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> I think the question is, how come an attack on a hospital does not have the optics of an attack on infrastructure? An attack on a hospital affects someone if
by meepmorp 5y ago
> I think the question is, how come an attack on a hospital does not have the optics of an attack on infrastructure?
An attack on a hospital affects someone if they work there or are using that hospital. A pipeline attack affects people who drive cars places and need gas. The latter group is much larger than the former.
- capableweb 5y agoMore apt comparison would be: Hospital affects workers who work there and people using that hospital VS Pipeline affects workers who work there and people currently refilling their cars with gas from there Or Hospital affects workers who work there and everyone within a radius who could need it at any moment VS Pipeline affects works who work there and people who generally rely on that gas to drive Suddenly the groups seems much similarly sized, while one being important for staying alive VS the other being a nice-to-have, if we consider it being offline for a week or two only. I know which one I would consider being worse if I was a country. But then we're also talking about a country who's fascination for oil is like no other, so this is hardly surprising.
- throwawayboise 5y agoSure it's "nice to have" unless it does go on longer and suddenly nobody can get to the stores to buy food and the stores don't have any food to sell because the trucks that deliver it can't get fuel.
- capableweb 5y agoThanks for expanding, that was exactly what I meant. Ok for smaller duration, while a hospital without functioning equipment is almost useless (compared to it's original status) immediately.
- SirSourdough 5y agoI mean, the pipeline in question provides half of the gas to the US East coast. You don’t have to love oil to see that losing 40% of the supply to more than 100m people overnight would be a public safety (what if emergency vehicles can’t buy fuel?) and economic risk. The number of people reliant on this pipeline is several orders of magnitude greater than would be impacted by taking a single hospital offline. You’d need to have many hospitals impacted to create a similar level of risk. The only big difference is that taking out hospital infrastructure can kill people immediately whereas the impact of a pipeline failure won’t generally be felt for days or weeks. Edit: Based on your other response it sounds like we are on the same page.
- capableweb 5y agoYeah, I understand this and agree with you. Compare one of the biggest oil pipelines in the country with one hospital, of course one will be worse than the other. But if you instead compare 40% of the hospitals going offline VS 40% loosing access to gas, with similar conditions, I think the mortality will be higher by attacking hospitals. I think the government could probably somehow logistically ration oil if shit really hits the pan too, so essentials can keep running. Probably worse situation with hospitals, even though the military could probably help out there a bit. That's why it's weird to not react when people are attacking hospitals, vs oil pipelines. But as said before in my other comment, maybe not too weird.
- selectodude 5y agoI guarantee if a ransomware attack shut down 40 percent of the hospitals in the United States at the same time, we'd have an Iraq War situation on our hands.
- bluGill 5y agoIf 40% of the hospitals shutdown the majority of people would not notice if you somehow kept it out of the news. It would be a disaster for those who need a hospital right then, but the average person doesn't even visit a hospital once a year. The average person fills their gas tank once a month, so they are much more likely to notice personally.