CONTINGENCIES FOR TERRORIST ATTACK

1-WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS.2-The Nation's Weather 3-31 people killed as storm slams northern India. 4-Hundreds of firefighters battling US wildfires. 5-Arab officials to take peace plan to Israel. 6-Pope: God will punish drug dealers. 7-U.S., Europe seek passenger data deal. 8-Citizens more ambitious than leaders on future EU policies. 9-Contingencies for nuclear terrorist attack.

EARTHQUAKES

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS (USGS)

Update time = Sat May 12 11:30 AM EDT

APR 12,07
MAP 3.8 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 4.7 TONGA
MAP 5.6 SERAM, INDONESIA
MAP 5.9 EASTERN NEW GUINEA REG, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
MAP 3.2 PUERTO RICO REGION
MAP 3.6 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.6 ISLAND OF HAWAII, HAWAII
MAP 5.1 SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAP 3.5 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 3.3 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.5 CENTRAL ALASKA
MAP 2.7 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
MAP 4.9 MAUG ISLANDS REG., NORTHERN MARIANA ISL.
MAP 4.1 VANCOUVER ISLAND, CANADA REGION

APR 11,07
MAP 5.2 MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES
MAP 5.1 KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 2.8 CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
MAP 3.0 MOUNT ST. HELENS AREA, WASHINGTON
MAP 2.6 KODIAK ISLAND REGION, ALASKA
MAP 4.6 BATAN ISLANDS REGION, PHILIPPINES
MAP 3.6 NORTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.9 VIRGIN ISLANDS REGION
MAP 5.0 SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAP 2.7 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 3.2 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 3.0 CHANNEL ISLANDS REGION, CALIFORNIA
MAP 2.7 SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA
MAP 3.2 SOUTHERN QUEBEC, CANADA
MAP 5.3 MARIANA ISLANDS REGION
MAP 2.5 PUGET SOUND REGION, WASHINGTON
MAP 4.3 TAJIKISTAN
MAP 2.6 SOUTHERN IDAHO
MAP 3.1 PUERTO RICO REGION
MAP 2.9 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 3.2 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 2.9 BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO
MAP 5.5 MAUG ISLANDS REG., NORTHERN MARIANA ISL.
MAP 4.9 KEPULAUAN BARAT DAYA, INDONESIA

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

The Nation's Weather By WEATHER UNDERGROUND, For The Associated Press
Sat May 12, 5:30 AM ET

Showers and thunderstorms were forecast from Virginia to eastern Texas on Saturday, while the Southwest and Great Basin were forecast to be hot. A high-pressure system drifting southeastward from Canada was expected to pull cold Arctic air into the Great Lakes and Northeast and dampen temperatures in the region.Low pressure pushing toward the West Coast was expected to bring rain from the Northwest through the Intermountain West. It was also expected to bring cool air to the West Coast. Daytime showers were forecast for the Rockies.Parts of the Southwest were expected to rise into the 90s and 100s, while the Southern Plains and parts of the Southeast were to see similar temperatures. The Northeast and Northwest could rise into the 60s.Temperatures in the Lower 48 states Friday ranged from a low of 28 degrees at Leadville, Colo., to a high of 107 degrees at Bullhead City, Ariz.

31 people killed as storm slams northern India MAY 12,07

LUCKNOW, India (AFP) - At least 31 people died as a storm hammered northern India, officials said on Saturday. All the deaths were reported from the worst-hit state of Uttar Pradesh, they added.

Scores of others were injured in the storm, late Friday, which was accompanied by hail and driving rain, officials said in the state capital of Lucknow.Fifteen people died in storm-related incidents in the district of Sultanpur, a state government spokesman said.Nine others were killed when trees came down on their homes in the district, he added.District administrator Sanjay Kumar said the storm also sparked fires and added some 100 houses were burnt during the bad weather in the district.Lightning strikes killed three in the hilly Pratapgarh district while four people were buried alive when their homes collapsed in the district of Barabanki, the official in Lucknow said.The state administration reported widespread damage from the storm, which lashed several northern Indian states including national capital Delhi, where rains flooded parts of the city and disrupted rush-hour traffic.

Hundreds of firefighters battling US wildfires Fri May 11, 11:44 PM ET

LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) - Firefighters on Friday battled to contain wildfires that scorched thousands of acres of tinder-dry parkland and forced large scale evacuations across the United States. Several hundred firefighters were deployed to tackle blazes in Florida and California, where record dry weather and high temperatures have forced authorities to maintain a state of near-perpetual alert.Around 500 firefighters were trying to extinguish a fire on Santa Catalina Island, a nature reserve and popular destination for day-trippers off the coast of southern California near Los Angeles.The fire tore through more than 4,200 acres (1,700 hectares) after erupting suddenly on Thursday. Initial efforts to contain the blaze were hampered by rugged terrain which rendered many of the hotspots inaccessible.However a drop in winds Friday and increased humidity allowed firefighters to make significant inroads into the blaze.

Speaking shortly after 5pm (0000 GMT), a Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman said the fire was now 35 percent contained, up from 10 percent earlier on Friday.We've made some good progress and we are now allowing all evacuated residents to return home, the spokesman said.Around 1,000 people were evacuated after the fire reached the borders of the island's main town Avalon on Thursday.One home, a commercial property and several outbuildings were destroyed in the fire, which was being bombarded by 10 water-dropping helicopters and five fixed-wing aircraft. There were no reports of injuries.Firefighting equipment had been brought in overnight by US Navy hovercrafts from the US Marines Camp Pendleton base in San Diego County.The fire came after a blaze devastated more than 800 acres (300 hectares) of Los Angeles' historic Griffith Park earlier this week.City fire officials said they expected the fire in the park to be declared 100 percent contained later Friday.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who shot scenes from the Terminator movies in the park -- expressed shock after inspecting the damaged areas. To see those great, same places where we were, where we filmed, destroyed was very hard to take, Schwarzenegger said.The Los Angeles Times reported that an emergency plan to repair the park was expected to cost around 50 million dollars.Los Angeles is in the grip of the driest start to the year since records began in 1877, according to recent figures from the National Weather Service.A spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the drought meant the fire season had begun earlier than usual.This year has been an extremely dry year and because of that the moisture levels in the vegetation have decreased, Daniel Berlant told AFP.We're seeing dry vegetation that we normally don't see until June or July. However, the blazes were not evidence of an increasing threat of fires, Berlant said. If you look through history, weather patterns go in and out -- you have dry periods and wet periods, he said. Right now we're in one of those dry periods.

Meanwhile firefighters battled with brush fires across drought-plagued Florida. Officials say more than 220 fires raged across the state, destroying six homes and blanketing much of the southeastern state with a smoky haze. The smoke also forced the closure of several highways. Weather forecasters had hoped a subtropical storm that formed offshore earlier in the week would bring some relief, but the weather system fizzled out without bringing the much needed rain.

Arab officials to take peace plan to Israel
Meeting in Cairo lays groundwork, touches on Gaza
Michael Slackman, Mona el-Naggar, New York Times - Friday, May 11, 2007

(05-11) 04:00 PDT Cairo -- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met Thursday and agreed that a team of Arab officials would soon visit Israel to discuss a Saudi peace proposal endorsed by the members of the Arab League. The meetings in Cairo are Israel's first with high-level officials of Arab countries since the Arab League reaffirmed its support in March for the peace initiative, which it first approved in 2002. The initiative sets out principles that would give Israel full recognition and normal relations with its Arab neighbors in return for its withdrawal to 1967 borders and creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The proposal also calls for an agreed, just solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. No details were available about the timing of the visit to Israel or the composition of the Arab League delegation, but it is expected to consist of Egyptian and Jordanian officials.

Livni and Mubarak also discussed the security situation in the Gaza Strip and the problems of growing Hamas military capabilities and the continual firing of Qassam rockets into Israel, said a statement issued by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. After meeting with Mubarak, Livni also spoke with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib. Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel, and they have served as the official diplomatic bridge to other Arab capitals. As events in the Middle East have become more turbulent, there have been some back-channel communications, including talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. There is a problem now, said Emad Gad, editor of Israeli Digest magazine, published by Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Egypt's premier research center.

The initiative is presented to the Israelis, he said, and the initiative has very clear words, and it doesn't even demand the right of return but refers to resolving the issue of the refugees, so there is room to talk. But you have an Israeli government that is in a very precarious position.In Jerusalem, Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Livni had called the prime minister to tell him about the meeting with Mubarak. Let me just say that there is no pressure on us from our neighbors who have peace with us to take new drastic steps, she said. So countries with relations with us are willing to use those relations to bring their ideas forward, and not impose them on us.The efforts to discuss the Arab League plan reflect a sense among officials in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that pursuing a settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis is the most important step toward stabilizing a region that is increasingly volatile and countering the growing support for radical Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. In 2002, Israel rejected the Arab initiative, but recently it has yielded to pressure to discuss the plan from the United States, which in turn was responding to pressure from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There has been little public expression of optimism over the latest effort, but officials have said they are committed to keeping peace efforts moving.

It's not a big step, said Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former adviser to King Abdullah II of Jordan. It's a good step. It is one step forward, but not enough to make me believe that this is a prelude to a peaceful settlement, because the other side has not and will not respond the way we want or expect it to respond. And let's wait and see.Also Thursday, Syrian President Bashar Assad dismissed rumors of secret peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, saying Israel was too weak to make a deal. There is no progress in the peace process and no contacts with Israel over the issue, neither in secret or overtly, because Israel is not ready for a just and comprehensive peace, Assad said in a televised speech as he opened a session of parliament. Peace efforts have faltered, he said, because a peace agreement would require strong leadership that could make decisive decisions, an apparent allusion to the political crisis in Israel. The speech was Assad's first public appearance since a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem last week.

Pope: God will punish drug dealers By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer MAY 12,07

GUARATINGUETA, Brazil - Pope Benedict XVI warned drug traffickers Saturday that they would face divine justice for the scourge of illegal narcotics across Latin America, telling them that, God will call you to account for your deeds.Speaking before a crowd of 6,000 at a drug treatment center, Benedict urged the drug-dealers to reflect on the grave harm they are inflicting on countless young people and on adults from every level of society.Brazil is the second-largest consumer of cocaine after the United States, according to the U.S. State Department, and big cities across Latin America's largest nation are plagued by drug violence.Driven by gangs that control street-corner dealing, the problem is particularly acute in the teeming slums of Rio de Janeiro, where gangs lure children into lives of violence and engage in near-daily shootouts with police that kill innocent bystanders.Human dignity cannot be trampled upon in this way, the pope said.

The treatment center where the pope spoke was founded by a Franciscan friar and claims an 80 percent success rate, giving addicts spiritual guidance as they milk cows, tend apple orchards and work as beekeepers.It is just a short distance away from the shrine city of Aparecida, where Benedict on Sunday will open a conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops aimed at finding ways to reverse the erosion of the church in the region.Addicts who listened to the pontiff said his visit was important because Brazilian drug users are often ostracized and left to beg on the streets for drug money.We are excluded from society, but we are the ones the pope is coming to see, said Diego Cleto, a 19-year-old who started taking drugs at age 13.The Garatingueta treatment center in a remote hilly region at the end of a dirt road was founded by Friar Hanz Stapel in 1983. There are now 31 similar farm/ treatment centers in Brazil and 10 more in countries such as Russia, Mexico and Mozambique.

Before traveling from Sao Paulo Friday night to the hallowed Catholic religious site of Aparecida, Benedict lamented difficult times for the church in Brazil amid aggressive proselytizing by born-again Protestant congregations.Brazil's census shows the percentage of citizens characterizing themselves as Catholics plunged to 74 percent in 2000 from 89 percent in 1980, while those calling themselves evangelical Protestants rose to 15 percent from 7 percent.The backdrop to the bishops' conference is Aparecida, 100 miles east of Sao Paulo, and home to the mammoth Basilica of Aparecida — as well as the three-foot-tall statue of a black Virgin Mary, called Our Lady Who Appeared, the patron saint of Brazil.The statue was pulled from a river in the 18th century by poor fishermen who were not catching any fish, and then caught loads in their nets. Miracles were subsequently attributed to the statue, and so many pilgrims flocked to Aparecida that the church built the basilica and inaugurated it as a shrine in 1955.

On Friday, the pope canonized Brazil's first native-born saint in a Mass before about a million people. He held up 18th century Friar Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvao as a model of rectitude and humility in an age so full of hedonism.Benedict was cheered by flag-waving crowds in the world's largest Catholic nation as he canonized the new saint, continuing a push for saints in the developing world that began under John Paul II, who sought role models as part of the church's worldwide reach. John Paul canonized more saints than all of his predecessors combined.Benedict also called on Catholics to oppose those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage, picking a tough crowd to confront about hedonism and permissiveness.More than 70 percent of Brazil's 190 million citizens may be Catholics, but sex before marriage is common. Scantily clad actresses are the norm on hugely popular TV soap operas, and women on the beaches wear bikinis that leave little to the imagination. Plastic surgery to reshape breasts and buttocks is nearly as popular as orthodontia. The pope may be popular among Brazilian Catholics but most probably will not heed his call when it comes to sex, said David Gibson, author of The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World.This is enormously frustrating to Benedict or any pope; they want to have more impact, Gibson added. But how do you go against a culture like that? It's tough. While polls show Brazilians oppose expanding access to abortion, they overwhelmingly support using condoms to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases — in firm opposition to church doctrine. The government, in fact, hands out millions of condoms for free every year, especially ahead of the debauchery that is an integral part of Brazil's pre-Lent carnival. Nothing could be more countercultural than his message in Brazil, the land of the thong, said Gibson, a former Vatican Radio reporter. Associated Press Writer Vivian Sequera contributed to this report.

U.S., Europe seek passenger data deal By COLLEEN BARRY, Associated Press Writer Sat May 12, 6:55 AM ET

VENICE, Italy - The U.S. Homeland Security secretary met with top European security officials Saturday to work out the details of a new agreement to share airline passenger data for terrorism investigations. Secretary Michael Chertoff also was expected to discuss changes to the U.S. visa-waiver program during the meeting with security officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland.A deal on the airline data must be reached by July to avoid problems for both airlines and U.S.-bound passengers.European governments are worried about protecting their strict privacy laws, a legacy of the continent's history with totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.The two sides disagree on how long U.S. authorities can use data, when it should be destroyed and which agencies should have access to the information. The United States also wants the authority to pull data directly from airline computers, but European countries insist airlines must transmit the information.Chertoff travels to Brussels, Belgium, on Monday where he will address the EU Parliament.

Citizens from 15 of the 27 EU nations can enter the United States without applying for a travel visa. U.S. officials say Greece and most of the newer EU members still fail to meet criteria for joining the visa-waiver program.The EU allows Americans to travel to all its member countries without visas and has long insisted on full reciprocity.Poland is especially adamant, arguing that it should be admitted in recognition of its contributions to U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States rejects 22 percent of Polish visa applicants — a rate that far exceeds the 3 percent benchmark required for entry into the waiver program.Legislation pending in the Congress would allow the program to admit new countries, while requiring all participating countries to impose closer scrutiny of their passports to ensure they are not lost, stolen or easily counterfeited.President Bush has said he favors adding countries to the visa-waiver list. All but four countries now on the list are European.

Peres says Israel ready for serious peace talks with Arabs Sat May 12, 9:01 AM ET

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said on Saturday that Israel is ready for serious discussions with Arab nations over a revived peace proposal, as shuttle diplomacy in the region continued apace. If the Arab side puts forth serious proposals, Israel will in turn offer its own proposals with a view to holding serious negotiations and to finding common ground, Peres was quoted by army radio as saying.We should be careful not to miss out on this opportunity, Peres stressed. Peres was speaking amid efforts to advance the peace plan, first presented by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and revived at an Arab League summit in March.The plan would offer a normalisation of relations in return for full withdrawal from Arab lands seized in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.

The league tasked Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries that have made peace with Israel, to work to convince the Jewish state to accept the plan.Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met her Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts in Cairo on Thursday, and stressed the important role the Arab world could play in helping to achieve peace.On Saturday, Palestinian foreign minister Ziad Abu Amr met his Jordanian counterpart Abdel Ilah Khatib and other officials in Amman to discuss the initiative.

The two reviewed bilateral relations as well as ways to advance the peace process to where the Palestinian people's ambitions of an independent state are achieved, Jordan's state news agency Petra reported.Abu Amr, an independent and the first Palestinian foreign minister to visit Jordan since the Islamist group Hamas formed a government in March 2006, thanked King Abdullah II for his efforts on behalf of the Palestinians.He is to travel to Brussels on Sunday for talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

Khatib stressed the need for Arabs and the wider world to make every effort... to relaunch the peace process through negotiations between the two sides and to achieve a just and comprehensive peace.

On Sunday, King Abdullah will visit the West Bank town of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.A palace official said the king will discuss Arab and international efforts aimed at bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to negotiations on the Arab peace plan and a two-state solution.A Palestinian official called it an important visit to discuss political developments in the region, Arab efforts to relaunch the peace process and the Arab peace initiative.The king's visit will come just two days before he meets Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at a gathering of Nobel peace laureates in Jordan's ancient city of Petra.Olmert last met the king in December, and both leaders are expected to discuss the renewed Arab initiative at their meeting on Tuesday.Israel rejected the Arab peace plan when it was first launched in Beirut in 2002. Recently, however, it has said the proposal could provide a basis for talks, provided there are amendments on the refugee issue.

Citizens more ambitious than leaders on future EU policies
11.05.2007 - 09:41 CET | By Lucia Kubosova

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU citizens are more ambitious about what Europe should do in the future than its political leaders, a new report summing up a series of popular debates shows.The debates with EU citizens were carried out across the bloc following the shock rejection of the draft EU constitution in both France and the Netherlands two years ago – an event that was interpreted as a clear signal of the gap between the bloc's citizens and its institutions.The report, published on Thursday (10 May), refers to the main conclusions of all national debates and shows that citizens in most countries favour action in social policy where Europe does not hold key powers and which is generally not foreseen as an area for major future initiatives.We believe that improving the social and economic conditions for families should be a European policy goal, because most of our panels think families in Europe need better protection and support, and the problem of low birth rates is apparent, stated the document.

Many panels suggested specific measures both at national and European level to address issues such as improved availability of rights to child care, working time flexibility for parents or job protection for those returning from parental leave.Another important subject on the citizens' wish-list is better job protection. People in central and eastern European member states in particular are calling for harmonised minimum work-related standards, such as a common definition of a minimum wage.

Similarly, a majority of participants in the debates - altogether attended by 1,800 randomly selected people - expect the EU to set standards ensuring accessible, dignified, high-quality and affordable health care treatment.When asked how to achieve this goal, the Irish and Greeks suggested open competition of health services, the Dutch, Italians and Cypriots stressed the need for cross-border access to patients while the Danes and Portuguese favour the idea of free health services across Europe.Citizens from several countries can also imagine much more uniform action and standards in education, saying that qualifications could be determined at EU level, while the specific content for comparable and compatible degrees would be dealt with at national and regional levels. There was also broad agreement that the resulting education system should be free and accessible to all.

High political goals

In terms of a common European foreign policy, citizens desire that the EU takes on an active role in protecting and promoting peace, democracy, human rights and justice in the world. They argue the bloc should use both peacekeeping forces and its diplomacy to provide a strong role model across the world in this field, with the French panellists adding the EU could be a force capable of providing a counterbalance to the trend towards a unipolar world dominated by the US.Only the French citizens favour future European cooperation in defence policy, according to the report, while most other countries highlight foreign and security areas for joint EU action.On the other hand, only the German panel specifically supported the idea of a European foreign minister - included in the set of institutional changes proposed by the disputed EU constitution - and it also called for a shared EU seat in the UN's security council.Finally, citizens also broadly favour a pan-European response to immigration and tackling the integration of immigrants, as well as a greater use of external relations policy tools such as development aid and border controls.The EU should also be given stronger powers to develop a common energy policy and ensure that member states live up to the commitments they have made at European level, according to the summary report.The results come just weeks before EU leaders are to gather in Brussels to try and hammer out the bones of a new treaty for the bloc.

Contingencies for nuclear terrorist attack
Government working up plan to prevent chaos in wake of bombing of major city
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer - Friday, May 11, 2007

As concerns grow that terrorists might attack a major American city with a nuclear bomb, a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program that would include the building of bomb shelters, steps to prevent panicked evacuations and the possible suspension of some civil liberties. Many experts say the likelihood of al Qaeda or some other terrorist group producing a working nuclear weapon with illicitly obtained weapons-grade fuel is not large, but such a strike would be far more lethal, frightening and disruptive than the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Not only could the numbers killed and wounded be far higher, but the explosion could, experts say, ignite widespread fires, shut down most transportation, halt much economic activity and cause a possible disintegration of government order. The efforts to prepare a detailed blueprint for survival took a step forward last month when senior government and military officials and other experts, organized by a joint Stanford-Harvard program called the Preventive Defense Project, met behind closed doors in Washington for a day-long workshop.

The session, called The Day After, was premised on the idea that efforts focusing on preventing such a strike were no longer enough, and that the prospect of a collapse of government order was so great if there were an attack that the country needed to begin preparing an emergency program. One of the participants, retired Vice Adm. Roger Rufe, is a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security who is currently designing the government's nuclear attack response plan. The organizers of the nonpartisan project, Stanford's William Perry, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, and Harvard's Ashton Carter, a senior Defense Department official during the Clinton years, assumed the detonation of a bomb similar in size to the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II.

Such a weapon, with a force of around 10 to 15 kilotons, is small compared with most Cold War-era warheads, but is roughly the yield of a relatively simple bomb. That would be considerably more powerful and lethal than a so-called dirty bomb, which is a conventional explosive packed with some dangerous radioactive material that would be dispersed by the explosion.

The 41 participants -- including the directors of the country's two nuclear weapons laboratories, Homeland Security officials, a number of top military commanders and former government officials -- discussed how all levels of government ought to respond to protect the country from a second nuclear attack, to limit health problems from the radioactive fallout and to restore civil order. Comments inside the session were confidential, but a number of the participants described their views and the ideas exchanged. A paper the organizers are writing, summarizing their recommendations, urges local governments and individuals to build underground bomb shelters, much as people did in the early days of the Cold War; encourages authorities who survive to prevent evacuation of at least some of the areas attacked for three days to avoid roadway paralysis and damage from exposure to radioactive fallout; and proposes suspending regulations on radiation exposure so that first responders would be able to act, even if that caused higher cancer rates.

The public at large will expect that their government had thought through this possibility and to have planned for it, Carter said in an interview. This kind of an event would be unprecedented. We have had glimpses of something like this with Hiroshima, and glimpses with 9/11 and with Katrina. But those are only glimpses. Perhaps the most sobering issue discussed was the possibility of a chaotic, long-term crisis triggered by fears that the attackers might have more bombs. Such uncertainty could sow panic nationwide. If one bomb goes off, there are likely to be more to follow, Carter said. This fact, that nuclear terrorism will appear as a syndrome rather than a single episode, has major consequences. It would, he added, require powerful government intervention to force people to do something many may resist -- staying put. Fred Ikle, a former Defense Department official in the Reagan administration who authored a book last year urging attack preparation, Annihilation from Within, said that the government should plan how it could restrict civil liberties and enforce a sort of martial law in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, but also have guidelines for how those liberties could be restored later. That prospect underscored a central divide among participants at the recent meeting, several said.

Some participants argued that the federal government needs to educate first responders and other officials as quickly as possible on how to act even if transportation and communication systems break down, as seems likely, and if the government is unable to issue orders. There was a clear consensus that a nuclear bomb detonated in the United States or a friendly country would be an earth-shaking event, and we need to know how we will respond beforehand, said Ikle. I wish we had started earlier, because this kind of planning can make an important difference.But others said the meeting made it clear that the results of any attack would be so devastating and the turmoil so difficult to control, if not impossible, that the lesson should have been that the U.S. government needs to place a far greater emphasis on prevention. Your cities would empty and people would completely lose confidence in the ability of the government to protect them, said Steve Fetter, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. You'd have nothing that resembles our current social order. I'm not sure any preparation can be sufficient to deal with that.Fetter added, We have to hold current policymakers more responsible" for taking all out measures to prevent a nuclear attack.

Raymond Jeanloz, a nuclear weapons expert at UC Berkeley and a government adviser on nuclear issues, said that California might be better prepared than most states because of long-standing plans for dealing with earthquakes and other natural disasters. Those plans, he said, could be a useful model for first responders. He added, as others did, that the dislocation and panic caused by a nuclear strike could make any responses unpredictable. The most difficult thing is the fear that this kind of planning, even talking about it, can cause, Jeanloz said. Michael May, a former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, defended the survival planning, saying that people should get used to the idea that such a crisis, while dire, could be managed -- a key step in restoring calm. You have to demystify the nuclear issue, said May, who now teaches at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. By talking about this, you take away the feeling of helplessness.E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.