Unlike nuclear weapons, I see no reason to think terrorism can ever kill any significant portion of the country's population. Ideas of terror attacks involving nuclear weapons or pandemics seem to be complete fantasy as best I can tell.
But within matter of few hours the rate of american killed by terrorists went from same as those killed by furniture to few thousand times. The central argument is that a comparison with death by furniture is irrelevant, since the risk profiles are significantly different. Finally one cannot minimize risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons in isolation from agents such as rogue states and terrorists.
We can come up with ways for terrorists to kill thousands of people, and people did come up with such ways before 9/11. I see no way, short of first taking over an entire country, that terrorists can kill millions.
If you think otherwise, then describe it, don't just appeal to ignorance. The "we don't know, so we should assume the worst" argument can be used to support literally anything.
Volume 119 >> Issue 22 : Tuesday, April 27, 1999
Not at all. This scenario was well documented by the responsible government agencies before it happened.