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Comment by 52-6F-62

7 days ago

So what you are saying is we can expect the number of accidental home-made chlorine-gas (and the like) toxic events go up.

> what you are saying is we can expect the number of accidental home-made chlorine-gas (and the like) toxic events go up

Maybe? One of the quirks of gaining even a surface-level understanding of infrastructure is realising how vulnerable it is to a smart, motivated adversary. The main thing protecting us isn't hard security. It's most Americans having better shit to do than running a truck of fertiliser and oxidiser into a pylon.

Similarly, I'd expect way more people to be trying to make their own designer drug, and hurting themselves that way, than trying to make neurotoxins.

  • > It's most Americans having better shit to do than running a truck of fertiliser and oxidiser into a pylon.

    FWIW, it's most people having better shit to do, regardless of nationality (or lack thereof).

    But, yeah, anyone who takes a few weekends to understand how large-scale infrastructure works and consider why it's possible for nearly all of it to remain untargeted by saboteurs inevitably develops a resistance to the "Lots of Bad Guys are trying to kill us all the time, so we must enact $AUTHORITARIAN_POLICIES immediately to prevent them and keep us safe!!!" type of argument.

    • My favorite example of this is the realization that a terrorist attack on a crowded TSA security checkpoint over the holidays would likely result in at least as many casualties as bringing down a commercial aircraft, with similar if not better odds of success (assuming, of course, the aircraft wasn't successfully used as a missile).

      Same goes for concerts, sporting events, political rallies, and at least historically, shopping malls. Yet if anyone were to suggest a prohibition against carrying liquids in containers larger than 100 mL to the Indy 500, race fans would riot, despite a far larger and denser population than any aircraft.

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  • > It's most Americans having better shit to do than running a truck of fertiliser and oxidiser into a pylon.

    Which sort of implies "most Americans have jobs and responsibilities and things to live for"

    I guess it's a good thing that AI is hammering away at the "jobs and responsibilities" part of that equation