Security and safety with blood and guts

Aug. 10, 2008
Be afraid, be very afraid...and pay attention, Grasshopper! Walt here, hijacking Unfettered for a book review that is sorta out of everybody's field. I think you should all read it. It puts into perspective what we are all trying to prevent. I just finished reading a monograph (a nearly 300 page monograph, at that) by an online friend, Chuck Stewart, who is an emergency medicine physician. The monograph is Weapons of Mass Casualties and Terrorism Response Handbook, by Charles Stewart MD, FACE...
Be afraid, be very afraid...and pay attention, Grasshopper! Walt here, hijacking Unfettered for a book review that is sorta out of everybody's field. I think you should all read it. It puts into perspective what we are all trying to prevent. I just finished reading a monograph (a nearly 300 page monograph, at that) by an online friend, Chuck Stewart, who is an emergency medicine physician. The monograph is Weapons of Mass Casualties and Terrorism Response Handbook, by Charles Stewart MD, FACEP, published under the auspices of the American Academy of Orthopedic Physicians by Jones and Bartlett Publishers (ISBN 0-7737-2425-4). You can buy the book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Casualties-American-Orthopaedic-Surgeons-Monograph/dp/0763724254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218408387&sr=8-1. Here's the review I just posted on Amazon: Although I write science fiction, and help edit two science fiction magazines, my day job is as editor of a major technical publication...Control magazine (www.controlglobal.com). I have been studying this subject from the other direction...from the direction of the terrorist attack on the control systems of critical infrastructure industries. Chuck Stewart's book is an absolutely terrifying look at what might happen if one of those attacks, or God forbid, more than one of those attacks might succeed. As you might expect, some of the deep medical content is over my head...I am an engineering type, not a medical type, but some of it isn't. If you are interested in the security of the critical infrastructure of the world, you ought to take a short detour through Chuck's book. What happens if terrorists (foreign or the home-grown variety) blow up a refinery, and then do a poison gas attack on the responders and victims? Chuck knows, and lays it all out in his book. This book is highly recommended for any serious researcher in safety and security, for anyone who works and manages in the critical infrastructure industries, for government types like DHS and FBI, and of course, for the medical professionals Chuck wrote it for.  Walt Boyes