Identify Threats & Hazards

 

We are going to continue on talking about threats. In this module, we’re covering the four threat types and I’ll share my preferred method getting down into the weeds a documenting the threats, hazards, and vulnerabilities within your area of operations.

As a gentle reminder, the entire reason why I’m teaching Area Studies is because all emergencies, disaster, and conflicts come down to this: what am I up against, and what do I have to work with?

The first part of this it determining what you’re up against. After we assess the full range of threats, hazards, and vulnerabilities, then I can start to plan for these things.

There are four threat types: Conventional, Irregular, Catastrophic, and Disruptive.

Let’s go through these.

Conventional: Conventional threats are typically uniformed authorities who often have de jure authority; i.e., a group who wields authority both by law and the threat of the use of force. Invading and occupational armies, standing militaries, martial law, police states, tyrannical law enforcement and secret police, and other similar organizations are examples of conventional threats.

Irregular: Irregular threats are typically not uniformed but they do often have de facto (actual) authority or power; i.e., a group who wields authority by the threat of force, usually unlawfully. Gangs, militias, mobs, looters, insurgents, organized or unorganized criminals, and other groups are examples of irregular threats.

Catastrophic: Catastrophic threats can cause mass casualties and, unlike the first two threats, cannot typically be deterred or defended against. Natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, pandemics, and man-made disasters like nuclear meltdowns and wars, oil and chemical spills, dam failures, and chemical and biological weapons are examples of catastrophic threats.

Disruptive: Disruptive threats cause interruptions to public services, utilities, or other systems. Financial and economic collapse, cyber attacks, power and internet outages, fuel shortages, droughts, ice storms and other severe weather events are examples of disruptive events.

And here are a few pieces of advice.

First, start with a scenario. Just like we did in the last module, think of a scenario and then identify all the potential threats and hazards that could exist, whether conventional, irregular, catastrophic or disruptive. And then move onto the next scenario, do the same, and keep going until you exhaust potential scenarios.

Second, be specific. One mistake I see students make is that they’ll write down “gangs” as an irregular threat, which is technically accurate but it’s not specific. It’s best to put down specific gangs, like Nine Trey Bloods, or Uptown Clique, or MS-13, or Latin Kings, or whatever gangs or cartels you might have in your area.

And third, consider the second- and third-order effects. So you have a tornado or hurricane. Could you see irregular threats like looters in your area as a follow-on effect? Could you lose power or water during this event? Those are disruptive threats. One thing we experience here during Hurricane Harvey is that we didn’t have any gasoline or diesel fuel come in for weeks, because everything was being delivered into Houston. So fuel shortages are a disruptive threat.

Go ahead and brainstorm with your group or on your own, using your existing knowledge, and write down every known, suspected, and potential threat for each of the four categories.

And you can pause this module here to complete this step before moving on.

So here’s a short list of some of my own considerations. I’m not concerned about an invading army, but where I live, we could potentially see things like police running checkpoints or possibly enforcing curfews. That’s about the extent to of my concern where I live, but you might have a lot more to worry about.

Under irregular threats, needy families are really going to be among my top concerns. An ad hoc criminal or ad hoc gang is what I call a person or people who are otherwise law-abiding, but are resorting to criminality out of necessity. Ad hoc is a latin term that means out of necessity. And of course, we have out of area criminals, which are a pretty persistent threat. There’s a potential for internally displaced persons or refugees in a Golden Horde scenario pouring out of Houston, Austin, or Dallas. And I know we do have Latin Kings, Aryan Brotherhood, and some other smaller gangs affiliated with Crips and Bloods in my county.

For catastrophic threats, tornadoes and hurricanes, flash flooding are a top concern. Living in Texas, there’s the threat of power outages due to natural disasters, but also I think the United States overall is just going to experience much larger problems with electrical generating capacity. I’m concerned that demand is going to outstrip supply, mainly due to domestic policies, but I’m almost certain this country is going to have major power reliability issues in the years to come. Which, of course, is a huge problem for me in the Texas summers. It’s a big vulnerability for us.

And then we have some pretty routine disruptive threats, but most of this is going back to natural disasters like severe weather.

Once you’ve gotten to this step, go ahead and identify any vulnerabilities you have based on the threats and hazards you’ve just identified.

Now let’s move on and I’ll show you some other ways to identify threats and hazards. We will never achieve a 100% solution, but I want to come at this from a few different angles because I would rather be thorough and document maybe 80-90% of my area’s threats and hazards. Because if I can identify a threat, I can work towards countering it and be prepared for it.

We’ll start with something I call the OE Scan.

In future modules, we’ll talk about the Operational Environment, but we can do what’s called an OE Scan. OE for Operational Environment.

I have six layers of my Operational Environment — physical terrain, human terrain, critical infrastructure, politics and governance, safety, security, and defense, and economics and finance.

Take a few minutes and think about the threats, hazards, and vulnerabilities you have at the political and governance level.

Then think about your human terrain — so the people and demographics of your area. And then critical infrastructure, and then law enforcement, military, and security personnel infrastructure around you, and then finally your local economic and financial conditions. Can you think of any additional threats, hazards, or vulnerabilities that exist here?

We can also look at the area’s flora and fauna, so plants and animals. It’s a good idea to spend a few minutes on Google or another search website and find good sources of information for dangerous plants and animals.

If we’re in a worst case scenario, like a survival situation, and we’re spending a lot more time outside, then obviously we’re going to come into contact with potentially dangerous critters, and so I want to know what plants and animals are gonna get me.

Getting a picture guide to venomous snakes and spiders is a really good idea. Otherwise, let’s think about packs of stray dogs potentially, predators like bears, cats, alligators.

Also look at local insects, especially ticks and mosquitoes. What disease bearing insects do you have, or poisonous or otherwise hazardous insects?

And then local plants, especially a picture book. Some plants are poisonous to humans. Some are poisonous to animals. Let’s document those and put them in our Area Study. If nothing else, I can teach my son or a family member what poison oak looks like and maybe save him some trouble.

Next is Medical Hazards. This is a big one because with all the illegal immigration, people are bringing all sorts of bugs and diseases with them. Measles and stuff that’s been eradicated for decades or a hundred years are popping up now, and it could become a very serious issue.

These are emerging medical hazards, so stuff that’s not been around, now popping up. We call this an emerging threat as opposed to a persistent threat. Persistent medical hazards, things that are persistent and routine at this point, so the cold and flu, bronchitis, stomach bugs, etc.

I bring this up because some diseases are more common in certain places, and I think it’s just a good idea to get a baseline for what we can expect in any given year.

This is another area where it pays to know people in the medical field, especially if that local nurse or doctor can tell you what they’re actually seeing, as opposed to what the CDC is putting out. It’s always good to get that ground zero perspective, plus they may be able to alert you to some novel virus or communicable illness with some time to react before it’s too late.

And then finally CBRNE, which is an acronym that stands for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive.

Typically when we talk about CBRNE, we talking about weaponized substances. So biological or chemical warfare, but a lot this stuff may already exist in your community.

One guy I did an Area Study for had some chemical facilities near him. Obviously a leak or an explosion is going to affect him, a lot like that East Palestine trail derailment in Ohio. If you live near rail lines that transport chemicals, then you should add this to your list of scenarios. Not that it’s particularly likely, but you should at least be aware and maybe plan for that contingency.

Nuclear power plants, chemical facilities, bio labs, munitions factories or depots — identify your level of risk if you live near any of these places.

And a good resource for that is your local fire department.

Which brings me to the next point here. There’s a good chance that your county has an Hazards Mitigation Plan, or something like that. Your county or region’s emergency management agency has almost certainly conducted a study of the hazards in your county. And in most cases, that document is available for you to download. Just do a search for your county and hazards plan. You may have to use a couple other terms, like hazards mitigation or all-hazards, but there’s a really good chance you can find it in the first few search results.

If you can’t find it online, then call up your county Emergency Management office and see how you can get a copy.

This is going to tell you what your county is prepared for in theory and what hazards they deem most significant. It’s a really good starting point, but as with anything that comes from the government, do your own homework.

And lastly, on a more serious note, let’s about foreign threats. Around 2018, the National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy started admitting that the U.S. homeland is no longer a sanctuary. They can reach out and touch us, and they have, and it will almost certainly get a lot worse before it gets any better.

In December 2020, the U.S. Army started warning in a public, unclassified document that foreign adversaries like China would “subject the Continental U.S. homeland… to anti-access (A2) efforts by conventional and unconventional means, including but not limited to cyber attacks, fomenting protests, and criminal activity.”

That report continues: “Adversaries will use sophisticated ISR, so Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance networks to target both military installations and soft targets associated with friendly forces, including private sector organizations, civilian infrastructure, institutional Army and joint targets, space capabilities, and service members’ families.”

And this is not a hair on fire, the world is ending YouTube channel, this is quoted directly from an Army report.

Realistically, we should be considering the domestic effects of a war with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, maybe some other people, in the not too distant future. Right now, the inside the beltway defense establishment view is that war with China could happen in 2027, some say as soon as 2025. So this is worth our time.

We know that an overseas war with China or Russia, first of all, it probably wouldn’t be against just one. I think war with either is probably World War 3 against them all. And that means that we’re going to feel the effects domestically: not just supply chain and economically, but cyber attacks, domestic sabotage, civil unrest, major and wide scale disruption. It’s going to be pretty painful.

The question is how will you be affected in your AO? The first thing I’m considering in my Area Study is my proximity to strategic targets. Any military or government installations associated with space programs, communications, or intelligence, and then military sealift, airlift, submarine bases. Scientific and technological research facilities like Oak Ridge or any of the national laboratories, and major critical infrastructure for power, communications, and information.

And then consider your proximity to symbolic targets. If you were a country like Russia or China and you were targeting the morale of the American people, what could you potentially destroy? Or what is a symbol of American power.

I’ll tell you, they could probably get away with bringing down the Washington Monument, but they better not touch a George Floyd statue.

And then there are 16 critical infrastructure sectors, according to the Department of Homeland Security. We’ll go through these, and then just consider if you have any of these facilities in your area. Judge your hazards and vulnerabilities.

The 16 critical infrastructure sectors are:

– Chemical

– Commercial Facilities

– Communications

– Critical Manufacturing

– Dams

– Defense Industrial Base

– Emergency Services

– Energy

– Financial Services

– Food & Agriculture

– Government Facilities

– Healthcare

– Information Technology

– Nuclear Materials

– Transportation

– Waste & Wastewater

If you know that you live near any of these places, then you need to determine your risk if these places are targeted. That may be a cyber attack, domestic sabotage, targeting of key personnel, or possibly conventional attacks against these facilities.

If you don’t know whether or not you live near any of these places, then we’ll talk a lot more about this during the Operational Environment modules. For now, do two things. First, start asking around among trusted individuals who would know. Second, you can use online resources. I’ve provided a list of websites and databases you can use you to aid your search.

By this point, you should have a hefty list of threats, hazards, and vulnerabilities. These are things we need to prepare for because this is where the risk is.

But how do we determine our risk? In the next module, we’ll go over threat analysis and risk assessment for your local area.