Could Another "9/1/1" Take Place In The USA?

[marshmallow]

Totalitarian states can’t prevent terrorist and partisan attacks. No way an open society can either.

[BigT]

It’ll happen, but it will take 100 years. Or, really 86 years, 3 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 3 Hours, and 30 Minutes

[Telemark]

@Llama_Llogophile

You have this backwards. This has been the rule in the U.S. for years, but not in other parts of the world. Though I believe that began to change about ten seconds after the Germanwings crash.

That’s what I intended to say, just worded it a bit awkwardly.

[Guinastasia]

@Urbanredneck

Also in hindsight, it was stupid we let these men take flying lessons when they had no obvious job target and never showed an interest in learning to land the plane.

I think just the fact that anyone of middle east heritage is going to be looked at with caution makes it harder. Its the saying “if you see it, report it”. A couple of years ago a middle eastern man bought a pressure cooker from us at a garage sale and my wife reported it.

:dubious:

What was their reaction?

(If you were that worried, why did you even sell it to him in the first place?) :rolleyes:

[rowrrbazzle]

@Urbanredneck

Also in hindsight, it was stupid we let these men take flying lessons when they had no obvious job target and never showed an interest in learning to land the plane.

I think just the fact that anyone of middle east heritage is going to be looked at with caution makes it harder. Its the saying “if you see it, report it”. A couple of years ago a middle eastern man bought a pressure cooker from us at a garage sale and my wife reported it.

From August 2013: ‘Pressure cooker’ and ‘backpack’ Internet search prompts visit from feds

[cmyk]

@carnivorousplant

An attempt to crash a dung cart into Caesar’s chariot.

Et tu, wagonwheel maker… ET TU?!

[carnivorousplant]

@cmyk

Et tu, wagonwheel maker… ET TU?!

[Duckster]

@Little_Nemo

I’d say the biggest danger would be the sniper scenario. This came up during the DC sniper killings - two people were driving around the Washington area and shooting random people with a rifle.

Now this was just one pair of civilians, traveling in one area, who were caught in less than a month. Imagine how much worse it would be if some terrorist organization gave fifty terrorists some training in evasion and some good resources. Split them up into twenty-five teams and tell them to travel around the country, shooting people at random.

You’d have ten to twenty people getting killed each day and no ready means to stop the attacks. How do you find twenty-five pairs of shooters in an entire country if they have some training and supplies? Even if you do catch some of them, each pair is independent so they can keep operating even when some are stopped. And the terrorist organization can always send new people in.

The result would be you’d have every person in the country living under the fear that they could be killed by terrorists at any moment. People would be afraid to leave their homes. Businesses would shut down. People would stop traveling. There would be dozens of people getting shot because they acted suspicious in some way.

@Gray_Ghost

I can see this, but with bombs, not rifles. It has to be somewhat tougher to do this than you’d think, or someone would have done it by now. My money was on the Serbs in 1999, and yet it never happened. Good thing.

I used to believe this scenario, too, but there is an easier method with greater impact.

Just take out the (electrical) grid. There are a number of choke points around the country. Take those out and everything stops. No telecommunications, no commerce, no air travel, no oil, no internet. Just enough so that repairs will take weeks. That’s enough time to destroy the US economy.

[Senegoid]

@OldGuy

The OP was referring to either Sept 1, 1 or Jan 9, 1. (or possibly Jan 1, 9)
No November involved there in any case.

I think, back in AD 1, November was Month #9. (Clue: There might have been some reason it was called November.) July and August were added later, causing the months September through December to no longer fit their names.

[Habeed]

@Telemark

Except that in the US, one pilot is never left alone in the cockpit anymore. After the last incident this should be true worldwide.

The cockpit door securing mechanisms reduces one threat while boosting another. Yeah, now the terrorists just need either

1. A pilot in on it. Even a pilot trainee, so long as he’s on the airliner and in the cockpit, would be enough.

2. To pull a fast one. Maybe when one of the pilots leaves to go to the bathroom, they rush the door and break in (pulling out weapons as they do so) before the door could be shut.

#1 only requires one hijacker.

Oh, pilots are allowed to carry guns http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77449.html

So in the number 1 case, that pilot just has to draw on his copilot and shoot him. Then he can line up a shot into a building at his leisure.

I wonder…

This sounds like a movie plot, but I wonder if it is realistic. The terrorist pilot would set the plane’s autopilot to impact with a building in a few minutes (by precisely setting a GPS waypoint calculated to be in the middle of an office building, and also picking the previous and future waypoints so that if the plane misses the first building it hits another building behind it.)

The terrorist would deliberately depressurize the plane, knocking everyone in the cabin out. (perhaps by messing with the pressurization controls that are in the cockpit)

He would then, with the plane on autopilot and the cabin depressurized, enter the cabin wearing a portable oxygen tank and bail out.

[bengangmo]

Can you imagine what would happen if you used a drone or radio controlled plane to deliver a single grenade into the crowd at an open football stadium? If that was repeated at two or three stadiums, what would happen to football game attendance?

How well protected are railway tracks? A single stick of dynamite that detonates when fuel transport train goes over it? How many miles of “unprotected” track are there in the US? Repeat that three or four times and what would happen to your transport grid?

How many open resevoirs are there in the US? How difficult would it be to use a drone to deliver something like giardia into one of them? How many times would you need to repeat before huge problems were faced?

Also relatively simple - just use a drone to cause a bus accident on a highway during rush hour traffic. How many times would that need to be repeated before people couldn’t / wouldn’t travel at all? Quite besides the people no longer taking buses, what about the resulting traffic jams this would cause? Or just put a small bomb onto a bus. If the terrorist worked within the depo - how long before he got caught?

How about the concession stands at football games? with planning, lead time and a relatively small budget How hard would it be to “infect” the hotdog supplies with botulism - how many people would be killed / seriously affected by such a move? And what would be the chances of catching the perpetrator?