Another Tom Swift invention is the “electric rifle” from the book Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle. When the electric rifle (okay, not a rifle) was invented it was called a “taser” from Thomas (A) Swift’s Electric Rifle
The 1994 Tom Clancy novel “Debt of Honor” featured the crashing of a hijacked jetliner into the U.S. Capitol.
The same year the Dale Brown book Storming Heaven had an airliner attempt to crash into the White House but was stopped at the last second. The White House was damaged by debris.
Hijack: I swear I did a ‘control f’ search on this thread for the word ‘Clancy’ before I posted, and nothing came up. It comes up now.
Has anyone on here encountered this? Possible Discourse problem?
Clancy also wrote The Sum of All Fears in 1991 where Palestinian terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb in Denver during the Super Bowl.
Clancy sort of wrote himself into a corner with this. In his universe, the nuclear attack in Denver would have been the defining event in the history of terrorism. But in the real world, it was the 9/11 attacks. So in Clancy novels written after 2001, he sort of had to have his characters act as if the Denver attack and the Capital attack hadn’t happened in order to keep them relevant to his readers.
Belongs in Site Feedback, but unlike in VBulletin in Discourse only a small proportion of posts are loaded into active screen memory: you have to do an hourglass search instead to make sure you’ve covered the entire thread.
Why do terrorists with access to a single nuclear weapon pick Denver as a target?
You quoted the answer right there. Emphasis mine.
They picked the Super Bowl as a target. Seems like a pretty big target to me
The Super Bowl? As opposed to NYC or Washington D.C.?
Millions of people worldwide are not watching NYC or DC live.
As someone whose regular sandwiches consist of a single slice of cheese or cold cut between two buttered slices of bread: how do you eat such a monstrosity without all of it falling apart and making a mess?
Note that it wasn’t an original plot idea, either. The 1977 film Black Sunday (based on a 1975 novel of the same name) has terrorists planning to detonate a large (conventional) bomb aboard the Goodyear blimp, over the Orange Bowl stadium in Miami during the Super Bowl, killing the ~80,000 people in the stadium.
As with the Clancy novel, the goal wasn’t necessarily maximum casualties, it was visibility.
The “unrealistic” part of the Clancy novel is the location: with one exception*, the NFL always selects a host city for the Super Bowl based on many factors, but one is that weather is unlikely to significantly affect the game; hence, host cities are either warm-weather cities or those with domed stadiums. Denver is highly prone to cold and snow in late January and February, and has an open-air stadium.
*- One Super Bowl was held in the New York area; this was originally chosen to symbolize the U.S.'s, and the New York area’s, recovery from 9/11, and they got lucky that the weather was mild that day.
The Black Sunday scenario makes more sense: if you’re limited to a conventional weapon a tightly packed crowd in a stadium is an optimal target (and it being the Super Bowl helps).
In the novel and movie, it wasn’t just about the Super Bowl - it was also that the President and various important government officials were supposed to be in attendance at that game.
I don’t eat Dagwoods myself, but I suppose having an alligator-size mouth would help. A Katz’s-size sandwich is as big as I can handle.
Jungle Cruise was based on The African Queen.
Then there’s the episode of the X-files spin-off “The Lone Gunmen”, in which they thwart an attempt to fly an airliner into one of the WTC towers. Aired in March of 2001.
I don’t remember everything about the book since it’s been so long since I read it (and the movie changed so much). I do remember that Clancy did a good job of having a bunch of plot threads that seemed completely unrelated to each other come together at the end. Several high ranking officials were at the game (including the head of NORAD and SECDEF). The president is in the White House and has a couple more drinks than usual while watching the Super Bowl. One of the many things that almost leads to a full nuclear war. In the movie I believe the president was at the game.
One thing I forgot was this was a false flag operation. The German terrorists were trying to start a war between the US and the Soviet Union. They weren’t looking to do the most damage. They were using it as a trigger. It took an 800 page book to explain how it was supposed to work. I’m not going to attempt here with my faulty memory.