Comment by NateDad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NateDad | Hacker News Reader

As someone personally affected by the lockdown, I find this highly offensive.

We were not cowering, though it would not be illogical to do so... we're talking about people proven willing to not only kill and injure hundreds of innocent people, they were also willing to get into action-movie style shoot outs with heavily armed police, tossing homemade grenades and pipe bombs, and murdering a police officer in cold blood.

So, maybe keeping people inside for 12 hours isn't that much of a price to pay to make sure they stay safe. But it was really more than that.

It was about finding this S.O.B. before he could get away.

We knew he was in the area, but couldn't be sure exactly where. By shutting down public transportation and keeping people and vehicles off the road, we made it nearly impossible for him to escape. ANYONE walking around, driving a car, is then automatically suspect and can be stopped. There is no crowd you can mingle in, no trains or buses you can slip onto, no taxis you can hail. There are no cars you can carjack. You're trapped.

Suddenly, instead of being able to hide among all the people in the city, you're in an urban ghost town where anything that moves can be pounced on. It's a hell of a lot more effective than just hoping someone recognizes him among the other 2 million people running around.

If you mess with Boston we will shut the whole city down to find you. Yes, we will. And you know what, most people will be glad to do it, to get the guy who killed 4 people and injured almost 200 others. It's just one day. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I think most other people here would too.

We weren't scared. We were pissed.

Where do you draw the line? Would you lock down all of New York City if some mother killed her four children by smothering them with a pillow? Why not? She's armed and dangerous and already has 4 dead to her name!

What happened in Boston was an amateurish overreaction to the task of hunting down and finding someone who had committed a handful of murders -- something that happens every day in the US.

There's really no logical comparison between your fictional scenario and what occurred in Boston.

The Boston Marathon is a world renowned event, and the apprehension of the perpetrators of the attacks was a necessary thing, because, as someone else has mentioned here, sending a message of "We'll catch you" to any would-be criminals is of the utmost importance.

Well done Boston. My condolences to those adversely affected by this tragedy.

> There's really no logical comparison between your fictional scenario and what occurred in Boston.

Care to elaborate? As he mentioned murders happen every day in the states, so would you prefer a non-fictional comparison?

> The Boston Marathon is a world renowned event, and the apprehension of the perpetrators of the attacks was a necessary thing, because, as someone else has mentioned here, sending a message of "We'll catch you" to any would-be criminals is of the utmost importance.

What does being "world renowned" have to do with anything? And what makes this case any different from any other criminal offence?

Don't we want to catch all criminals?

The Boston Marathon is a high profile event, and when explosives are involved, the security response is elevated. Explosives != pillows.

The "world renowned" aspect is just that. The world is watching how we respond to such incidents, and to attempt to marginalize this incident by comparing a mother smothering her children with pillows to bombs targeting a crowd is callous in the extreme.

Of course we'd prefer to catch all criminals, especially those who target high profile events with explosives.

"World renowned" is a bit much. I, for one, had never heard of it before the tragedy, whereas for instance I have heard of the New York marathon many times.

(I hope this doesn't offend anyone - I think Boston has enough going for it that the fame of its marathon around the world is of little importance.)

I don't know how old you are, but I've been aware of the Boston Marathon for decades. (I used to be an endurance athlete)

People come from all over the world to compete in the Boston Marathon, as they do the New York Marathon, the Honolulu Marathon, etc.

> (I used to be an endurance athlete)

That's why. A "world renowned event" is famous in the real world, not just in the world of athletics. I have never run a marathon and I never intend to (cardio kills gains, lol), yet I have hear of the New York marathon many times over the years. That is a world renowned event.

someone who had committed a handful of murders -- something that happens every day in the US.

That's extremely disingenuous. Besides the fact that a 'handful of murders' carried out by the same perperator(s) is not actually a daily event, how many regular crimes also result in hundreds of injuries, many traumatic? I'm not very freaked out about bombings, given that I grew up in Ireland and lived in London during a particularly vicious phase of the Troubles, but enough with this BS meme that there's nothing distinctive about a bombing vs. everyday levels of crime. It's an insult to common sense and the experience of anyone who has ever been near to or affected by a bombing.

reducto ad absurdum isnt just something harry potter would say...

If the mother killed her children by using home-made explosives in crowded places frequented by innocents, of course. A (perhaps more tempered) version of this response would still have been necessary if not a single person had died.

don't discount the dozens of people who were injured or maimed by the original bombing.

Not to be pedantic, but it's over 150 people injured in addition to the dead.

I did say dozens of people. 150 people is just over 12 dozen.

It's a bad way of dealing with terrorism. It's in the name - it's all about terrorising, and the Boston bombers have certainly succeded in that. With this whole spectacle you've let two guys with very little resources put the whole nation into a state of emergency. You're playing their game. This is exactly what they want. They don't deserve that honour.

I wrote about it here a few day sago: http://www.maximise.dk/how-a-great-statesman-would-deal-with...

A true statesman will not put fuel on the bonfire of fear. He will extuingish it by telling us that there is nothing to be afraid of. That these acts are done by moronic twisted people that don’t deserve the attention. He will tell the people that they have nothing to fear but fear itself.

And despite this deathless rhetoric in the face of economic collapse, FDR interned 110,000 Japanese people because they had distinctive ethnic features shared by one group of people engaged in a war against the US, although there was never any attempt to intern German-Americans.

What happened in the Boston is that the authorities requested the cooperation of the public in exceptional circumstances, and got it. If they had tried to impose some sort of lockdown on Monday after the bombing, you might have a point. But they didn't. The city kept operating normally until the suspects resurfaced, got into a shootout with police, and one of them managed to evade his pursuers. Given how many people were affected by the original terrorist incident, I don't find it odd at all that most people chose to facilitate the manhunt by leaving the streets empty.

Being "pissed" doesn't really make people any more rational than being scared, though.

This may have also been done to prevent whatever interference or vigilantism may have occurred from a city who was pissed and not scared.

The shutdown of Boston was an incredible event without precedent. It is absolutely correct for people to discuss whether the right choices were made, and it is a little bit frightening to have people declaring such a conversation "offensive".

In the end it was pretty clear that these two perpetrators were not the brightest of terrorists. They operated in plain sight, during a massively photographed event, and then went about their life as if nothing had changed. Their bombs, while sadly effective to a degree, were much less devastating than they could have been (and that they were throwing pressure cookers at police borders on...the word comedic doesn't quite fit given the carnage they have wrought, but it certainly is ridiculous).

Did the lockdown help catch them? We'll never actually know, as the suspect could have been caught using traditional means in a fully operating city. On the flip side, if the suspect wasn't seriously injured, as they purportedly were, they could have been murdering people in house after house during the lockdown.

"We weren't scared. We were pissed."

Please. The people of Boston were scared shitless. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with admitting that. When you have a couple of insane killers who could have hidden god knows how many bombs out there, being scared is the appropriate response.

What is not appropriate is shutting down the entire city to find those guys. I'm very glad they were caught. But by shutting down public transportation and getting all cars and humans off the streets, Bostonian authorities greatly magnified the scare-factor for Bostonians. It was an overreaction.

Now that I think about it, we are really good at overreacting to terrorism. A bunch of guys rammed planes into the Twin Towers and our response was to invade two countries. Some guy hid a bomb in his shoes and our response was to make tens of millions of people take off their shoes every time they are at the airport. A couple of guys set off bombs at a marathon and our response was to shut down an entire city.

When does it end? When do we learn to respond to terror attacks rationally rather than emotionally?

Thousands of people lined up in the streets Wednesday night for a chance at a seat inside the city's Cathedral for Thursday's memorial service. That doesn't sound like the behavior of a population living in fear, since they were making themselves a target by gathering together in that fashion.

Thousands showed up in Dorchester on Monday night to mourn the death of one of their residents.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com