Yesterday in New York and New Jersey we experienced the strang
The olfactory mystery in the New York region was matched by strange activity elsewhere. In Austin, Tex., police cordoned off 10 blocks of the downtown business district early yesterday after more than 60 birds were found dead overnight along Congress Avenue, which leads to the State Capitol.Air testing there failed to find a cause, but preliminary results determined that people were not at risk. In New York, the piercing odor was the talk of Manhattan, and it called to mind another mystery: the maple syrup odor that people reported smelling on separate days in late 2005 and whose source has never been established. In yesterday’s case, several people said they were overcome by the odor.
I hope alarm bells are sounding in guts all along the Eastern corridor inside those who are responsible for protecting the well-being of millions of people. New Yorkers are famous for shrugging things off and getting on with the business of living. Today, unlike back in 2005 when we let the “maple syrup” odor pass without a second thought in our busy lives — we need to recognize there is a pattern here that deserves — nay, demands — public inspection and immediate discourse and transparency from those who are vested in protecting the public interest.
Are we being subjected to Bioterrorist test attacks or not?
For the cautious among us, we cannot deny these “strange odors” appear to be a test — a precursor if you will — of the feasibility of a Bioterrorism attack on New York City and other major cities and the media are doing all the results testing for the rogues who are putting these “smells” into the air.
The media then broadcast the results of the “smell test” by mapping all the calls to 9-11 and the Department of Health across the city. The pattern of exposure is precise and undeniable. The print media pinpoint where the smell was strongest and where people were sickest and how effectively the smell touched certain areas across the urban landscape.
Meanwhile, the local government makes excuses for the smells and shrugs their shoulders and tells us to move on and go back into the evacuated Macy’s department store and stalled PATH trains and emptied schools because you can “close the windows” inside a structure better than you can hold your nose outside on the street.
We all remember the Al-Qaeda plot to blow up entire apartment buildings in big cities by “cutting the gas lines” and making those housing structures giant bombs exploding in neighborhoods.
Yesterday’s gas smell is a direct threat to our national welfare and our personal safety and it must be taken seriously by the international community because there have been two “smell tests” in New York City in the last year and both were wildly successful.
The next logical step in this sort of plot is for a real Bioterror agent to be released in New York City — but next time the silent killer will not have an odor and we’ll be picking up dead bodies in the street instead of shrugging our shoulders and scratching our heads and wondering what happened.