On 9/11/01 9:15 PM, "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
>
> Questions:
> - If they only had knives, why didn't multiple passengers
> "rush" the terrorists?
Because there is a (statistically correct) assumption that most hijacking
won't end with the passengers being harmed. Given a lack of precedent, the
people onboard probably did what they thought would be best for their
safety.
> - Now that we have seen what can happen -- will a plane full
> of Americans allow it to happen again?
I was talking to some friends about this. I expect that the next vanilla
hijacking may end up with the hijacker severely beaten or dead, even if he
just wants a free trip to Cuba.
> - Skyscrapers are constructed to withstand plane impacts.
> Can they be constructed to withstand a plane full of fuel
> setting them on fire?
Skyscrapers are designed with fire containment in mind, but the damage was
of so massive that it breached the containment mechanisms in ways that may
not have been anticipated. You *could* partially fix the problem with
materials that are more fire resistant (i.e. alloys other than steel), but
that would be very expensive.
> - Why didn't the Pentagon (or less likely, the World Trade
> Center buildings) have individuals on the roofs equipped with
> surface-to-air missles? Given what these disasters will cost,
> it would have been a small additional security expense.
They do have surface-to-air missile defenses on some key buildings in the
Capital area, but they are of the portable kind, and would be entirely
useless on something as large as the jets in question. Large format
surface-to-air defenses would work, but there is the problem of recognizing
a threat. You don't want to be responsible for shooting down a plane that
was merely having problems; any active defensive posture could only really
come after the initial attack.
> - Where was the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania headed?
> I've heard speculations of the USX building, Camp David
> and the Pentagon.
White house was a serious speculation. It did look like there was some last
minute decisions on target selection in the capital mall.
> Doesn't look like anybody has attempted looking at solutions
> looking at other terrorist acts. How do you stop a "go fast"
> boat headed for Miami with a nuclear or bioweapon?
It boils down to setting hard boundaries and rules that are enforced with a
"no-questions-asked" lethal force. This may make things more difficult for
terrorists (and seriously tighten up border security), but it will also mean
that innocents will in all likelihood be inadvertently killed on a
semi-regular basis.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:29 MDT