It has occurred to me that the disruptions caused by bomb threats - aircraft put out of service, entire buildings evacuated and hours of time wasted - cause more lost human lifespan and money than bombings themselves.
So I have the following solution. By federal law (trumping state law), it is *illegal *to respond to a bomb threat unless the caller identifies themselves in a unique way as an individual who has already committed a bombing. In the IRA days, the IRA would sometimes call in their bombings before they set off the device in order to minimize the number of innocent people killed. So if someone who has already committed a bombing calls in and gives unique information not released to the press (like “the detonator used all purple wires”) from a previous bombing, then an evacuation can be done. Otherwise, it’s illegal, because the disruption caused by a bomb threat is the act of terror in itself.
Otherwise, it’s illegal. Anyone who orders an evacuation is guilty of a felony - “cowering before terrorists”. Also, the Federal government agrees to indemnify/protect from liability any individual or institution that ignores a bomb threat due to this new federal law and then is sued after an actual bombing.
While were at it, let’s ignore tornado warnings, too. After all, in the last 100 years, the city of St. Louis, Mo. has been hit by nine tornados, but has only recorded fatalities from two of them. Yet, everytime someone says a tornado is coming, we have to drop everything and head for the basement!
Everyone should ignore those dumb fire alarms, too. Even better, we should replace that annoying siren sound with a karaoke version of “It’s Raining Men”.
That is insane. If it happened I think we’d all have to go apologise to the Truthers, because that sounds a lot like a plan to maximise casualties among your own civilians.
To add more stupid to just plain stupid, you’re saying that the thing that should make it legal to respond to a bomb threat is information they are incapable of verifying for themselves.
Okay, this isn’t as bad as the guy last week who suggested the solution to the homeless problem is that we start torturing homeless people in order to motivate them to get back on their feet.
Soooo… the major gripe in the OP is that bombers are really just wasting people’s time. They’re just not effective enough. They need to be really A-level professionals before society need bother noticing that they exist.
Is this supposed to be the first half of a point of some sort?
Like since this is clearly completely idiotic we ought also to agree than some commonplace action is idiotic as well?
But what could it be?
The OP seems to be assuming that a vast majority of bomb threats are hoaxes, and they probably are. But it doesn’t do a very good job explaining why that means the solution is to ignore 100% of them.
I’m amused at the responses. The thing is, we live in objective reality. In that reality, the truth about things isn’t subject to popular vote. Every single person who said “this is stupid” is stupid. (at least about this)
It’s simple reasoning that an elementary schooler can understand.
There are tens of thousands of bomb threats made annually in the United States. I’m not able to find a total, but I read an article mentioning that just 1 school has received 145 in a single string of threats.
There’s a handful of actual terrorist bombings made per year in the United States.
The actual live bombings where a threat was made in advance, in the United States, in the last decade? Zero. The actual bombings where a useful threat was made in advance in all of human history? Probably a very small number.
Making a threat defeats the whole purpose of committing a bombing. And committing an actual bombing obviates the need for a threat.
So no, it’s not at all comparable to a fire alarm. It’s more like a sensor that always goes off when it’s a false alarm, and almost never goes off when it’s the real thing.
Evaluating the response to bomb threats to see what actions make sense in light of the actual risk isn’t a terrible idea. That is not what you proposed, though.
Criminalizing evacuations after bomb threats is insane and stupid. That is what you proposed, and it is genuinely one of the stupidest ideas I have ever seen put in print.
