On Thu, 20 Sep 2001, Derek Martin wrote:
> If we, the citizens of this country, are not stronger ...
Try being strong when a terrorist has a knife at your loved one's throat,
and is promising you'll be okay if you just sit down and ride out the flight
to whatever location they claimed it was going to.
Derek, it is very hard to say this without giving offense, so I will only
say that this is not a personal attack, and be direct:
You strike me as an armchair quarterback. If is very easy for you to talk
this way, when you are at a safe distance.
Note that you are hardly the only one that strikes me this way. A great
many people act this way. And I do not eliminate myself from that group.
> I also don't rule out the possibility that it was shot down by F16s. I
> would not expect the government to tell you that they did that ...
Conspiracy theories don't work.
You probably believe the USAF has alien flying saucers buried in New
Mexico, too, right? :-/
> 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 ...
Until last Tuesday, that was a reasonably safe assumption.
> But it is our own weakness that allowed this terrible tragedy to happen.
Unfortunately, there is basically no way to secure an airplane against
attack from the inside.
I hear you talk of bullet-proof cockpits, firewalls, and carrying guns.
You are likely aware that a commercial passenger jet is a flying pressure
vessel. Perhaps you do not realize the implications of this. I did not,
until I saw them pointed out last week: You cannot simply install a steel
door in the middle of an airplane. If you do, in the event of a
decompression, the plane will break up. The threat of pressure hull
compromise from bullets from guns is similar.
The only way to effectively defend the flight deck against attack from
passengers would be to make a fully separate pressure hull, with no
connection to the passenger compartment. While that might work on short
commuter flights, it is problematic for trans-continental or longer flights.
Even so, it is technologically doable.
So then the terrorists could infiltrate the flight crew instead.
Or, for that matter, they could drive the bomb into the next skyscraper.
Do not forget the lesson of Timothy McVeigh, who did what he did with a
truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil.
I am minded of a quote I see on the MS Exchange mailing list frequently:
"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."
-- Ed Crowley
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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