I discounted the exercise at the time, calling it "embarrassing." I never thought that 9/11 was a failure of imagination. I thought, and still think, that 9/11 was primarily a confluence of three things: the dual failure of centralized coordination and local control within the FBI, and some lucky breaks on the part of the attackers. More imagination leads to more movie-plot threats -- which contributes to overall fear and overestimation of the risks. And that doesn't help keep us safe at all...How Science Fiction Writers Can Help, or Hurt, Homeland SecurityFascinating stuff. But the biases produce the reverse effect when it comes to movie-plot threats. The more you think about far-fetched terrorism possibilities, the more outlandish and scary they become, and the less control you think you have. This causes us to overestimate the risks.
Think about this in the context of terrorism. If you're asked to come up with threats, you'll think of the significant ones first. If you're pushed to find more, if you hire science-fiction writers to dream them up, you'll quickly get into the low-probability movie plot threats. But since they're the last ones generated, they're more available. (They're also more vivid -- science fiction writers are good at that -- which also leads us to overestimate their probability.) They also suggest we're even less in control of the situation than we believed. Spending too much time imagining disaster scenarios leads people to overestimate the risks of disaster.
Asking sf writers to imagine terrorist scenarios is dumb
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I disagree. I think fiction writers offer a certain degree of creativity that may be helpful in imagining what kinds of things terrorists might come up with, but more importantly (if they're good writers) they bring the ability to take those creative ideas and make them plausible. It's one thing to say "what if people decided to crash planes into the twin towers" it's another to come up with the backstory of how they would have to do it in order for it to seem plausible, which is what (good) fiction writers would have to do.
But writers should not be in charge of ranking threats or developing responses to them. That's the military's job, and it's what the military does best. Writers can come up with ideas from the plausible to the outlandish all day long, but it's the military that should be weighing the likelihood of every scenario against the danger, cost, and consequences of preparing for it.
Step 1: Take a lot of photographs of the site in plain sight of rent-a-cops. No wait...
I once read an article (for the life of me, I can't remember where) in which the author argued that the South would have shortly abolished slavery if the Civil War didn't happen (or the South won) because that's the case so many alternative history novels (e.g., "The Guns of the South").
It seems odd to give SF (& alternative history) novelists so much credence in this regard. SF is not about making predictions, it's about viewing the present through a different lens.
I don't know - it worked pretty well in Footfall. :)
Who needs science fiction writers?
Two months into a drought in California, set off incendiary bombs in 100 locations in the woods on timers to go off after they are all placed. It'd take one person hiking in the woods with a big backpack and a couple weeks.
Spend a month driving around the country in a Winnebago leaving bombs in the ceiling tiles of bathrooms at rest stops, tourist traps, etc. Set them on timers to go off at different times after they've all been placed. Takes an old guy with time to waste.
Terror doesn't have to come from blowing up huge buildings, but from the thought that anywhere you go could be next. I've often wondered why al Qaeda hasn't done a series of small events to scare the pants off Americans over the past eight years. It's the kind of thing that cannot be stopped in a free society, because you can't stop every plot if there are enough of them. Add in copycats, and it would freak everyone out.
maybe they should hire writers to imagine more totalitarian surveillance states?
I think that Huntsu has put his/her finger on the problem.
The problem is not that it is difficult to think up these scenarios, it's that it's too easy. We don't need to hire specially imaginative people in order to come up with ideas.
Indeed, the other problem is, trying to defend against scenarios which we have no evidence will ever happen, because we want to look as if we are doing something constructive.
Security at airports means that airport bosses look good and have their arses covered if anything else happens again. But, they don't really make airports safer (and from the point of view of those ordering the security restrictions, they don't have to).
Like Huntsu, I've often wondered why we haven't seen more single small terror events. Just imagine the reaction in this country if we suddenly had lone or 2-man teams of these guys walking into malls and schools in a dozen locations throughout the country and at the same time just start shooting up the place. Look at the coverage a single mall or school shooing gets. Imaging a dozenb happening across the country at the same time. Not every American goes to the big targets, but every American either goes to the mall or sends their kids to school.
Nothing SciFi about that, and nothing we could ever do to stop it. At least nothing we could do that would leave us any sort of freedom.
I dare say most of us could come up with terrifying plans - but this isn't the forte of the sorts of people who actually commit terrorist acts. Most of them are brutes, they're not creative - they're going to stick with what has worked in the past to get maximum media coverage. Even 9/11 was just a pretty predictable extension of the standard hijack scenario.
I've often wondered why we haven't seen more single small terror events.
Could it possibly be that your fears have been whipped up a bit? So that you think the threat is truly existential, rather than distracting and extraneous? Maybe?
The problem is that they never come up with GOOD ways to scare people:
- A detonator that uses the RFID from a passport as a trigger. Set it to go off when any person carrying a passport with a specific date of birth on it comes within range.
- A control algorithm, inserted via wireless network, that shifts the spectrum of an x-ray machine to a radiation level that will cause terminal cancer in anyone within 50 feet.
- A hack that turns CCTV cameras into high powered anti-personnel lasers.
- A sleeper agent posing as a security guard sneaks the larvae of deadly, skin-burrowing african parasites into travelers' shoes while whey go through security.
Hey- they're at least more plausible than blowing up a plane with 10oz of mouthwash...
I would hope the benefits of asking SF writers to engage in Anthropological/Sociological exercises would be self evident.
Except that Huntsu, Igpajo et al. are merely proving the government's position: that "gaming-out" or imagining possible terrorist threats is beneficial to a civil society. What, you don't think the government has thought of your single-cell, small-team plots? You think you're the first to ever think of this one? Obviously not, so don't knock planned, possibly beneficial ways of harnessing natural curiosity over an important issue.
Obviously, you haven't been paying attention to the terrorists: Al Quaeda et al. like big, spectacular attacks, plus they quite likely lack the infrastructure and cells to perpetrate what you imagine.
MDH, if you think a nuclear-armed terrorist isn't a true existential threat, then maybe you need to read some more sci-fi?
So if a SF writer correctly describes a future attack do they become a prime suspect?
Really genius, create scapegoats. Maybe we should just pre-emptivly start a "War against Science Fiction Writters" or better yet "War against Writters" oh... wait... "The War on Writting!"
Asking _science fiction_ authors, yeah, might be dumb. Asking other types of writers? Not so much.
Example: Tom Clancy's book "Debt of Honor" - see the ending. I think this came out in 1994.
Thank you!
All the 'geek press' are always like - 'how cool is it that my favorite vampire novelist is working for DARPA?!' Rather than actually take the next step and think that perhaps it's NOT a good idea to wildly inflate expectations of the national security state and the baseless fears of the population.
There are a lot of people who ought to know better who in the last several years became far too enthusiastic for this venture - very glad to see it beginning to be questioned.
Why not? They already have thriller writers coming up with tremendously improbable threats for them to defend against, such as exploding water.
With SF writers on the payroll, they'll be able to come up with rules and regulations to expand their protection to include outright impossible threats, such as shape-changing alien muslims extremists, or people smuggling nanomolecular nuclear bombs.
I liked the snippet on "The Family Guy" where they showed how personal hygiene products could take down an airplane. It involved the captain having his hair washed in the cockpit and getting shampoo in his eye.
@tdawwwg.
It does your argument no good that neither of us can name a single nuclear terrorist who poses, or ever did pose, such a threat. Neither you nor I can can prove a negative. Neither you nor I can point at Gitmo to prove this point.
However, you ought to be able to come up with a few documentable cases - somehwere- where something like what you propose got beyond the sketchbook (dreaming) phase of planning.
Maybe some creditable designs for suitcase weapons? or some indication that weapons grade material has gone missing recently enough to still be useful as a fission weapon without needing a state sponsor to hide the mini-Hanaford reprocesing plant (no small feat).
Outside of that you're talking what, dirty bomb? Makes a mess of a couple city blocks? C'mon?
Do you honestly propose we continue to skew our priorities to prepare for the kind of near impossible timing, precision, and support that a terrorist nuclear attack (he existential threat you posed, not some strawman I'm inventing here) would require so that we can prevent the scale of consequences that are already achieved by nature on a regular basis - something for which we were recently underprepared because our priorities were out of whack.
Many people misundertand nuclear weapons, and just how difficult they are to use IN REALITYLAND.
You sir, tdawwwg, are among that number - and you are spreading FUD, and you stink at it. Good day.
nuclear terrorists?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents
in Tom Clancy's "Debt of Honour" (1994) novel a revenge-obsessed plane pilot crashes a jetliner in the US Capitol, so the idea has been around for a while and didn't even require an SF writer.
OTOH having would-be-suicide-bombers trained as pilots is a long way to go to achieve the goal that the terrorist pursued.
Having said this, it is probably true that if we try to prepare against every possible threat scenario, no matter how far-fetched it seems, would mean feeling constantly under threat no matter what activity we're pursuing, and having this generalized fear spread would simply mean achieving the terrorist's goals for them.
The people we're ostensibly trying to stop have absolute faith in a dictated dogma of violent, zero-tolerance religious fundamentalism. Ability to "think outside the box" pretty much disqualifies them from the gig, no?
If you think the fallout, literal and figurative, from a dirty bomb would stop at a "few city blocks," then you don't know a lot about dirty bombs.
I wasn't talking about the likelihood of nuclear terrorism. I was simply saying that a nuclear-armed terrorist would be a seriously scary thing, and is perhaps a threat not simply limited to sci-fi and the ravings of neocons. MDH I simply have no idea what your yadda yadda re: proving negatives has to do with anything. One might simply point to a long list of historical "unthinkables" that, having happened, were quite thinkable, indeed, obvious from the rearview mirror.
Put another way, you don't think Qaeda et al. are aware of said difficulties? That they're trying to overcome them? That, in the long chronicle of war and history, somebody will figure this out, and sooner rather than later? To not even allow the possibility of these things happening is the worst know-nothingism; similarly, for me to insist that THEY'RE GOING TO HAPPEN O NOES would be stupid.... which is why I pointedly didn't say that.
Takuan, nice list: your point?
tdawwg, the yadda-yadda should be re-read. It's where your argument falls apart.
You're saying that the world is a scary place, and yes it is. Bad things happen, bad men do bad things.
But we need a sober assessment of the scope of the danger, and you have yet to provide that assessment.
You are full of FUD, and as I said before, you are not talented at it.
So the possibility of Pakistan's nukes falling to the Taliban.... that's just Tdawwg's Crazy Talk, right? Just me and those fearmongers in the Obama Administration? Nobody IN REALITYLAND (?!?) is worried about this, just me and the gubbmint?
Try harder, dudes. Hate the game, not the playa!
here tdawwg. I will provide a link backing up much of what I say.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/231814
can you do the same?
can you show an existential threat that justifies your fears?
i think you cannot.
I'll take that as a tacit admission as to the real danger of dirty bombs, thanks. QED.
I think you and I'd agree on the yadda yadda. Again, nowhere do I advance an argument as to the likelihood of nuclear terrorism. I don't feel that I need to do so: again, I was talking about the possibility, not the likelihood, a big difference for those who read for nuance, and who aren't going to polemically pigeonhole an argument they don't like. Acronyms are cute, but a better marker of your attitudinizing and posturing than of any fear, uncertainty, or doubt I may or may not be promulgating.
And mightn't you be projecting? I imagine there are those who can read "nuclear terrorism" without getting all sweaty about it: you're not one of those folks. I'm not particularly scared myself, although the possibility is terrifying: again, a big difference. Let's hope those providing your "sober assessment of the scope of the danger" are working to do so: they certainly aren't going to be found on BoingBoing.
Ad hominem polemicizing FAIL.
Wasn't Jerry Pournelle one of those invited? Now there's a terrifying thought.
Sorry, all the measurements were in some funny non-American system. :D
An existential threat that justifies my fears? Hmmm, perhaps the following equation will work:
If you want the likelihood or probability of this happening, call the State Department: I'm not Hillary Clinton, and, again, since you seem to miss this point, the likelihood of any of this happening wasn't the point of my original response.... (If anything, it looks like the Pakistani Army might prevail, hooray?!?)
I love how we've segued from sci-fi imaginings of horrible disasters to me somehow proving, were ultimate proof possible, the likelihood of any of these disasters. WTF, man, WTF....
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-security-of-pakistans-nuclear-arsenal
http://www.geo.tv/5-11-2009/41828.htm
http://blog.taragana.com/n/mullen-says-he-feels-pakistan-nukes-are-secure-but-has-grave-worries-about-taliban-advances-51607/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtun
http://brendabowers.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/selig-s-harrison-the-fault-line-between-pashtuns-and-punjabis-in-pakistan-washingtonpost-com/
Nice links, again: again, your point? These articles agree with what I said above: scary, but unlikely. Again, as I've said like a hundred times now, this isn't at all the point of the original discussion. Maybe we could all stay on topic?
If spamming a thread were an art form Takuan (and it isn't), you'd be the acknowledged master. As it is, you're being clubby and obfuscatory, and you've successfully killed any desire I might have to further "debate" this with y'alls. Mission accomplished?
http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/3100000/why-so-serious-the-joker-3122768-1024-768.jpg
hic⋅cup
/ˈhɪkʌp, -əp/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [hik-uhp, -uhp] Show IPA noun, verb, -cuped or -cupped, -cup⋅ing or -cup⋅ping.
–noun
1. a quick, involuntary inhalation that follows a spasm of the diaphragm and is suddenly checked by closure of the glottis, producing a short, relatively sharp sound.
2. Usually, hiccups. the condition of having such spasms: She got the hiccups just as she began to speak.
3. Informal. a minor difficulty, interruption, setback, etc.: a hiccup in the stock market.
–verb (used without object)
4. to make the sound of a hiccup: The motor hiccuped as it started.
5. to have the hiccups.
6. Informal. to experience a temporary decline, setback, interruption, etc.: There was general alarm when the economy hiccuped.
Also, hic-cough /ˈhɪkʌp, -əp/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [hik-uhp, -uhp] Show IPA .
Origin:
1570–80; alter. of hocket, hickock, equiv. to hic + -ock; akin to LG hick hiccup; see hocket
nas⋅ty
/ˈnæsti/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [nas-tee] Show IPA adjective, -ti⋅er, -ti⋅est, noun, plural -ties.
–adjective
1. physically filthy; disgustingly unclean: a nasty pigsty of a room.
2. offensive to taste or smell; nauseating.
3. offensive; objectionable: a nasty habit.
4. vicious, spiteful, or ugly: a nasty dog; a nasty rumor.
5. bad or hard to deal with, encounter, undergo, etc.; dangerous; serious: a nasty cut; a nasty accident.
6. very unpleasant or disagreeable: nasty weather.
7. morally filthy; obscene; indecent: a nasty word.
8. Slang. formidable: The young pitcher has a good fast ball and a nasty curve.
–noun
9. Informal. a nasty person or thing.
Origin:
1350–1400; ME
tdawg, you never began debating. You just talked and were surprised when the class was dismissive.
Nice riposte, or whatever you're aiming at, Takuan. Clever of you.
MDH, it's hard to debate where we so substantively agree. But you want to keep taking this conversation where it doesn't really want or need to, so, again, thanks for playing.
Tdawwg,
Withdrawing from the fray: ur doing it rong. You made an unsupported point, you got called on it and now you're pouting. Give it up.
What unsupported claim? Give what up? My simple point is that terrorists with nukes would be scary. I never once pointed to the likeliness of this, and I've patiently sat through a deluge of links pointing to things I've already read and that I've already agreed with.
SO ANYWAY
about those lone gunmen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUKQz-xm0is
I know it's old hat for conspiracy theorists, but if it belongs anywhere it belongs here.
Is it useful for SF writers to be coming up with terrorist scenarios? I don't have an opinion on it one way or the other, but history proves that at least some of them get it right when they do.
@tdawwg - "What unsupported claim?"
"if you think a nuclear-armed terrorist isn't a true existential threat, then..."
is an unsupported claim.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhRUe-gz690