The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11 can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the plane was being hijacked, and that they would eventually be released. That stopped working on the 3rd (edit: 4th) plane. I don't see how it would work again. Passengers now default to assuming there's no path to live other than fighting back. Meaning many of the measures we still take aren't…
20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
101–110 of 969 posts
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles…
Wouldnt that also equip many attackers with better skills?
I Russia, despite a nominal ban, you can buy a gun on the vegetable market, but nobody seem to be going, and shooting people out of a sudden other that 2-3 freak accidents per year.
Being murdered in a banal armed robbery is a by far bigger risk.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. It's not a 9/11-style attack we need to be worried about. No one will let a plane get commandeered ever again. The 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the "comply with the hijackers" policy in place at the time. That opportunity ended the moment the second plane hit the towers. The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack tha…
> The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.
Maybe because your base assumption is wrong: there are not many of them.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#104And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter. Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships. It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire on an hijacked civilian plane. That's th…
Oh, and only one of these things will be heading for Congress potentially.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. It's not a 9/11-style attack we need to be worried about. No one will let a plane get commandeered ever again. The 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the "comply with the hijackers" policy in place at the time. That opportunity ended the moment the second plane hit the towers. The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack tha…
> The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.
I've certainly never met any neo-Nazis. Not to say they don't exist, but if they are truly as common as I've been told, I think I'd have encountered some.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles…
Wouldnt that also equip many attackers with better skills?
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles…
Im in favor of people concealed carrying for this exact reason...distributed security works better than slow centralized security and a vulnerable public. Obviously this doesnt work for a plane though. Fully expect to get downvoted for this on HN...because its HN.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Im in favor of people concealed carrying for this exact reason...distributed security works better than slow centralized security and a vulnerable public. Obviously this doesnt work for a plane though. Fully expect to get downvoted for this on HN...because its HN.
So if I want to create real mayhem I just need to have two suicide attackers starting a firefight in roughly opposite directions in a crowded open place and wait for dozens of bystanders to join in?
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles…
>> military training/civil service mandatory. >> Basic combat training and paramedic abilities Those are very different things. Not every soldier is taught hand-to-hand combat. Not every civil service volunteer is taught to handle a weapon. And basic first aid training is almost universal already. More lives could probably be saves by everyone being trained in basic mental health and de-escalation techniques.
Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cockpits are now locked by default, so there's no terrorist getting in there anymore, they can threaten anything, all it would do is divert to closest landing spot.
Yes, and this is why crazy pilots suffering from depression can bury their planes in the ground and nobody can do anything about it. 200 people lost their life in the crash of Germanwings 9525 on March 24, 2015, but this is not classified as a terrorist attack so it doesn't really count for anything. However, it is the direct consequence of the so-called security procedures implemented the world over; those 200 peopl…