I’m [NOT] blowing the airport sky high!!

I haven’t travelled on a plane since 2004. I’m not really looking forward to the next time I have to fly. Security was already silly then. Now hysteria has taken over. If the authorities read this, I want to let them in on a secret.

If I were a terrorist, I wouldn’t bomb a plane. At least, not one with me on it. It’s just not worth the hassle. This was already true before the 11/9 attacks, which weren’t bombings. Those guys weren’t targetting the planes, they were using them as weapons. It was true before the shoe bomber, the water bombers, and the arse bomber. All those incidents prove is that some people will try anything. That’s always been the case. Of course, they did succeed in causing widescale disruption, which was probably their intention.

But personally, I can think of easier ways to achieve that goal. If I’m a real suicide bomber I don’t want to bother with having to get through airport security, then sitting on a plane surrounded by hundreds of people who stand a pretty good chance of stopping me if I mess up just one thing. Even without full body scanners and cavity searches there’s too much can go wrong.

If my target is air travel, I’m much better to target the airport. I can kill a lot of people and cause a similar amount of disruption by blowing myself up on the public side of the security checks, while standing in the queue. Then there’ll be a global panic and airports will hastily be reorganised to check people at the entrance to the building. And so it goes on.

If I’m not even feeling that bold, maybe I pick a different target. I can walk up to the gates of Old Trafford on match day and detonate myself. I don’t need a ticket to do so. I won’t attract attention in a crowd like that. I’ll probably be able to take down a few police officers too if I get it right. Suddenly, football matches have become extremely dangerous.

The thing is, this isn’t a secret. I think everybody knows it, especially the government. They know that they’re wasting everybody’s time and making life unnecessarily unpleasant with all these rules and checks. They know that terrorists will cause terror, because it’s what they do. The Twitter user who got arrested for making a rather inappropriate joke recently had threatened to bomb an airport, not a plane.

What I can’t get a handle on is what the real motivation is for the nonsense. If the government knows that it won’t stop terrorism, then they must know that we know it too. They must know that they’re running the risk of looking extremely stupid. They know they’re running the risk that by putting so many resources and so much attention in a small number of places, that they fail to spot a blindingly obvious attack vector somewhere else. Which makes them look extremely stupid.

I really don’t properly understand the motivation. But you can bet it has something to do with two things: money and power.

Disclaimer: All terrorists appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real terrorists, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. THIS IS NOT A BOMB THREAT.

UPDATE @ 12:43: In the interests of balance: RT @darrenf: @julianyon don’t believe everything you read about airport security being chaotic, intrusive, or hassle. even for US-bound flights. @ 12:52: RT @darrenf: @julianyon yep. Heathrow, US-bound, simpler+quicker than I’ve _ever_ seen before; & secondary at the gate was selective (I was waved past).

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