From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun Sep 16 2001 - 00:20:29 MDT
On 9/12/01 12:59 PM, "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
>
> I have been thinking of a different kind of "the singularity is near"
> plot: terrorist explosive power as a function of time. Does it grow
> exponentially over time?
>
> Methodologically creating such a plot would likely be a bit tricky. I
> guess the best way of handling it would be to plot the TNT equivalent of
> either the largest explosions within a decade or five year period, or
> each record breaker explosion. This would represent the envelope of the
> amount of devastation that a group can cause. Of course, bioweapons and
> chemical ones are nasty too, but harder to quantify.
>
> Does anybody know any data sources that could help fill out this grim
> diagram?
I don't think you would find anything interesting for a number of reasons.
1) Explosives themselves have remained virtually unchanged both in power and
availability for better than a century. The ambition of the terrorist is
the biggest limiting factor on the size of an explosion.
2) There have been some very large explosions, due to terrorists and other
forms of malevolence, since well into the 19th century (from my own
knowledge) and probably as far back as the 18th century if I cared to look
it up. Most terrorist acts utilize no more than a few pounds of explosives.
3) The results of the explosives are heavily dependent on how well they are
used. 50-kg of high explosive in the hands of a creative genius will do
vastly more damage than 1,000-kg of high explosive in the hands of a moron.
Engineering is everything. A couple pounds of explosives brings down
airplanes, but thousands of pounds have failed to wreck buildings (though
only due to incompetent application).
Of course, if you want to talk about nuclear explosives, that is a different
story. And completely hypothetical, though I don't expect it to stay that
way very long.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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