Terminal Cornucopia
terminalcornucopia.com
terminalcornucopia.com
The threats that the TSA itself admits are non-existent? (http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-...)
The best I can see coming of this is that the TSA will start to ban braided leather belts and condoms.
Bad news ever since the TSA confiscated my toothpaste.[0]
[0] Yeah, it was actually a thing.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-08-breast...
The woman already had the milk bottled. What's the harm in drinking some of it to prove that it isn't any dangerous compound? I thought liquids from outside weren't allowed in the planes, ideally they shouldn't have allowed her in with it at all, though, but that's a different point.
> did she fail to see the connection to stopping terrorism The connection is that she could have been a terrorist, and a compound dissolved in the milk could be used to make a binary explosive.
Not to mention, breast milk has always been counted as medication, although the rule to not make passengers sample their own liquid is probably new since that incident.
Liquids from outside are allowed on planes depending on how you bring it in. My dad travels with juice/gel exceeding 3oz (with a note from his doctor). I've gotten a Costco-sized bottle of contact lens solution past TSA (so if you want to know how to sneak in some vodka...) One winter I was traveling a couple times a month with some terrible bronchitis+sinusitis issues and I had a gallon sized bag full of cough syrups and inhalers. Whatever. The only two things I remember TSA specifically tested from my bags from, at this point, hundreds of flights, is one mega sized bottle of purple drank (if you split liquid meds into a bunch of smaller but still bigger than 3oz bottles they don't seem to care) and one bottle of shampoo.
Banning people from bringing liquids on board and halfheartedly enforcing the 3oz rule when they can be circumvented so easily even with TSA approval (see TSA precheck!) is so incredibly dumb it baffles my mind.
Oooh ooh bonus points: I put something like 10 quarts worth of homemade jam in my checked luggage on one flight and TSA didn't even look at them (and good thing too, because they were all canned and I would have flipped out if the seals were broken). I wonder what you could do with 10 quarts worth of jam-consistency material in a bag. BTW hey TSA I'm not a terrorist, just someone that doesn't like you very much for making me deal with those terrible massages every time I try to get on a flight.
You can just take it in <100ml bottles inside a quart bag. Although you might get in trouble if it's labeled as alcohol.
Its all a show and unfortunately past examples shows that those who try to terror or did terror an airplane were either working with, willingly or not, the FBI/CIA or other gov agencies. And why wouldn't they? You take a mentally ill men, drug him big time, tell him government is bad and then you "catch" him on the plane with bomb behind his waist. Result? Another billion bucks spent on "terrorism" and Chertoff making $300MM on his radiation scanners.
So long story short; no, they are not interested in messing around with airport smallbusiness shops, even if this would stop a terrorist attack, because their mission is not to prevent one, but rather get american people used to deep searches, submission on demand and checkpoints everywhere.
Just short them out and throw them somewhere strategic. Takes all of a minute.
If any would be terrorists tried the same tactic from 2001 today they would be mauled in the cockpit. Prior to 2001, passengers assumed they would be hostages and would come out unharmed if they cooperate. Now they assume they are potential collateral damage. That's a huge difference.
The only thing they actually need to prevent getting past screening is explosives. Every other method I can think of would not work fast enough before the passengers take you out.
The only way to overpower an entire plane full of passengers is in numbers and spread throughout the plane. Social Network Analysis can be guess if more than N passengers not sitting together (i.e. not family or friends) are likely acquaintances warranting greater scrutiny.
Remember, individually it's "rational" (in the game-theoretic sense) to let the other brave folks take the risk, while you sit there nervously and think about the kids/parents/pets who couldn't bear to be without you. And let someone else be the hero.
Worse case scenario, nobody is brave, and everyone dies as a result.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/29/world/asia/china-plane-hijack-... http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=m... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-149289/Italian-plane...
etc etc etc
Let's make a terribly naive model in which there are 200 passengers, and the percentage chance of them succeeding in fighting back against hijackers is equal to the number of passengers who fights back. One passenger fights back means 1% chance of success, 50 passengers means 50% chance, 100 means 100% chance, and any more just saturates at 100%. This is wrong since the real-world chances are almost certainly not linear, but I think the basic idea of the chance starting at zero and increasing with the number of passengers fighting is sound.
Now, start with a case where nobody fights back. That means there is a 100% chance that everybody is going to die. Thus nobody has anything to lose. If they fight back, then they have a chance at living. If they don't, they are certain to die. The rational choice is then to fight back.
Now, some people have chosen to fight back. Do you join them, or do you wait? Joining them increases the odds of success, and therefore your risk of death. Not joining them increases your risk of death.
The one complication in this is your chance of being killed in the fighting when the hijackers are defeated. However, I think it's reasonable to suppose that your individual chances of dying go down the more passengers who fight back. If many others are also fighting, your odds of dying are low. If few others are also fighting, your odds of dying in the fight are high, but your odds of dying because they lost the fight are also high. I suspect that the rational course of action is going to be to join them as long as the fighting group is smaller than a pretty large size.
In any case, it's impossible for there to be a rational equilibrium in which nobody fights back, because all actors improve their odds of survival by choosing to fight back in that case, even if they end up acting alone. The equilibrium thus must involve some number of people fighting, and although I'm not sure how many that would be, it seems reasonable to think that it's a lot.
Car accidents are always interesting because they often have the same dynamics, those who respond are those who have had even the most rudimentary training to respond. Almost everyone lacking such trainers waits for others to act. As someone trained to act, I've actually been in such a situation first hand as a victim and been the first to respond. I was in a vehicle traveling at ~45mph and another vehicle pulled out without looking. I t-boned her vehicle the moment my car came to a standstill, I whipped out my phone called 911 and immediately after getting off the phone with the 911 operator, I went to check on the other driver.
Trying to analyze people like economists do, considering people to be merely self-interested agents, doesn't paint the whole picture. Many people in society are trained to act in a way contrary to what a simple simulation would suggest. Among 200 people on a plane, the likelihood that there are 2-3 such people trained to respond is pretty high, and at least high enough that a would-be terrorist has no way of knowing if they are lucky enough to have picked the rare plane where no such people trained to respond are present.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
How good are the new secure cockpit doors? If responsible for securing planes I would be worried about a surprise attack getting through while the door is open and then locking the doors before any of the passengers have time to react. I suspect that the secure doors may be counter-productive and less safe than a plane full of passengers able to help.
Another potential threat is one of the pilots themselves if they can subdue the other pilot and close the door can anything be done?
Equipment available doesn't really matter though short of semi-automatic weapons and explosives.
There isn't much you can do with a plane on the ground, and the chances of taking off in one in a post-9/11 world is basically zero.
*Edit: Nail clippers may be permitted now. This point may still apply to scissors greater than 4 inches in length, or screwdrivers greater than 7 inches. http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/prohibited-items
So anyone who has the money to charter a private jet is also able to carry whatever they want onto an aircraft, which illustrates the double standard inherent in most tyrannical systems.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/private-...
http://www.generalaviationnews.com/2011/01/is-ga-a-menace/
The above links discuss the matter further.
Then... we'll wait for an attack on sea vessels. After people die that way, we'll put more security theater there, without ever reducing or removing the decade+ old theater imposed in other areas.
TL;DR: AXE body spray is super combustable!
People cooking up shitty meth apparently do it (http://health.utah.gov/meth/html/ToxicologyofMeth/Lithium.ht...) but I don't know how they do it. They might be using tools that wouldn't be available in an airport, but I'm not so sure of that.
Not quite Ned Kelly, but might help a little.
Huge crowds are already caused by homeland security theater.
Are they still taking water bottles from people and throwing these "dangerous materials" right into the trash next to everyone?
I know this because my shoe fell apart a couple of months ago and one came out: I'd been through multiple airports with this on my feet and I think it's highly likely that a majority of people are incidentally carrying sharp metal blades because of this.
[1] http://distilleryimage4.ak.instagram.com/a31902082b7911e3b58...
There was also the people who were successfully able to get through with decoy explosives without a hitch, but this is much more whimsical.
However it looks like they are relaxing that:
http://www.ataturkairport.com/en-EN/Airlines/Pages/Announcem...
A bullet point list of materials, a paragraph of description, a few diagrams and an embedded video demonstration would be far more effective. A slideshow would also work well.
I apologise if this seems nitpicky, but as interesting as I found what you've done, I only watched half your videos because I found it so painful to sit through them. I doubt I am alone in this.
And even if Fraggucino and Blunderbussiness only hurt or maim someone, they are enough to strike fear among a crowd of people. Do not underestimate the implications of that.
Could someone make a short montage of all the weapons firing/being detonated? Slow internet and a lack of weapon descriptions make for quite the frustrating evening.
People know what an AK47 is and they know it will kill what it is used on.
Power lies not in the weapon, it lies in what people think of the weapon.
Another thing, since 911 passengers most likely assume they will be killed whether if they cooperate or not. Certain death in a plane crash or possible death trying to take a terrorists weapon.
However, I think that most of these things could be solved with a second screening. None of these options would pass a secondary x-ray, for instance. Or, a better option would be to have all items purchased in duty free to be shipped as luggage, and retrieved in the destination airport. Those would both be a huge pain in the ass, however, and I doubt anyone would put up with it.
What evidence do you have for that belief? Here's my evidence to the contrary -- if the TSA really were deterring terrorist attacks, the result would be a shift to other targets. It isn't like a terrorist is going to just give up, go home and forget about causing terror. They are going to pick another easier target. So where are all the other attacks?
Since 9/11 the number of civilian attacks has been less than the fingers on one hand, and the only one that wasn't just a bunch of mental midgets too incompetent to even ignite a bomb were the Boston Bombers.
No, there is no deterrent here because there is nobody to deter. If there were actual, serious terrorists looking at getting onto planes, the TSA wouldn't make a bit of difference. We've got TSA agents using their privileged access to smuggle drugs - it wouldn't take much to swap a couple of keys of cocaine with a couple of bricks of C4 and those dummies would end up helping the terrorists.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/26/news/la-trb-tsa-drug...
in the ten years before 9/11 the number of civilian attacks on US airplanes has been less than the fingers on one hand. After TSA 100% of these happened on non-flight targets.
Mind you, I still think the TSA is dumb.
Automatic weapons are extremely easy to come by in this country. Think of the havoc you could create just walking up to an airport security checkpoint at rush hour and opening fire. If you know a few like-minded individuals, then you could synchronize the attacks to happen simultaneously at, say, JFK, Dulles, Reagan, and LAX. The casualties would be immense, and the subsequent panic would be enormous.
There are about a million other possible scenarios you can cook up that take no more than a few semi-intelligent nutcases and a few thousand dollars. Of those million, the current system defends against perhaps ten.
Although, when you look at it objectively, those attacks do happen fairly frequently. Navy Yard, Sandy Hook, Aurora, and many more. But we don't call them "terrorism"... why? Only because it doesn't fit the overly-specific mold that "terrorism" consists of. If they were brown middle-easterners shooting up schools, we'd call it terrorism no problem, but since it's a white dude, we call it something else. And because of that, there is basically no anti-terrorism effort directed at these things, furthering the argument that such efforts are completely useless.
The only people TSA deters is honest an law abiding citizens from flying as often as they would otherwise.