[clawrencewenham]

The ending to The Blues Brothers seems prophetic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2quc-iQ96R0

To edit and elaborate: they shut down a large portion of New England, affecting millions of people. Amtrak service, for example, was suspended north of New York City at 12:30pm today. Private taxi service in the Boston Metro area shut down until 11am. Other public transit, such as the T, shut down for most of the day. People didn't go to work.

I know it sounds callous, considering how many died or were maimed, but we now have to consider that a couple of pressure cookers are on par with hurricanes, blizzards and power blackouts when it comes to anesthetizing the North East corridor. I think we should think about this.

[Anechoic]

* they shut down a large portion of New England*

No, "they" really didn't. Life was pretty much normal outside of 128.

[clawrencewenham]

I don't know what 128 is, but I know of people who were taking Amtrak to Connecticut but had to get off at NYC and travel uptown to Grand Central Station to get on a commuter train. They weren't going to Boston. Amtrak service was halted north of NYC because of this manhunt.

I do know that much of Boston had no choice but to take a day off on Friday. I know the Bruins game was cancelled, and that Comic Con was "postponed" and likely cancelled because of the difficulty of re-booking the conference center anytime before next year.

Not even considering the salaries and overtime of the officers involved, it is not wrong to say that this manhunt may have cost hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars in economic losses. For example, some of the speculation from The Washington Post this afternoon:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/19/t...

This is as if an entire city went into anaphylaxis.

[Anechoic]

I don't know what 128 is

Route 128 is the loop highway running around Boston.

I do know that much of Boston had no choice but to take a day off on Friday

Much of Boston is not the same as "a large portion of New England." New England is ~14 million people. The affected areas covered about 600K people.

may have cost hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars in economic losses.

Your own link doesn't support "billions of dollars in economic losses." In any event, extraordinary events require an extraordinary response. In any event, I can't see how having those streets packed with cars and pedestrian traffic (as happens on a normal Friday) would have done anything but hinder the manhunt.

[clawrencewenham]

> Much of Boston is not the same as "a large portion of New England."

Alright, much of Boston is not "a large portion of New England" but to use your figures, even 600 thousand is still huge. Does it really disprove my point that this manhunt will have enormous economic consequences? Even if our economy can absorb it, we must address the fact that the cost was staggering in proportion to what it cost the bombers to conduct their attack.

> In any event, extraordinary events require an extraordinary response.

Bruce Schneier pointed out, once, that airport security was brittle because it couldn't contain an event to the gate: it had to shut down a whole terminal and often--such as with the LAX evacuations after 9/11, an entire airport. This event shut down the work of perhaps 600,000 for the price of some pressure cookers and black powder.

If it cost a few hundred dollars to shut down 600,000 hosts or terminals on the Internet, we would be looking at ways to improve security and protocols so that such an inexpensive attack could not force such enormous losses.

I think we should brainstorm ways to block this vulnerability. It should not be possible for two guys, 26 and 19 years old, to freeze a major city.

[cema]

Even inside. I live in, uh, 10 minutes' drive up north from the Charles river, and my life was not disrupted at all.