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The city Im in uses about 100 million gallons per day. Delivering a toxic dose to tens of thousands would require poisoning a targeted 10 million gallons withou

The city Im in uses about 100 million gallons per day. Delivering a toxic dose to tens of thousands would require poisoning a targeted 10 million gallons without being detected early. Im not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying adding hundreds or thousands of gallons of poison to a distributed system isn't easy nor is it something a few pissed off people can do alone. You're well in to the realm of controlled/watched substances, advanced chemical synthesis, and dozens of people carrying out an attack against hardened targets.

coldtea 10y ago
>The city Im in uses about 100 million gallons per day. Delivering a toxic dose to tens of thousands would require poisoning a targeted 10 million gallons without being detected early. How about just that of a huge building, say a hotel or hospital? >nor is it something a few pissed off people can do alone. Who said anything of a "few pissed off people doing it alone" though?
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  A single building wouldn't impact tens of thousands before discovering the attack. Even attacking a single large building is a complex task, unlikely to succeed. Large networks are easier to detect via our mass surveillance technologies. That's why most of the attacks we see these days are from small groups acting quickly. My point was your scale was way off about what's realistic to be afraid of. It's easily 100 times as likely a large corporation will kill tens of thousands than that a terrorist group will. Now, there probably are terrorist attacks that could harm tens of thousands (and no, I won't list what I think they are here), but none of those suggested here are them, they'd likely be coordinated by a state actor (and so questionable if we want to count it as just crazy people), etc.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >A single building wouldn't impact tens of thousands before discovering the attack. Tens of thousands can work on a single small building. Heck, tens of thousands can eat at single McDonalds per day, where one might e.g. infect it's storage. And why think it would be discovered quickly? An attack, eg. some virus or poison could be selected that takes a day or more to manifest any symptoms. >they'd likely be coordinated by a state actor There are groups of terrorists that are not state actors too, and some have considerable funding...
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >Tens of thousands can work on a single small building Ooops, meant "on a single building" here, like a hotel, hospital, etc, not "small building".

coldtea 10y ago

>The city Im in uses about 100 million gallons per day. Delivering a toxic dose to tens of thousands would require poisoning a targeted 10 million gallons without being detected early. How about just that of a huge building, say a hotel or hospital? >nor is it something a few pissed off people can do alone. Who said anything of a "few pissed off people doing it alone" though?

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
A single building wouldn't impact tens of thousands before discovering the attack. Even attacking a single large building is a complex task, unlikely to succeed. Large networks are easier to detect via our mass surveillance technologies. That's why most of the attacks we see these days are from small groups acting quickly. My point was your scale was way off about what's realistic to be afraid of. It's easily 100 times as likely a large corporation will kill tens of thousands than that a terrorist group will. Now, there probably are terrorist attacks that could harm tens of thousands (and no, I won't list what I think they are here), but none of those suggested here are them, they'd likely be coordinated by a state actor (and so questionable if we want to count it as just crazy people), etc.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >A single building wouldn't impact tens of thousands before discovering the attack. Tens of thousands can work on a single small building. Heck, tens of thousands can eat at single McDonalds per day, where one might e.g. infect it's storage. And why think it would be discovered quickly? An attack, eg. some virus or poison could be selected that takes a day or more to manifest any symptoms. >they'd likely be coordinated by a state actor There are groups of terrorists that are not state actors too, and some have considerable funding...
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Tens of thousands can work on a single small building Ooops, meant "on a single building" here, like a hotel, hospital, etc, not "small building".