IN Andrew Vachss’s 1998 novel “Safe House” Burke discovers a plot to drive trucks fill of explosives and set them off on all of NYC’s bridges and tunnels. Burke foils the plan by having hi8s oood guys take out the bad guys and drive all the trucks into the Hudson River.
I can think of a few relatively simple, and not all that spectacular ways to cause huge national harm, and these would be impossible to defend against.
Not only that, the effect would be pretty much to wreck westernised economies, maybe only short term, but a sustained campaign would be disastrous.
We in the UK had one such incident although it was not terrorist related, but it did demonstrate just how vulnerable we are, and I believe some contingency plans have been made, but just the use of half a dozen light aircraft would easily be enough.
As for spectaculars, I think back to the Irish terrorist bomobings at Manchester, Canary Wharf and Lloyds, these were huge explosions and caused significant economic damage, multiply this by a factor of five, make them simulatneous event in major US cities and there would be huge loss of confidence, which would have a big effect on the markets.
If you really wanted to be nasty, there are some other ways, assets that are probably not well protected enough and are vitally important to just about every nation.
Somehow, speculation on this subject seems not to be a great idea, I can only hope those whose task it is to look out for such things have already got a good eye out, as organisation is always of major importance to such attacks.
Possibly the greatest feats accomplished by the 9/11 conspirators were to make the rest of the US sympathize with New Yorkers and to make the creepy Rudy Giuliani appear to be a viable presidential candidate. The producers of 24 have it right: LA is next.
Now imagine the effect if you had seen it live then repeated many times. Effective terrorism has a big element of show biz and McVeigh and Nichols showed they were unaware of that when they chose a target that triggered an initial response of “Where? Why would they blow THAT up?” For the same cost and effort they could’ve taken out the Washington Monument.
Security is a tricky thing to think about because the goal of security is to optimise the worst case, not the average case. Human brains aren’t built to think about that so many of our intutitive notions don’t work.
Think of it this way: You’re goal is to “secure” a building by making it impervious to rats. So you go over to the west side of the building and start obsessively plugging every tiny hole you can find and the entire west side of the building is sealed shut to the outside world? If the east side of the building still has numerous gaping holes, have you made the building any more “secure”? Is the rat population in the building going to decrease? The answer is no, you’ve made the building no more secure even though you expended a great deal of effort and have many tangible results you can point to.
I think you are underestimating the potential impact of a biological attack. Sure there might not be huge fatalities and it would be largely psychological, but the economic impact could be huge.
An optimal biological weapon delivery/dispersion system would be difficult for a terrorist group to develop, but they don’t need optimal, just good enough. It has been shown that that can be done with readily available equipment. Once they developed such a capability it would be easy to produce enough to conduct numerous simultaneous attacks. I agree that smallpox is probably unlikely, but it would be no more difficult for a disgruntled lab worker to smuggle out than a nuclear weapon would be.
In the wake of the anthrax attacks of 2001, which used the very sophisticated stuff-it-in-an-envelope technique, some 20 odd buildings needed some level of decontamination at a cost in the hundreds of millions. That was just for the cleanup, refurbishment and loss of use was even more. The fatalities were relatively low, but then the method of dispersal was about the most inefficient possible.
Hey, just to throw a little post-9/11, Patriot Act paranoia your way: The FBI, CIA, NSA and DHS are looking at the feed that has been captured by their computers. They discover two pages on a public internet thread discussing various plans for how to outdo OBL. They research (if they haven’t already) the previous posts by some board members and find some very extreme anti-government statements. They dig further and find members who are current or former soldiers, doctors, scientists, computer experts and so on. At this point some Tom Clancy wanna-be says, “Hmm, maybe this is the public face of a radical domestic terror group.”
Fast forward a few months and you find the majority of the SDMB and Unca Cecil in Gitmo.
I now return you to your plans for destroying Western Civilization. Sweet dreams.
I’ve always wanted to visit Cuba. I’ll save you a seat.
Not at all, since I don’t believe that they are seriously trying to catch any terrorists, or have ever cared about terrorism except as an excuse to grab ever more power and start wars. Spy on the Democrats or ACLU, yes, but the last thing the Bush Administration wants is to block a terrorist attack; that would let them wave the bloody shirt and get his numbers up.
And how many foreign government officials would look the other way if they discovered a plot against Americans, or cheer the terrorists on, given the worldwide hatred we’ve created ?
2001-2007 of course. Al Queda has achieved victory after victory after victory; beyond their wildest dreams. Saddam Hussein : Gone. Iraq going from a secular state to an Islamic one. Bush screwing America over internally and internationally. Bush getting re-elected. America humiliating itself in Iraq.
Hardly; few if any of the people there are guilty of anything.
As for why there hasn’t been another terrorist attack, it’s because they don’t want to help America. Why do something to garner sympathy for the US, in order to do trivial damage ? If they want to hurt America, they just need to sit back and let Bush do it. The last thing they want is to do something that will pull us together and make people feel sorry for us.
I should study Arabic, then. I relish the chance to organize a population of prisoners.
<snort>
He thinks they’re going to let him sit down?!
HAW!
Hey, I’d be one of the people shipped to Cuba, too.
Actually, ECHELON is constantly filtering electronic transmissions looking for keywords like “bomb”, “nuclear”, “anthrax”, “terror”, etc. When the computers pick up the words it is sent to a human analyst for further evaluation. After 9/11 there were many gross abuses of electronic eavesdropping and investigations including the pursuit of environmental groups and the warrantless wiretaps and bank record searches. Do you really think that our rambling brainstorms would slip by unnoticed?
I really doubt, though, that the alphabet soup agencies would waste their time with any of us.
Except maybe for Der Trihs. They’ve probably got a cell with his name all ready. 
Hey, if I’m going on about things like ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel, it’s only because I need those kinds of things to grow the corn that I use to feed my stock and heat my house, maybe power that bomb in the back yard I call a truck. :rolleyes:
I know. It can be a real holy terror to get my car moving some days. While it’s warming up I nuke some coffee and take a few vitamins to ward off any diseases. Then I head out to that old bomb. Once I’m on the highway, though, it takes off like a missile. Sorry for the hijack.
See you all in Cuba!
Definitely they could top it by blowing up the Super Bowl, or crashing something onto the field. The clincher here is that hundreds of millions of people across the world would be watching, and to have each of them see such desctruction happen on live TV would be unprecedented. Plus you have the possibility of killing 100,000 people, including some of the US’s most beloved atheletes on field and entertainers in the stands. As bad as the WTC was, few if any saw the planes hit on live TV, and even then you saw a few bodies jump at most. What would the reaction be to see thousands of people die on live TV?
erie774, you win.
Great! I’ll be the one at the awards ceremony in the orange jumpsuit with a black bag over my head and electrodes attached to my hands, nipples and genitals.
“I’d like to thank everyone who helped me get here. Ted Kacczynski, Osama; you guys are a real inspiration. Tim McVeigh, wow, you really opened my eyes to the opportunities. John Ashcroft , without whom we couldn’t have this great award in the first place. And, of course, Uncle Cecil, who can’t be with us tonight because it is his turn getting waterboarded. I love you Unca Cecil! This award is really for you!!”