UT-Austin completely evacuated because of bomb threat | Hacker News Reader

UT-Austin completely evacuated because of bomb threat

utexas.edu

8 pointseegilbert19 comments

It's almost certainly a hoax, of course. I'm fairly certain there's never been a bomb threat on an American school where there turned out to be an actual bomb.

Not once in any school in the United States, ever in the entire history of the nation.

I've really looked for a counterexample, but I haven't found any. If any of you have one, I'd love to hear it.

It seems remarkably easy and consequence-free to disrupt major institutions like universities, sporting events, etc.

The answer probably isn't to ignore the threat, but it seems there's gotta be a better solution than shutting the entire thing down. Maybe not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre

This is a ridiculously-poor example. The Columbine shooting didn't involve a planted bomb, and there wasn't a phone call in advance. The boys just showed up to school shooting.

Did you read the article? "Upon their arrival at Columbine, the duo met near Harris's car and armed two 20 pound (9 kg) propane bombs before entering the cafeteria a few minutes prior to the beginning of the A lunch shift, placing the duffel bags containing the bombs inside. Each bomb was set to explode at approximately 11:17 a.m.[4] However, a custodian removed the security camera video tape, rewound it, and placed a new tape into the slot just as the duo entered the cafeteria. Though the act of placing the bombs was not recorded, just as the new tape was started, the bags were clearly visible. Klebold and Harris then returned to their vehicles to await the explosion of the bombs they had planted."

"The pair hoped that after setting off home-made explosives in the cafeteria at the busiest time of day, killing many hundreds of students, they would use their guns to shoot survivors as they fled from the school. Then, as police vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks, and reporters came to the school, bombs set in the boys' cars would detonate, killing the emergency personnel, media, and law enforcement officers; this original plan backfired when the explosives did not detonate."

Yes, I'm pretty familiar with Columbine. What you seemed to have missed in my question were the words "bomb threat".

When has anyone called a school and said "I've planted a bomb" and then a bomb ended up actually being there? I assert never.

Wait a second. How can you be "pretty familiar" with Columbine and also assert that "The Columbine shooting didn't involve a planted bomb" and "The boys just showed up to school shooting", neither of which assertions actually turns out to be true?

I get that you don't want to consider this as the counter-example that you're looking for. That's fine. And I grant you that there was no phone call in advance; I never said there was. I thought this was a good example in the spirit of the question, as your implication seems to be "and therefore there never will be".

Your third assertion is just as meaningless as your first two. It doesn't matter whether or not there ever has been. What matters is this: there very easily could be.

I knew Harris and Klebold had brought bombs with them, although I'll admit I'd forgotten about the bomb that didn't go off they'd set outside.

When I said "planted bomb", what I was thinking of was a situation where the bomber visits the intended target site in advance, stealthily hides the bomb, sets at timer (or remote detonator) and then leaves. Later the bomb goes off with the intent of killing people.

I don't consider Columbine to be similar to this in spirit because 1) the boys brought the bomb with them that day; it wasn't set up "in advance". 2) the bomb wasn't intended to hurt people, really; it was to draw people out so the boys could shoot them. And, of course, there was no "bomb threat" call, either. This was a travel-to-the-site school shooting that just happened to involve a(n) (unsuccessful) bomb, which I believe to be very different in spirit from something like the OKC bombing.

You rightly complain that I'm hand-wavy, but I'd assert that even if there very easily could be such a bomb, it DOES matter that there never has been.

The goal of a terrorist is to create fear in the population at large. One of my goals as a school teacher is to reduce unfounded fear among students and parents.

Parents already have enough to worry about. There are real, likely worries: my child will be in a car accident. There are real but unlikely worries: my plane will crash. And then below that are technically-possible-but-still-unlikely-and-have-never-even-happened worries: the bomb threat at my school represents a danger to my child.

I'm not saying school violence isn't a legitimate worry, just that a bomb in a school with a phone call beforehand ought to be pretty low on what's already a pretty insignificant risk.

I can live with that. :-)

It's not just Austin: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19602986

I've heard from a friend in Austin that this is a hoax. Sounds like this might be related to the anti-Islam film.

Why is this on HN? Hoaxes like this happen daily.

We had a discussion about this about how often bomb threats get made to universities. I felt as if this was a rare thing, which is why, IMO, when it does happen the news picks it up.

However, my coworker thought that it does happen often, but is curious as to how they then distinguish between what might be legitimate and what they immediately think is a hoax.

Then we both thought, if you do want to make a bomb threat, how do you decide who to call? Deans office? Football Coach? Ombudsman?

I'm at a public school in suburban Austin, and we get probably one bomb threat a year (that I know about). We evacuate for each one, unfortunately.

I presume because it happened 3-days after 9/11 and the bomber/hoaxer claimed to be with Al Queda.

Bruce Schneier wrote an excellent piece about this very topic back in April. It's worth a read: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/bomb_threats_a...

(Reader comments are great, too.)

What perplexes me is that the threat was called in at around 8:30 am and claimed bombs will go off around 10 am. UT made the decision to evacuate at 9:53 am, 7 minutes before the called threat. Is 7 minutes an ample amount of time to evacuate a campus this large?

North Dakota State University has been evacuated as well.

http://www.chron.com/communityblogs/atmosphere/article/North...

Yikes! Looks like I'll take Mopac into downtown today.

Hope the threat doesn't amount to anything...

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