How? Is it because we cannot carry liquids or lighters onto flights?
Or is that occupation of Iraq what is making us safer?
I seriously fail to see how anybody, anywhere, is safer today than pre 9-11.
I think a significant quantity of a biological agent in the hands of actual terrorists who wanted to inflict as much damage as possible (as opposed to “Boo! We Have Anthrax! Take some antibiotics!”) would be quite devastating.
Back when that whole head-trip was going on, I used to keep myself awake at night by imagining what I would do if I were an evil person faced with the problem of maximizing the impact from a cache of weaponized anthrax. I could easily imagine tens of thousands of casualties getting in under the response time, if the bad guys really had the intent and thought about it for any length of time, looking for a stealthy delivery system that would quickly affect as many people as possible to the greatest degree possible. There are weaknesses to be exploited that would be very difficult to protect. (Heck, the scariest thing I thought of, you could go to the DHS tomorrow and say, “We’d be screwed if this happened!” and I don’t think they’d be able to do a damn thing to minimize the possibility.
Not a nice thought.
Added to that is the little issue that many of the terrorists are more than happy to die for the cause. Smallpox has an incubation period of a few days. Who needs a container that can be found in a search? I’m sure a few terrorists would go along with being injected with smallpox or some other nasty. Instant mobile undetectable (until it’s too late) bioweapon.
Minimal impact, though. Smallpox isn’t really contagious until the blister stage, and even then it’s less contagious than chickenpox, so unless you can find a few hundred people who could be tricked into serial wrestling matches with someone who was obviously Feeling Poorly, you’d be unlikey to even make the back pages. 
Terrorists would need to find a massive delivery method that would go unnoticed until the victims were well away from the point of contact in order to do any serious damage – otherwise it’d be dealt with with a massive medical mobilization, and very little harm.
Actually, if you wanted to cripple the airline industry, just a big boom-boom gun (50 cal is it?) is enough to force a plane to return to the airport and create a major panic if you get to pull that a couple times in different places.
What color is the sky in your world? Hate to burst your bubble, but we are absolutely not safer now than were were pre-9/11. If anything, we are less safe. We have a strong illusion of security, that’s for sure. But it’s only an illusion, I assure you.
I just don’t understand the fascination with high technology terrorism. Nuclear, biological, yadda, yadda. Is this fascination a product of our own imagination (potentially picked up by terrorists to exploit so that it might just become a self-fulfilling prophecy), or a fabrication exploited by the powers that be to keep the masses under control? It’s all so complicated, so expensive to accomplish.
Remember the Beltway Snipers from October 2002? Two people terrorized more than ten million people for three weeks. Two people! As I said in this thread back in 2002, a similar scenario occurring between Thanksgiving and Christmas with perhaps two dozen two-person terrorist sniper teams spread all over the country would destroy the US economy in short order. Add in a few tanker hijackings and local TV station hijackings and our freedom would disappear as fast as the population would clamor for martial law.
Are we safer? What exactly does it mean to be safer? Sure, we’ve spent a lot of money on airline security but there are still dozens of areas in which security has remained largely unchanged since 9/11. If you’ve removed the 5th through 10th most devastating methods of causing destruction but haven’t touched the 1 - 4, does that make us safer?
I went to a talk by the head of security of the Seattle/Tacoma Ports Authority and he showed us half a dozen known ways a determined attacker could cause billions of dollars worth of damage with no special skill required and virtually 0 chance of being caught. There’s absolutely no way of plugging those holes without causing severe economic slowdown and gross removal of civil liberties so how much safer are we than before 9/11?
Right, two people shut down an entire city so the obvious question is, why hasn’t it happened again? If it were so easy for terrorists to do this, it should be happening every week. Why is it the only terrorists we’ve caught are planning toilet bombs and beheading PMs if such an obvious route is open to them?
The only answer I can see to this is that the reason why there has been no terror attacks is not because we’ve protected ourselves so well but because there really are no terrorists. Sure, theres lots of people who hate America but very few who are smart and motivated enough to actually want to cause substantial harm to it.
FWIW, Fredrick Forsythe in The Afghan postulates an Al Queda plot that involves a spoiler. Highlight to read:
Al Queda hijacks a liquefied petroleum gas ship and uses it to try to blow up the G8 Summit, which is being held on the Queen Elizabeth 2. Apparently the explosion of an LPG tanker would be on the order of 30 Hiroshimas at once. The novel describes in detail how AQ could acquire the ship and disguise it in order to avoid detection. Using time, patience and money, AQ could easily use the same strategy in real life to blow up any port they choose.
I think bombing a stadium has been discussed in books and films.
There are certainly a lot of concerns about it over every high profile gathering, such as olympics or conventions of various ilks. I doubt a soccer match would be a target.
Of course 9-11 could be topped, and I’m sure the terrorists are working 24/7 on figuring out how to do it. I think the US IS more secure now, because it’s more vigilant. But how long can that last? A few years and nothing happens, then you start to relax. The terrorists just have to sit back and wait; time is on their side. I do believe the government when it says that other plots have been discovered and foiled; who knows what those plans had involved?
The first time we flew into the US after 9/11 as a few years afterward, and we were curious what the Immigration experience would be like. My Thai wife is not Muslim, but you still hear stories. I have to say we – and especially she – were treated with the utmost respect and professional courtesy.
I agree with Sapo here. A dozen suicide bombers with their watches synchronized could walk into shopping centers across the country and blow themselves up in a crowd on the same day at the same time. People would never leave home again.
I would. We even had some fatal synchronized bombings here in Bangkok on New Year’s Eve, even though that was probably the work of the ousted government deposed in our coup last September and not the work of the Muslim insurgents who have been waging a separatist struggle in our deep South for three years now. (The types of bomb materials did not match anything used in the South before, plus the insurgents have never struck outside their territory. Plus there are intelligence reports detailing how the ousted prime minister handed over the cash to pay for the bombings to a minion.). You simply have to continue going about your business.
You don’t need suicide bombers. We war-gamed this, and figured that a dozen binary car-bombs outside elementary schools around the country would shake the country the most. First you take out the kids and moms, then 30 minutes later the second set of bombs go of to take out the emergency services. When the security flocks to schools, then you hit the malls.
It bothers me a bit that I can think like they do.
Like terrorists or the people who came up with shock and awe?
The beltway snipers did not shut down the city. Not even close.
The anthrax in the mail doesn’t seem to bother anybody anymore.
Terrorist could try to bomb Wal-Mart on Black Friday but they would probably be trampled to death by shoppers wanting those $29.99 DVD players.
I think we are little bit safer today thanks to what we’re doing in Afgahnistan.
As for topping 9/11. It could be done.
My theory for why we don’t have more terrorist attacks is that, as soon as they get here and see that they can choose from 39 brands of toilet paper, they just get hooked on the american style. Then they start to plan ridiculously impossible plots just so they can stick around longer. And I am not kidding.
I always though anything involving a Theme Park primarily for children (Disney, Sea World, etc) would be wayyyy worse than 9/11.
Picture a crop duster spraying Anthrax down Main Street with Cinderella’s castle in the background.
Scary indeed.
The problem with the big big plots if you gotta involve so many more people, more money more times, ship the hardware more places. Once the authorities get a small sniff of something going on they try and trace all these movements and shut it down. Atleast they seem to be doing that over here in the UK.
Had another thought, but took too long typing to edit it.
A lot of the plots that are being listed in this thread and things we find scary, as westerners. The targets of 9/11 were economic, military & government targets. Normal targets of war. Although I’ll risk being yelled at to say it, I think it’s clear they have some moral structure they’re working within.
The worst attrocities (from our point of view) would only be done by real loonys, and that’s not a condition that helps with the effective leadership and planning needed to pull such thing off.