Hacker News Reader

Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that the level has literally never been below substantial or above severe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels

From the linked wikipedia page: 'It had been raised to "critical" following the Parsons Green bombing on 15 September.' (2017)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41288525

Though if you click through to the Wikipedia page for the previous alert scheme it replaced, apparently the lowest "white" no-alert level under that was "known to have been used for periods between the Good Friday Agreement and the 9th of September 2001". Really, it's just a reflection of the times we're in right now.

I think it's a bigger reflection of the fact that there is absolutely zero incentive to lower these alerts and that the police, who inform the threat level, generally benefit greatly from the "temporarily" expanded privileges from higher levels.

> Really, it's just a reflection of the times we're in right now.

How so? Looking at charts like [1] or [2] it seems current threat levels should be much lower than in the time before 2001. Notable terror attacks in the UK have gone from a regular occurance to a once-in-a-decade deal.

1: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-6aa8066136b8b875fc4805...

2: https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/eca0e3ae8792b445038a7dd2...

The nature of the attacks is very different; the majority of historic deaths in those charts were of policemen and armed forces. It would be interesting to see similar charts with them excluded!

The 5 color US equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Terrorism_Advisory_Sy... has never been on the lowest levels either, "high threat level is now considered as the "baseline.""

Note that it's gone from tracking one figure (all forms of terrorism), to three figures (international terrorism, NI-related in GB, NI-related in NI), to two figures (all forms of terrorism, NI-related in NI).

While there were three figures, NI-related in GB did reach moderate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com