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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

It's theater. There are much better and easier ways to commit mass murder than trying to take down a plane. And yet, we don't see waves of airport bombings, train/train station bombings, shopping mall bombings, stadium bombings, theater bombings, etc. Why are planes so special that we have to endure inconveniences and privacy violations in order to secure them, when we seem not to care about all these other things?

The fact that someone tried (and yet failed!) to detonate a liquid explosive on a plane is not an excuse to ban water. Water! A basic requirement for life! It's absurd.

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> Why are planes so special

Psychology. A flight passenger's life is in the hands of others for a span of hours at a time. The victims of a hypothetical attack are hopelessly trapped, whereas one can at least imagine theoretically fleeing the scene in most other cases. These things make the threat seem far more salient.

Also, humans are generally bad at understanding small probabilities.

I dunno, 9/11 proved that a plane is efficient enough at destruction to take down an entire supertall office building. Can someone do that in a theater, train station, or stadium?

And in the decades before 9/11, hijackings were actually a somewhat regular occurrence and real threat.

Yes, there is security theater involved, but I think airplanes are very obviously a special case. When they used to get hijacked it was a difficult situation because authorities were trying to deal with a fast moving plane with civilian lives on it (so they can’t just shoot it down), and that person could cross borders and do all kinds of things that you can’t do any other way.

They can be flown anywhere quickly, they can’t be evacuated when they flying, and they can quickly cross borders and barriers.

Water isn’t banned, either. There’s plenty of free water past security. Bring an empty water bottle.

Or just bring ice: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...

Recurring inconvenience is a good basic test for compliance.

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