Terror Level Orange (and rising?)

[Sucumbio]

I guess I didn't have to wait until the new year after all for something "big" to hit home.

Now it's a bit early at this stage, but here's a few news links if you're not up on your current events.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/12/25/airliner.firecrackers/index.html

substory: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/26/airline.attack/index.html​

substory: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/27/airline.attack.qanda/index.html​

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/12/27/airline.attack.security/index.html

http://themoderatevoice.com/57133/d...signal-new-threat-and-new-terrorist-techique/

This is some serious stuff, folks. After all those years of posturing and fear-mongering by the Bush administration, what have we learned? That we're still not safe! Sure, these planes took off from International locations, as opposed to right on our soil, but still... does this mean we're going to have to personally man every airport in the world? We've seen how declaring a global "war" on terrorism has worked out, it's not feasible, it's way costly, and frankly a dumb idea. So too would even trying to police the world's airports, not to mention the number of country's government that would NOT just sit by while we waltz in to hold everyone up for 20 hours for background checks and screenings and luggage checks, "is that deodorant? Sorry it contains alcohol which can be used to ignite... something." Seriously, there is a line drawn already which cannot be crossed despite our own domestic policies trampling all over it (Patriot Act comes to mind); we tried w/the War on Terror, and failed, got stopped after just TWO countries, which we're STILL IN! I mean c'mon, Bush, your math wasn't that bad, was it? That's a mere fraction of the world.

So what CAN we do? Lump it?

My solution: Eliminate International Flights to/from the US. At least for now. Shipments will have be done by boat. I won't discount the importance of international trade. source

I will however suggest that for now, anyway, it's a matter of national security that all international flights to and from the US be grounded until further notice. No passengers. No trade.

"That means you're giving in to the terrorists!"

NO! That's not it at all. It's literally delusional to think that this didn't happen, because it did! So "giving in" is automatic. In the short term. You HAVE to first admit it happened, then you have to proceed with a rebuilding of your defensive strategy to prevent it from happening again.

The only way I see this as being possible, albeit an extreme solution, is to ground inbound/outbound international flights, until we've come up with a VIABLE solution to the threat of these flights containing people, persons, or items that can be used to inflict terror.

Prove me wrong, PG. Show me why this isn't a good choice. Why it's too extreme. Better still, come up with something better, even MORE effective. Just remember, what we need is two things. An immediate answer to this recent rash of terror plots. A long-term solution that abates said plots. And one that does not involve going to War w/the world, cause we already know that doesn't work.

Go.

 

[Eor]

Before I respond I'm going to assume one thing. I assume that the date international flights won't happen will be announced beforehand, so people travelling on vacation or on buisness and so forth won't wake up and find out they're banned from re-entering the united states, and flight companies won't have to cancel and refund thousands of tickets to and from the united states. If you wouldn't agree with that...well I won't throw in arguments against it here unless you do say you disagree with that because it's pretty obvious why that's not good.

Thing is, let's look at the last several years of terrorist attempts on planes in America. Now I'm going off the top of my head in this, but in the last 10 years, there have been four. 9/11, Shoe Bomber, the planned attempt to detonate planes from UK to America over the Atlantic, and the Underwear bomber. That is four attempts that have at least reached the stage where it possibly could of worked.

Now for 9/11, there were four planes hijacked. In the 2006 transatlantic plot, there were 10 planned planes. The shoe bomber and underwear bomber targeted one plane. So in the last ten years, 16 planes were targeted for terrorist attacks in a plan that was past simple planning.

Now, from what I have researched, there are roughly 28,537 Commerical flights in the United States per day (not including private or supply planes). Of those, about 5,525 are international flights leaving from America. I couldn't find one that included international flights to America, but I'll just leave those out and use 5,525.

A year is 365 days. This means that per year, 2,016,625 planes arrive in the United States. So in the last 10 years, about 20,166,250 international flights arrived in America. Now while the 9/11 attacks were on domestic flights, I'll just add them to international flights to make this easier.

So in the last 10 years, 16 flights were targeted for terrorist attacks. There were 20,166,250 international flights (actually more in we included flights to America instead of just those leaving). Which means that about 0.0007934% of all international planes are at risk.

Add in the economic loss that America would have from closing our planes. While we could still ship in/out goods/people, ships are not nearly as fast as planes, and most companies use planes to transport goods because it's faster. Our economy is incredibly fluid and fast paced, the quicker the better. Also trade going to places other then our coast would have the extra fees/time required to unload the goods from the boat, then either load them into trucks or domestic planes to fly to wherever they're needed in the country. Add in the loss the economy would get from tourists, and closing international flights would hurt our country much worse then a terrorist attack.

Plus if we close international flight then there wouldn't be anything stopping them from just blowing up ships. Since ships take longer, and have more privacy, they'd be able to have multiple people have multiple "small" parts for whatever bomb they want to build, then just construct them in their private dorms to blow up ships. Or they would just land in America and attack other things.

For any sort of plan against terrorists, we don't really need anything more then what we have. Any answer I'd give would be more about war and diplomacy in the Middle East, but that's a pretty different topic.

 

[Sucumbio]

Before I respond I'm going to assume one thing. I assume that the date international flights won't happen will be announced beforehand, so people travelling on vacation or on buisness and so forth won't wake up and find out they're banned from re-entering the united states, and flight companies won't have to cancel and refund thousands of tickets to and from the united states. If you wouldn't agree with that...well I won't throw in arguments against it here unless you do say you disagree with that because it's pretty obvious why that's not good.

Yeah, that's a fair assumption.

...

about 0.0007934% of all international planes are at risk.

This is very true. The risk is very small when considering how many flights are involved. This would tell me that ALL flights may be a bit harsh. Perhaps there could be a way to truncate the number of airline nodes that to-America flights may originate? This would probably clog like heck the 2 or 4 airports that could be used, Heathrow, for example, lots of flights already come from there, but to make all EU flights first have to land there, then onto the US would seem safer, but may be logistically impossible.

Add in the economic loss that America would have from closing our planes. While we could still ship in/out goods/people, ships are not nearly as fast as planes, and most companies use planes to transport goods because it's faster. Our economy is incredibly fluid and fast paced, the quicker the better. Also trade going to places other then our coast would have the extra fees/time required to unload the goods from the boat, then either load them into trucks or domestic planes to fly to wherever they're needed in the country. Add in the loss the economy would get from tourists, and closing international flights would hurt our country much worse then a terrorist attack.

Well ok, to be fair all fights period were grounded after 9/11 and for a short period. This period would have to be no more than 4 or 5 days, a week, tops before it did have serious impact. We'd have to work quickly to institute whatever plan we would, be it a truncation of the international airline node system, the setting up of extra support personnel at international airports... whatever it is we could do.

Plus if we close international flight then there wouldn't be anything stopping them from just blowing up ships. Since ships take longer, and have more privacy, they'd be able to have multiple people have multiple "small" parts for whatever bomb they want to build, then just construct them in their private dorms to blow up ships. Or they would just land in America and attack other things.

So you're saying ships are not as safe as planes? That's funny cause my whole idea was that ships were safer than planes. I guess you're right though, despite that they move slower and cannot be used as missiles, they can harbor more people on them who would be terrorists. Whatever things we may institute to make international flight safer, would probably have to be done on ships too, only on an even larger scale. Good call.

For any sort of plan against terrorists, we don't really need anything more then what we have. Any answer I'd give would be more about war and diplomacy in the Middle East, but that's a pretty different topic.

Eh, well this I think is bad, cause doing nothing means we're still at risk, and the point was to eliminate risk altogether, but perhaps what you're really saying is that there IS no eliminating risk 100%, that no matter what we do, we may still get attacked, and we just have to deal with it? That's depressing, lol but I can admit it's probably true.

As it turns out not long after I made this post a local company to my home town who builds full body scanners got a giant order in to place their products in airports all over the place. These body scanners have been the point of some scrutiny in the media due to a privacy rights issue. Would you consider this "doing more" than what we're already doing? I do, but I'd like your take on it, and if you think it's really a violation of civil rights. Honestly, I don't mind them scanning my junk, lol it's all for safety and I for one would rather strip naked and have a finger up my *** than board a plane that might blow up mid-air or be used as a missile to topple a sky scraper.

Thanks for the reply btw, I think at the time I felt a lot more vehemently about this issue, but thankfully the assessment at the time was inaccurate, they'd been saying this was the start of a bunch of attacks to come, but it's turned out to be nothing special.

 

[Eor]

Well how could we possibly eliminate risk 100%? There's risk every day, I mean driving a car is incredibly risky, but you can't decide to not drive/get in one because of it (well you can, but it'd be much harder to get around). Terrorism doesn't even have to be from outside the United States, I mean if you do a look for terrorist attacks in America the majority of them are not targeting planes and are from people who are from America, who do things like bomb a building (Oklahoma City Bombing) or just decide to do a mass shooting (Fort Hood, plus like a dozen others). Best we can do is minimize the risk, but I don't see any way to remove that risk from Terrorism. I mean even if we find a way to stop all terrorist attacks on planes they'll just attack other things, like subways (London Bombings) or buses, or places where people congregate or things like that.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

I'm glad you've calmed down Sucumbio. Banning flights would be insane! The damage to trade and the world economy would be horrendous. I think before we any large solution to the problem of terrorism, we need to do some kind of cost-benefit analysis. Otherwise we'd do something that'd cost WAY too much and infringe on personal rights AND wouldn't deliver.

I think the best solution would be to bump up security a bit. And don't do anything too major like invading a country or something. I think full-body scanners are okay, but they do pose a few invasion of privacy problems. I honestly don't want random security officers to see what I wouldn't show my friends. I'd honestly prefer just a lot of pat-downs... And how good are these full-body scanners?

Also I think we should sort out the lack of communication between government departments. That'd be a big help. That way the CIA would actually provide information that could be used on the ground. This could have stopped the most recent terrorist attack (which I will dub "the underpants bomber"), and the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Tightening border security may be useful, especially as the 9/11 incident happened because the terrorists were let into the USA first. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the some of 9/11 hijackers didn't have correct visas, so making sure that you actually adhere to our security guidelines would be very good. That'd actually prevent most of the attacks.

 

[KrazyGlue]

I agree that banning all international flights would be ridiculous. I'm all for upping security (to a certain degree), but not allowing people to go on vacations/business trips/diplomatic or charitable missions/whatever to other countries is a terrible idea.

Eor is right, the risk is very small. All we need to do is not make boneheaded mistakes like letting that Nigerian man on the plane when HIS OWN FATHER TRIED TO TURN HIM IN.

By the way, if you don't know the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8431470.stm

I think full-body scans would help; they're nice and quick and they can check for bombs hidden under various clothing garments.

 

[Sucumbio]

yeah I've calmed down, lol... I was pretty heated, but in retrospect we've come a LONG way, from when a handful of planes got taken off our own soil to be used as missiles vs a shoe guy and now an underpants guy... these full body deals would be more than enough to appease my sense of vulnerability.

 

[Riddle]

Full body checks seem like a good idea for security.

Disclaimer: I think terrorism is awful

The thing about terrorism is that very few people die from it. Terrorism is waaaay down there on the list of death causes. Why does our country care so much about terrorism and so little about heart disease then? Because terrorism evokes a strong emotional response. You hear about the deaths from terrorism. These are innocent people who weren't meant to die yet and they died because of an act of violence. You don't hear about people who die from heart disease or cancer and blood clots and mutated and rapidly reproducing cells just don't ilicit nearly as much sympathy as terrorism does.

So while we should obviously do all we can to prevent terrorism there is no need to overreact.

 

[Omnicron's Baklava Enterprises]

Full body checks seem like a good idea for security.

Disclaimer: I think terrorism is awful

The thing about terrorism is that very few people die from it. Terrorism is waaaay down there on the list of death causes. Why does our country care so much about terrorism and so little about heart disease then? Because terrorism evokes a strong emotional response. You hear about the deaths from terrorism. These are innocent people who weren't meant to die yet and they died because of an act of violence. You don't hear about people who die from heart disease or cancer and blood clots and mutated and rapidly reproducing cells just don't ilicit nearly as much sympathy as terrorism does.

So while we should obviously do all we can to prevent terrorism there is no need to overreact.

Terrorism indeed does evoke strong emotional responces, especially ever since disasters such as the Jakarta Bombings, the London Subway Bombings, and the World Trade Centre Bombings. However, one of the reasons terrorism evokes such a powerful responce is primarily because of the media continuously reporting upon it. Something about the murder, brutal or quick, of other humans instils profound fear within many of us. For reasons overall unknown, diseases that kill millions of people do not strike us as terrifying; my prediction being because diseases do not involve moral issues, whereas humans killing each other does. Terrorist attack also point out the flaws of a country's transportation system; a breach of the safety. I know that the bombings of the World Trade Centre caused a hysteria within some Middle Eastern countries, because it was the felling of a symbol of Capitalism, and the felling of the symbol of an enemy country. Diseases causing death do not make the country out to be a bad place, as disease occurs everywhere. Again, terrorism occurs in certain places.
Away from that, though.

I agree that there is no need to overreact to terrorism, it occurs in minimal amounts compared to other causes of death. I believe that because of overreactions, we can become vulnerable in certain spots of transportation. The paranoia that some countries have over protecting their transportation systems may reveal vulnerabilities to potential terrorists. Although such things like the bombings stated above are thought to never occur again due to security measures, one never knows. Firstly, there are the ones that are paranoid of terrorism, and end up taking extended measures in order to protect a certain place. Secondly, there are ones who heed not much attention to terrorism, and think themselves safe when travelling through an airport/train station/subway, and thinking such may end up having the Law of Unintended Consequences carry out the task. Measures must be taken, but without panic.