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There was the same discussion a few days ago on another post. It's not a fair comparison. You can hardly hijack a train. Even if you manage to get control of th

by maeln 5y ago

There was the same discussion a few days ago on another post. It's not a fair comparison. You can hardly hijack a train. Even if you manage to get control of the train, you cannot land it in a tower full of people. The worst you can do is make it de-rail which, while it will probably kill a lot of people, is unlikely to kill all of its passenger. And if you carry a bomb you will blow at most one compartment. Also, with train, even if someone manage to get to the driver compartment, you can still control a lot of the train from the outside. You can change its direction at exchange point, you can cut its supply in electricity (if it is an electric train) therefore stopping it (although in quite a dangerous way...). And you are still on the ground were it is very easy for police / military to catch up and intervene. You can't do that with a plane several kilometers high in the sky. Planes are much more sensible to all of those potential threat. That is why we ended up with such drastic security. Although I have to say, in a lot of places, security is way more relaxed. If you travel from the E.U to the E.U you have way less check and queue time.

mytailorisrich 5y ago
The thing is that if someone wants to use a bomb to derail a train it may be easier to place the bomb on or near the tracks, which obviously bypasses any security onboard. This was attempted on the TGV during the terrorist wave of the mid-90s in France but, fortunately, it did not detonate. That being said, I think that they have X-ray checks now on TGVs.
- pjerem 5y ago
  > I think that they have X-ray checks now on TGVs. Nope.
  - mrgordon 5y ago
    Spain has security checks at their major stations for high speed trains including to go to France, but France does not
    - pjerem 5y ago
      There are so many widely open train stations in France that securing only some of them would be a huge waste of time and energy while securing them all would be nearly impossible. And I really don’t want to live in a country where boarding a train is as painful as boarding a plane. Millions of people are using train to commute, adding security checks would totally kill the train.
      - mrgordon 5y ago
        For what’s it’s worth it’s more of a bag scan rather than a full security check like at the airport. Certainly the full security check is not something I want to deal with but it wasn’t too bad. They only do it at the main stations in Spain and only if you’re riding the high speed trains, so I imagine if France did it then it would only be at TGV stops which are not so numerous
- Sevaris 5y ago
  I'm so glad that terrorists are largely unimaginative and/or incompetent. There are so many targets, including trains, that they're ignoring that would be so much easier to hit. I think what many people seem to be missing is that you don't need to kill 3000 people. If you kill 1000, spread out across 10 cities, you're going to cause a lot of fear and chaos.
GDC7 5y ago
You don't get it. Trains are left to themselves, there is no surveillance. Ill intentioned people can change dynamic of the attack, instead of needing 2 planes and use them as kinetic projectiles against buildings, they'd need an armed guy on 10 trains The end result in terms of human losses is the same because a guy with a gun can go through each and every compartment and off everybody before the police would even know what's going on. Multiply that scenario by 10 or 20 or 30 and you have the worst national tragedy in the history of the nation. I am thankful because if people on HN can't conceptualize that, then the odds of some goatfuc*er in the mountains of Afghanistan doing it are even lower....but still people thought they could not conceptualize the attacks happened in the 2000s. Everybody remembers the first, but there were also London and Madrid.
- bserge 5y ago
  We need to get rid of those through-highrise rails!
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Or the terrorists could just go shoot up a packed nightclub, which is exactly what they did in the Bataclan attack in Paris. There isn't really anything particularly attractive about trains as a target compared to any other crowded place. Also, your hypothesis is that a single person could kill everybody on a train, but in reality they'd get assaulted with suitcases, the doors between carriages would be barricaded, somebody would pull the emergency brake and people would flee, etc. This was actually tried once in France, and the attacker managed to kill zero (0) people before they were overpowered. https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201217-thalys-train-gunman-sentenced-to-life-in-jail-over-foiled-2015-terror-attack https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201217-thalys-train-gun...
  - GDC7 5y ago
    > There isn't really anything particularly attractive about trains as a target compared to any other crowded place. The amount of people per square foot surface, the fact that there is no way out and the fact that police cannot rush to the scene
  - 5y ago
jacquesm 5y ago
We had two hi-jacking of a train in NL a long time ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Dutch_train_hijacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Dutch_train_hijacking
- throw0101a 5y ago
  France in 2015: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Thalys_train_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Thalys_train_attack * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_15:17_to_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_15:17_to_Paris Spain in 2004: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings
  - maeln 5y ago
    Ofc these things happen, but compare that to the number of hijacked aircraft : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking Pre 2001, there was more than 10 hijack almost every year.
bambax 5y ago
The point of terrorism isn't especially to kill "a lot of people" (although that helps, obviously); it is to terrify. Many recent terrorist attacks killed relatively few people, yet were extremely effective in terrorizing. Should the first car of a TGV explode at 350+ km/h I think it would work as a terror attack. Yet, although train security is nil, it never happens [0]. I'm not sure why. My first guess is there are not that many terrorists. We probably could ease the security on planes with few ill effects. [0] There has been train attacks or hijacks but no bombs AFAIK.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_involving_railway_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  It's not nil. I had to get my luggage x-rayed when I went from Barcelona to Madrid, a national trip. I didn't get checked for metal objects etc, but there is no point. You can't get to the cab from the train anyway. And the impact of knifings/shootings is the same as in a busy shopping centre. We don't do metal detections there on every visitor. So the main terrorism risk really relevant to it being a mode of transport rather than any other crowded place, is bombing and thus derailment of the entire train. And that is something that is checked for, at least here in Spain.
  - bambax 5y ago
    It is not checked in France, ever, at all, and TFA is about French TGV. It is true that it is "checked" in Spain; I experienced it this summer while going from Sevilla to Cordoba. However the check is (in my experience) quite superficial; also, as it creates long lines of people that get upset that they may miss their train, it is expedited and many things do not in fact pass through the X-ray machine. And finally, it is not checked on all trains; we were checked from Sevilla to Cordoba (the train was going all the way up to Barcelona) but there were no checks on the return leg. So, while it would be trivial to bring bad things aboard a train in France, it seems that it wouldn't be difficult in Spain either.

by maeln 5y ago

mytailorisrich 5y ago

The thing is that if someone wants to use a bomb to derail a train it may be easier to place the bomb on or near the tracks, which obviously bypasses any security onboard. This was attempted on the TGV during the terrorist wave of the mid-90s in France but, fortunately, it did not detonate. That being said, I think that they have X-ray checks now on TGVs.

pjerem 5y ago
> I think that they have X-ray checks now on TGVs. Nope.
- mrgordon 5y ago
  Spain has security checks at their major stations for high speed trains including to go to France, but France does not
  - pjerem 5y ago
    There are so many widely open train stations in France that securing only some of them would be a huge waste of time and energy while securing them all would be nearly impossible. And I really don’t want to live in a country where boarding a train is as painful as boarding a plane. Millions of people are using train to commute, adding security checks would totally kill the train.
    - mrgordon 5y ago
      For what’s it’s worth it’s more of a bag scan rather than a full security check like at the airport. Certainly the full security check is not something I want to deal with but it wasn’t too bad. They only do it at the main stations in Spain and only if you’re riding the high speed trains, so I imagine if France did it then it would only be at TGV stops which are not so numerous
Sevaris 5y ago
I'm so glad that terrorists are largely unimaginative and/or incompetent. There are so many targets, including trains, that they're ignoring that would be so much easier to hit. I think what many people seem to be missing is that you don't need to kill 3000 people. If you kill 1000, spread out across 10 cities, you're going to cause a lot of fear and chaos.

GDC7 5y ago

You don't get it. Trains are left to themselves, there is no surveillance. Ill intentioned people can change dynamic of the attack, instead of needing 2 planes and use them as kinetic projectiles against buildings, they'd need an armed guy on 10 trains The end result in terms of human losses is the same because a guy with a gun can go through each and every compartment and off everybody before the police would even know what's going on. Multiply that scenario by 10 or 20 or 30 and you have the worst national tragedy in the history of the nation. I am thankful because if people on HN can't conceptualize that, then the odds of some goatfuc*er in the mountains of Afghanistan doing it are even lower....but still people thought they could not conceptualize the attacks happened in the 2000s. Everybody remembers the first, but there were also London and Madrid.

bserge 5y ago
We need to get rid of those through-highrise rails!
dustintrex 5y ago
Or the terrorists could just go shoot up a packed nightclub, which is exactly what they did in the Bataclan attack in Paris. There isn't really anything particularly attractive about trains as a target compared to any other crowded place. Also, your hypothesis is that a single person could kill everybody on a train, but in reality they'd get assaulted with suitcases, the doors between carriages would be barricaded, somebody would pull the emergency brake and people would flee, etc. This was actually tried once in France, and the attacker managed to kill zero (0) people before they were overpowered. https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201217-thalys-train-gunman-sentenced-to-life-in-jail-over-foiled-2015-terror-attack https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201217-thalys-train-gun...
- GDC7 5y ago
  > There isn't really anything particularly attractive about trains as a target compared to any other crowded place. The amount of people per square foot surface, the fact that there is no way out and the fact that police cannot rush to the scene
- 5y ago

jacquesm 5y ago

We had two hi-jacking of a train in NL a long time ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Dutch_train_hijacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Dutch_train_hijacking

throw0101a 5y ago
France in 2015: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Thalys_train_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Thalys_train_attack * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_15:17_to_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_15:17_to_Paris Spain in 2004: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings
- maeln 5y ago
  Ofc these things happen, but compare that to the number of hijacked aircraft : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking Pre 2001, there was more than 10 hijack almost every year.

bambax 5y ago

The point of terrorism isn't especially to kill "a lot of people" (although that helps, obviously); it is to terrify. Many recent terrorist attacks killed relatively few people, yet were extremely effective in terrorizing. Should the first car of a TGV explode at 350+ km/h I think it would work as a terror attack. Yet, although train security is nil, it never happens [0]. I'm not sure why. My first guess is there are not that many terrorists. We probably could ease the security on planes with few ill effects. [0] There has been train attacks or hijacks but no bombs AFAIK.

Symbiote 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_involving_railway_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
GekkePrutser 5y ago
It's not nil. I had to get my luggage x-rayed when I went from Barcelona to Madrid, a national trip. I didn't get checked for metal objects etc, but there is no point. You can't get to the cab from the train anyway. And the impact of knifings/shootings is the same as in a busy shopping centre. We don't do metal detections there on every visitor. So the main terrorism risk really relevant to it being a mode of transport rather than any other crowded place, is bombing and thus derailment of the entire train. And that is something that is checked for, at least here in Spain.
- bambax 5y ago
  It is not checked in France, ever, at all, and TFA is about French TGV. It is true that it is "checked" in Spain; I experienced it this summer while going from Sevilla to Cordoba. However the check is (in my experience) quite superficial; also, as it creates long lines of people that get upset that they may miss their train, it is expedited and many things do not in fact pass through the X-ray machine. And finally, it is not checked on all trains; we were checked from Sevilla to Cordoba (the train was going all the way up to Barcelona) but there were no checks on the return leg. So, while it would be trivial to bring bad things aboard a train in France, it seems that it wouldn't be difficult in Spain either.