According to scientists, California is expecting a huge earthquake sometime in the next 200 years. It’s quite another to tell people to remain on alert, but not to alter their plans. They feel there was a usefulness to the higher alert mode, even if nothing came of it. People respond to the warning, and there is a discrete period when their lives are markedly different. Hurricanes are short-term events, and it’s obvious when the danger is imminent and when it’s over. It’s one thing to issue a hurricane warning, and advise people to board up their windows and remain in the basement. It keeps the public worried about terrorism, while at the same time reminding them that they’re helpless without the government to defend them. This kind of behavior is all that’s needed to generate widespread fear and uncertainty. This headline-grabbing stuff might make for good movie plots, but it doesn’t make us safer. The careful wording of these alerts allows them not to require any sound, confirmed, accurate intelligence information, while at the same time guaranteeing hysterical media coverage. New York and Washington, D.C., were put on high alert one day, and the next day told that the alert was based on information years old. We’ve been warned that the terrorists might use helicopters, scuba gear, even cheap prescription drugs from Canada. The threat index goes from yellow to orange and back again, although no one is entirely sure what either level means. The DHS’s threat warnings have been vague, indeterminate, and unspecific. And we now know that their primary use was political. There were never any actions associated with them. Of course, the codes never became useful. And the threat levels are publicly known, so any terrorist with a lick of sense will simply wait until the threat level goes down. Terrorist attacks are rare, and if the color-threat level changes willy-nilly with no obvious cause or effect, then people will simply stop paying attention. But even then, the real measure of effectiveness is in the implementation. If the color-alert system became something better defined, so that people know exactly what caused the levels to change, what the change means, and what actions they need to take in the event of a change, then it could be useful. The threat levels actually do more harm than good, by needlessly creating fear and confusion (which is an objective of terrorists) and anesthetizing people to future alerts and warnings. Even local police departments and government organizations largely have no idea what to do when the threat level changes. People are left to worry, or are given nonsensical instructions to buy plastic sheeting and duct tape. The color-alert system, on the other hand, is not tied to any specific actions. The difference is that the DEFCON system is tied to particular procedures military units have specific actions they need to perform every time the DEFCON level goes up or down. military has a similar system DEFCON 1-5 corresponds to the five threat alerts levels: Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, and Red. The color-coded threat alerts issued by the Department of Homeland Security are useless today, but may become useful in the future. I wrote about the DHS’s color-coded threat alert system in 2003, in Beyond Fear: Modifying the Color-Coded Threat Alert System
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