> If you find yourself on a plane being hijacked, is it better to assume
> that you will land safely and be rescued by law enforcement, or that
> your attackers will kill you and everyone else on the plane if you
> don't stop them?
Given past data, yes, it would have been better to assume. Considering
that the VAST majority of previous hijackings ended on the tarmac, almost
never with all on-board dying, it was a rational decision to make. Now
that more data has been added, people will bear this in mind come the next
hijacking. If you go back and look at previous hijackings, however,
almost all of them had the majority of passengers get off with their
lives, and almost never any deaths on the ground (not counting shock
troops). Until last Tuesday, I would have considered it the height of
folly to upset people who in all likelyhood were out of their minds, but
not enough so that they wanted to die instead of get (say) their brethren
released from prison, which was a fairly common hijacking demand. The
recent events raise the bar, I readily and willingly grant. However,
given past history, I *absolutely* back the decision of those who thought
that being quiet was the correct policy.
Things have now changed. Yes. That does not make their decision, based
on available data, a poorly thought-out decision. The wrong one? Alas,
yes. But not for lack of thinking, or courage. To die needlessly (since
I'm sure *none* of them actually thought they'd be crashing into the WTC,
and probably never even realized it) is just dumb. Had they realized that
for every single one of their lives, ~30 others would, or even *might*,
die, I'm sure that the result would have been resoundingly different. I,
at least, have that much faith in the people of our country.
-Ken
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