Making the Nation Safer The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism (2002) / Chapter Skim
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9. The Response of People to Terrorism
9. The Response of People to Terrorism
Pages 267-286
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From page 267... ...
This chapter shows how the behavioral and social sciences can provide knowledge of and insights into the responses of individuals and organizations to the threat of terrorism and to terrorist events. {Chapter 10 discusses the importance of modeling terrorist decision making as an input for understanding vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures and systems and the effectiveness of proposed ways to mitigate those vulnerabilities.
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From page 268... ...
Institutional, Group, and Political Vulnerability Understandably, our initial impulse in thinking about the human consequences of terrorist attacks is to envision casualties the numbers of people killed or wounded, as well as the emotional wounds to their families and loved ones. But there are several other dimensions of societal vulnerability as well, springing from the fact that not only is society made up of people but that people are organized in relation to one another in complex ways.
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From page 269... ...
Modernized societies also evolve a system of social classes that crosscut associational life. Historically, the class dimension has not been a prominent feature of American society (as it was in many European societies)
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From page 270... ...
Local responses to attack must be coordinated by multiple levels of government and private sector organizations, and the efforts must all be integrated. THE UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RESPONSES Despite variations in directness of attack whether on humans or on human institutions and despite overlap among types of attack, all attacks generate behavioral, attitudinal, and emotional responses in the populations affected.
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From page 271... ...
Preparedness for attacks involves two sets of actors the responsible authorities and the population in general. Government preparation should attempt to be exhaustive and conditional trying to anticipate every conceivable kind of attack, understanding probable ripple effects, thinking in terms of multiple attacks, preparing proper responses for agents who would give out information in crisis situations, detailing the roles of first-line response agencies such as police and rescue agencies, and developing a range of backup responses to contain damage and minimize future damage.
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From page 272... ...
12~. This slippage of public apprehension works its way into public opinion, and the resulting complacency may become an obstacle to maintaining readiness.
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From page 273... ...
, and available through multiple channels public warning devices such as sirens, radio, television, and the Internet (Working Group on Natural Disaster Information Systems, 2000~. False alarms and misdirection of warnings to people not at risk, however, generate the same negative consequences as overtraining.
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From page 274... ...
to broadly destructive (such as the successful disruption of much of the nation's electric power system or the explosion of a nuclear device over or in a metropolitan center)
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From page 275... ...
The widespread reporting of the anthrax contamination in the weeks after September 11 served to expand those events from several localized incidents into a potential generalized threat. All this underscores the crucial roles of both the mass media and authoritative sources such as the police and political leaders in giving definition (psychological reality)
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From page 276... ...
In all cases, identification and training of these potential spokespeople should occur before an attack takes place, so the government can respond not only by providing emergency services but also by providing important, accurate, and trustworthy information clearly, quickly, and authoritatively. First-Line Responders to Attacks The differentiation and mutual dependence, or "systemness," in contemporary society, mentioned earlier in this chapter, apply as well to the numerous agencies responsible for maintaining law and order, protecting the society from am.
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From page 277... ...
Nowhere is this truer than in the initial responses to attack, when quick decisions and direct actions are required. The accumulated body of research on natural disasters reveals all too many instances of scarce information, deficient communication, poor coordination, and jurisdictional conflict among nominally coordinating organizations (Kreps and Bosworth, 1993; Tierney, Lindell, and Perry, 2001~.
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From page 278... ...
Reactions to Extraordinarily Catastrophic Attacks The focus of this report is catastrophic terrorism, as defined in Chapter 1, and the principles outlined above describe people's reactions to such terrorist events or the threat of them. However, in the case of extraordinarily catastrophic attacks such as serial nuclear bombings of cities, destruction of an entire region, poisoning of a large segment of the population, prolonged paralysis of the nation's energy system, or any event in which there are hundreds of thousands (or millions)
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From page 279... ...
Widespread breakdowns of social order also heighten the probability that mutually hostile class, ethnic, and racial groups (the fault lines mentioned earlier) will come into open conflict, especially if different groups perceive that they have been treated unfairly in relation to others.
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Therefore research on immediate disaster responses generally relies on hastily assembled journalistic reports and after-the-fact accounts based on participants' recollections. Both types of sources are subject to selectivity and distortion.
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From page 281... ...
It was less than 2 months after September 11, 2001, when Democrats and Republicans split along recognizable lines over the issue of whether airline security personnel should be federal employees or remain as private sector employees. By December, the New York Times, in summarizing the national situation, quipped that "the Democrats and Republicans are fighting about everything but terrorism" (Week in Review, December 23, 2001, p.
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From page 282... ...
Though a sense of comfort and pride can be gained from that posture of moderation on the part of government, press, and the public, it should not be assumed that the issue is permanently closed. Successful terrorist attacks in the future, especially major ones, or evidence or suspicion of terrorist activities on the part of Muslim-Americans, could quickly excite a season of pointed, even explosive, group antagonisms.
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From page 283... ...
The full cost of replacing the World Trade Center (including compensation for survivors) and the damaged portion of the Pentagon will be enormous, as would be the costs of replacing destroyed dams or severely damaged electric power systems.
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From page 284... ...
Normalization and Cultural Memory The natural history of recovery from disaster involves a diminution of emotional responses, a denial of the possibility of recurrence, and a return to routine activities, events, rhythms, and conflicts. These are, by and large, reasonable and
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From page 285... ...
Indeed, we received messages from government and public leaders exhorting us to return to normal activities in the wake of the September 11 attacks, while at the same time stressing the need for vigilance and even warning of potential impending attacks. Because terrorist attacks tend to be sudden, surprising, and of short duration, they are usually regarded as discrete events.
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From page 286... ...
Working Group on Natural Disaster Information Systems (Subcommittee on Natural Disaster Reduction)
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