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It is; if only for the fact that the very small number of violent radicals can organize more effectively than ever while also having access to better murder tec

by exelius 11y ago

It is; if only for the fact that the very small number of violent radicals can organize more effectively than ever while also having access to better murder techniques than ever before. I'm personally terrified of the day someone decides to strap a claymore to the bottom of a drone and detonate it ~100 feet above a large crowd. That's the day that outdoor public gatherings become unsafe for the remainder of human history.

evilduck 11y ago
New means of killing people doesn't really make large gatherings any less safe. Suicide bombers already blow up large crowds of people all over the world. The drone and claymore is probably already less effective and more costly than the current methods of just holding someone's family hostage and forcing them into a crowd with way more explosives than a drone would carry.
nitrogen 11y ago
I'm reminded of the scene in Back to the Future where Doc reveals that he got his nuclear fuel from terrorists. The name of the country has changed, but the problem is an old one. The biggest thing we can do to keep people safe is to stop giving desperate people the means and motive to kill.
ganeumann 11y ago
Well, it's not. Not unless you live in one of a very few countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Nigeria, or Iraq, http://qz.com/552334/more-people-died-from-terrorism-last-year-than-ever-before-and-mostly-in-these-five-countries/ http://qz.com/552334/more-people-died-from-terrorism-last-ye...). People forget that there has always been terrorism and that it has historically been much worse than it is now. Scroll down a bit to the chart of international terror attacks on the US in this report: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/terror-trends-40-years-data-on-international-and-domestic-terrorism http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/terror-tren... (You can also run your own custom report here: http://smapp.rand.org/rwtid/search_form.php http://smapp.rand.org/rwtid/search_form.php) The 1970s and 1980s were much more dangerous in the US and Western Europe than the 1990s and 2000s. The idea that we are now fighting terrorists and weren't before is ahistorical nonsense. The idea that terrorism is more dangerous in the US today than it has been is purely a result of politically motivated fear-mongering. In the US at least, there is always a war on something. If it's not the cold war, it's the war on drugs, or the war on terror. It's just another system of control.

by exelius 11y ago

evilduck 11y ago

New means of killing people doesn't really make large gatherings any less safe. Suicide bombers already blow up large crowds of people all over the world. The drone and claymore is probably already less effective and more costly than the current methods of just holding someone's family hostage and forcing them into a crowd with way more explosives than a drone would carry.

nitrogen 11y ago

I'm reminded of the scene in Back to the Future where Doc reveals that he got his nuclear fuel from terrorists. The name of the country has changed, but the problem is an old one. The biggest thing we can do to keep people safe is to stop giving desperate people the means and motive to kill.

ganeumann 11y ago

Well, it's not. Not unless you live in one of a very few countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Nigeria, or Iraq, http://qz.com/552334/more-people-died-from-terrorism-last-year-than-ever-before-and-mostly-in-these-five-countries/ http://qz.com/552334/more-people-died-from-terrorism-last-ye...). People forget that there has always been terrorism and that it has historically been much worse than it is now. Scroll down a bit to the chart of international terror attacks on the US in this report: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/terror-trends-40-years-data-on-international-and-domestic-terrorism http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/terror-tren... (You can also run your own custom report here: http://smapp.rand.org/rwtid/search_form.php http://smapp.rand.org/rwtid/search_form.php) The 1970s and 1980s were much more dangerous in the US and Western Europe than the 1990s and 2000s. The idea that we are now fighting terrorists and weren't before is ahistorical nonsense. The idea that terrorism is more dangerous in the US today than it has been is purely a result of politically motivated fear-mongering. In the US at least, there is always a war on something. If it's not the cold war, it's the war on drugs, or the war on terror. It's just another system of control.