” Clairmont glibly added, “is the detonation-very little warning. This, of course, presumes the unlikely scenario of a nuclear exchange being limited to a single strike, killing “only” millions and avoiding the quick death of hundreds of millions in a wider nuclear war, leading to nuclear winter, the killing off of crops around the world and mass starvation. ![]() The “good news” for those fortunate enough to survive a nuclear blast in a fallout shelter, he continued, was that they would need supplies for only two weeks, as dangerous radiation from the fallout would decay rapidly. “The likelihood of government, whether it be the county, state or federal government, to be able to successfully shelter as large and diverse a population as we have in the timeframe we have-you are looking at a very low likelihood of that, even if you had all the funds in the world available,” he said. He added that establishing a new network of emergency shelters that could accommodate the current population was impractical, and insisted that any new disaster planning include instructions on how individuals could supposedly survive a nuclear blast and subsequent fallout in their own homes. He testified, however, that it would take years and significant levels of funding to update the fallout shelter plans for Oahu and the other islands. “This is uncomfortable to think about, but we have a whole generation of people growing up that haven’t ever really thought about these things, and they need to be educated about the reality and survivability and what we can do,” Democratic Representative Matt LoPresti said at a hearing of Hawaii’s House Public Safety Committee last week.Īccording to Governing, Toby Clairmont, executive officer of the Defense Department’s Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, told lawmakers at hearings on the resolution that the Pentagon supported the state’s initiative. Much of Honolulu would be devastated by a nuclear strike on the military facilities on Oahu, and depending on prevailing weather patterns, the neighboring islands would be severely affected by nuclear fallout. Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 triggered Washington’s entry into World War II. The base is located near the state capital and Hawaii’s largest city, Honolulu, with a metropolitan area population of nearly 1 million. Oahu is home to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, which hosts the US Pacific Fleet, considered the main target for a possible nuclear missile strike. Structures on the island previously identified as possible shelters include parking garages. The fallout shelter plan for the island of Oahu was last updated in 1985 and food and emergency supply stockpiles have long since been discarded. The resolution calls for the identification of useable fallout shelters and the updating of shelters that are now obsolete. Hawaii’s network of fallout shelters was built during the Cold War and has not been maintained since the mid-1980s, when state funding was cut. The carrier group anchored by the USS Carl Vinson is set to arrive in waters near the Korean peninsula on Tuesday, the same day, according to the US media, that Pyongyang may be planning to carry out a new nuclear test. ![]() The White House is recklessly ratcheting up tensions, with Trump promising to “solve” the supposed threat from North Korea and Vice President Mike Pence warning that the US “sword stands ready.” Reports in the US media have played up claims that North Korea is on the verge of developing missiles that can be loaded with nuclear warheads and reach the Hawaiian Islands or Alaska in less than 20 minutes. The legislature’s resolution cites the threats by President Donald Trump to launch a unilateral attack on nuclear-armed North Korea as the main impetus for seeking to modernize Hawaii’s nuclear war disaster preparations. ![]() The resolution also requests that the military provide radiation survival tips in the event of a nuclear missile strike. The Hawaii state legislature passed a resolution Friday calling on the Pentagon to assist the state in updating its disaster preparedness plans, including the upgrading of the state’s network of nuclear fallout shelters.
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