Movie Plot Threat contest -- scare us into buying!
Bruce Schneier's launched his annual "Movie Plot Threat Contest," in which he challenges his readers to come up with ridiculous threat-scenarios (think of blowing up an airplane armed with nothing but some optimistic misapprehensions about organic chemistry, Tang, and hydrogen peroxide). A condition of the competition is that your weird-ass threat has to be preventable by means of a snake-oil security product that you want to sell us (bonus points if deploying your product makes our lives hell -- shoe-removing, liquid-confiscating indiginities!).
There's a ton of great entries already -- I like this one, from R. Serrano:
PROTECT your family!, SERVE your country!Link (Thanks, Bruce!)Would you LIKE some terrorist bombing your son's school with YOUR VERY OWN just stolen and filled with EXPLOSIVES car?
Don't let this happen with CURARE SHOTS! An easy to mount hypodermic syringe hidden beneath the seat of your car prevents burglars, thieves and TERRORISTS to MISUSE your car in ways YOU COULD NEVER IMAGINE by literally stopping them on the seat of your car while a wireless silent alarm* warns the closest police station and a text message is sent to your cell phone**.
PROTECT your family AND SERVE your country well with CURARE SHOTS.
* Alarm sold separately.
** Text message service only available with selected providers.
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Do you have to look any farther than the Boing Boing front page this morning?
What about terrorists spreading contact poisons on door handles? All you need is one of these to protect you!
Then the terrorists could take over over a plane using the "Handler" (looking like a bunch of crazy Captain Hooks?) after which Homeland Security would start confiscating our Handlers and we'd all die from the contact poisons!
It a doomsday scenario, I tell you! Doomsday!!!
These ideas may seem silly in context, but I wouldn't mind using some of them in a story. In a Charles Stross novel, Iron Sunrise I believe, a terrorist uses some unlikely means to threaten New York. It's good fiction and demonstrates that crazy people can do crazy things, but that we are quite lame when it comes to predicting these things. A crazy idea like flying planes into buildings was used by a crazy writer named Tom Clancy (correct me if I'm wrong). These writers are obviously guilty of using the best of crazy ideas to entertain us with. Because this stuff is fun, not real. Until it happens.
On a related note, I made a web site that generates random fake James Bond movie titles and plots:
http://www.kmoser.com/jamesbond/
The titles and plots are random remixes of existing Bond titles and plots.
--K