My amazement continues. What a perfect attack. Beautiful really, if it wasn't so horrible. So simple and such complete destruction. News reports keep speculating about the masterminds behind the plot and how only a few terrorist groups in the world have the capabilities to pull something like that off, yet there appears to be no evidence to back that up. The reality, and the elegance of the attack, was that almost anyone could do it. The whole thing might have cost just a few thousand dollars. The damage is certainly well into the billions. Maybe trillions? That's some return on investment. And then on top of that, there seems to be no way to defend against it.
Assuming that the public will not stand for mandatory strip searches of all airline passengers I can only think of one thing to do. Airplanes should be reconfigured so that the cockpit is seperate from the cabin. No doors, and reinforced thick steel walls seperating the two areas. Not a locked door - no door. These planes can still be attacked. They can be blown up with bombs. Passengers can be killed. But the plane itself cannot be commandeered in mid flight by a passenger and turned into a guided missle. This seems like a simple to implement step that will almost completely take away the possibility of this sort of disaster (I guess the plane could be taken over on the ground while the attackers could still get into the cockpit section from the outside, but that seems orders of magnitude harder for the attackers.)
Without this measure, it's hard to imagine this won't happen again. And again. And again. A few hundred bucks for a couple of tickets, and a few ceramic knives is all it takes to bomb the pentagon or knock down the World Trade Center? (Well, plus that willing to die part.) This is not acceptible. Tougher security checks at airports are not going to matter. Moving naval battle groups into New York harbor is not going to matter. Star Wars or any other crazy high tech solution will not matter. We must try to make peace, and in the mean time we have to make it impossible for people to easily get their hands on giant flying bombs.
[I'm posting more WTC related stuff in the comments below]
Just some more notes here:
The lower east side is completely shut down. Police on every major corner. You can't walk south without an ID. I went to the store above Houston this morning and had to go through check points to get home. They were searching bags. Weird. Hardly any cars on the streets. Still, for all that, people seem to be taking it in stride. Business as (un)usual.
We opened up the bar last night for friends. Tony brought a TV and we all watched the news together. I have to say, even though I don't like him, Rudy Giuliani gave a great talk last night. Really good job. He seemed like a human. I don't like him or his politics, but he's a good leader. George Bush, on the other hand, seemed to confirm the idea that he is a robot. I think his system software must be a 1.0 release. Ridiculously bad speech.
The wind is shifting now. We can smell it rather strongly. Like burnt plastic.
It seemed weird that this scenario hadn't been discussed before. Looks like it has.
I just heard (from someone talking to a detective) that 90% of precinct 1 (below Canal st.) police are missing.
I can't find it written anywhere, but I keep hearing a story about a fireman who was on the 80th floor of one of the towers at the time of collapse. Supposedly he road the building down and suffered only a broken leg. Seems impossible, but so does a lot of stuff that has happened lately.
Here's the WTC plume from space.
From the just another crazy thought department: What if they had crashed a plane into a nuclear power plant? Would that be like a nuclear bomb? Are those things constructed with anything like that in mind?
jim maybe for now...a sky cop on each plane garding the cockpit, no carry on, a pat down search for all inc crew...a start
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Assuming that the public will not stand for mandatory strip searches of all airline passengers I can only think of one thing to do. Airplanes should be reconfigured so that the cockpit is seperate from the cabin. No doors, and reinforced thick steel walls seperating the two areas. Not a locked door - no door. These planes can still be attacked. They can be blown up with bombs. Passengers can be killed. But the plane itself cannot be commandeered in mid flight by a passenger and turned into a guided missle. This seems like a simple to implement step that will almost completely take away the possibility of this sort of disaster (I guess the plane could be taken over on the ground while the attackers could still get into the cockpit section from the outside, but that seems orders of magnitude harder for the attackers.)
Without this measure, it's hard to imagine this won't happen again. And again. And again. A few hundred bucks for a couple of tickets, and a few ceramic knives is all it takes to bomb the pentagon or knock down the World Trade Center? (Well, plus that willing to die part.) This is not acceptible. Tougher security checks at airports are not going to matter. Moving naval battle groups into New York harbor is not going to matter. Star Wars or any other crazy high tech solution will not matter. We must try to make peace, and in the mean time we have to make it impossible for people to easily get their hands on giant flying bombs.
[I'm posting more WTC related stuff in the comments below]
- jim 9-12-2001 6:24 pm
Just some more notes here:
The lower east side is completely shut down. Police on every major corner. You can't walk south without an ID. I went to the store above Houston this morning and had to go through check points to get home. They were searching bags. Weird. Hardly any cars on the streets. Still, for all that, people seem to be taking it in stride. Business as (un)usual.
We opened up the bar last night for friends. Tony brought a TV and we all watched the news together. I have to say, even though I don't like him, Rudy Giuliani gave a great talk last night. Really good job. He seemed like a human. I don't like him or his politics, but he's a good leader. George Bush, on the other hand, seemed to confirm the idea that he is a robot. I think his system software must be a 1.0 release. Ridiculously bad speech.
The wind is shifting now. We can smell it rather strongly. Like burnt plastic.
- jim 9-12-2001 6:48 pm
It seemed weird that this scenario hadn't been discussed before. Looks like it has.
- jim 9-12-2001 7:44 pm
I just heard (from someone talking to a detective) that 90% of precinct 1 (below Canal st.) police are missing.
- jim 9-12-2001 7:53 pm
I can't find it written anywhere, but I keep hearing a story about a fireman who was on the 80th floor of one of the towers at the time of collapse. Supposedly he road the building down and suffered only a broken leg. Seems impossible, but so does a lot of stuff that has happened lately.
- jim 9-12-2001 8:39 pm
Here's the WTC plume from space.
- jim 9-12-2001 10:14 pm
From the just another crazy thought department: What if they had crashed a plane into a nuclear power plant? Would that be like a nuclear bomb? Are those things constructed with anything like that in mind?
- jim 9-13-2001 2:31 pm
jim maybe for now...a sky cop on each plane garding the cockpit, no carry on, a pat down search for all inc crew...a start
- Skinny 9-15-2001 10:41 pm