From: lists@thecri.org
Date: Thu Feb 27 2003 - 19:11:53 MST
A few thoughts on mass panic....
I think that there ARE real new threats everyday. To deny this is
irrational. To react with reason, moreso than fear is logical.
The Politicans and their families in Washington DC have more to fear
than most anybody, as DC is probably pretty high on terrorists target
lists.
Fear can be used as a motivator for good or bad. In boxing and martial
arts for example, if you can strike fear into your opponent, you have an
advantage. Your opponent, however, fearing losing, may train very hard
and be prepared come fight day.
I talk to most of my friends and many of the emotions that I see are
fatalism, fear, who cares, or a fighting attitude. Very few are actually
preparing for much of anything. Most seem to want to just go along as if
nothing has changed.
Many friends say something like "more people are killed in car accidents
than terrorism" to which I say "You must look at the rate; 10 years ago,
car deaths were X, today they are ~ X+10%, whereas 10 years ago, there
were X terrorism incidents (in USA) today there is ~10X" Extrapolate out
this trend, the rate of increase of terrorism is increasing much faster
than anything, except obesity in USA :-)
To pretend that things are the same does not help anybody. If I were a
fighter and was told I had to fight Mike Tyson, I would first shit, then
train like mad, then tape my ears up, then fight! I would pretend he is
just another average fighter.
This is a stress on society, much like the ice age was on our ancestors.
Probably some of them said "don't worry, it will not get much colder"
while others developed fire and moved together as communities to stay
warm.
What I am fearful of is that I feel that technological innovation is
forcing us to evolve rapidly as a society but everybody in doing the
wrong things. Many are saying "Don't Worry", the military at the same
time is co-opting technology in the name of preparing. Nanotech,
Biotech, Infotech all may become weapons of tomorrow.
I would advocate the opposite appraoch, be concerned, but use it to come
together as a society and world. Small groups can cause increasingly bad
things to happen. I agree, subways may be a bad investment. Air travel
and tourism are not good investments. Globalism might not be the best
economic trend. Invest in plastic bubbles! Unfortunately, nobody is. So
the problem I see is that in addition to depressed economies from lack
of tourism, we also will not have plastic bubbles! That is called
lose-lose. Use technology to feed the poor so they do not want to kill
the rich!
What we do not want to do is let fear motivate bad decisions by our
leaders. Fear of terrorism in Israel has allowed them to stay in thie
fear mode and not look for solutions. The threat is not just Islamists,
if the gov cracks down hard enough here, homegrown terrorists will
emerge, or just sociopaths (12 monkeys)
I consider myself a Brinista, who believes lots of Transparency, not
imposed Orwellian like on us, but volunteered in a positive way is part
of the solution.
At 40, I no longer think heart disease is my biggest risk, weapons of
mass destruction are. I am simply a concerned moderate person who is
trying to think of SOLUTIONS.
Erik Sayle
www.thecri.org
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of spike66
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 8:14 AM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: weapons of mass panic
Nova, the science and technology TV program, has
demonstrated to the entire world some relatively
easy and cheap ways to spread radiation using
any metropolitan subway. They correctly reported
that the subway could be made effectively useless
even with an amount of radiation far below what
would pose an actual significant health danger.
Some months ago I speculated similarly, that a
terrorist could easily obtain some type of legal
and harmless radioactive material such as Americium
from smoke detectors, power it, spread it using
ordinary commerically available fireworks, then
watch the proles panic. Geiger counters do not
actually identify the type of radiation, only
that there is radiation of some kind. If a news
agency reported that a low level of radiation
is discovered in the subway, the people wouldn't
even read the second line, that the level is
considered harmless.
I have never seen it used as an argument against
mass transit, but we should consider that especially
subways are so vulnerable to terrorists they might
already be considered a very bad investment of
public funds. spike
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