Are you smarter than a terrorist?

Factual Questions
1

Having accidentally resurrected an old thread on metal detectors, I got to thinking about the plots we’ve seen recently. Limiting the discussion to jihadists operating against America, the plots seem to be variations on one or two core plans. Blow something up (particularly airplanes), or shoot a bunch of people. Die in the process.

I understand the martyrdom thing, and I guess you don’t get any extra virgins if you stick around to commit a few more acts of violence. Maybe that explains it. Life’s probably not so great for those folks anyway.

To me, someone who has no violent ambitions, this seems remarkably inefficient. If the goal is truly to strike fear, or do economic damage to undermine our war-making capabilities, why is there so little variation? They’ve ruined air travel for most of us, and they’ve helped to ensure that a huge amount of your paycheck goes towards bombs and spies, but was that their goal?

It seems to me that a month of travel expenses for one person, a cutting torch, and some late night visits to car and railroad bridges and power stations could do near-9/11 damages to us economically. Kidnapping one child of a deep-sea drone operator could cripple our communications. Following the example of an 84 year old nun could result in the first dirty bomb exploding on American soil.

Maybe stomping out liberties here and abroad is the exact opposite of what we need to do to solve the terrorism problem.

I thought of two of those examples in the last five minutes. Can you think of any? It’s an interesting exercise, and I think that publishing a very long list of plausible terrorist plots could ultimately be good for America.

This is a group of smart people, so is anyone up for hatching some evil plots to help stretch the resources for American security theater past the breaking point?

2

Obviously, I’m from America (you know, the important part), but this also applies to the UK and any other country in which overreacting to terrorism is worth a few points politically.

3

I really wish I could edit posts after five minutes. :smack:

I see the USA-centric viewpoint in my posts (which we are raised to have, it’s true). I tried to address it with a bit of irony, but this kind of thing is having a huge impact on many other countries, particularly in Europe. I don’t want to alienate anyone.

I hope somebody comes along and helps me out of my flustered state. Think about how vulnerable we really are, and how little it (statistically speaking) has impacted you. I’m just trying to have a little fun and enlist a skeptical audience in shutting down these constant attempts to take power by appealing to fear. There’s a good topic here.

4

Moderator Action

Welcome to the SDMB, PotatOS.

Please note that we do not allow discussions that, in our opinion, encourage illegal acts. While you may be actually trying to discourage terrorist acts, trying to create a list of terrorist ideas is a little too much of a “how to” guide for terrorists.

Thread closed.