[aneth3]

> surely no shortage of people willing to die to do that

I think there is a major shortage of people willing to be suicide bombers. There is a grand fallacy out there that the world is full of suicidal terrorists. It is not.

Suicide bombers from Palestine were generally tricked or extorted. Those that were acting on their own volition generally could not detonate themselves, which is why bystanders had detonators.

There is strong evidence that most of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission.

That said, under orders, extortion, or trickery, a human could definitely sneak a bomb into a city.

[clarky07]

"There is strong evidence that most of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission."

Could you share a link to that? What part of "fly plane into building" didn't they understand?

[aneth3]

Only those in the cockpit needed to know. The rest were in charge of subduing the passengers and could have been told they were hijacking the plane for ransom, or to meet demands, or any other story. If you consider the long lead up to 9/11, keeping most operatives in the dark makes the most sense for an Al Qaeda planners since it reduces the chances of a member talking or dropping out.

"FBI investigators have officially concluded that 11 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on 11 September did not know they were on a suicide mission"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/14/terrorism.septem...

[clarky07]

Interesting. Good link. Yet, that still means that 8 of them knew. Not like it was 1 out of 19.

There have also been plenty of other suicide bombers at much smaller targets. Generally I don't think they are that excited about blowing themselves up, more they are willing to do it to take care of their families financially when they don't see any other options.

[rsanchez1]

There is a shortage of willing people, but as you demonstrated there's no shortage of people that can be tricked into doing something.