The drones from Wolf Warrior 2.
To date the world’s most successful (non-state) terrorists have only been getting about ~100 kills / death (or capture).
The 9/11 hijackers each killed 2,996/19 = 158 people. Anders Breivik methodically killed 77 people. Brenton Tarrant got 50 while livestreaming it like a video game. Aircraft bombings can take out 100-200 people.
But can these figures go any higher? Let’s do some brainstorming.
Back in 2016, I speculated about attaching gun barrels to drones, and then either operating them manually or coupling them to aimbots and AI recognition software:
A couple of years ago there was a lot of agitation around TrackingPoint, a weapons company that coupled a gun with a tracking system. All you had to do was tag your target, press the trigger, and align the reticle with the tag, which would automatically fire the shot while making adjustments for range, wind conditions, your own motion, etc. Accuracy far exceeds what even the best marksmen are capable of with a traditional rifle and scope outfit. You can also shoot around corners and barricades with special eyeglasses (this was once an exclusively military technology which has now made its way into the civilian market).
Now TrackingPoint’s products aren’t really the sort of weapons you can do a productive rampage with – crucially, it is single shot, and extremely expensive ($20,000) to boot. But it should soon be possible to create far more effective solutions. For instance, a standalone mod that contains a database of common gun models (and maybe the option to input custom data) that you can strap onto any old AK. An accomplice can tag targets remotely through a connected smartphone, or even automate the process entirely on the basis of face recognition. Think of the kind of head shot percentages you can achieve.
Incidentally, just a year later, the Chinese movie Wolf Warrior II featured that idea in their intro scene:
Even more creative solutions can be thought up. Just the sort of stuff you can do by coupling this with drones can provide material for countless cyberpunk stories.
Incidentally, this is the reason why I think that draconian gun control will become the norm throughout the world within the next 2-3 decades, even in the US. Cheap drones and machine learning basically guarantee that.
And, come November 2017, we got this dystopian presentation on “slaughterbots” – mosquito-like drones carrying shaped microcharges that can blow a hole in a human skull – from The Future of Life Institute:
This idea is even more “elegant”, though I am not so sure that it is technologically feasible yet. Any such slaughterbot needs to have enough intelligence for indoor navigation without the use of GPS, and for face recognition. Both tasks are computationally intensive, so we either need much more progress on miniaturization, or a reliable Internet connection to a server (would be funny to be murdered by your WiFi). Also battery longevity might be an issue though miniaturization is progressing fast.
Anyhow, I reckon that once terrorists manage to “master” the drone toolkit, the K/D ratio can go up an order of magnitude into the thousands. Just imagine what a few killbots at a very crowded location, such as a football match or a big protest, can cause.
But while this will be a very bad development, it can’t really change things like global geopolitics, at least insofar as they don’t provoke large-scale military reactions.
For that, we need nukes.
Fortunately, so far as terrorism is concerned, they are not what they’re hyped up to be in the movies. Real nuclear devices are far too closely surveilled for terrorists to make off with them, and far too failsafe to do anything “interesting” with if they do. So-called “dirty bombs”, can create a lot of panic, but they won’t really kill many more – if any at all – in addition to the casualties of the conventional blast that spreads the radioactive isotopes. Consequently, any Sum of All Fears scenarios decidedly lean towards the “fiction” part of science fiction.
However, I think there might be one possible exception in which nuclear terrorism on a truly massive scale becomes possible. Now obviously, I am not any kind of expert on the ins and outs of submarine procedures, nor do I have access to any classified information. So with that caveat out of the way, here goes perhaps the one realistic scheme that a group of especially dedicated and reasonably competent fanatics can carry out to unleash global Armageddon.
Unlike American and Russian SSBNs, the British Vanguard class does not have Permissive Action Links. PALs are devices that are attached to nuclear weapons systems to prevent them from being armed or launched without the insertion of a predetermined code. In the American case, this code is broadcast from the US Chiefs of Staff in the event of nuclear war. But the UK never implemented this. According to the BBC, the Royal Navy thought “it would be invidious to suggest… that Senior Service officers may, in difficult circumstances, act in defiance of their clear orders.”
But suppose that an extremist cell manages to concentrate a few members on a British submarine. The key position may not be the commanding officer, but whichever officer is in charge of the armory (at least in the US, all submarines have Small Arms Lockers, to defend against pirates, polar bears in the Arctic, etc.; I imagine it’s the same on the Vanguard). On a crowded submarine, the rest of the crew will be at the complete mercy of a few armed cell members.
The key question, then, is one of how many people are needed to prep, aim, and launch the missiles. I don’t know the answer to this question, so I would appreciate any informed input. That said, if just 3-4 guys can do that, then the rest of the crew can just be exterminated*. Nobody can hear you scream tens of meters under the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Alternatively, should this require the cooperation of a couple dozen people, then assembling a cell that large is unfeasible and they will have to coerce operations personnel into going along. This is risky, as they might figure out a way to sabotage the operation, or manage to overpower the terrorists.
While the natural response would be to launch those SLBMs at the US, it might be more productive – from the point of view of the terrorists, assuming that they are radical Islamists – to instead blast them at Russia (perhaps save one for China if it’s within range). Crippled Russia will then likely turn most British cities into glass. If the Russian political leadership is successfully “decapitated” – not the most far fetched possibility, given that this attack will come out of the blue – then Russia’s response might even be an automatic strike on the US, dependent on the fine details of its highly classified Perimeter system. Perimeter is a “dead hand” system that is rumored to be capable of automatically launching an annihilating retaliatory strike should the Russian leadership be destroyed. Alternatively, even if Russia only attacks Britain, then the US may become so unnerved that it attempts to launch a decapitating and disarming strike against Russia, with approximately the same global-level results.
Total nuclear exchange between the world’s leading Crusader Powers – what’s not to like?
I am not so sure that the ummah will come out of this so well in the end; setting off an atomic democide will presumably make much of the rest of the world rather negatively inclined towards Islam and Muslims.
But OTOH just think of dat K/D ratio. Just think of the achievements you will unlock.
Anyhow, I really don’t know if this is realistic or not. Probably not. Too much planning, too much persistence, and too much luck (e.g. at least 3-4 people getting assigned to the same boat, inc. one with direct armory access).
Perhaps this one of the good things about more British Muslims electing to fight for Islamic State than to serve in the British Armed Forces.
- Commenter Sean confirms that “just 3-4 of the officers cooperating are required to can launch.”
That’s pretty bleak.
Was the Maduro Assassination Attempt the first use of a home-grown drone to get at someone?
This idea is even more “elegant”, though I am not so sure that it is technologically feasible yet.
LOL, this sounds horrible without context.
This article is a bad idea.
I don’t mean that it’s bad, but that this will be used against you in the future.
And not much better with context.
Also make sure to livestream with good soundtrack. I was really amazed the first time I watched Tarrant’s video how well he chose the tracks.
Maybe add some sound effects too, like “double kill/multi kill/killing spree” etc.
If you’re launching nukes, add some Red Alert or Starcraft quotes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Cell
They had a team of SEALs take over subs, plant bombs near Air force one, barricade buildings on military bases. The commander would announce they were coming before to show vulnerabilities.
It definently could be done with some special operations experience and some will. Military security is actually pretty weak. However most non western countries have poor quality special operations training, and most American muslims would lack the intelligence or patriotism to get selected for US/UK special operations.
I recall a movie from a while back in which the assassin used a radio-guided model plane equipped with explosives to take out a leading politician while he was speaking in an outdoor venue to his loyal followers.
So, while drones may be novel, the concept of using small, remotely operated aircraft has been around for awhile. Since this hasn’t–to my knowledge–actually been employed, then maybe drones won’t be either.
It may be that while we all occasionally fantasize about taking out an opponent by devious means, those are, ultimately, just idle daydreams. The situation today, according to some, is different. Fanaticism is on the rise and what was historically unprecedented is now not improbable. But maybe they’re just Chicken Littles.
Anatoly Karlin’s remake-script of Crimson Tide
This isn’t really anything new. Anyone with a brain can figure out that explosive substances will kill people and destroy things, directly or indirectly. From an energetic standpoint it is highly wasteful and nonspecific; in a word, it’s low-tech which makes it convenient for the terrorists to feel like they are accomplishing something when they are doing the equivalent of going to the supermarket. Low energy and high specificity is where things get dicy and everything is much more controlled, the procedures and knowledge are occluded, and the low intelligence and time preferences of violent terrorists is exposed. For that matter it reveals why terrorism isn’t really a threat to the states but more of an opportunity to exploit the systems that are in place.
“I reckon that once terrorists manage to “master” the drone toolkit, the K/D ratio can go up an order of magnitude into the thousands. Just imagine what a few killbots at a very crowded location, such as a football match or a big protest, can cause.”
Perhaps at first, but then other technologies will quickly bring it back down again. The K/D ratio for these kinds of incidents 50 years from now will probably be much less than you think. For example, it would not be too difficult with future technologies to station medium-capacity lasers at key locations and tag them to an AI trained to distinguish between organic and inorganic drone killbots (mosquitoes) or functioning/malfunctioning drones of other types; and there would be many ways to train the AI: flight pattern, size, estimated mass from motion paired with wind speed, aberrant noise emission, etc. The moment the killing started, most of your drones would be eliminated, perhaps nearly at the speed of light and possibly with minimal risk to the public. The intelligence services would then quickly track down the culprit, discouraging copycats.
One of the problems with predicting the future is that people tend to unduly focus on the potential of one concept while ignoring potential drawbacks or mitigating factors. For example, you saw this in predictions of flying cars. We have now, or will have shortly, the technology to implement the suggestion, but it will never happen in your lifetime, regardless; there are too many things not accounted for in the original prediction: vehicle cost, high associated insurance costs, market size (training would be required, limiting demand), public acceptance (“who’s afraid of the flying giant death machine?”) … same here.
Bioterrorism, however, might be a significant threat. Cures for diseases take a long time to find, endless millions to develop, and weeks to distribute even in an extreme emergency. If “terrorism” itself – inducing terror in a population – is your thing and not so much K/D ratio, it would be fairly easy to buy an AIDs test at a grocery store, test a homeless guy, withdraw his blood, break into a blood bank, and add his sample – wash, rinse, repeat. Do this a couple of times in a major metropolitan area, wait a few months, and then announced on the internet what you’ve done. Afterwards, you’ve got real panic and lots of attention for your cause. Of course, you’ve also got a really low K/D ratio, but that misses the point of terrorism. The point of terrorism is to induce terror as a means of evoking change or forcing an opponent to meet a demand, and there are lots of ways to do that.
Honestly, the West has gotten somewhat lucky in the terrorism department. Most potential terrorists – Arabs, disaffected white men, the occasional black Muslim – are morons.* Of course, the FBI and other agencies are fairly competent at their jobs, but they are indirectly aided by the myopia of their opponents. Something like cheap bioterror tools might change that to a degree. Press a button and a device the size of a computer printer engineers an RNA sequence found in a deadly virus. Then take the RNA, dump in some self-assembling protein for the viral capsid (also assembled by your machine), shake, and then release it into the environment – perhaps aerosolized. Any idiot could do that. There’s your high K/D ratio.
*Well, so are the good guys. There’s no way to prove it here, but I independently thought of the idea behind 9/11 many years before it happened. I specifically mentioned to an expert in building design the potential for terrorists hijacking commercial airliners and ramming them into skyscrapers. I specifically noted that the practice some construction companies had of merely spraying on thermal insulation could come back to bite them if an object crashed into the building and blew away the insulation. I was dismissed with the usual nonsense: not likely, who would fly it, the building wouldn’t come down, airport security. I wasn’t surprised when it did happen.
How about 50 syringes from the ebola “hot zone” and an equal and willing number of “fanatics” or “patriots” or “freedom fighters” or “terrorists”with credentials and cash to hop a plane flight to just about any major transportation hub or hubs on the planet after giving themselves “the shot.”
This “operation” could be pulled off for peanuts compared to most others, would have a success and “kill rate” that would dwarf incredibly expensive nuclear weapons, but if combined with selected EMP strikes (meaning a State Actor) you add in a “multiplier” with some serious implications. Paralysis of any parts of a responding WHO/CDC quarantine effort including overloading such an effort with refugees as well as crippling the supporting Mil/Gov support agencies and Media Org literally creates the “perfect storm.”
Granted, an EMP strike against US, China, Russia, and other countries such as those of Europe, India, Pakistan, Israel and so forth is probably best if only attempted around the “edges” but that is actually only what is required and desired.
Such EMP strikes could literally “stampede” people into disease “hot zones” where the majority of your operatives were active. “Dirty Bomb” terrorism could also be used, but EMP alone is an escalation that risks “detection” and it is absolutely essential that the various plots be compartmentalized and sub-compartmentalized.
General problem with bioterror is that it doesn’t really appeal to anyone apart from total nihilists… though there’s a niche for that too (e.g. Aum Shinrikyo).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_(1977_film)#Plot
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/BlackSunday1977.jpg
Black Sunday (4/8) Movie CLIP – Testing the Weapon (1977) HD
The Power To End All Life | Genesis of the Daleks | Doctor Who
dunno – i’d say the heart of darkness from their point of view would be the banks/media in New York as that’s the root of neocon influence in US foreign policy.
i agree drones/AI etc could be a game changer but not so much with genuine terrorism as i don’t think they’re likely to have the brains/resources to do it but state sponsored false flag or “targeted assassination” type terrorism like on Maduro, yeah i can see that.
That’s the point – if they shoot at Russia first, then the Russians might retaliate against both the UK and the US with thousands of missiles. So instead of just destroying a few American cities, they might go on to destroy half of America.
The only thing to be said for slaughter bots is when they arrive the oligarchs will have to live underground. It will be the end of fresh air for them for eternity. Maybe there will still be some left for the deplorables on the surface.
According to my computer’s spell-check deplorable ain’t a word.
yeah i get it – not sure that would be in their interest though when all they’d need to do is take out the New York banks/media
although i can see the banking mafia engineering a nuclear exchange between Russia and the West in this way after they’ve moved to China.
it’s an example of what i mean about very high k/d terrorist activity probably needing to be sponsored by a state or at least a faction at the far end of the bell curve with state level resources – imo part of the reason such a high percentage of terrorist stuff involves the assistance of state actors is terrorists themselves are often too dumb or crazy to organize anything complicated on their own.
How realistic is it that one day it will be feasible for one man to build nuclear bombs? I don’t know much about the technical hurdles but from what I know the hard part is enriching the Uranium, supposedly this is impossible to do by the lone bomber in his basement. However with improvements in AI and other technologies such as 3D printing and who knows what else, could this not be a possibility one day, the K/D ratio would be off the charts and this would probably be civilization changing or possibly even civilization ending.
No, they will be able to afford first class air defense systems operated by their bodyguard divisions. I wouldn’t worry that the oligarchs won’t do well for themselves: they will.
Yes, just 3-4 of the officers cooperating are required to can launch.
I am dubious about PAL being what it sounds like. The whole point of the ICBM subs is to have a nuke retaliatory capacity that cannot be neutralised by a counterforce first strike. There must be an override for PAL available to because communication with a sub requires special frequencies if it is under water and all those transmitters are sitting ducks.
In other words am enemy clean sweep of ICBM sub communications thus making them physically unable to launch would be much too easy if codes not available are necessary. My feeling is the supposed failsafe of PAL is contingent, and ICBM sub commander and coupled his officers are must work together for a launch can launch on their collective authority if the situation warrants it (for example no contact with high command, and no civilian radio broadcasts plus other evidence that there had been a full enemy nuclear strike on the homeland).
Perhaps then, Britain’s Trident is not really that different, although I strongly suspect it it would be easier to take over with guns . One of the boats is called HMS Vengeance, and the only serious scenario for using Trident is in an act of vengeance for destruction of Britain, the idea being to let everyone know what they would get and thereby deter them from a first strike. So for act of retaliation ICBM sub is hardly going to be completely reliant on a authorization code being sent from base, are they?
I have to admit that the rest of it is rather good. For getting rid of the crew an idea in tandem with guns might be to put on oxymasks and interfere with the air system to suffocate everyone (the old Malaysian Scareways pilot trick).
I think it is almost inevitable that a full boat of Tridents blowing up Russia would result in a mass Russian launch against the US, even if the Russian leadership knew (how could they) it was from a British sub. But they wouldn’t know and even if they did Russia could not be sure it was not a US trick, or a Chinese one. It would start WW3.
I am worried about Perimeter talking to the US equivalent. In The Forbin Project the governments forbid communication of their respective AI defence systems with each other.
I remember that movie!
Women in STEM! Getting these flechettes to distribute correctly must be quite difficult for a non-BigCorp undertaking.
Stanislaw Lem wrote about using “micromachine swarms” with insect-level non-intelligence as replacement for regular armies in “The Upside-Down Evolution” (a chapter in “One Human Minute”) back in the 70s. That was not in a terrorism context, but an old-school East-West cold war context, but still.
An edgy hot take on who to exterminate after he becomes God-Emperor as a follow-up article?
Obviously non-whites like Central Asians, Africans, Latvians, Ukrainians etc. would top the list. Would Swedes make it?
The Las Vegas shooter could have killed many more. He shot himself after just ten minutes, while he still had several weapons and tons of ammo. The police arrived on the floor only two minutes after he stopped shooting, but it took them over half an hour to break into his room.
However, he must have noticed that the police have arrived. A top priority for him must have been not to be caught. So he shot himself before they had a chance to catch him. But is it a top priority for a terrorist not to get caught? I doubt it. This Christchurch terrorist was caught eventually anyway. He didn’t seem to care. Breivik was similar, just gave himself up.
It’s likely that Breivik always intended to be caught alive, the trial was part of his performance.
I think this Christchurch killer is similar, he’ll try to use his trial for spreading his message. His entire attack was designed to reach the widest audience possible, why should he forgo the opportunity to continue with that in court? I guess he’ll want to get the point across that he’s basically a decent person, but was radicalized by events and had no other choice. It will probably be less convincing than he imagines, but no doubt a non-trivial number of people will still feel some sympathy.
In other words, the body count of the Las Vegas shooter could have been higher, had he been a terrorist, instead of just a regular psychopath.
They will hold a closed trial anyway. Already Breivik could not really use the trial to spread his message.
What if your goal is simply spreading the message and generating sympathy for yourself?
Maybe you should do something which is macho all right with guns etc., but either doesn’t kill anyone or only someone who would be considered a legitimate target by most people? Many of the old Palestinian airplane hijacks and lots of the IRA etc. car bombs announced before detonation fit this bill.
Weren’t they smarter than the mass murderer terrorists?
Is the idea that terrorism doesn’t work just wishful thinking?
I’ve heard people say the same thing about torture – that it doesn’t work – but torture obviously works. All you need is intelligence that you can verify, like an address. Often, all that is needed for intellectuals is the threat of torture.
Terrorism is a bit more nebulous. Maybe, you need a standard army in support, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, or doesn’t accomplish something different than an army does. Algerians are in France. The French are not in Algeria. Both sides had armies.
I’d go further, and say it flat out works sometimes without an army. Seems pretty effective for ethnic cleansing – at least in third world countries.
In the case of the West, it is easy to feel like the Left bends over backwards in support of Muslims because of terrorism. Maybe, it is just because they are a dysfunctional population like blacks, but I feel like terror is a part of it. Hard to separate it, I guess, but I have heard terror used a a justification for continued mass immigration. Whether it was superfluous or not is difficult to say.
You’re right, that seems indeed very likely. Still, Breivik could make some statements during his trial which were reported in media and iirc he does have some contacts with outside admirers. So there is some opportunity to continue to influence one’s own image in the public, try to get a message across etc. I suppose that’s important for the Christchurch shooter. And unless they’ll lock him up in total isolation (which maybe could happen in the US, but NZ is probably too human rights-oriented for that), this can’t be prevented completely.
I’m reminded of It Conquered the World, a Roger Corman cheapie about some bat-like drones that went around biting people and turning them into zombie aliens. (The frightened Brits gave the movie an “X” rating)
One of the drones ended up getting stabbed with a fire poker, although in the case of the slaughterbots, I’d use a tennis racket.
https://youtu.be/5vD-Z56Px_k
Try to find a graphical artist to draw a picture of Mohammad for a children’s book. You won’t be able to find one, because terrorism can work.
But I have serious doubts it’ll work for white nationalists. We’ll see, anyway, whether we like it or not.
i guess it depends on the scale of the demands – bin laden wanted US bases out of Saudi and got it (more or less) but that demand was mostly just an inconvenience for the US.
Doing something with guns or other weapons probably isn’t a good idea in general since there’s always a risk someone gets hurt or killed, even if you didn’t intend that. Non-violent activism like the identitarians do seems much preferable to me, even if it’s difficult to avoid self-radicalization.
But yes, obviously the acts of that Christchurch shooter, killing random Muslims, including children and elderly people, are so immoral that they won’t generate any sympathy.
I’ve always wondered though what would happen if right-wing terrorists struck at some establishment figure, e.g. did a Hanns Martin Schleyer-style attack on some pro-mass immigration business lobbyist. The end results would probably still be disastrous (and of course such an attack would be difficult to pull off), but I suppose there might be more sympathy among the general public for something like this.
Not a good idea in any case though.
I’m not sure this ratio is a useful comparison, as it implies 9/11 would have been more “successful” (from the Islamic terrorist view) if the same attacks had used a smaller number of terrorists.
But Muslims who want to be terrorists are common enough to be disposable assets (there is no lack of supply from the Muslim world), and Islamic terrorists also want to die in the attack, because they can receive paradise, 80 virgins, etc. So the more terrorists who die in the attack, the better from the Islamist point of view.
9/11 terrorists killed 2996 innocent people. And the 19 Muslim terrorists also received their desire of “martyrdom”.
So from the Islamic view, it was 2996 people killed (good from terrorists’ view) + 19 Muslims achieve glorious martydom (good from terrorists’ view).
If it was only 2996 people killed and one Muslim terrorist, this would have been “worse” from their view. (As there would be less tickets to Islamic terrorist paradise on the ride).
I would have been more “succesful”, if they had killed more people. I don’t know how well you remember 9/11, but there were initially fears there could have been something in the range of 50 000 dead (and Islamists probably came fairly close to achieving something like that already with their 1993 attack on the World trade centre).
Breivik is also in Norway, where prison is like an expensive hotel.
And probably Christchurch (New Zealand), is very similar.
In this case, to stay alive after the attack, is not such a frightening option – prison is not even unpleasant in those countries.
Both of those killers are motivated by (apart from enjoyment and sense of power they had from the killing itself), a desire for attention and celebrity. So by staying alive they can enjoy their celebrity status.
People are suddenly reading their texts as if they were talented novelists, and filming television programs and writing articles about them as if they were famous celebrities.
Even if attack was just in countries where prisons are not luxury hotels – for example, like Brazil, where prison is not supposed to be so nice – their view of going to prison for so many years, would have been different.
Yes but if the number killed is constant (like 3000).
Then increasing the number of terrorists involved in the attack, is the same (from their view) as increasing the tickets to paradise. So this is positive from their view.
Obviously, if they could, they would try to maximize the amount of people they kill. But aside from that, they would also like to maximize the martyrs they produce.
There were 19 “martyrs” from 9/11. If there was 1, that would have been worse (from the Islamic view). If there were 1000, that would be better (from the Islamic view).
Islamic theology results in a martyrdom culture. If person dies in the correct way (including jihad), then they go to paradise. A family will commonly celebrate (or pretend to celebrate) when Islamic terrorist has died in the attack.
In my reading of Wikipedia, the terrorist attack with the highest likely K/D ratio, was a failed attack in Israel in 2002, called “Pi Glilot bombing attempt”
In this attack, it could have resulted with 10,000:1 ratio , according to Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Glilot_bombing_attempt
It is really so clear that civilian drones can be plausibly modified to be kill bots? We’re talking pretty sophisticated engineering here. The ML part isn’t particularly hard to do, thousands of guys in the US could do the coding if they had the hunter-killer drone API to work with, but you got to modify the drone hardware to carry, aim and fire a semi auto rifle. The drone needs pretty serious lift capabilities, dozens of kg in ammo at a minimum. That’s a high task, and the talent which could pull it off is busy making $100k+ in various industries, a lot to lose. In any case, if the NSA do their job, guys working on these things should be spotted and stopped before the attack. Big “if” but that’s the ostensible reason for having an NSA.
It would be ripe for a false flag type attack though. Certain agencies could make the homemade kill bot, find some loner, kill him, and then frame him for it.
Imho, the real threat to gun rights is via the culture. At this point, the bug person class views AR15s and AKs as equivalent to Confederate Flag bumperstickers, something only owned by Bad Men. Frankly, as a paranoid internet person, I’ve become too spooked to own cool firearms anymore. The Mosina 3 line rifle was good enough to beat the Natsees, it’s good enough to ward off looters in a SHTF scenario. The culture pressured a commited thought criminal like me into under-arming, I reckon it’s just a matter of time before the middle class loses the will to resist calls to end sales of semi-autos.
I was involved in a drone project for indoor navigation without GPS ,about 5 years ago. Observation drones the size of of a large beetle at the time.
NZ is in the process of upgrading it’s long term detention centre to world standards so it is not Norwegian grade for a few more months.
Apparently Erdogan is using the video of that Christchurch attack for riling up his followers:
https://twitter.com/abdbozkurt/status/1107348478915690496
This post makes me think: So far, at least, terrorists in Western countries have largely failed to inflict significant casualties or economic disruption. As liberals fairly point out when there’s an Islamic terrorist attack—though not when there’s a school shooting (which they can use as a pretext for gun control), a comparably rare event—-the overall number of casualties from terrorist attacks is usually at least an order of magnitude below that from maladies like automobile accidents, heart disease, routine homicide and drug overdoses.
Thus, it would be logically defensible for media outlets to devote less coverage to terrorist attacks—i.e. to cover deaths from them more proportionately to deaths from other sources. My question is, would terrorist attacks be discouraged by reduced media coverage? (Incidentally, I would frame this in terms of the preferences of media consumers rather than the decisions of news organizations.)
I tend to think so, because terrorists (and some spree killers and mass shooters) are, by their own admission, seeking to gain media recognition for a cause, and I would conjecture that the 15 minutes of (even posthumous) personal fame that comes from dominating a news cycle is also a significant motivating factor for many individuals.
Thus, if terrorist attacks were A7 news instead of front page news, I suspect that they would also decrease in frequency. What would be the point of murdering x<100 (usually x<20) civilians in a country of millions if the rest of the at-risk population either didn't know or didn't care? I think it would also be harder to find young men willing to risk almost certain death or imprisonment without the accompanying reward of a bit of world-wide fame.
I therefore think that a voluntary coordinated attempt to pay less attention to terrorists, mass shooters, serial killers, et cetera, would be a good idea, regardless of what one thinks of various related issues like immigration, foreign policy, gun rights, ethnic separatism, and so on. (Though, as I mentioned previously, the overall number of victims is relatively small as it is.)
Serial killers are an ongoing operation until they are caught. They also commit murder out of enjoyment, and they prefer not to be caught. (So they hope they won’t get famous.) In the USSR the press tried not to give them inordinate attention, but this didn’t make them nonexistent.
Here’s an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo?wprov=sfti1
He was also interesting, because some other people confessed to some of the crimes (and one was sentenced to death and executed) under duress. Anyway, he reduced his activities in response to the visible manhunt. He didn’t like the idea of getting famous…
This is an interesting problem for NZ law enforcement.
But for the brave Pathan who successfully intervened in the 2nd Mosque shooting the Christchurch killer would have surpassed Breivik’s record. But Brenton with his well written manifesto(has two of my favourite poems – Rage against the dying of the light & Invicitus), eclectic choice of music and most importantly live streaming of the attack has set new aesthetic standards for terrorism, say whatever you want but the man was an artist.
Looks like he was successful at kicking off a small race war.
memetics
Sure, that’s how Israel became a state, after all (plus many other examples).
Those groups tend to be much better organised, have a high amount of public support, and choose better targets (they’re operating a campaign, after all) than the ‘random loser loner’ white guy that we’ve seen so far, though.
Why do you think there is a relation of Islamic terrorism, which attacks all year, to the shooting in New Zealand?
There is Muslim shooting attack today to a tram in Belgium today which killed 3 (and there was a Hamas terrorist attack to cars in Israel yesterday, which killed 2).
But this is not related to a shooting in New Zealand (Islamic terrorists do not need any motives like that).
There was neutralized Islamic State terrorism in Samara region last Wednesday as well.*
Muslim terrorists try to attack something every day of the year, which days they are successful are random but will be frequent in any year.
Frequency of Islamic terrorism is not “responding” to anything – but happens according to opportunity and when there is lack of security for the Islamist’s targets.
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There is some overlap, though.
Some serial killers which enjoy media attention after they are captured.
For example, Chikatilo in his trial. Also Ted Bunday. Both have personalities similar to Breivik, in their trial behaviour.
And mass shooters, will also be motivated by excitement of killing itself (but it’s equivalent only to the first killing for a serial killer – they usually don’t have opportunity to repeat their killings like an addiction).
Sorry, it was in Netherlands – where there is also a large radical Muslim population.
Just part and parcel of living in a multicultural society, guv.
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8425743.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Nice-terror-truck-attack.jpg
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-14/terrorism-feared-after-truck-drives-crowd-nice-france-killed-dozens
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4531940/Emergency-services-rush-Manchester-Arena.html
OK, we can go on for a while in this vein.
Well…
New Zealand Man Prevents Dozens of Rapes with Just One Weird Trick!
“Looks like he was successful at kicking off a small race war.”
Streisand Effect: they banned the guy’s manifesto and now everyone wants a copy. You’d think the Ruling Class would be a little smarter than that, but maybe I was expecting too much.
Unless 3D printing become cheap and widespread enough so that terrorists can easily make 3D printed guns, making draconian gun control useless.