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You can crash a whole plane by poking a small hole with a tiny bomb. Put a bomb in a TGV, and you'll kill people nearby, but not in the other wagons. So it's n
by himinlomax 5y ago
You can crash a whole plane by poking a small hole with a tiny bomb.
Put a bomb in a TGV, and you'll kill people nearby, but not in the other wagons. So it's not a particularly attractive target compared to say, a shopping mall.
Terrorists planned to derail one in the 1990s by destroying rails, they were thwarted beforehand. But even if they succeeded, TGV is designed specifically to resist derailment and not fold on itself like a regular train, so it's unlikely most passengers would have been killed.
- Ekaros 5y agoYour best option is likely controlled demolition of a bridge. And that needs decent number of explosive and knowledge. Plus timing. Ofc, the financial damage is quite substantial, but loss of life is in the few hundred range.
- himinlomax 5y agoSo it's not specific to TGV, if you can destroy such a bridge you could destroy any number of similar works, or even whole buildings. Busy commuter trains typically have more passengers.
- GDC7 5y agoI don't know about the TGV and other high speed trains, but in normal trains you can move from one compartment to the other. So I stand by what I said and I claim once again that you only need one ill intentioned person with a firearm and everybody on board is basically done, they'd move across compartments and off everybody. There are thousands of trains which all have that same vulnerability, so a coordinated attack would have a toll much higher than everything seen before. People have a blindspot, they'd claim that such attack would never take place because the "production value" is not the same as explosive attacks. I don't think hoping that ill intentioned people hold "production value" as rigorous parameter when planning an attack is a valuable strategy
- himinlomax 5y agoSuch a person with a firearm would do the same damage in a mall than in the TGV. There is no multiplier effect, unlike in a plane.
- GDC7 5y agoThe 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. It's not like a mall > There is no multiplier effect Your multiplier effect is the initial factor advantage of how easy it is to pack a firearm on a train. A depressed kid could do it, easy target to recruit online, and doesn't even need firearm training considering that it would be as easy as shooting sardines in a barrel given the physical space in a train. So basically an ill intentioned group would need to recruit 20 depressed kids , put them on 20 different trains departing at approximately the same time and they'd cause a toll in excess of everything seen before
- himinlomax 5y agoAgain, it's just as easy to pack a firearm in a mall. That's why the security is the same as in a mall.
- GDC7 5y agoThe 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 A train is not a mall.
- zwaps 5y agoTrue, there are more people in a mall, and you don’t need a long time to move through piece by piece…. as you need for the train. What if the train stops? This can be done by any personell quickly. Doors and windows of trains can be opened everywhere, they are designed that way. Stop the train, intercom and tell people to leave the train and the situation is over. Chances are this will turn out differently than you assume
- bambax 5y ago> TGV is designed specifically to resist derailment Not sure about that. In 2015 they did a demo of a new TGV line and the train derailed just by going a little too fast in a curve [0]. It killed eleven people on board and injured 42 others. The number of dead and injured is so low because there were very few people on board. If a bomb exploded on the first car of a TGV the number of casualties would be high. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment