Gullible people not confined to 1930s Americans listening to The War of the Worlds

[lovingboth]

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1218779,00.html

I'm particularly amused by the idea that terrorists wouldn't have thought of placing two bombs on an underground train.

When I was watching it, I was wondering why they didn't have some of the particularly nasty possible attacks, but I suppose having your emergency planning team go "right, let's pack up and go home, there's not much we can do" doesn't make for very good TV.

So, no destroying the dozen or so electricity substations that supply London with electricity (the IRA were actively planning this one but were caught, fortunately, as it'd take about a year before everyone got their power back).

No battery of anti-aircraft missiles in West London (with a plane every 90 seconds or so over work, I'd be surprised if you couldn't get at least three planes to crash before air traffic control managed to divert everyone else).

And no exploding a serious bomb on a Bakerloo or Northern Line train going under the river between Embankment and Waterloo (goodbye tube network for about a year, if it floods).

What would your evil terrorist twin do?

Comments

[elves-uk.livejournal.com]

place a bio weapon in water reservoirs, or even simpler hallucinogenic compounds.

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

Kill a couple of dozen people in one day using traps hidden in a type of everyday regognizable object (e.g. exploding cigarette packets). Be sure that your traps are distictive and tha a couple of them survive to be reported. Keep a low profile and do it again a few months later, planting your traps in a different kind of object (e.g. poison-tipped newspapers). Do it again later with a completely different kind of trap (e.g. tampered traffic lights), until caught.

Within about a year, you will have killed less than a hundred people, but you would have made Londoners so paranoid they would be unable to function. After each incident, nobody will be willing to stand near cigarette packets, pick up newspapers, trust traffic lights etc. Furthemore, if past experience is anything to go by, the authorities will impose elaborate measures to prevent a repeat of the same attack in each case, and will keep accumulating these burdensome measures, but will ignore possible new attacks.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to assist terrorists but to highlight flaws in the way the public and the authorities reason about our security.