Entries Tagged "movie-plot threats"

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A Science-Fiction Movie-Plot Threat

This has got to be the most bizarre movie-plot threat to date: alien viruses downloaded via the SETI project:

In his [Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois] report, entitled “Do potential Seti signals need to be decontaminated?”, he suggests the Seti scientists may be too blase about finding a signal. “In science fiction, all the aliens are bad, but in the world of science, they are all good and simply want to get in touch.” His main concern is that, intentionally or otherwise, an extra-terrestrial signal picked up by the Seti team could cause widespread damage to computers if released on to the internet without being checked.

Here’s his website.

Although you have to admit, it could make a cool movie

EDITED TO ADD (12/16): Here’s a good rebuttal.

Posted on November 29, 2005 at 7:16 AM • View Comments

Today's Movie-Plot Threat: Electronic Pulses from Space

No. Really:

The United States is highly vulnerable to attack from electronic pulses caused by a nuclear blast in space, according to a new book on threats to U.S. security.

A single nuclear weapon carried by a ballistic missile and detonated a few hundred miles over the United States would cause “catastrophe for the nation” by damaging electricity-based networks and infrastructure, including computers and telecommunications, according to “War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World.”

“This is the single most serious national-security challenge and certainly the least known,” said Frank J. Gaffney Jr. of the Center for Security Policy, a former Pentagon official and lead author of the book, which includes contributions by 34 security and intelligence specialists.

The “single most serious national-security challenge.” Absolutely nothing more serious.

Sheesh.

Posted on November 23, 2005 at 7:39 AM • View Comments

Using Security Arguments to Further Agenda

I’ve often said that security discussions are rarely about security. Here’s a story that illustrates that.

A New Jersey mother doesn’t like her child’s school bus stopping at McDonald’s on Friday mornings. Apparently unable to come up with a cogent argument against these stops (which seems odd to me, honestly, as I can think of several), she invokes movie-plot security threats:

“I think they all like it,” Tyler [the mother] said. “They are anywhere from 9th to 12th graders. They don’t really think about the point that it could be a dangerous situation. They just think it’s breakfast.”

Tyler wants the stops to, well, stop before a student is hit by someone speeding into the drive-thru or before a robbery occurs and her son and other students are inside.

Posted on November 2, 2005 at 2:13 PM • View Comments

Medical Movie-Plot Threats

Movie-plot threats aren’t limited to terrorism. Bird flu is the current movie-plot threat in the medical world:

Just in time for Halloween, the usual yearly ritual of terror by headline is now playing itself out in medical offices everywhere. Last year it revolved around flu shots; a few years ago it was anthrax and smallpox; a few years before that it was the “flesh-eating bacteria”; and before that it was Ebola virus, and Lyme disease and so on back into the distant past. This year it’s the avian flu.

“I was crossing Third Avenue yesterday and I was coughing so hard I had to stop and barely made it across,” a patient told me last week. “I’m really scared I’m getting the avian flu.”

I just looked at him. What could I say? He has smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for the last 50 years. He has coughed and wheezed and gasped his way across Third Avenue now for the last 10 years. His emphysema is not going to get any better, but it might stop getting worse if he were to stop smoking.

Remember when people were seeing terrorist plots under every rock? The same kind of thing is at work here. When something is in the news, people believe it is common. Then they see it everywhere.

Posted on October 26, 2005 at 11:41 AM • View Comments

Terrorists Playing Bingo in Kentucky

One of the sillier movie-plot threats I’ve seen recently:

Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money.

The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base, said John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming.

The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash, Holiday said.

Posted on October 25, 2005 at 3:30 PM • View Comments

Another "Movie Plot" Threat

“Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared for Full-Scale Zombie Attack“:

A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at great risk for all-out destruction at the hands of the living dead, according to the Zombie Preparedness Institute.

“When it comes to defending ourselves against an army of reanimated human corpses, the officials in charge have fallen asleep at the wheel,” Murphy said. “Who’s in charge of sweep-and-burn missions to clear out infected areas? Who’s going to guard the cemeteries at night? If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we’d all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday.”

From The Onion, of course.

Posted on October 22, 2005 at 10:33 AM • View Comments

Exploding Baby Carriages in Subways

This is a great example of a movie-plot threat.

A terrorist plot to attack the subways with bomb-laden baby carriages and briefcases—the most specific threat ever made against the city—triggered a massive security crackdown yesterday.

This is not to say that there isn’t a real plot that was uncovered, but the specificity of the threat seems a bit ridiculous.

And if we ban baby carriages from the subways, and the terrorists put their bombs in duffel bags instead, have we really won anything?

EDITED TO ADD: The threat was a hoax.

Posted on October 11, 2005 at 8:12 AM • View Comments

Jamming Aircraft Navigation Near Nuclear Power Plants

The German government want to jam aircraft navigation equipment near nuclear power plants.

This certainly could help if terrorists want to fly an airplane into a nuclear power plant, but it feels like a movie-plot threat to me. On the other hand, this could make things significantly worse if an airplane flies near the nuclear power plant by accident. My guess is that the latter happens far more often than the former.

Posted on September 29, 2005 at 6:40 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.