[hughprime]

What about surgically implanted bombs in fat people? (Like in that movie I won't name just to avoid spoiling it for the small number of people who haven't seen it.) Does anyone have a good idea of whether that's a severe risk? Can anyone have a sizeable bomb surgically implanted and live long enough with it inside them to recover from the surgery enough to walk around normally?

[sokoloff]

I would imagine that if you designed it to look like a near full-term pregnancy, that you could get it close enough to the masses of people in the security lines for sure.

To have a massively disruptive attack, you don't need to bring down an airliner; you only need to kill and injure a whole bunch of people, such as those conveniently massed outside the security screening areas. You could probably accomplish the same thing much more easily by just packing a stroller full of explosives and detonating THAT in the security line.

[jacquesm]

> You could probably accomplish the same thing much more easily by just packing a stroller full of explosives and detonating THAT in the security line.

Exactly. The problem with all this security theater is that if you wanted to just kill a bunch of people there are 100's of ways to do it, low tech and cheap.

What bugs me about all this is that the 'terrorists' so far have shown surprisingly little sophistication in the attacks they have made, mostly because they didn't have to. (well, maybe the 'shoe bomber' should count).

For the most part, if the stated goal was to bring down western society they're taking their bloody time about it, security really isn't that good.

My guess is that this is all blown way out of proportion.

Sure, there are some bad guys, but there are less of them than seems to be presented, and they're pretty busy doing other stuff.

Blowing up an airliner is a publicity stunt, it isn't going to derail society unless you let it.

Germany had an enormous terrorism flap in the 70's, and 80's, according to the media.

But in reality several tens of people died and somewhat more were wounded.

Much less than a year on the autobahn.

[hughprime]

What bugs me about all this is that the 'terrorists' so far have shown surprisingly little sophistication in the attacks they have made, mostly because they didn't have to.

That bugs you? I'm pretty grateful for it, personally.

The jihadists' greatest strength is also their greatest weakness: they're not very rational. If they were rational then they'd figure out that there are more efficient ways to kill random civilians than anything they've explored so far. On the other hand, if they were rational then they'd figure out that killing random civilians to please an invisible sky wizard is a pretty fucking stupid way to spend your life anyway.

[jacquesm]

Well, it bugs me in a sense that it makes me wonder how much of the whole thing is propaganda and how much of it is really true.

I find that I have less and less trust in media reporting. The few times that I've been eye witness to something that made it to the media made me wonder if we'd been in the same place.

Sure, there are a bunch of people hell bent on destruction. But they are either not very numerous, not very successful, not very smart or a combination of these three.

The number of them that are willing to kill random strangers is quite probably a lot lower than media attention would make you believe. Conveniently, really hard numbers do not exist.

That doesn't say they do not exist. But given the amount of attention, funds and legislation (most of which seems to affect non-terrorists) that is being spent on this there would have to be a lot more fire than I can perceive.

[roc]

If you're not looking to get past security, you might as well be indiscriminately killing civilians in the heartland.

It'd certainly be far more effective than trying to blow up right next to people trained to identify you and ready to deal with such situations and the aftermath. You don't even need suicide bombers or exotic materials at that point. Just drop off a pipe bomb in a coffee shop, or block a couple exits and firebomb a night club. You could manage a veritable wave of terror with far fewer assets.

[sokoloff]

Terrorists' [presumed] goal is not to maximize body count per unit effort; it's to maximize terror (perhaps per unit effort, but it's not clear to me).

The reason to target someplace like airport security is precisely because the TSA is standing right there and everyone's been to an airport and stood in that line. If you firebomb a nightclub, many people just shrug and think "Hell, I don't go to nightclubs."

If you blow up a security line at an airport, people freak out, because nearly everyone can put themselves in that situation and therefore become fearful that you could have killed them within a dozen yards of a cadre of TSA staff and there's nothing we can do about it. Terror is the goal; killing people is merely incidental or secondary to that goal. Think about how many more billions of dollars the Western world has been "forced" to spend on security post 9-11. Think about how large a factor that is compared to the actual damage done on 9-11.

If you believe that the TSA stands ready and trained to identify and thwart such an attack, you have vastly more faith in them than I do. (Not specifically a slam against TSA, but more an observation that it's a very difficult problem.)

[stcredzero]

What about a convincing fat-suit? You could make one of those without metal components, and you'd need to require people to remove clothing, or have trained personnel pat down every passenger to detect that. And you could easily conceal about 100 pounds of explosive in that fashion. (Making it proof against chemical sniffers would be problematic, though.)