The lead story on Melbourne news this morning was “America fearful as threat of further terrorist action revealed” It was no. 1 story last night too.
I tune in to the Boards today to check how my Doper friends are handling it, possibly to offer support, see if there’s any new stories breaking.
Not a sausage. The thread from the other day on this issue has vanished. The front page of current threads includes one-eyed creatures, deodorant stains and egg-salad sandwich recipes. Not a word about vigilance, Halloween threats, nothing.
I suppose I should be relieved.
I would love to believe Dopers have amazing sang-froid, but I suspect the reason for the silence is more that the threat is not as major as our newscasts implied. Although it was the FBI.
What’s the story guys?
(And of course, this comes with very supportive wishes - I know it’s a tough time for your country at the moment, even on the good days.)
well, to be honest, we either live in fear everyday and overload our selves on Paxil and Prozac or we get on with our lives. I have never lived in fear and I do not plan on it right now. I am a first year teacher at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast USA. I am not about to have the kids I am teaching see any sort of concerned look on my face for anything. They are there to learn and I am there to teach. I am psyched you are concertned, well so am I, for all those who may lose their lives in a terror attack that may or may not happen. But this is a time to be alert, vigilant and happy, [if you can beleive it]. Happiness is a way of life you see, and I’ll be damned if any threat will keep me from losing that faith in the unknown, or that faith in the future of my happiness.
Oh, yeah, I think it’s safe to say we’re talking about it. I’m up here near Seattle(can we say LOTS of targets here), and work for a big plane company(yeah, that one), and it’s on pretty much everybody’s mind. Problem is, what do you do with what’s essentially useless information? I mean, we don’t have bomb shelters in our backyards anymore, I never see a test of the EBS(Emergency Broadcast System), and similar Cold War preparations don’t seem to be of much use.
We don’t have any specific threat. How in the heck do you prepare for that?
I compare it to the big earthquake we had on Feb 28 - you find yourself sorta, I don’t know, listening for the aftershocks. What else ya gonna do?
I think it’s because we have amazing sang-froid, if I ever find out what that means.
I was taught very early in life not to fear the unknown. We can’t look for a boogey man behind every bush. And we can’t live our lives being fearful of what may or may not happen.
Yup, I’m in Seattle at the UW, and my choices are either hide under my bed or try to get my degree.
It’s also dissipated a little. For a week afterwards, I would cringe whenever I heard a siren or jet, but I’ve eased up now. Only time will tell if that’s a good thing or not.
Yes, I’m worried. When I go into Manhattan, I feel extra-worried. But what am I gonna do about it? There’s nothing I can do. So I just go about my business.
Threat my ass. 9/11 deserves (grudging) credit as a tactical operation, but, aking to that science fiction story where the outcome of a global conflict is changed by getting one guy names Sebatinsky to change his name to Zebatinsky, or Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star and preserving the Rebel Alliance by shooting one tiny little salvo down one little vent, the tactician’s applause is for accomplishing so much destruction with so little to work with.
I think it unlikely that they can put together a string of such incredible accomplishments, and they’d have to, since they still don’t have much to work with.
Anthrax–assuming it’s them, which wasn’t at all my original assumption–wasn’t bad from a tactical standpoint either, since it seems to have half the damn country running around like headless chickens and gulping down Cipro, but (again, if it is indeed the same folks) it underlines the weakness of what they have to work with. Anthrax isn’t particularly contagious, it isn’t difficult to deal with pharmaceutically, and it isn’t a rapid and lethal killer. It seems unlikely that they would lead off with pitiful little Anthrax if they have Smallpox or Whooping Cough or Bubonic Plague or even the Measles available instead.
If they were some sort of admirable underdog freedom fighters taking on the Evil Amerikan Empire, the world would celebrate the notch they carved in our butts, but they aren’t; we as a country are no worse than Microsoft at our most imperialistic, and the fundamentalist militant jingos that constitute Al Qaeda are sure the fuck not freedom fighters.
And I betcha they can’t do it again, and meanwhile America is…
America is a huge ungainly Mack truck. America is beginning to commence to start to initiate the protocols that will kick off the process by which we dip our toe into the endeavor known as war. Our resources aren’t geared towards it yet, but we have phenomenal resources and they will be geared towards it. Our military has good technology but has a certain flabbiness of strategic focus, an ungainly hybrid of cold-war think-tanking and localized police-action quick-fixeries. But we have an astonishing depth of talent to draw upon. Our citizenry is mellow and accustomed to rare and short-lived military escapades with sharply defined parameters, but we have a popular culture that has conditioned us to tuning in to each other in a mass sense, and there is a large groundswell of support for rolling up our sleeves and doing what’s gotta be done and doing it right and for keeps. (We have low tolerance for blundering planners and politicos who have no goals and no strategy, but that can be a good thing here, too). Ever seen a big diesel get going? It doesn’t seem to be making any appreciable progress at first; it isn’t fast off the blocks; but it gains speed and gains speed and gains speed and its rate of acceleration doesn’t fade off as it goes. And the momentum of the big rig once it really gets rolling is something to inspire some awe. America is in first gear. Y’all watch, now.
Well, Redboss, you gotta remember, too, what a big place this is, in terms of sheer size. I live in Central Illinois, about in the center of the continent, so not only is there a tremendous physical distance from the shouts and cries emanating from New York and D.C., but also psychologically it’s on the other side of the world from the fretful East Coast and the gonzo West Coast.
And the Better Half is a letter carrier, so yeah, I think about anthrax–but not a lot. I shrug. “What can you do?” Nothing. I get on with my life and its endless minutiae. For example, tomorrow is Halloween. I have to remember to obtain some kind of sugary bribe to hand out to strangers to keep them from heaving my front porch bench over the railing into the flowerbeds. How many bags should I get? Like that.
And from the Department of Silver Linings comes this: a lot fewer people are planning on going trick-or-treating this year, so maybe this is the death knell for what had already become a thoroughly ridiculous and illogical custom. Thank you, Osama Bin Laden.
Sang-froid, french for cool self-possessed calm, I suppose. Literally “cold blood”, but without the “heartless” connotation. Didn’t mean to be obscure.
I’m glad you’re not all freaking out. What you have said is impressive, and you have my respect in these diffcult times.
If international news reports and well-respected American intelligence analysts speaking on condition of anonymity are credible enough for you, I would be concerned about these loons detonating a 10-kiloton warhead in one or more of of our cities.
In the nuclear age, a string of successes isn’t necessary. Just one will do it.
I don’t think they would’ve wasted their first wad on kamikaze runs at the WTC towers if they had Hiroshima-sized (or larger) nukes lined up to play with. Instead of a pair of missing skyscrapers, we’d be looking at a missing Lower Manhattan.
We should be vigilant, of course, but the flip side of that is, gee, we’re (more) vigilant now! It is harder to pull off something that would’ve been comparatively easier to pull on us prior to 9/11!
At this point I’m almost more afraid of copycat and other opportunistic me-too assholes deciding that now would be a good time to do their debut as the Symbionese Liberation Army of the 00’s.
I think you got the first example wrong, AHunter. The story is by Asimov and is named Spell My Name With An S, because the person changed his name from Zebatinsky to Sebatinsky. I could have the names wrong, I’m using your example, but I know he went from a Z to an S, not the other way around.
Very good post overall, though. I just had to get in my SF geek nitpick.
Well, I’ll amend that to “AMERICAN MASS MEDIA are fearful…” etcetera. They’re doing their best to create a crisis / panic mentality, but nobody I know is going for it.
Any day now one of these anchors is going to crack. They’re going to go wild-eyed and cry into the camera, “Aren’t you people listening? Why aren’t you terrified yet?”
No worries here in Colorado. I am a nobody, work out of my home so I am home about 98% of my days.
I am more likely to get killed in a car accident than I am to be subjected to terrorism. The only (minor) concern I would consider is that I have three military bases and one is serious high security even in the nicest of times, NORAD and the Air Force Academy. I 'spose that if a terrorist were really out to do some major f***** up damage, they would attempt to hit NORAD and Shriever AFB with some serious weapons of some kind.
It’s highly unlikely but as others have said, we go about our lives. Many of us aren’t anywhere near the anthrax issues, WTC or the Pentagon.
They say it’s possible that something is bound to happen within the week but we have to go on about our lives and keep the economy going. If we all sat in our living rooms 24/7 and refused to go to work, purchase our goods, get haircuts, etc…then the terrorists have succeeded.
Don’t ever think that the images of WTC aren’t burned in the back of every American brain. We were shocked worse than anything our country has ever seen but I think that the great majority of Americans will continue to live life with the understanding that our lives may forever be threatened but we refuse to bow down to terrorism.
Well… although I live in northwest Indiana I work in the Chicago Loop (for those of you not famillar with Chicago - that’s the part of the city with the really tall buildings). I open my bosses’ mail. I was told NOT to wear the t-shirt with the bull’s eye on it to work.
Yeah, I’m checking out the envelopes before I open the mail but I’m not putting on a hazmat suit before doing so - if I get something full of white powder the company will test it and I’ll get some free antibiotics in the meanwhile. If I develop nasty skin sores or pneumonia-like symptoms I’ll go to a doctor but I can’t shake in terror all day. For us ordinary citizens who aren’t directly involved in fighting the Bad Guys about the only thing we can do is to go about living as normally as possible and keep the country running.
I check into the news a couple times a day, but to be honest, if something Bad happened we’d know about it. I wasn’t listening to the TV or radio on September 11, but I knew about the first WTC crash within 5 minutes of the occurance. If one of the big buildings downtown gets hit I’m sure we’ll all know about it more or less immediately. I know where the emergency exit is for the building I work in and aside from running like hell if the worst happens there really isn’t anything more I can do.
I’m also a pilot, so indulging my favorite vice on the weekends is getting a little complicated. Where I can and can’t take a plane changes every day. Yesterday they ordered us to stay clear of all nuclear power plants - gotta get that navigational map out and draw more circles around spots that are off-limits. Last weekend I wanted to take a short trip to a favorite breakfast spot and had to replot my course twice due to new off-limits areas. It’s annoying on one level. On the other hand, given the circumstances, it’s an annoyance I can live with. It could be worse - there are folks who’d like to ground all general aviation for good (like the mayor of Chicago).
Yeah, we all still have trouble sleeping some nights. We’re all a little distracted right now. But London during the Blitz of WWII was far more directly under attack and yet folks kept on with their lives.
Thank you for your support. Our rather perverse media seems to only report those who disagree with us, burn our flag, and scream “death to America!”. And if I hear “anthrax” one more time I’m going to scream.
