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Comment by drakeskrit | Hacker News Reader

Imagine for a moment that instead of this gentleman, a terrorist with a RPG came ashore instead with the intention of shooting down a large jetliner (or two or three). I think that's the real horror of this situation. A man who did not have any ill-will and -every- intention of being caught so he could find help, was not seen until he approached a worker on the tarmac.

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Imagine a terrorist with an RPG walking into the front door of an airport and firing upon the security checkpoint. Or shooting down a large jetliner from the side of the highway next to the airport.

You can't make security policy decisions based on hypothetical horror stories alone. If you don't balance fear with reason you end up with ridiculously expensive policies that do absolutely nothing to increase safety.

> Imagine a terrorist with an RPG walking into the front door of an airport and firing upon the security checkpoint.

Exactly! I've seen 500+ people at security checkpoints at Chicago O'Hare. A couple people with AK-47s could likely kill far more people than a shoe bomb on a plane.

That this sort of thing hasn't happened seems an indication of just how impotent Al Qaeda is these days.

As soon as any airport is attacked like that imagine the new security fun we'll get.

Responses like car searches coming into the airport with guns pointed at you and other things that will make our current wait on getting to an airplane look like a distant dream. And picking people up at the airport will become more painful than a dentist visit.

How impotent it always was.

You're watching too many movies. As long as we are imagining, why not imagine a team of terrorists paratrooping on to the tarmac armed with nuclear bombs, and a vial of smallpox virus genetically modified to be exceptionally virulent? Or that the president is secretly controlled by aliens and has introduced an agent into the water supply that will sterilize all humans, allowing a non-violent takeover of the planet by 'them'.

Well RPGs are cheap and easy to get, the stuff you mentioned isn't.

No, the real horror of this situation is thinking like yours in positions of responsibility. For what reason would we expect a terrorist to swim up on the beach with an RPG (James Bond style) and start blasting planes? Is this a scenario worth considering? Is it worth spending money on?

This just demonstrated a proof of concept that 26/11 mumbai style attack is possible on U.S soil. That is a very,very dangerous thing.

Coordinated attacks have always been possible on US soil and have been made even more so by the response to 9/11 (e.g. big group of people piled together in front of every security line). It's not a "very, very dangerous thing". There is always something that is vulnerable, and yet no one has exploited this yet. Has this world-wide cabal of highly advanced terrorists someone missed this vulnerability that I noticed the first time I flew after 9/11?

India has a history of terrorist attacks from islamic extremists (largely originating in pakistan). The US has no such history.

A Mumbai-style attack will always be possible, on any soil. It's not possible to secure entire cities of millions of people against a handful of people with rifles and grenades.

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