Keeping The Terrorist Tragedies Of Yesterday From Becoming The Terrorist Catastrophies Of Tomorrow

How the international community deals with future disasters, natural or man-made, is a critical topic of concern to the world.

Regardless of opinions one way or another, there is one thing that I am sure all of us agree on: we need to think about new and better ways to anticipate and prevent disasters and, if the worst still happens, how do we prevent disasters from becoming catastrophes?

Today, we must not only think about the possibility of terrorists using biological, chemical and radiological weapons of mass destruction to intentionally cause disasters that are designed to create catastrophes. There are also natural disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and a potential avian flu pandemic that we must think about.

In the end analysis, the question of what we can do to prevent disasters, whether they are man-made or occur naturally, from escalating to become catastrophes is one of the most important questions of our time. But, much of the work and investments we have made in disaster preparedness can serve us well in anticipating, preventing and mitigating the consequences of both man-made and natural disasters to prevent them from escalating into catastrophes. This includes concerns about the malevolent use of radiological dispersal devices.