When asked during the campaign debates to name the gravest danger facing the United States, President Bush and challenger Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) gave the same answer: a nuclear device in the hands of terrorists.

But more than 3 1/2 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. government has failed to adequately prepare first responders and the public for a nuclear strike, according to emergency preparedness and nuclear experts and federal reports.

[...]

Take, for example, a Ready.gov graphic showing that someone a city block from a nuclear blast could save his or her life by walking around the corner. The text reads, "Consider if you can get out of the area." Nuclear specialists say that advice is unhelpful because such a blast can destroy everything within a radius of as much as three-quarters of a mile.

[...]

In late 2003, months after the debut of Homeland Security's Ready.gov Web site, Rand Corp. released a detailed study advising individuals on responding to various attack scenarios -- but with starkly different recommendations.

Ready.gov gave almost no information on which to base a hide-or-flee decision, beyond advice such as to "Quickly assess the situation" after a nuclear blast. In general, it advised going inside, underground if possible, and fleeing by car rather than on foot.

Rand, which in the 1950s was an architect of U.S. nuclear doctrine, said going indoors "would provide little protection in a nuclear attack." It said Ready.gov's suggestion that people in the blast zone head underground after a blast is "misleading" because few people would have time to take that step.

Ready.gov made no mention of the critical factor of wind. But Rand advised that if wind is carrying smoke and the mushroom cloud toward people, they should immediately head perpendicular to it, on foot, for at least a few miles, to get out of the plume's path. Driving would be futile because of impassable roads, Rand said.

"Guidance from Ready.gov fails to indicate the time urgency involved," said Lynn E. Davis, a former undersecretary of state for arms control who was the Rand study's lead author. "We must act in a matter of minutes to survive."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

"A lot of good work's been done, and a lot of federal resources are poised to respond...Can more work be done? Absolutely"...some of the criticisms of Ready.gov are valid, and that they might change its wording in some places..."We decided [advice to flee crosswind] was not necessarily the best guidance for the American people"...[the] strategy is not for people themselves to decide what to do, but for them to listen for officials' advice over radio or television...

Nuclear terrorism is too dangerous a threat to leave our defense in the hands of the government.

Public schools have utterly failed to teach the very basics of nuclear physics, so most Americans are utterly ignorant of the unique problems and dangers a detonated nuclear device presents. The result are teeth-grittingly obvious suggestions from Ready.gov that the cynics online have roundly lampooned and satirized.

I was somewhat surprised that the WaPo article didn't mention 24 and the current season's upfront plot about stolen nuclear weapons and an imminent attack.