Comment by ExoticPearTree
13 hours ago
> Suicide bombers are probably the main vector that TSA helps avoid even if they miss some items sometimes.
Not really, but this is because there are pretty much no suicide bombers anywhere in airports. They are incredibly rare.
But if you're a suicide bomber, by the time you get to the TSA checkpoint you can do a ton of damage inside a terminal during a holiday season when all airports are packed. Until then no one is stopping you.
There are many events where you can go that is full of crowded people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Arena_bombing
Why are they rare?
There used to be suicide bombings in the news all the time. Hijackings were the reason they instituted the metal detectors at airports.
Improved security seems unlikely as a reason, given how many tests they fail. Was it just a fad? Did they decide it wasn't getting them what they wanted at a high personal cost? Did they find something more effective?
Common things don't get into the news. How many people died in car related accidents in your country yesterday - it almost never even makes the morning news in your country, much less international news.
There's lots of suicide attacks in poorer African countries.
But the west by and large won the war on terror, it broke up all the state sponsored terrorist camps, and built a vast surveillance network capable of spotting people trying to build these devices. Israel was the flashpoint and they built walls and put cameras and AI everywhere and just flat out ignore human rights. It's just really hard to radicalise someone to that extent and not have them show up. Isis was also behind a lot of the attacks and they don't exist anymore. Afghanistan and Pakistan also don't shelter terrorists anymore because they might have kicked the US out but they don't want them back again.
Most of this is terrible from a civil liberties / human rights / sovereignty point of view, but if you wanted to stop suicide bombings it worked.
As far as the terror in terrorism goes, blowing up a plane or hijacking it and flying it into a building is a much bigger impact than blowing up a queue of people. It doesn't need to be rational.
I grew up in a time and place when terror bombings were "commonplace". And while actual bombs were rarish, bomb alerts were not.
The impact of a bomb at a post office or shopping mall or commuter train was way more impactful than planes. Only a small number of people flew, and that was easily avoided if you cared. It's a lot harder to process when a place you go regularly explodes.
Flying into buildings is not gonna happen again. That tactic didn't survive even a few hours as UA 93 demonstrated. Passengers won't allow it, and these days the cockpit door are locked.
That’s what happened in Brussels.
I was hoping these events could be used to impose fines/jailtime for airlines/airports/security that have queues longer than 5 people, but you know, counter-terrorism can’t mean making life better for the public.
> I was hoping these events could be used to impose fines/jailtime for airlines/airports/security that have queues longer than 5 people, but you know, counter-terrorism can’t mean making life better for the public.
Not even at private airports or business terminal can you can manage not having a queue smaller than 5 people. So this is a really no-go from many points of view.
BRU did something incredibly retarded after the incident: moved the queue outside. I mean yes, in open air a bomb is less lethal than in an enclosed space, but will still kill people.
And like others said, we developed capabilities to track hostiles before they can actually blow up a bunch of people. That's why you don't see FRA or MUC or CDG or LHR being blown up daily.