Sci-fi Writers Join War on Terror

yoyoq writes "Homeland Security is looking for suggestions from sci-fi writers. "Looking to prevent the next terrorist attack, the Homeland Security Department is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described "deviant" thinkers: science-fiction writers." Here's a suggestion: 9-11 could have been prevented with locks on the cockpit door."

Idea!!!

Put a Terminator on every plane. What could go wrong?

Re:Idea!!!

Ha!

Leaving aside the Terminator suggestion, the SF writer involvement in suggesting government policy isn't actually quite as crazy (or as unprecedented) as it sounds.

One of the requirements for this group is that the individual has to have a PhD in a technical area (physics, engineering, etc.). These aren't just random writers off the street.

As TFA notes, the 9/11 commission said the attacks were a result, in part, of the government's "failure of imagination". SF writers, unlike some beltway bureaucrats and politicians, aren't lacking in that, at least.

As for precedent, both Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (coauthors of Footfall, and the Mote in God's Eye amongst other works) were a significant part of the push in the 80's to develop what is now National Missile Defense.

(Of course, that may or may not be a good program, but it's certainly an example of educated SF writers influencing public policy).

Holmwood

Re:Idea!!!

As TFA notes, the 9/11 commission said the attacks were a result, in part, of the government's "failure of imagination". SF writers, unlike some beltway bureaucrats and politicians, aren't lacking in that, at least.

I think that comment very often gets taken out of context in order to justify exotic anti-terrorism schemes. It wasn't a "failure of imagination" in the sense that nobody in their wildest dreams thought that it could happen. I mean, let's face it, there's nothing far fetched about smuggling weapons onto a plane. That's why they have metal detectors at the gates. There's nothing far fetched about hijacking a plane. That's happened dozens, if not hundreds of times, in the past 30-40 years. There's nothing far-fetched about suicide bombers. They blow themselves up on a daily basis in the middle east. There's nothing far fetched about attacking the WTC. That had already happened once. The only "failure in imagination" is the failure to believe that terrorists would combine their most effective and well-known tactics into a single act.

But the worst part is that the "failure of imagination" wasn't the reason that 9/11 happened. It was the failure to prevent people from smuggling weapons onto planes and hijacking them that allowed 9/11 to happen, and those are threats that have been around for a very long time.

It's like Bruce Schneier has said many times, if you're spending time and effort in trying to prevent hollywood movie-style terrorist attacks instead of the routine, more effective (and much more likely) types of attacks, then you're probably wasting your time and resources. We're far more likely to end up with car bombs blowing up bridges or suicide bombers blowing themselves up at shopping malls than we are to end up with some exotic antrhax-infected mutant sharks with laserbeams. Hell, a handful of Beslan-style school attacks executed simultaneously across the US would probably have as big of an impact as 9/11 (look what happened with the relatively minor Virginia Tech incident), and it would probably be easier to implement too.

We need a change of philosophy...

Personally, much of my solution to the problem involves a shift in our teaching process. For years we've taught 'let the professionals handle it'. IE the police.

Even the police had been infected with this - during Columbine they secured a perimeter and waited for SWAT. This cost lives. Now standard procedure for many departments is that police go in when they get there. Officer Dan might not be SWAT, but he has a gun he should be competent with, and he's what's there, not what's going to take another 15 minutes(and possibly another 60 dead).

We saw the ultimate failure at Viginia Tech - Students hid under desks and tried to flee - from a single assailant. Far fewer lives would have been lost if they'd done the same thing flight 93 had done - attacked back.

I think that a cultural change to one of resistance, one that venerates the 'one who stood first' would be a good thing, in many ways.

I believe there's a lot of truth to the saying: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

As for using scifi authers, I figure it's brainstorming, and a scifi author is generally both inventive and cheap. I can think of far worse things to spend ~30k on.

Re:Idea!!!

The way to improve security is to have well-trained guards in vulnerable places

Well, this is certainly a good brute-force approach. The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of vulnerable places. Schools, shopping malls, stadia, airplanes, hospitals, large buildings, bridges, factories, food processing plants, ports, power plants, electrical grid, network control centers... and the list goes on. So that means millions of guards. Possibly tens of millions. Assuming you're actually going to protect vulnerable places with well-trained guards. In a modern technological densely-populated society, that's a lot of places to protect.

Now if you want well-trained, highly competent guards, you're going to have to pay them more than the typical rent-a-cop rates. That'll be expensive. You'll have to arm them (with at least non-lethal weapons).

Let's say you only need 2.5 million guards in North America. (well under 1% of the population). Of course, they only work 40 hours a week, so you're looking at just over 4 shifts. OK, 10 million guards. Well-trained, highly competent, so you'll probably have salaries of around 50k, and support infrastructure and overhead that doubles that. 100k/year. That's a trillion dollars a year.

Is that really the best way to improve security? I can think of a lot of ways other than spending a trillion dollars on 'well trained guards in [all] vulnerable places'.

And you'll have something much closer to a police state -- either they'll be government guards or corporate guards.

And if you miss just one vulnerable place, then the approach fails. No, I'd rather apply intellect and thought to the problem rather than try and brute force it. I'm not sure the SF writers are the way to go, but I think it's a lot better than going the police state road and spending a trillion a year for the privilege.

-Holmwood

Re:Ever heard of Conceal and Carry?

Armed citizens cant be oppressed.

Yes they can. Just use an imaginary or real external threat, tell them that any measures are just for their own security, and denounce anyone who doesn't agree with that as "unpatriotic".

Or just bring bigger guns.

Re:Idea!!!

you're still not focusing on the disease, and that's fundamental inequality and slavery in this world.

Re:Idea!!!

Yes, but it's a lot easier to declare war on a concept that (more or less by definition) you can't beat by shooting at than it is to solve world hunger and abolish inequality over the entire planet.

Or, to put it another way (for those who still think the US is doing well in Iraq): Think of terrorism like a vicious, unpredictable animal that wants to attack you. That's easy enough. But there's a twist: it gets stronger every time you shoot at it, bomb it or do anything violent towards it. Why are you still shooting at it?

Re:Idea!!!

"...But there's a twist: it gets stronger every time you shoot at it, bomb it or do anything violent towards it. Why are you still shooting at it?..."

Very simple! Our jobs depend on there being a vicious animal that wants to attack us. This was fine during the 60s, 70s and 80s, and we had good job prospects. We got lots of established government funds.

Then, in the 90s, our vicious animal suddenly died on us. We were stuck. We weren't just going to quietly retire. We tried to invent drug barons, organised crime, and minor foreign countries as a new vicious animal, but it wasn't the same.

Now we have Islam! If we had been clever, we could have encouraged this ourselves, and paid Osama to crash those planes. We probably didn't, not because we wouldn't, but because we didn't have the foresight. But now it's happened, we're back in clover.

And we're damn well not going to mess this one up. It's going to last a long time, just like the Russian animal. Have you noticed how we insist that speeches are made stressing that this willl be a 'long haul'? Too right. We're not stupid. Everyone told us that invading Iraq would make things worse. Why do you think we did it?

Re:Idea!!!

The fact that the dominant power structure in this country does better for itself when there's an outside threat doesn't in turn mean that all outside threats are created by that power structure, or that all outside threats are actually harmless.

Put more simply: The president may be a tool, but that doesn't mean that the people he's railing against aren't also tools, or even much worse than he is. That's the biggest problem I have with "progressives" in this country -- they think evil or incompetence is a kind of zero sum game. If the president of the US is bad, his enemies can't *really* be all that bad, which is totally untrue.

Re:Idea!!!

While I don't disagree with your point that the enemy is bad, even if the President is an idiot, there are plenty of places in this world that are in far worse shape than Iraq was under Saddam Hussein. You've heard of Sudan right? The President just made some sort of speech about it, several years after we learned about the problem and over a year after his administration claimed they would do something proactive about it.

And lets not get into Indonesia and all the problems there that we could have helped with, or Tibet, or Nepal. You do know there was essentially a civil war in Nepal for the last 10 years right? Oh, and the monarch disolved the parliament and basically imposed martial law on the place. What about Thailand, and the military coup that just occured?

Yes, Saddam Hussein was a bad man doing bad things. The point is, however, he was an "evil" we understood how to deal with. He was essentially no threat to anyone but himself and his own people. Yes that's bad, but his conflict wasn't causing issues any different than the others that have been going on at the same time. We did however decide to put on our big boy shoes and step in his playground to pick a fight with him as opposed to others. Why? Because it was a name people recognized (so even if it was the wrong choice at least some people would support it on name recognition alone), it was a profitable place to pick a fight, and it was during a period of economic "recession", which always calls for war. It's the great economic provider for the USA, and has been for a very long time. I won't even speculate at the personal economic gains of the administration, which others probably have far more information about.

Re:Idea!!!

I love kid's skewed view of things. They think everything was invented just a few years ago. Now this "new vicious" animal, aka Islam terrorist/jihadists, that is part of the whole military-industrial conspiracy that the United States has just now "recently" provoked, has been on the warpath for over thirteen centuries now, that's 1300 years kidos. That's more than 1000 years longer than the US has even been around. Just because you, Hollywood, and 90% of Congress took till the late nineties to figure it out, doesn't make it new. Even the "current" mess in the middle east started before all of this during WW I after the British and the French divide up the spoils. Before them the Ottomans had it and before them the Persians. All through history, the locals have been rebelling and every single group in power has thrown troops at the problem. There is no conspiracy going on here. The only thing the US government is guilty of is ignoring history and being overly optimistic on the ability of Democracy/Republic style of governments being the solution to the problem.

Money Money Money

They went to war because they thought they could win easily, and it would be a good idea. They were wrong, on a number of levels, but that doesn't mean they're happy about or moreover intended the current situation over there, and to imply anything else, like I said, is pretty ridiculous.

They did win easily. Saddam was toppled in a matter of minutes. But it's becoming blatantly apparent that they were more interested in a prolonged conflict, so they can deluge money on all the defense contractors and other direct supporters of the current administration. Once the money reaches Iraq, there is no legal accountability for anything. If you receive money to build a school, and don't, there's nothing illegal about it as long as you put up a half-assed attempt at trying to build one. (Meaning if you rented a bulldozer and claimed the security for it bankrupted you, you're off the hook.) Heck, 360 tons of cash [bbc.co.uk] went missing and the public did nothing about it.

After reading up on how the Department of Homeland Security was basically turned into the equivalent of a government contractor eBay, it seemed to confirm it. I've been told that the standing orders from the people who work there are that the department is not allowed to do anything themselves, they must contract everything out. So again the main focus seems to be funneling money to the contractors.

Contrary to the national media image (which by the way is controlled by their supporters) this administration is not dumb. This administration is quite adept at funneling money from the taxpayers to the contractors. All the rest of what they're doing just seems to support and protect this goal of theirs. As for Gitmo and "getting tough" on terrorists, they just know what show their base wants to see.

Re:Idea!!!

I'd say that saying "fundamental inequality and slavery is the cause of all terrorism" is as simplistic as saying "They hate us because of our freedom."

Let me go off on a minor tangent here, bear with me: The direct purpose of terrorism is to exact a response. The indirect purpose is to use the results of that response, where the results could be any number of things. In the case of 9/11, the clear purpose of the attacks was to cause America to react - nobody could possibly be so stupid as to think the most powerful country on Earth would just ignore thousands of its civilians being killed on its home turf. The only place America was likely to react was the Middle East. Therefore, very likely the purpose of 9/11 was to get the most powerful country on Earth to do a bull-in-a-china-shop act in the Middle East.

Why would OBL want that? OBL's direct aim is not to bring peace and prosperity to Palestine. It's not to ensure oppressed Muslims in Saudi Arabia worship on their own terms rather than the Saudi Royal Family's. It's not to make Afghanistan a modern, wealthy, state able to take care of its citizens. OBL's aim, as expressed repeatedly, is to create an Arab superstate, overthrowing the local governments there, and creating instead a single Islamic nation.

What does any of that have to do with inequality and slavery? Not a great deal. It's all about power, and it's a power struggle between the entrenched incumbent elite and a body that disagrees with them. But the disagreement isn't over the relatively lack of equality, it's a disagreement over an entirely different issue of religious and political significance. Insofar as equality is a factor, OBL feels obliged to use terrorism to achieve his aims because he doesn't have an army.

But if he had an army, he'd use that instead. Equality wouldn't prevent the war, it would just change how its fought. Which isn't really what, I think, you meant.

It's very tempting to look at terrorism as being purely a last resort of the oppressed, but it doesn't always work like that. Terrorism is frequently merely the first resort of those who want power over others, but do not have it yet.

Re:Idea!!!

Put a Terminator on every plane. What could go wrong?

Did you ever see Terminator 3?

Besides, having your security device being confused with the Govenator of California isn't exactly the most ideal situation in the world.

Personally, I think it would be better to put a Dalek on every plane. Cold. Efficient. Deadly accurate with their gun and sucker. Not able to be reprogrammed by the terrorists. Hell, they can even be considered multi-functional, as they can even use their built-in plunger to fix a stoppage in the lav.

Re:Idea!!!

I can see the terrorist running up into First Class and yelling down "Yeah, stairs motherfucker!"

Genius yoyoq!!!

Here's a suggestion: 9-11 could have been prevented with locks on the cockpit door.

Everyone's a snide little clever genius after the fact.

Here's a suggestion: no, it could not have been prevented with locks on the cockpit door. It would have likely been a somewhat different attack, but it still would have happened.

Meanwhile, people still catch colds despite having a supply of tissue in the house.

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

Everyone's a snide little clever genius after the fact.

People worldwide had been saying for year that US airport security was worthless - paticularly when stuck in line behind a US tourist abroad complaining long and loud that as an American they never should have to put up with having their bag searched. Now it has swung to another extreme with security theatre that is often mindless, inflexible and carried out by the pooorly trained due to the need to take on a lot of staff suddenly (I would really hate to be old or disabled and have to deal with a random bit of security theatre).

If you don't like locks...

How about a sane foreign policy? Like cockpit locks, it won't prevent all terrorist attacks, but less bullying and more actual diplomacy will help. It also wouldn't hurt to examine economic policies and disproportionate consumption of resources. America is a colonial power by fiat and as long as that is so, there will continue to be terrorists.

The sci-fi angle is just silliness, in my opinion.

"It WILL happen again"

People are totally innumerate and they overreact to rare, dramatic events. Everyone went nuts over the VT tragedy because it was "the worst school shooting in history" even though it only killed 30+ people. That's less than an average day's worth of gun deaths, or about six hours of car accidents. Now it's almost six years later and people are still overreacting to 9/11. I mean, 3000 deaths in one day and at the same place is impressive, but it still totals to just one month of car accidents. Think of how miserable we've made ourselves since then. Was it worth it?

Asking "whether the next 9/11 can be prevented" is a dumb question to try to answer. It's like "how do we prevent the next car accident?" The sort of questions we should be asking sound cold and calculating, which is unfortunate because it keeps us from asking them:

- Is it possible to reduce the number of terrorist attacks?
- Is it possible to reduce the number of terrorist attacks to zero?
- What is the probability per year that a terrorist act might affect you?
- What is the probability per year that our self-flagellating counterterrorism efforts might affect you?
- Since 9/11, how many additional hours of your life have been spent in airports?
- How many years of your life have been spent as a soldier overseas?
- How many years of your life have been lost as a soldier overseas?
- Is terrorism even something most of us worry about personally anymore?

It's unfortunate that we have created security monsters like TSA that simultaneously don't work and would be political suicide to get rid of.

My own idea for "preventing the next VT tragedy" was to crack down on the manufacturers of doors, not the sellers of handguns. If it were illegal to manufacture doors with closed loops in their handles, the guy wouldn't have been able to chain the door shut.

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

Before 9/11, if your plane got hijacked, you'd likely have to fly to Cuba or somewhere, unload the terrorists, and then sit around until someone negotiated you out of there. So, sitting there flying the plane while they execute passengers would be dumb.

After 9/11, hijacking = you crash into a building. So, sitting there flying the plane while they execute passengers is the smartest thing you can do.

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

Further to that, prior to 9/11, 99% of hijackings resulted in one of two things:

1. Hijacker is arrested the moment they get off the plane and spends a nice long time in prison.
2. Hijacker is shot the moment they get off the plane and spends a nice long time dead.

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

With knitting needles someone could knit an Afghan.

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

Didn't one airline (may have been Israeli) suggest that they actually build a bulkhead between the cockpit and the passenger compartment? The pilot/copilot would then have their own external door to enter/exit the plane. They theorised that hijackings would reduce, because there's no way of moving from the passenger area to the cockpit whilst the plane is in flight without structurally damaging the airframe. Seems a good, if expensive, idea to me...

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

Didn't one airline (may have been Israeli) suggest that they actually build a bulkhead between the cockpit and the passenger compartment?

And then, both pilots die from food poisoning and a whole plane full of retired pilots crashes since no once could actually get into the cockpit to land the darn thing.

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

Still, an instrumentation downlink from the plane to the ground is enough to land the damn thing by remote control anyways.

It's also good enough to fly the plane into the nearest skyscraper, once you disable/disrupt/jam/take over the legitimate transmitter and know the protocol and encryption keys.

Re:Genius yoyoq!!!

I think unless there is a serious flaw on the side of airport security, the equipment advantage of the bad guys is not so big. The ONLY weapons which caused 911 were surprise and bad assumptions. The terrorists were allowed into cockpit with the assumption that it is just one of "routine hijackings" (scenario: land somewhere, demand something, negotiate, release hostages). The incorectness of the assumption was the moment of surprise and I truly believe that all pilots since then have to consider a 911 scenario as well.

Let us now think about those executions of passengers. We may not prevent them, but we can reduce the casualties. Assume that there are approx. 6 bad guys armed with improvised cold weapons, therefore effective attack range of each member is cca 1 meter. What are tactical options of passengers?

• They have vast numeric advantage. Say at least 50 men and don't forget about capabilities of many angry women.
• They may create improvised weapons and shields as well. Trays, belts, blankets...
• The cramped space onboard in my opinion favors the defense. The movement of attackers can be obstructed by improvised barricades (luggage)

As long as the cockpit is not penetrated, the pilots may help with another effective countermeasures (but they would require a tactically skilled flight attendant coordinating the actions, or some kind of CCTV in the cabin):

• Perform sudden maneuvers (rapid descent, steep banking) to incapacitate attackers; they won't probably wear belts during the incident
• Change parameters of cabin environment: temperature, light, sound -- anything which may disrupt focus and coordination of the attacking group
• Decompress the cabin and therefore restrict the movement of all passengers
• I personally can think of merits of equipping flight attendants with tasers, sticky foam, pepper spray (or even stun grenades)

In this mental exercise are some assumptions as well. The foremost is that only cold weapons are available to terrorists. Here we have to rely on the integrity and skill of airport personnel, but even with handguns I believe passengers with improvised shields would stand a chance. When it comes to bombs, well, bad luck, BUT: the bad guys can destroy the plane, but they will not control it.

Stupid

Here's an idea, why not stop wasting time on this sort of, headline grabbing, nonsense and sort out the existing agencies who are supposed to be responsible for this sort of thing so they can gain some actual intelligence about what the terrorists are actually planning and actually do something to stop that.

If Homeland Security really are trying to think of more innovative solutions they might consider putting a stop to some of the activities the US is or has been involved in which tend to increase the number of available terrorists wanting to attack it. This might involve stopping the CIA kidnapping people and taking them off to be tortured, stop starting pointless wars and stop interfering in other countries in order to install regimes that suit your own purposes.

Re:Stupid

Are you nuts? That could actually work, how the heck do you want to push more laws towards the police state goal when there's no threat anymore?

You'll never be a good politician, stay with your honest daytime job.

Re:Stupid

Pointless wars?
1. Your latest war on Iraq has guaranteed that no sane country will as much as *think* of switching to the PetrolEuro ever again. HUGE economic advantage for you. 2. It has also set the grounds for convenient exploitation of oil wells in Southern Iraq. Considerable economic advantage. 3. It also managed to get a few terrorists killed. Smallish morale gain. 4. It allowed your gov't to gain more power. Again, huge advantage (ok, this only benefits them and not you).
So in what way was that all POINTLESS again? You can claim it's good/bad/expensive/whathaveyou but there is no way in hell is was pointless.

They're going about this wrong

They should get a science fiction writer to create a religion to create an alternative to Islam. Oh.

am I the only one who is tired of terrorism?

I'm sick of it taking up every waking moment of our intellectual lives. About 3000 people were killed in 9/11, and that was how many years ago? The flu kills about 15000 Americans each year. The flu. Let's not even go into cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and all the rest of the diseases that kill us off by the hundreds of thousands. Worldwide, cholera and other diseases that could be remedied by clean water kill vastly more than terrorism.

Our sense of risk is so badly out of whack that we're just being ridiculous--it isn't even hysteria anymore, not after this many years. We're being suckered by a sensationalistic media working in cohorts with government, which always, always wants more power. I'd say it was shocking if I could even muster any surprize at how stupid we're being over this.

You're missing the point.

The bogus threat of terrorism has been the greatest bonanza for greedy and power-hungry politicians in recent US and world history. So why would they give that up now?

Re:am I the only one who is tired of terrorism?

About 3000 people were killed in 9/11, and that was how many years ago? The flu kills about 15000 Americans each year. The flu.

Sure, but which one do you think works best when you want to restrict civic liberties?
- We declare war on terrorism, so we need to tap everyone's phone in case they're terrorists.
or
- We declare war on flu, so we need to tap everyone's phone in case they've got the flu.

Re:am I the only one who is tired of terrorism?

Yes, that is my very objection. Would-be totalitarians have a ratchet-like mechanism. They want more power, so they wait for something to happen. Something happens, and they ratchet away a little on civil liberties. Now this new, lower, level of freedom becomes normal. Something else will happen eventually, so one more click of civil liberties are in the past. The new, yet lower, level becomes normal, and so on. Sometimes something big happens like 9/11, and we get a few whole turns of the wrench, so we end up with military tribunals, warrantless surveillance, torture, secret prisons, the whole bit.

We don't go all the way to gulags, not right away, at least not on US soil, because people won't stand for it--yet. But once something else happens--and it always does, eventually, with or without an agent provocateur--the current level of freedom will seem excessive, and we get a few more clicks towards totalitarianism.

There are already feelers out investigating exactly what conditions would have to exist for elections to be suspended and the current President to be just "in charge." Will it happen? No, I don't think it will, even in my most paranoid moods. The population won't stand for it--yet. But if there is a big attack, at least by someone with brown/olive skin, it would be easy to temporarily "put off" the election. An attack by a white supremacist or Christian Identity group wouldn't cut it (and probably would barely make the news), but one by Muslims would be center stage on all the networks, around the clock.

Would we see death camps and Stalinesque tactics? No, I don't think so. Michael Moore and Rosie wouldn't be rounded up and imprisoned, much less shot, Ann Coulter's book sales notwithstanding. But a "unitary Executive" or whatever his lawyers are calling him this week, in charge of the entire federal government, exempted (de facto, if not de jure) from oversight or checks/balances by the legislative and judicial branches, who can suspend elections at will--what else do you really need? As long as there wasn't any slaughter or mass imprisonment, which there wouldn't be, would people really take to the streets for democracy? I wonder.

Then attack would be carried out differently

Pilots would be blackmailed into opening cockpit doors at the threat of killing everyone in the cabin. Terrorists would learn lock picking. WTC would be brought down by a big truck with explosives instead of planes. Al-Quida would carry out a chemical or biological attack. Let's face it, targets are endless and internal security is only a small part of preventing terrorism. Withdrawing from Israeli-Palestinian conflict on one hand and refusing to do any business with Islamic countries on the other would deprive terrorists of both recruits and resources and have a much bigger effect on new attacks. We can also distinguish religious freedom from calls for violence against everyone and deport or deny visas to extremists of every faith - muslim, christian, scientology, falun gong...

Lemme see...

Lemme see...

- train your stormtroopers so they can hit a man sized target at 100 ft distance

- don't have your war droids depend on a centralized node that, when destroyed, would disable the whole army

- make sure there are no vents leading directly to your death star's reactor, no matter how hard or unlikely to hit they are

- fun as it may be, and sure as you may be that he's a complete bastard, don't send a father to torture his daughter and duel his son. They might end up working together against you. Also, if you've decided to replace him with his son, don't tell it to his face.

- don't make yourself hated by whole populations in the first place. Destroying whole planets just to show you can, is actually pretty bad PR. It's bad for your tax income too. Noone will rise in rebellion or send suicide bombers against you for just treating them right and creating employment.

- make sure the doors, especially prison doors or doors to critical command rooms, can't be opened by shooting the control panel. And generally, security means everything should fail in the way that is the least of a security problem. Losing electricity should cause the door bolts to lock the door (e.g., they're on springs that push them to the locked state, and you need current to pull them open), not unlock it.

- for that matter, and according to the same principle, a damaged reactor should tend to shut down, not blow up. There's a reason 20'th century nuclear reactors need current to keep the moderator rods out, and get to shut down if they lose that current

- control consoles don't have much of a reason to explode when the ship takes a hit in some point half a mile away. You may need that console again, and trained specialist officers that operate them are expensive to replace too

- invest in some shielding technology, or at least armour. The Mitsubishi A6M Zero fared poorer than you'd think with only speed and maneuverability as its only defenses, and got shot by airplanes which could take a whole clip and keep flying. The TIE fighter is just repeating an existing mistake. Don't do it.

And generally, read the evil overlord's list already.

Re:Lemme see...

Sure, this is all obvious in retrospect, but you are forgetting that Star Wars took place A LONG TIME AGO!! (in a galaxy far away, no less)

- davevr

Forget the safe-bet experts

This group is a professinal think tank, those in the picture all look over 55, and to be a member you need a technical doctorate degree. How much of a "deviant" thinker or "rebel" can they really be? Aren't people that come up with the most inventive and "crazy" ideas a bit younger? I like the idea of employing think tanks, it shows initiative which is vital, but if they really want some results I think they're going to have to attract a different set of thinkers.

More ideas to be ignored.

Leaving aside the Monday morning quarterbacking there is ample evidence to suggest that the "ideas" of 9-11 from the tactical nature of the attacks to the identities of the attackers was in fact known or knowable. Al-Quaeda was, in fact on the intelligence community's radar screen and warnings about Osama Bin-Laden were prevalent even in Presidential Daily Briefings. Additionally there had been an exercise simulating exactly the kind of attack that occurred. So it wasn't that the idea had not arisen or that noone had suggested things.

Rather, its apparent that the suggestions were ignored. Whether they were ignored because Bush wanted to focus on other things or that the nature of the ideas somehow rendered them ignorable is unclear. What is clear is that they were, in fact, present and had been suggested.

Post 9-11 a great deal of effort has been spent on garnering "ideas" for attack styles on the grounds that "we didn't know". While it is nice to see people expanding their minds it is a little worrisome that they have not done so before. It is also a little worrisome because the new ideas seem to fall into two categories, those that get ignored and those that are overreacted upon.

In the former class we have things such as not throwing children year olds into Guantanamo Bay, and adding armor to protect our troops against IEDs (something that was so badly rejected that the solders were ordered by the White House to remove armor that they had added in the field). A great example of the latter comes from one of Bob Woodward's books on Bush. Some of you may remember that point about a year or so ago when the terror alert levels jumped and new, ominous, warnings came out about Al-Quaeda hijacking trains and filling them with chemicals. It turns out a bunch of guys were sitting around a meeting and one of them said: "You know it would suck if Al-Qaueda stole a train and loaded it with chemicals..." A few days later they lock down all the train stations.

So with all due respect to DHS's desire for new info but I'd like to see them make better use of what they've already got.

Re:More ideas to be ignored.

Why it was ignored? Cui bono?

I'm not trying to add more fuel to some oddball conspiracy theories, but seriously: Who benefited the most from the attacks?

So let me get this straight..

Homeland Security has invited sci-fi writers...to do their job for them?

They might as well just post the discussion here.

Here's my list:

1. Equip every passenger with anti-terrorist lasers, because of their nature, terrorists will shoot themselves by accident.
2. Shield the entire airplane with a time distortion device, except the cockpit, the passengers will be in "slow-time", so for them the plane would take off and land within seconds, not enough time for any terrorist to do anything.
3. Mother-F%*$ING SNAKES, with mother-F@#(@ING LASERS on their heads put as security guards. No terrorist will dare.
4. Virtual reality helmets for every passenger. Terrorists can act out their evil deeds to their hearts content in the safety of their own virtual plane. Of course every helmet will be recoded, and the terrorists apprehended upon landing.
5. Replace bomb sniffing dogs with jedi knights. Explanation not required.

Heres a suggestion.

Rather than screening people coming into the USA why not screen people leaving the USA.

You could come up with a standardised "AQ" (Asshole Quotent) score and refuse exit to anyone scoring more than 100.

Answering "Yes" to questions like "Do you believe there should be Starbucks outlet in every culturaly important site" gets you five points.

Aswering "Yes" to a question like "Do you believe it is acceptable to shout out 'Does anyone in this joint speak English' when visting a foriegn art gallery" get you ten points.

Answering "Yes" to a question like "Do you believe its wrong to provide condoms to people who are HIV positive" gets you 50 points.

By screening people leaving your country in this way you could promote the illusion that USAians are polite considerate respectfull people and you hatred and bombs would be better directed at Candadians or Swedes.

Also candidates for high office could boast about thier high scores come lection time.

   

Scare Tactics

Dear Sci-Fi writers,

We're flat out of fanciful terrorist ideas to scare the public with and need some new ones. Have you got any? Don't worry if they sound totally implausible, once we're finished sprucing them up only the unpatriotic will be laughing at them.

Yours,

Authorities

Hey Homeland Security!

I wonder if a science fiction writer could have come up with a story as screwed up as this one [mail.com] about the tuberculosis guy. A patient with tuberculosis flew to his wedding in Greece and while he was on his honeymoon in Italy he was notified by the CDC that his tuberculosis was a scary drug resistant strain, to avoid travel, and to turn himself in to Italian authorities to be quarantined. They also told him that he had been put on the no-fly list. But damn it, he's on his honeymoon. So what did he do? He flew from Prague to Montreal to successfully avoid the no-fly list, and then he drove across the border into New York State, with no-flying:

Health officials said the man had been advised not to fly and knew he could expose others when he boarded the jets from Atlanta to Paris, and later from Prague to Montreal.
The man, however, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that doctors didn't order him not to fly and only suggested he put off his long-planned wedding in Greece. He knew he had a form of tuberculosis and that it was resistant to first-line drugs, but he didn't realize it could be so dangerous, he said.
"We headed off to Greece thinking everything's fine," said the man, who declined to be identified because of the stigma attached to his diagnosis.
He flew to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. While in Europe, health authorities reached him with the news that further tests had revealed his TB was a rare, "extensively drug-resistant" form, far more dangerous than he knew. They ordered him into isolation, saying he should turn himself over to Italian officials.
Instead, the man flew from Prague to Montreal on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104, then drove into the United States at Champlain, N.Y. He told the newspaper he was afraid that if he didn't get back to the U.S., he wouldn't get the treatment he needed to survive.
...
The man told the Journal-Constitution he was in Rome during his honeymoon when the CDC notified him of the new tests and told him to turn himself in to Italian authorities to be isolated and be treated. The CDC told him he couldn't fly aboard commercial airliners.
"I thought to myself: You're nuts. I wasn't going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged," the man said.
He told the newspaper he and his wife decided to sneak back into the U.S. through Canada. He said he voluntarily went to a New York hospital, then was flown by the CDC to Atlanta.
He is not facing prosecution, health officials said.
"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the paper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

So what was unfortunately revealed by this episode?

• After six good years of hysteric overspending we still can't track down TB patients on their honeymoons much less bioterrorists
• So we put patients with communicable diseases on our handy terrorist no-fly list
• Handy travel tip for anyone on the no-fly list: fly Czech Air to Canada and enter the U.S. via rental car!
• Tuberculosis causes dementia as is shown here by the illogical desire to get to the U.S. for medical treatment

I've got mixed feelings on this..

On one hand, I really don't know if it's a good idea for politicians to read books at all, let alone speak to writers. Here in the UK someone misread 1984 and took it to be a guide book promoting the merits of the police state, complete with instructions.

On the the other hand though, if the writers really pushed the boat out and highlighted the - ever so real - danger of space based terrorism, who knows, NASA may get funding to build decent spacecraft (maybe even a Star Destroyer). Wouldn't want one of them little rascals redirecting an asteroid to hit N.Y. now would we?

Diplomacy

I'm not a Sci-fi writer but here is what I suggest:

• 1) Fire/Execute the morons of your Homeland Security Department for not understanding the problem and suggesting such stupid ideas.
• 2) Fire/Execute your moronic president. Because of him and his father, your country is now the most hated country in the world.
• 3) Try to play nice with all the countries in the world. I know this is difficult, but it is called "Diplomacy".

Hello! We are not in a movie or a video game. We live in The Real World. People realy die, people realy suffer. We can't just rewind the movie or restart the game.

If you don't want someone to hurt you, don't be his enemy.

Re:here's a crazy idea...

Let everyone onboard with any weapon (firearm) they are legally permitted to carry otherwise.
From my European perspective this is a Bad Idea. More innocent people are shot in the US than anywhere else in the world.
might as well arm the pilots too while we are at it.
Not as crazy as you think. Some people need to carry guns for their occupations (cops, for instance). What might happen is demonstrated by the case of an armed pilot of Garuda, Indonesian airways. Things more or less evolved in the following manner:
Hijacker (as he enters the cockpit): "This plane is hijacked!"
Pilot (shoots the hijacker) : "Not anymore."
Not a single passenger got injured.

Re:here's a crazy idea...

And then you try to fire your gun again, but it won't fucking work without oxygen, you idiot.

I think you need to read up on what makes explosives (including gunpowder) go boom, actually. Hint: They do contain their own oxidizer.

Re:here's a crazy idea...

An explosion is the result of a solid (or sometimes liquid) material being converted into a gas in a confinded volume. In most cases, the conversion has to happen faster than the gas can leak out of an enclosure. Most explosives are comnustable material that's been mixed with an oxidizer so it burn really, really fast. Without the oxidizer, oxygen can't get to the combustion fast enough and the gas escapes, turning the BOOM into a POP. Since there's an oxidizer present, these types of explosives work quite well in total vacumns, and yes, gunpowder falls into that group.

In other words, your gun will fucking work without oxygen, you moron.