I was explaining to a friend of mine just the other day that nobody would think to target Albany, of all places, and our tiny little town is 3 hours north of NYC so we could only get in trouble if the wind was blowing straight up the Hudson River and the fallout managed to hit us if they nuked The City. He doesn’t believe me; he claims that if they blow up NYC the bomb will take us out too.
That’s some bomb, to wipe out everything in a 150-mile radius (and over mountains, too)!
Actually, I bet those bag check lines would be a great place for a terrorist attack. Lots of people grouped closely together…
My GF lives in the financial centre of London, a grenade’s throw from buildings that have previously been bombed. Do we get lots of terrorist target chic points?
Actually I do think Disney would be a prime target. Disney is a potent symbol of America. And they wouldn’t necessarily want to kill a large number of people, just create panic, which a bomb on the Wonderful World of Disney would do. Of course, it would also be a PR disaster - imagine all the footage of charred Mickey Mouse ears - and there would be a lot of children as casualties, so hopefully that would dissuade any potential Disney bombers. The park isn’t paranoid for taking precautions though.
In the first Gulf War, I worked in the East Wing of the National Gallery in DC. We were all freaked and we all got “training” in spotting bombs. It consisted of, “If you see an unattended package, call security.” The feeling was – they’ll go for the Capitol, but if security there discourages them, they’ll go to the nearest place they can get into, which would be us.
A couple of years after Oklahoma city, I saw two guys wearing camo wrestling with these huge boxes in the back of a Ryder truck, right outside of the Air & Space Museum. It creeped me out slightly, and I reported it to the security guard at the building entrance. He said, “I’ll keep my eye on them”, and settled back in his chair, where I could tell that he couldn’t even see the truck.
Since then, I haven’t worried about much of anything. They’ve had their shot at me and blown it.
THANK GOD that I live near Washington, D.C.! MAN! Glad I don’t have any concerns like BEING A FRIGGIN’ TARGET! Not sure WHAT I would do if I lived in a ‘high profile’ area…
Well, of course we are! This is the entertainment capital of the world, and without the entertainment industry, there would be no violence! Wipe out Hollywood; stop America’s corruption of the world!
I’m not from there, though I’ve spent enough time there to almost feel like a native. I’ve pulled my share of walleye and bass out of the lake.
I grew up, actually, in the Mon Valley. Dad worked, at various times, at the Clairton, Irvin, and Edgar Thompson works of U.S. Steel.
My house was right next to a disestablished Nike missile base, so my area probably was a target at some time growing up.
What are you all talking about? From the media coverage we get over here it’s clear that all the sleepers are targeting Germany.
For more terrorist chic points I’d have to relocate to Berlin, however, where last week they used a big-ass robot (looking like Number 5 from Short Circuit) to blow up a backpack somebody had left unattended. I really would have liked to see the face of the poor schmuck when he came back to find his backpack blown to smithereens…
I am so manly! I live and work in NYC! I risk death every time I leave the house!
I risk death every time I don’t leave the house!
I am such a daredevil!
No-one is tougher or harder than me!
Ooops, someone just set off a fire alarm and I crapped myself. Gotta go…
Well there are no towers left, so hopefully they will go blow up Podunk USA. I work 3 blocks from that big hole in the ground, and have had enough drama for several lifetimes.
This is kind of the opposite of when I was growing up in the eighties and we were assured that if there was a nuclear war, our town would be a major target because Bell Labs was located there. I say “assured” because that meant that we would be killed instantly and not have to suffer through radiation sickness or horrible mutations. What a fucked-up way to reassure kids!
Now I work in NYC and live just across the river.
I live ten miles from CentCom and I’m remarkably sanguine. Hell, I regularly go nearer it voluntarily.
Well, it looks like my MIL’s school isn’t the only one that’s letting the orange alert stop field trips. A local school is cancelling all trips to the Mall of America and government buildings such as the State Capitol.
(If you’re wondering why schools would even take field trips to the Mall of America, there is an aquarium there that’s probably pretty educational.)
And, frankly, if I were a terrorist, I’d bomb the MoA long before I bombed Cleveland. Sorry, that’s just the way it is :D.
There are so many people in Seattle who are scared to death that the Space Needle will be bombed. Why?
IT’S A FUCKING RESTAURANT!!!
That’s it. An overpriced, half assed quality restaurant that happens to appear on every postcard or shirt or hat ever made for Seattle. Sure it’s a landmark, but what kind of lame ass terrorist would try to hit it? So they can kill 40 people who made reservations 2 weeks in advance to eat there and are now so upset that they did it that they are wishing they were dead anyways?
Why not blow up the St. Louis arch while you’re at it? You show 'em, guys!
“What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way … we would not now be about to commit British troops.”
Robin Cook, March 18, 2003
::looks at Palm Beach County voter registration::
Damn. I’m screwed.
To think, somewhere in Possum Spit, Arkansas a man and his wife are are just about to sit down for their daily 8-hour butt-numb-a-thon in front of the boob tube (12 hours on weekends!). The wife brings in their regular dinner - a six pack of beer, deep fried grizzle sticks, and pork rinds with cheese-whiz sauce. The husband takes a drag from his cigarette and turns to his wife and says, “You know Bobby Jo, those A-rab terrorists are gonna kill us…Possum Spit has that fancy new chicken processing plant…We should go out and buy some duct tape, plastic tarps, and canned food…just as soon as American Idol is over.”
Given health data, Americans are far more likely to die or suffer some bodily harm as a result of their unhealthy lifestlyes than from any terrorist attack. If only the people of Possum Spit, Arkansas were as concerned about their weight, cholesterol, diet, etc. as they were about terrorists…
After Septemeber 11, 2001, there was the occasional muttering that our university’s campus (Purdue) would be a target. The logic was that we have a nuclear reactor on campus. And we do- it’s for the Nuclear Engineers to putter around with, and from what I’ve heard, it’s maybe big enough to power a hairdryer.
I heard some asshat in one of my English classes say that Kalamazoo is a PRIME TARGET the other day. Why, you ask, would a podunk “city” like Kalamazoo be targeted? His logic is that we’re about halfway between Detroit and Chicago. Never mind that it’s 112 to Chi-town and 140 to Detroit, apparently nukes have that kind of radius now. What the fuck is there to blow up in Detroit, anyways? The Ren-Cen? The lame ass casinos? Greektown? Shit. Anyways, from what I’ve heard, most of Dearborn is Arab-populated anyways, so wouldn’t that be fairly, ya know, BAD for the ethno-centric terrorists to blow up their OWN PEOPLE? (That may be ignorant on my part, if so, I apologize.)
The asshat’s other reason: Our school, Western Michigan University, has a top-rate flight school. Apparently eradication of commercial flight is a biggie on the terrorist honey-do list.
Gah.
Guy, you are in ALOT of danger! Erie is the where the winery that makes the best wine I’ve ever had is located! Get away from there now! Come here to nice and boring Mentor, OH. Just be sure to bring a couple cases of that wonderful wine!