"Can you imagine seeing a mushroom cloud while driving along Interstate 5? What if a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded at the Port of Seattle's Terminal 18 on Harbor Island?

That scenario is worth thinking about in light of last week's incident when the port was evacuated after a bomb-sniffing dog implied an explosive device was hidden in a cargo container. We were lucky. This incident turned out to be nothing.

But do we think enough about the "what if"?

"What if" is exactly what scenario planning and analysis are all about. Last week (on the same day as the port evacuation), The RAND Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy released its study about the Port of Long Beach, "Considering the Effects of a Catastrophic Terrorist Attack.""

Get the Story:
Mark Trahant: 'What if' the port bomb had been real? (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer 8/20)

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