Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Seven: War and Terrorism 79plants. Except at the eleven federal facilities handling nuclear bomb materials,where recently installed protective devices include armored cars with lightmachine guns, U.S. nuclear plants are defended by small numbers of guardswith conventional light arms. Non-nuclear energy facilities generally have lessthan that—typically a few pistol-toting people, who, in John McPhee’s phrase,look as if they could run the hundred yards in four minutes. Such guardforces are clearly no match for the sort of firepower that even a handful of terroristscould deploy against an energy facility. These potential weaponsinclude the following main categories:•Firearms: past terrorist and criminal attacks have used all available civilianand military firearms up to and including heavy machine guns, twenty-millimetercannons, antitank guns, and recoilless rifles. Modern counterinsurgencyarms now available to terrorists include “tiny—some less than fifteeninches long—silent submachine guns.” 90 Automatic weapons are readily available.91 “Enough weapons and ammunition to outfit ten combat battalionsnumbering eight thousand men were stolen from U.S. military installationsaround the world between 1971 and 1974.” 92•Mortars—especially well suited for attacks on spent fuel pools, switchyards,and other facilities unprotected from above. A single North Vietnamese mortarteam caused about five billion dollars’ damage in a few minutes to the U.S.airbase at Pleiku. Technical progress continues:A Belgian arms manufacturing firm has... developed a disposable, lightweight,silent mortar which can be used against personnel and also fires aprojectile with a spherical warhead designed to produce a “shattering effect”suitable for the “destruction of utilities, communications, and light structures.”The full field unit, which weighs only twenty-two pounds, includesthe firing tube plus seven rounds. All seven rounds can be put in the airbefore the first round hits. 93•Bazookas and similar unguided rockets. “In August 1974, ninety anti-tankweapons were stolen by a Yugoslav national who was an employee of the U.S.Army in Germany.” 94 These were recaptured, but many more were stolen andlater turned up in the hands of criminals and terrorists. Their shaped-chargewarheads are specifically designed to penetrate thick armor. World War II-vintagebazookas have a range of twelve hundred feet. The Korean War version,of somewhat shorter range, is in service with National Guard and Reserveunits. The 1970s version, the U.S. Light Antitank Weapon (LAW), is a fivepound,hundred-dollar rocket effective at a thousand feet against stationary targets.It is shoulder-fired from a disposable tube and can penetrate nearly threeinches of armor plate. 95 One was unsuccessfully fired at a West Coast police