Word: panic
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...some trucks is a tracking device similar to the transponders used on commercial jets. The device beams a truck's location by satellite to fleet managers, while a two-way messaging system allows drivers and trucking officials to stay in touch. Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego offers truckers a panic button. When it's pushed, a ping sounds in the company's network management center, a NASA-style command base with 31 computer monitors. In an emergency, an operator can alert authorities to the location of the truck in distress...
...Panic buttons aren't standard equipment yet, not even for hazardous-material haulers. But since Sept. 11, more trucking companies are looking into them. Another device that could help, also made by Qualcomm, can stop a truck from operating when the messaging system is disabled. The technology is used in other parts of the world where terrorism has been a bigger threat, but few U.S. truckers know about it. "We didn't do it here because it wasn't a big issue," says Qualcomm's Chris Wolfe. "We weren't projecting a terrorist problem...
Some security advocates are asking Congress to help fund the installation of a panic button on every truck that hauls blasting agents. The Institute of Makers of Explosives, a trade group whose products are often shipped by truck, advocates federal background checks on drivers who haul explosives. "I don't mean you need a top-secret clearance," says James Ronay, a former FBI bomb expert who runs the institute. "But you need to know who that person is." Ronay's group is also pushing for a new federal licensing system for all purchases of explosives. Such licensing is now required...
Which is why the greater danger may lie in dirty bombs, conventional weapons used to spray radioactive material--anything from used reactor rods to contaminated clothing--over wide areas. Although the death toll wouldn't be great, the contamination and the public panic could be widespread. "The ultimate dirty bomb is a nuclear power reactor," says NCI's Leventhal. That someone will run a jet into a cooling tower isn't the only risk. Periodically the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has staged mock attacks against facilities, and the faux intruders won half the time--meaning they were in a position...
...they quickly discovered that the best way to strike terror and confusion within the U.S. government was to send the contaminated mail to a Congress that can't agree on anything even in the best of times. Be calm, our leaders told us. No need to panic, they insisted. But to a jittery America those pleas sounded like the orchestra that kept playing after the Titanic hit the iceberg...