Geek woman news story of possible interest...

Tue Sep 25 23:08:57 UTC 2007

I've been reading and rereading this post for two hours now, trying to
come to terms with, and develop a reply to, such a strong response.

Evan, I mean no disrespect here - more often than not I agree with
your position.  I'll try to define my position as clearly as I can
(not something I excel at, by any means) but I think that Gary's post
was relatively well put together for a general audience.

On 9/25/07, Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Gary Layng wrote:
>
> What a load of nonsense fearmongering.

I'm not sure that fearmongering was the intent of Gary's message.  To
me it came across as a personal analyis or opinion.

> > As has been proven repeatedly, aircraft are terribly vulnerable to attack,
> > which results in much higher casualties than any other form of transportation.
> You've got to be joking. The death rate per-person-travelling is much
> higher on the road than it is in the air. Sources listed below.
>
> Please indicate where you find stats showing "higher casualties than any
> other form of transportation" -- everything I've seen indicates otherwise.

I'm thinking that by "higher casualties than any other form of
transportation," Gary was referring to a per-incident measure, not
per-person-travelling.

> The ensuing "argument" offers both poor facts and poor arguing techniques:
>
> > They come with their own "bomb load" (jet fuel) and can be steered into places that vehicles, ships and trains cannot go.
> Any mode has its places it can go that others cannot. Arguably the most
> flexible in this regard is the bicycle. Given how compact explosives are
> these days, you can deliver a fairly large payload on a Segway too. What
> the heck, you can deliver plenty just strapped to your body into lots of
> places a 747 can't fit.

Aircraft have the interesting capability of maneuvering in 3
dimensions - which gives it a considerable advantage if used as a
weapon, regardless of payload size or capabilities.

Interestingly, in an appendix to 3001 The Final Odyssey[1], Arthur C.
Clarke has given the ultimate limit on explosive capability I believe.
 I haven't read it in several years, but IIRC the appendix covers some
of the science behind the trappings in the story - in this case, the
destruction of a star and it's planetary system as the result of an
"industrial accident" involving the Zero-Point field (or "quantum
foam").  I don't recall what the energy value was, but apparently even
a coffee cup of "empty" space (or vacuum) is more than enough to take
care of an entire solar system.

> Also: current formulas of jet fuel are designed as to be highly
> resistant to explosion.

Can you provide sources for this claim?  It's hard to imagine a fuel
source for combustion-based engines as being "resistant to
explosion."[2][3]  Also, I'm curious how much more this feature would
cost - and how many airlines can afford to pay for it?

> > Take one down, you take down anywhere up to 500 people, plus the people on the ground.
> Fact: the largest aircraft in Air Canada's fleet has a capacity of 349.
> The vast majority of aircraft are far smaller, and the large capacity
> ones attract higher security.

Gary's point here was _upto_ and did not define any airline or
nationality.  Also, as is often discovered in the IT field, it doesn't
matter how much security one has...  sooner or later those measures
can be beaten.

> > You don't even need to physically step on board, like with Pan Am or Air
> > India, or be physically on board when the bomb goes off, as happened to a
> > Pacific air carrier when it was bombed by an Islamic terrorist - he placed
> > the bomb and walked off the aircraft.  (Last I heard, he was still behind
> > bars in the Phillipines.)
> >
> Funny how the airline you'd figure to be the one most attacked --
> Israel's El Al -- is also the most secure (no successful hits or
> hijackings yet). Its planes are equipped with anti-missile  defence.
> Security of this kind is possible on all airlines if the will exists,
> just like high standards of maintenance.

I've actually watched documentaries on this topic.  They've certainly
spent a great deal of time (decades), effort, energy and finances in
order to accomplish this level of security.  In an effort to curb
controversy, I'll just leave my comments on this topic at that.

> > Suspicious of liquids on board?  Blame that British terrorist who tried to
> > detonate his shoes.  Ludicrous sounding, but cabin fires can spread rather
> > quickly and are notoriously difficult to extinguish.  See the Swissair
> > disaster, or a similar one involving an Air Canada DC-9.
> >
> More fearmongering. It's quite telling that you have to go back so far
> in time for an example that Air Canada was still flying DC-9s (it was
> 1983, for anyone actually tracking facts). The Swissair flight was a
> DC-10, an aircraft no longer made and used by only a handful of major
> airlines. New aircraft are far more fire-resistant than ever.
>
> In any case, the debating tactic of connecting shoe bomb to cabin fires
> is not very useful here.

I don't understand your issue here.  Using historical information
makes an argument invalid?  Perhaps technologies have changed some,
but thinking it couldn't happen again is, I believe, folly.

> > Bomb a train, you tie up the line for a few hours and kill some of the people
> > in the compartment, which may be as few as 10 people.
> So when talking about aircraft you say "as much as" and about other
> modes, "as few as"... what kind of crap is that? Airplanes can go
> airborne with "as few as 10 people" and _current_ trains can easily
> carry more than 500. Derail a high-speed train and you _do_ get deaths.

Down a plane, you also get deaths.  As few as 1 and as many as (n)
hundreds.  I think it's called setting the floor and ceiling on a set
of numbers.  I don't think it's crap at all.

> > Bomb a train station or airport terminal, and you'll get a handful of souls if that.
> Spoken by someone who's never had to endure a passenger terminal at its
> peak. Consider that all of those air passengers had to stand in line to
> check in. Visit Terminal 1 at about 7pm most nights (most European
> flights leave early evening) and talk about a 'handful of souls'... what
> rubbish.

I agree with you that a terminal incident would involve more than a
handful of souls, but your argument comes across as being awfully
emotional.  How do you _know_ Gary's "never had to endure a passenger
terminal at its peak"?

> > Detonate a  truck bomb (say, the size of the one Timothy McVeigh used) in the middle of a
> > span of the Boor Viaduct and you'd disrupt life in Toronto for days, weeks,
> > maybe months
> So the Bloor Viadict is a poor target. There are others. It should be
> noted that McVeigh did his damage using a truck as a delivery vehicle
> and the target was a regular office building.

I read that completely opposite.  Affecting life in Toronto for weeks?
 MONTHS?  Why is that a poor target when it's so enduring?  I
shuddered when I thought through the implications.

> > Hijack a typical ship, even an oil tanker, and congratulations you have a large, slowly-moving, use-once-and-discard battering ram - we don't send many ships with Mount
> > Blanc's cargo of munitions from Point A to Point B much anymore, as World War
> > I ended some time ago.
> >
> Many of the newest superships are equipped with more than 3,500 berths
> (talk about sitting ducks!), not to mention lots of people who slept
> through the lifeboat drill.
>
> Even better targets (should one be looking) are overcrowded ferries,
> which sail with hundreds of people and often miserable safety
> facilities. A fatal accident on one of those happened as recently as a
> month ago in Egypt, and another in Sierra Leone killed about 150.

I have no argument here, nor anything to add.

> > So yes, if you want to do spectacular damage, aircraft remain our civilization's biggest soft spot.
> >
> Absolute BS. The paranoia about planes comes more from human
> claustrophobia and helplessness while in the air than anything else.
> Certainly not fact.

Why must this be BS?  Maybe not a fact, but depending on the measure
of casualties (see my second point above) it may be worth more than
just "fearmongering."

> > And people doing crazy things
> ...like claiming that flying kills more people than driving. You
> probably thought that "Snakes on a Plane" was based on a true story.

Again, why the all the emotion?  It doesn't seem to aid the
intellectual components of your arguments at all.

> OTOH, facts can be your friends...
>
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/travel/reports/03092000/TINFO.html
> http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0203/Jan20_03/18.shtml
> http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/16237

And OTOH, the media can lie.  Such is - most unfortunately - the way
of the world.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3001:_The_Final_Odyssey
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_engine
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine

-- 
  Scott Elcomb
  http://www.psema4.com/
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