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Could British invention foil terror bombs?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#41

Post by GordonS »

wildmusings wrote: post #35
nkozyra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One other difference - at least in terms of perception - is that the threats you listed are relatively static over time. Terrorism is a movement that involves recruitment and contains inherent plans to expand. To be the first to invoke Godwin's here, the Nazis did not statistically represent a significant daily threat to health and safety in 1928, either. Looking at present body counts as a gauge for what's worth "fr…

Exactly, terrorism is a high-variance event and we can't extrapolate that future violence will resemble current violence. A single catastrophic attack, like a nuke in a city, makes everything that happened before irrelevant. 9/11 itself was a huge escalation, the most deadly terrorist attack in history by far. Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They…

> Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They would kill millions of us if they could

This is rather sensationalist. There are infinite ways that anyone with a bit of intelligence could hurt or kill large numbers of people with small arms, explosives, chemicals, vehicles etc - and yet we see time and time again that terrorists usually display extreme incompetence (e.g. underpants bomber). The few terrorists that there are, just aren't very good at it.

The idea of terrorists getting hold of a nuke and actually being able to use it effectively is, frankly, ridiculous.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#42

Post by GordonS »

wildmusings wrote: post #39
sametmax wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but why do we fail to convince ? What can we do to help people not panicking ?

If panic is to be averted, the leadership of the West has to show that they take the problem seriously. As long as people are tiptoeing around even calling the problem what it is, hard-line sentiment will grow. Tony Blair had some good thoughts on this lately: ""The centre has become flabby and unwilling to take people on. We concede far too much. There's this idea that you're part of an elite if you think in terms o…

> Tony Blair had some good thoughts on this lately

Sorry, but Tony Blair is a war criminal - why on earth would anyone care what he has to say?

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#43

Post by GordonS »

gmac wrote: post #37
yoo1I wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If it had been on the doors there, it would have stopped people getting in." Problem? People blowing themselves up on airplanes. Solution: Check them for bombs before they board the airplane. Next Problem? People blowing themselves up in the lines before the bomb check in the airport. Solution: Check people outside the airport. Next Problem? People blowing themselves up in the lines outside the airport Solution: C…

Plan? First, get news media to lift their embargo on trying to understand the motivations of people who perpetrate these awful attacks. Right now, it seems the only acceptable explanation is comic-book evil plus religious prejudice ("they hate our freedoms!"). This is basically a taboo on the application of reason, and we'll get nowhere until it goes away. Second, reflect a little on the possible motivations of these…

The majority of those killed in Iraq were civilians[1]

And that's just Iraq - there is also Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria[2], Somalia...

[1] https://www.iraqbodycount.org

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/us-led-air-stri...

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#44

Post by mseebach »

junto wrote: post #27
mseebach wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that you could deploy this device without having a queue, just a door to slam in the face of a positive detection. Worst case, you need to space people out a bit.

Wherever you have a funnel, you get a queue. You have people standing outside waiting for the bus, smoking a cigarette. People gather and there is nothing that you can do about it.

Then don't have a funnel, or have enough of them. I've never queued, except for maybe the briefest of moments, to enter an airport building, even though you always have to pass through a "funnel" (aka draft-preventing double doors[1]).

Even the narrow automatic one-way sluice doors[2] increasingly popular as you leave the secure area of an airport only ever seem to cause a queue when some idiot tries to go back, and security has to reset them.

When there's a queue at security/immigration it's because the checkpoint is understaffed (or otherwise under-provisioned), not because there's a checkpoint.

1: http://cdn.kone.com/www.kone.co.uk/Images/49562_Entrance_dou...

2: http://www.recorduk.co.uk/images/getImage?t=product&img=imag...

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#45

Post by d4nt »

rayiner wrote: post #20
sametmax wrote: post #3

I find crazy the amount of resources we deploy to fight something: - that causes little deaths compared to most diseases or social issues. - cost little compared to most economical or educational issues. - has little long term consequences on the country compared to internal and external policies, laws, politics and visions; - is a direct consequence of social, economical and educational issues and a by product of po…

People don't view the impact of death merely in terms of body count. If we did, we wouldn't care about serial killers or child abductions or people shot by police. We devote major resources to fighting terrorism not because of the body count, but because we feel it deeply unjust to allow terrorists to kill innocent people to make a political point, especially when that political point is an attack on fundamental prec…

I don't think the parent post was suggesting we don't care about it. Just questioning why we care about it more than, say, serial killers.

> Terrorism isn't just an attack on people; it's intended to be an attack on our institutions and our society.

The fact that you're calling it terrorism instead of murder, and that we're discussing this in the context of an OP about the development of new technologies to detect explosives, shows that it's working.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#46

Post by Zigurd »

rayiner wrote: post #20
sametmax wrote: post #3

I find crazy the amount of resources we deploy to fight something: - that causes little deaths compared to most diseases or social issues. - cost little compared to most economical or educational issues. - has little long term consequences on the country compared to internal and external policies, laws, politics and visions; - is a direct consequence of social, economical and educational issues and a by product of po…

People don't view the impact of death merely in terms of body count. If we did, we wouldn't care about serial killers or child abductions or people shot by police. We devote major resources to fighting terrorism not because of the body count, but because we feel it deeply unjust to allow terrorists to kill innocent people to make a political point, especially when that political point is an attack on fundamental prec…

The way you portray that implies that the public has an undistorted view of the effects of terrorism. In fact, the greater part of the effect is how governments, media, security state vendors, and other profiteers and comp followers shape the impact of terrorist attacks, and echo and amplify the profitable and policy-promoting aspects of those effects. You can launch multi-trillion dollar wars of aggression based on that messaging. It's not "our institutions and society." The people are not represented. They are farmed for profit and kept docile.

The real question is not whether it is irrational to fear terrorism, but, rather, whether the warmongers, snoops and profiteers exploiting terrorist attacks should be heeded, or not.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#47

Post by wildmusings »

GordonS wrote: post #41
wildmusings wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, terrorism is a high-variance event and we can't extrapolate that future violence will resemble current violence. A single catastrophic attack, like a nuke in a city, makes everything that happened before irrelevant. 9/11 itself was a huge escalation, the most deadly terrorist attack in history by far. Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They…

> Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They would kill millions of us if they could This is rather sensationalist. There are infinite ways that anyone with a bit of intelligence could hurt or kill large numbers of people with small arms, explosives, chemicals, vehicles etc - and yet we see time and time again that terrorists usually display extreme in…

It's unlikely that a nuke falls into terrorist hands, but its not unimaginable. Pakistan is a half-failed state with nuclear weapons and it's easy to imagine that government collapsing completely. North Korea is another unpredictable actor. US officials have warned about lax security around smaller nuclear weapons in Russia. You are right that they would face further obstacles in trying to detonate it.

There are many more-likely but still catastrophic scenarios. A bigger Paris/Mumbai-style attack could kill thousands. An attack on the Hoover Dam or a chemical plant could also kill thousands and cause billions of dollars of economic damage.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#48

Post by chopin »

mseebach wrote: post #13
peterclary wrote: post #6

"First, a microscopic amount of Semtex 1A high explosive is dabbed onto a T-shirt. To the naked eye, it is almost invisible - but from a large, red, metal box mounted on a portable steel trolley an ultra-violet laser beam flickers on to the white cotton surface of the garment. Immediately, a warning flashes up on the display monitor." So you would be able to cause disruption AND get innocents locked up by simply cove…

Do you want to see what happens if you slip a big knife into someones carry-on? It's harder than "covertly dabbing" someone, but not impossible. On the other hand, big knifes are substantially easier to get your hands on without drawing attention to yourself than even microscopic amounts of Semtex. Yet, it doesn't happen, so I think we're safe here.

Just use fertilizer. I am pretty sure that will work, too. If not, congratulations, you know now how to defeat the guard.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#49

Post by alan-crowe »

sametmax wrote: post #12
peterclary wrote: post #6

"First, a microscopic amount of Semtex 1A high explosive is dabbed onto a T-shirt. To the naked eye, it is almost invisible - but from a large, red, metal box mounted on a portable steel trolley an ultra-violet laser beam flickers on to the white cotton surface of the garment. Immediately, a warning flashes up on the display monitor." So you would be able to cause disruption AND get innocents locked up by simply cove…

And by spraying markers on a lot of people you can either: - cost a lot of money by forcing events to be cancelled; - enforce more invasive/costly security measures; - diminush the value of the security mesure and pass a bomb in. But this is what's strange with terrorists : they strike ma as utterly incompetents. There is so many easy ways to fuck things up, and they always do the ineficient and hard things. My fathe…

Every-one thinks that they are the good guy. That isn't just a quirk of psychology, it is also a constraint.

People lives their lives according to different narratives. There is a fire-and-sword Muslim narrative, a quiet-life Muslim narrative, various Western narratives. Some-one living their life according to the fire-and-sword Muslim narrative is a bad guy by many other narratives. But that doesn't liberate them to be a bad guy by their own standards. They still have to be the good guy in their own head.

They have to be the hero, not the ass-hole. They cannot just be a nihilist who wrecks stuff to make things miserable for every-one. There has to be a sense that they are a warrior, fighting bad guys.

Perhaps it is as simple as attacking a cafe where they serve alcohol or a venue where the music is haram, or a business district where they charge interest on loans. I don't really get the inner logic, but I'm sure there is one and it constrains the kind of attacks they can make.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#50

Post by kgilpin »

sametmax wrote: post #3

I find crazy the amount of resources we deploy to fight something: - that causes little deaths compared to most diseases or social issues. - cost little compared to most economical or educational issues. - has little long term consequences on the country compared to internal and external policies, laws, politics and visions; - is a direct consequence of social, economical and educational issues and a by product of po…

I live in Boston. I had friends that were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit, then terrorists blew up our marathon and my kids had to stay inside all day during the ensuing manhunt. So that's twice I have been personally affected, and I am really just an ordinary citizen.
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