On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 10:55:07AM -0500, S.J. Van Sickle wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, Ralph Lewis wrote:
>
> > Interesting that the Empire State Building took a direct hit of an american
> > air force bomber with a much more explosive fuel (aviation gas) than jet
> > fuel and damage was minimal. Makes you wonder about building standards and
> > building permit enforcement today.
>
> The B-25 that hit the Empire State Building weighed around 41,800 pounds
> maximum takeoff weight, with a normal total load of 974 gallons aviation
> gasoline.
> http://www.b25.net/
>
> The 767 that hit the WTC has a maximum take-off weight of 412,000 pounds
> and a normal total fuel load of 23,980 gallons aviation kerosine.
> http://www.boeing.com/commercial/767-300/product.html
I have been thinking of a different kind of "the singularity is near"
plot: terrorist explosive power as a function of time. Does it grow
exponentially over time?
Methodologically creating such a plot would likely be a bit tricky. I
guess the best way of handling it would be to plot the TNT equivalent of
either the largest explosions within a decade or five year period, or
each record breaker explosion. This would represent the envelope of the
amount of devastation that a group can cause. Of course, bioweapons and
chemical ones are nasty too, but harder to quantify.
Does anybody know any data sources that could help fill out this grim
diagram?
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