Risk Management
by Tom Temple
10 August 2006
I just drove Courtney to the airport. She’s headed out to Sas Fee for some glacier skiing. Getting on the plane turned out to be a challange.
As some of you might know, a piece of ceiling fell in Ted’s tunnel. There is a cement subceiling to allow adequate ventilation in the case of a fire. I’m not entirely sure why they decided to go with cement. Probably because it’s cheap. But anyway, a piece fell and killed a lady a few weeks ago. So pretty much everybody has lost their mind over this and tunnels are getting closed all over the place.
You guys might have also heard that there was a terrorism plot broken up today. So no toothpaste, or waterbottles, or any liquids or gels of any kind were being allowed through airport security.
I would like to point out that people die in traffic all the fucking time. These deaths are routinely caused largely by inadequacies of the infrastructure itself. Other countries do roads differently and less people die—Thousands less. To act like we need to close all the tunnels because one lady died while there are gaping potholes on I93 is not well thought-out.
Does anyone realize how many planes planes the terrorist would have to blow up before flying became less safe than driving? I get like 30—40 per year, in the United States alone!
What fraction of toothpaste bombers do you think they would catch when you could just put your toothpaste bomb in your pocket and walk through the metal detector! To pick through every god-damn persons carry-on looking for mascara (which, it turns out, counts as a gel) knowing full well that they will certainly find no bombs strikes me as pretty stupid too.
They also added a second security checkpoint immediately before boarding. Where they made sure that if you bought any liquids or gels in the terminal, you couldn’t bring them onto the plane. I’m serious. They took Courtney’s water at security. She went in and bought another one and then they took it again. Remember when you had to take a sip from your waterbottle (and not grimace if it was vodka)? I never realized that those were the good old days. I wonder what is the status of the embattled plastic cutlery.
If all they wanted to do was blow up the planes why not just put it in the checked bagage. The fact that planes aren’t blowing up everywhere points to that there are
- Hardly any of them,
- They aren’t very smart and/or
- They are pretty unmotivated.
I guess it comes down to people wanting to look like they are doing something about the “problem.” Has society always been like this with people finding “problems” and then demanding that the government “do something” about them? I wish we had a candidate with the balls to come out and say, “Terrorism? Yeah, we’re on that but c’mon, how many people have they killed this year? It’s not our top priority. Let’s deal with this deficit—it’s like a bajillion dollars!”
Maybe Ned will do it.
Aug 10, 07:41 PM
I guess not, Ned
Aug 10, 11:10 PM
Schneier on Security weighs in with “Given how little we know of the extent of the plot, these don’t seem like rediculous [sic] short-term measures. I’m sure glad I’m not flying anywhere this week.”
I agree with him. If there’s a reliable indication that there’s an immediate threat of a bombing of this type, then these increased messures might be effective at the margin.
In particular, it’s speculated that the bomb under consideration was something like Nitroglycerin + Sulfuric Acid = Explodes if you shake it. Apparently someone actually did this in 1994, on a Chinese (or somewhere else not important). The explosion killed someone, but they were still able to land the plane. While you could probably still rig a system out of shampoo bottles, ziplock bags, and servo motors that would do this in a checked bag, it would be more difficult and easier to detect.
In the long term, I think we all agree that motivated terrorists capacity for creativity is going to exceed our willingness to tolerate meaningful security measures. Where then do you think the line is? Should we even bother with the metal detector and x-ray? Are knives ok? What about when he terrorists figure out ceramic knives?
Aug 11, 07:11 AM
I hadn’t considered that speculation. A toothpaste tube’s worth of nitroglycerin wouldn’t damage a plane. I think even a large shampoo bottle would be a few deaths, but no crash.
I think knives should be allowed, guns too, as long as the cockpit is locked and the door is kept shut. I don’t see why killing people one at a time on a plane should be any different than in other places.
The best hijack threat I can think of is to use a gas agent while the door to the cockpit is open. Besides that we’re worried about bombs big enough to bring the whole plane down. If we’re going to try to detect bombs, we’re going to have to x-ray all bags, not just carry-ons and also frisk people. My first question to Court after she boarded was if there was an increase in frisking and there wasn’t. I think both of these measures are 1) too much in light of the infrequeny of attacks and 2) unlikely to be reliable (x-ray screeners only catch 5-15% of guns which would be pretty much the easiest thing to see).
So yes, X-rays and metal detectors only waste our time. The question is how to get rid of them politically.
I think the only realistic/effective measures involve cockpit security. There should be a lock on the door, and the controls should be keyed in such a way that the pilots can disable manual control1 very quickly.
fn1. Currently it can do pretty much everything besides the first and last 1000 vertical feet. It should be possible in about ten years for the plane to fly itself for the entire flight\cite{Temple06}. It’s funny to think that this precise moment, I can say this with more authority than anyone but a few dozen people.
My best terrorism idea involves highways and makibishi.
Aug 11, 07:17 AM
I forgot to mention chemical tests. I think that is a good persuit. If bags and people can be simply and effectively screened for C4 for instance, it should probably be done.
Aug 11, 10:14 AM
Tom, I think we need to turn your argument around. The reason things like tunnel-ceiling collapses, plane bombs, and hijackings garner such undue attention is because they are such low-probability events. The size of an event in people’s minds is a function not only of the number and manner of injuries or deaths, but also some factor of the probability of the event (say -ln(p), maybe).
So, it takes a lot of high-probability events like car crashes to get the same attention given a very low-probability event like twelve tons of concrete ceiling tile crushing somebody in a tunnel. Multiply that out over all the voters in your district, and you can see why the elected officials are scrambling over ceiling tiles rather than potholes.
Also, I think it’s easy for us to suppose that most of the car crashes are caused by the driver being stupid—talking on the cell phone, fixing his hair in the mirror, twaddling with the radio, or groping under the seat for another can of beer. It’s harder to blame Ms. Delvalle for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Aug 11, 12:43 PM
CNN is reporting that the terrorist were planning to use peroxide based explosives, which I think means they were going to mix hydrogen peroxide and acetone in the presence of a catalyst to make Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), a known high explosive often used by suicide bombers. The more I think about it, the more this plan makes sense. Both components are readily available and both could probably be snuck on a plane without the slightest difficulty (before they banned liquids). I’m not knowledgable enough about plane construction or explosive power, but it definitely seems feasible that this plan could work.
Aug 11, 01:15 PM
Tom, did Court say who took her water from here at the gate? Was it airline employees or more TSA screeners? The re-checking of bags at the gates seems to be an admission on the part of TSA that they’re going to miss (or are missing) a lot of things at the security checkpoints. It seems pretty silly to expect that someone at the gate (without the help of any electronic screening aids) is going to catch something that the first round of screeners missed. Unless of course they’re hand searching every carry-on, in which case why not just do it once and be done with it?
Aug 11, 02:14 PM
Now I’m really curious how much it would take. It looks to like detonated in the open space of the cabin, it would take a pretty respecable bomb to bring down a plane.
Citation too bad you non-MIT kids can’t read the whole thing. Tiny bombs in the passenger compartment won’t do it.
Much easier would be to just gas everybody (assuming the oxygen bags won’t save the day). I image you could pull that off without a whole backpack full of chemicals.
Aug 11, 02:23 PM
Brqyt, at the very least the second screening is an acknowledgment that secure area vendor’s goods are not as thoroughly screened as passenge’s goods. That, or you can MacGuiver a bomb out of shit you buy at duty-free.
Tom, the initial explosion doesn’t neccissarily have to take down the plane. It could just start a fire in the cabin interior, which commentators have been saying is not that hard to do, and catastrophic.
Other commentators have suggested that the goal may have been to synthesize a poison gas rather than an explosive. It seems to be that both poison gas and interior fire have a convenient solution in a pressurized cabin at altitude, though.
Aug 11, 05:50 PM
Is the solution to have exit-row-guy do it? They should have something built-in at least for fire. But anyway, I would love for that to be my job! Actually I think the wing exits open in and the front exit opens backwards making it impossible. We’d die just like the crew of Apollo 1. What an honor.
Aug 13, 01:54 AM
so, the funny thing is…i’ve been reading this comment chain WHILE waiting in the security line at PDX. flying yesterday really wasn’t that bad, although I did take the precaution of taking only my id, tickets, and cell through the security check-point and nothing else (GREAT CALL ME!) which made my life infinitely easier. right now, my main concerns are a.) just HOW long I’m going to be standing here while waiting for YET ANOTHER wealthy (and totally f-ing illiterate??) older woman to jettison her massive personal arsenal of expensive looking perfume and makeup into the TSA trash cans, and b.) what the likelihood is that i’m going to get some sort of horrible foot-fungus by having to take my shoes off to go through security. they’re f-ing FLIP-FLOPS!! i wore them so i WOULDN’T HAVE TO take them off in this exact situation (but apparently ALL footwear, even if it is a pair of solid rubber toe-thongs, must now go through the x-ray…richard reid, you jackass, thanks for getting the paranoia ball rolling…now these “home grown” (i hate how they keep anouncing that) brits have managed to yet again substantially increase my chances of contracting a foul fungus (ala cosmo’s crotch)).
other notes –
1) as far as i can tell, “gate security” stations are totally non-existant…at least in the 3 airports i’ve been in today.
2.) you can’t take anything on the plane (drink-wise) even if you bought it at duty free.
3.) i seriously entertained the thought of trying to get onto the plane with the EMPTY bottle of dasani water which I’d just bought at the newsstand (and subsequently pounded…leaving little more than a few droplets of H20 clinging to the interior)...but pussed out at the last minute.
4.) tom, I think you are underestimating the ability of a hand-gun to take down a plane at 30,000ft (i’m pretty sure that a tight burst through the wall of a pressurized cabin at that altitude could do the trick…ever hear about that flight from LA to Hawaii in the late ‘80’s?...small hole grows progressively larger, eventually taking off a substantial (LARGE) section of cabin ceiling, thereby resulting in multiple people/seats going flying into mid-air over the pacific.)
the final hilarious TSA stupidity / jack-ass-itude of my day of travel?
watching the TSA employee tell the woman in front of me that her husband’s “gel” anti-perspirant was verbotten, but that her “solid” deoderant was A-OKAY!...are you KIDDING ME??! WTF?!?
hmmm…C4 with a little titanium dioxide coating? sounds like it looks a hell of a lot like some roll-on “Suave” to me.
Aug 13, 07:38 AM
I don’t know about the shoe bomb. Richard Reid was barely carrying enough explosives to kill himself.
4) Sorry Levi, I’m going to have to ask for a citation on that story. Unless it is in the nose/windshield of the plane, I’m extremely confident that a bullet hole isn’t going to bring down the plane. Atmospheric pressure is only 13 pounds per square inch (so about 2.5lbs per .50cal bullet hole) and the pressure gradient falls off like the square of the distance to the hole.
Now if I were to, for example, open a door as Jon proposed, that would be a freaking ton of force, but there isn’t all that much air in the cabin and it would be looking for the path of least resistance around me. Despite the fact that it would be all rushing by me at once, I’m pretty sure my seatbelt would hold as would the bolts holding my chair and, most importantly, I don’t think I’d be ripped in half by the seatbelt.
If the airplane fails in this way, it’s not because of the pressure, it’s because of drag. One of the few successful modern bombs (PanAm103) succeeded this way. Although the initial hole wasn’t very big (still several hundred bullet-holes worth though) it was in a bad place aerodynamically. Drag around the hole tore the skin off and it was the direct force of the wind on the skeleton that destroyed the plane.
Aug 14, 01:34 PM
Levi/Tom:
They’ve disproved explosive decompression on Mythbusters at least twice now.
The incedent you refer to, Levi, is Aloha Airlines Flight 243 (took me almost 5 minutes to find; I finally got it by looking up the made-for-TV movie). It was caused by corrosion, metal fatigue, and (like the case of the Big Dig) poorly-applied epoxy.
As far as the rest of this discussion goes, I think security is dumb. Slate had an article on how easy it would be for a motivated individual to consume acetone, hydrogen peroxide, etc. if prompted by a TSA drone.
I don’t know what I hate my compatriots for more; losing sleep about getting blown out the sky by terrorists (I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given that they also play the lottery), or that they believe security proceedures would catch a well-planned attack.
Aug 21, 06:14 PM
weird… I was looking up my own name on the net (Thomas or Tom Temple), Bored at work and this site came up. That isn’t too weird that we have the same name, however, I date a girl named Courtney and when I read that you are connected to a Courtney I thought you would find it a funny coincidence.
Cheers,
Tom