Terrorism, WMDs

[ewx]

The BBC reports an attack on the South Korean Daegu underground. The lone perpetrator seems to have just used fire, fueled by petrol or something, and killed at least 100 people. It's not reported how many are injured but alive.

In comparison when the Aum cult attacked the Tokyo underground using sarin, a nerve gas, there were many people performing the operation and they only killed twelve people. On the other hand, thousands suffered more or less unpleasant direct and indirect side effects.

I'm also reminded of the once fairly common meme that the best place to be if the cold war went hot was near a target: it'd be over quickly for you.

Perhaps the terror we associated with NBC weapons is to do with what happens when they don't kill you: the debilitation from being poisoned, the radiation sickness, the ostracism ("he's the one from that weird attack").

Comments

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

Perhaps "don't kill you quickly". Remember that people often think that a bullet kills quickly, or in such a way that they can't appreciate the pain involved (film heroes valiantly carrying on, that sort of thing). Bio/Chem weapons may put your through the debilitation from being poisoned, the radiation sickness, the nerve and tissue damage, the pain, and then still kill you. A torturous death, instead of a quick one.

Perhaps a lot of the fear associated with NBC weapons is fear of the unknown. Guns, knives and soldiers are on TV all the time, and even though the depiction is rarely accurate, they've become familiar.

Fear of the unknown

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's almost certainly part of it.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I'm also reminded of the once fairly common meme that the best place to be if the cold war went hot was near a target: it'd be over quickly for you.

My sixth-form teacher, c. 1988: "We're living slap-bang between three major airforce bases [the USAF one has now shut] - if the worst comes to the worst, I recommend getting a loved one and the best bottle of wine you can find, going to the nicest field in the neighbourhood, and watching the show."

We could always tell when things were about to escalate by watching the transport planes going out of Brize.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

The biggest effect that anything like this has is fear; events like this destabilise society, get us all looking funny at everyone who seems a bit strange, make everyone a bit more uncomfortable, a bit more aware of anyone who's 'different'. That's the real power of attacks like this. We live in a world that seems carefully constructed and solid, but it takes very little to break that illusion. It all relies on the people, and once they get scared things get out of control. I could create chaos on the underground by acting oddly right now, I think, and the uk is a country more used to such things than most.

Have you read Haruki Murakami's book on the Aum/Tokyo event - it's a fascinating book.

Book

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I started reading it a while ago but got distracted by something else (I always seem to have multiple books on the go at once). The bit that I've read so far is interesting, though, yes. One thing it reminded me of is some of the street-level footage (and other reporting) from 9/11; in a disaster films you see crowds just running around in a blind panic, but in real disasters they seem often seem to behave much better. The counterexamples, like Chicago recently and various football stadium tragedies, seem particularly to be those that involve extremely high densities of people.

Re: Book

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Nightclubs and football grounds contain high densities of people, and they're also more emotional [1] and sometimes/often drunk, which doesn't help.

I reckon people are a lot more able to cope in emergencies than they give themselves credit for. There seems to be a survival mindset that kicks in (I get this impression from 'I was there' reports as well) where people seem to run on instinct and logic rather than letting the more emotional bits in.

1. Not quite the word I'm looking for - less logical? crowd mindset? Nope, but you may know what I mean.