Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terrorist Attacks

• Main Author: Davis, Lynn E. (auth)
• Other Authors: Melmed, Arthur (auth), Krop, Richard (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: RAND Corporation 2003
• Subjects: Terrorism, armed struggle; Political Science
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Individual preparedness is an important element of our nation's strategy for homeland security. This report adopts a scenario-driven approach that provides a rigorous way to identify actions-linked specifically to terrorist attacks-individuals can take to protect their health and safety. The result is an individual's strategy across four types of terrorist attacks-chemical, radiological, nuclear, and biological-consisting of overarching goals and simple and directive response and preparatory actions. The actions are appropriate regardless of likelihood of an attack, scale of attack, or government alert level; designed to be sensitive to potential variations; and defined in terms of simple rules that should be easy for individuals to adopt.