Many of those so-called "go bags," medicine kits and boxes of canned food and water that Americans stockpiled after the 9/11 attacks have been lost, expired or gone bad.
Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., says
it's time to pack a new emergency bag and draft updated evacuation plans in preparation for another terrorist attack. He's put together a "how to" handbook to help constituents and other members of the public plan what to do.
"I was a Boy Scout, and the motto of the Boy Scouts was to be prepared," Pittenger said.
The chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare said his handbook was inspired by growing concerns about terrorism and the Islamic State group. U.S. intelligence officials say that more than 100 people from the United States have traveled to Syria to fight there. Authorities fear those people might return radicalized and trained to carry out their own attacks.
Americans can alleviate anxieties by learning as much as they can about how to survive an attack, Pittenger said. But some who study terrorism threats see the manual, and
its graphic pictures of mushroom clouds, as backhanded fear-mongering.
"
The basic idea being to prepare for an emergency, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and people are not very good at that," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University political science professor who studies terrorism threats. "
But to heighten all this terrorism seems pretty irresponsible to me."
Pittenger's handbook has chapters on terrorist hazards, explosions and nuclear blasts. His home state of North Carolina experiences tornadoes, weather-related power outages and the annual threat of hurricanes.
While he says the book is also intended to assist citizens with natural disasters, there are no chapters dedicated to them.
Comment: Radio Liberty is a U.S. State Dept. propaganda outfit. So it's fitting that clamp down on freedom of speech. Can't let the truth get in the way of a good campaign of lies, after all.