Hypothetical terrorist attack

[Darth Raptor]

Suicide attacks were never explicitly proscribed, just wasteful. You have fifteen highly qualified, irreplacable people. Although if you can achieve your objective by blowing them all up, I don't see why it shouldn't be allowed. Unless... they wouldn't want to do it. It's also nowhere explicitly stated that you're a militant Islamic group either, people just assumed that was the case. You could be Nazis or IRA or PETA for that matter. Your men may be willing to die for their cause, but they may not be willing to kill themselves for it.

[fnord]

Whoops. Didn't read the thread as closely as I thought I had.

[Shroom Man 777]

I like the tactic of murdering celebrities.

How about causing a massive railroad accident? Those kill a lot of innocents.

If we kill good god-fearing white christian men and women, pretend Mexicans and illegal immigrants did it, or better yet rape a white woman and kill her and leave behind evidence suggesting a latino did it (like, say, leaving behind some beans, a donkey, or a sombrero hat), we could raise a shitstorm.

[The Kernel]

Suicide boming is not prohibited, but obviously the benefit would have to be there.

Judging by what I'm seeing in this thread, it really comes down to four types of attacks people are proposing:

1) High Profile Commercial/Industrial Targets: This is more along the line of conventional warfare, and although expensive to replace, these are high risk targets and don't produce the same kind of psychological impact that others do.

However, at the very high end you might find ways to make this a worthy course of action. Blowing up things like LNG tankers, gasoline refineries and power stations are obviously things that are more valuable and harder to replace. Throwing a wrench into the US refinery capacity alone could have serious consequences.

2) Low Profile Commercial/Industrial Targets: This would follow into CaptainChewbacca's suggestion of transformers, as well as sabotaging such things as railways and other mass transit.

The effect of this would be difficult to gauge, but on a localized campaign you could probably see enough damage to seriously hamper the ability of a city to function. Then you would uproot and start all over again somewhere else.

3) Random Terror against civilians: This would include such things as random sniper attacks, bombings against schools and recreation centers, low intensity chemical weapons attacks, etc.

This would obviously have the largest impact on the culture of the US as if you spread out these attacks sufficiently and made them of a high enough intensity, you could cause social chages VASTLY out of proportion to the damage done.

4) High profile government/civilian targets: These would be the favored attacks of any terrorist group, but also the hardest to pull off. The effect is obvious, as 9/11 falls squarely into this catagory.

[The Kernel]

By the way, the resources given in the OP were meant as a starting point, but the purpose of this thread should be obvious. I want to determine exactly what a well funded and organized terror cell could do as far as damage is concerned if they were set loose in the US.

[Broomstick]

My first question would be - is such a discussion of plausible terrorist plots legal?

In the US (which is where I am) yes, it's legal but maybe not advisable. There is no way to know if a US authority of some sort is reading this board or not, but it's well known that aviation message boards and mailing lists have various sorts agents as members. In some cases not undercover (FBI and CIA agents are allowed to be pilots, after all) and in some cases yes. If you posting from the US and come up with a particularly ingenious scheme you may be paid a visit by a representative of the US government. This doesn't mean you will be automatically hauled off in chains, but even if they're just curious and want to talk to you for an hour or so it may be a very uncomfortable hour.

For those outside the US local laws will apply.

[Starglider]

Buy fifteen rusty old box vans for cash from scrapyards. Set up a hundred or so primitive mortars in the back; 20 x 5 lengths of pipe at a 45 degree angle pointing up through holes in the roof, with some divergence. Put thin plastic film over the holes. Load with real mortar rounds if they can be smuggled in, otherwise improvise some. Test out in the desert somewhere to check that the design works and validate range. Park them in fifteen different major cities pointing at concourses, subway stations, that kind of thing. Set them to all fire more or less simultaneously during rush hour.

[Knife]

Depends if you want to terrorize the public by destroying a symbol, or terrorized the public by destroying some of the public. As disgusting as it is, you could set up a series at banks and shopping districts in major US cities.

This country thrives on consumption and consumer confidence. Start to shake that and you'd be getting some where. *runs off to go shower* I feel dirty.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Mortars + major refineries = hardship.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Ten million dollars is probably enough hard cash for you to attract the interest of some venture capital investors on a low scale. Use the money and the accompanying loans to buy a chemical plant, and intentionally sabotage it so an equivalent of the Bhopal Incident happens in an major American city.

One that's done, have all your operatives disperse with rifles and bombs. Their mission will be to imitate the beltway sniper until the police are closing in on them, and then have an elementary school pre-selected to attack with a combination of firearms and bombs. A Bhopal incident followed by sixteen suicide gun/bomb attacks on sixteen different elementary schools at widely dispersed areas of the country (Focus on the heartland) should be maximized. In combination with the terror of the snipers out hunting during the intervening period you'd maintain a sort of "drumbeat" of continuous terror developments which would psychologically paralyze the nation even if the overall damage was not great.

Between the news showing the thousands of corpses being hauled out of the area that the gas clouds had overwhelmed, to the idea of random gunfire killing you at work, culminating in hundreds of dead elementary school kids, you'd have done very well for yourself in terms of a terrorist.

Now, the obvious answer of how to stop this is to maintain a very close monitoring of financial transactions and their origination to break up any possible acquisitions by foreigners or suspects in terrorist organizations of a facility capable of a lethal gas release like Bhopal. Unfortunately, stopping the snipers even if you succeed in stopping the first part is nearly impossible; stopping the school attacks means the distribution of armed personnel to all elementary schools in the whole country, which is utterly infeasable unless we are to arm teachers and school staff.

[Starglider]

Mortars + major refineries = hardship.

True, set up one of the abovementioned 15 vans facing each of the largest US refineries and mortar launch a spread of 100 mixed crude incendaries, high-explosives and if you can get them a few rounds of chemical/radiological agents (to complicate firefighting and repairs) into each refinery, over the course of a minute or so.

[K. A. Pital]

DC is a FUCKING BUNKER.

Don't tell me that something is a "bunker" if I'm able to come in some 100-meters close to the Pentagon. The White House is the only part which is more or less well-sealed off by barriers in DC.

[Edi]

Depends on what kind of trouble you want to cause, but low profile infrastructure targets like powerlines, transformers, transit infrastructure, water pipes and other utilities plus the oil refinery infrastructure would be fairly easy to carry out and cause maximum hardship to the maximum number of people.
Basically, not a campaign of terror so much as a campaign of sabotage.

Want terror, Beltway sniper copycats all over and doing it randomly for a very limited time, then switching place somewhere else.

Incidentally, this kind of thing is precisely what e.g. Military Police are trained to counter, and it's harder to counter than to execute if the bad guys have their shit together.

[Broomstick]

Ten million dollars is probably enough hard cash for you to attract the interest of some venture capital investors on a low scale. Use the money and the accompanying loans to buy a chemical plant, and intentionally sabotage it so an equivalent of the Bhopal Incident happens in an major American city.

I fail to see the need to purchase a chemical plant or refinery in order to either sabotage or destroy it.

After all, the 9/11 crew didn't need to purchase 757's to pull of their mission.

You don't even need $10 million to cause terror and/or massive economic disruption. If you're patient, it's more than enough money to train and infiltrate your operatives into areas where they will be accepted - because they have necessary certifications and job experience - as well as effective for your goals.

[J]

This is an easy one, target the energy infrastructure, specifically the electrical grid and oil & gas pipelines. It won't be hard at all to bring large parts of the US to a grinding halt leaving millions in the cold and dark. If the weather's right we may hundreds or even thousands of indirect deaths as people freeze to death in their homes or die from scorching summer heat.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Get 5 of my men educations in engineering and chemistry. Their job will be to infiltrate 5 major nuclear power plants or chemical refineries if necessary in the East Coast. Let them take years if necessary, but they must be able to sabotage their workplaces when necessary and cause a Bhopal/ Chernobyl/ whatever kind of disaster.

Co-ordinate my actions so that on one day, all five will sabotage their plant and hopefully trigger a series of meltdowns. At the same time, the rest of my men will act in a different manner: They are to cut as many transformers and power lines as possible to disrupt the energy grid. 10 dedicated men and 5 power plants all going down should fuck up the power royally.

Now this is where it gets interesting. At this point, radioactive waste and fallout should trigger a mass-migration from the cities and evacuations of all nearby cities. But now with the power grid shut down it will be impossible to co-ordinate the kind of emergency response necessary. So what do we have already? Chaos. Mass panic as people attempt to flee and violence results.

So this is where my ten remaining men really get to work. In all the mass hysteria following the power plant attacks, my 10 remaining men get to work. Roads and highways will be clogged, so mortar, IED and sniper attacks will begin in earnest. The idea will be to utterly paralyze people and thus the country. People will try to flee from the meltdown, power will be cut so the panic will gain even greater momentum, and then random explosive attacks on as many major roadways as possible will utterly destroy the collective psyche of the people from the areas near my reactor attacks. Cue terror.

Reading this over, my ideas seem muddled, so I'll just repeat the gist: Sabotage power plants to trigger meltdowns, on the same day cut the power grid, then begin random attacks on roadways and civilians in ways mentioned by everyone else.

Sounds rather horrific to me.

[Starglider]

These infrastructure attacks make logical sense but they may not make sense as terrorism, because people are just more scared by 'I might personally be blown up!' than 'I might freeze to death without heat or go hungry because there's no fuel to ship food', even if the odds of actually being hurt or the aggregate harm done are massively greater with the later. The WTC attacks had everyone who worked in a tower block and didn't really understand statistics (i.e. anyone who thinks playing the lottery is a good idea, which is a big chunk of the population) scared. Blowing up a refinery or a power plant wouldn't; a Chernobyl style accident might, because people still have such a huge irrational fear of radiation, but I'm dubious about whether that's even possible for one or two operatives in a US designed power plant.

Thus 'fire lots of mortars at city squares in rush hour' may be a more effective terror attack than 'shoot up several refineries/pipelines/etc' even though the latter does more economic damage. Attacking transformers is particularly weak; sure it does lots of economic damage, but the point is to terrorise the enemy, not inconvenience them. At best it can mildly complicate a response, since all key disaster response installations have generators and plenty of fuel.

[Coyote]

The first thing right now would be to target refineries with IRA-style mortar vans. Even near-misses spark fires, which cause shutdowns, and gas prices shoot to $5.00 a gallon overnight. It would have to be coordinated, since as soon as you do it to one, th eothers will be locked down.

You can also strike at oil tankyards, or, the ten-miilion bucks will allow you to buy a couple of Cessnas for either remote-control operations or a suicide operation to kamekaze into oil storage facilities. Your 15 operatives may be "invaluable resources", but with $10-mil, you can hire/recruit local radicals and down-and-outs to do it for you.

Once gas prices are hovering at $8+ a gallon, start targeting infrastructure. Hijack a fuel truck and crash it into a freeway overpass at rush hour, like in California recently. Do similar thing at the really deep railroad bridges out West.

Doing abortion-clinic bombings and leaving hard-core Christian propaganda; empty fuel pumps on the ground and firebomb them leaving ELF propaganda; hit black churches and leave KKK/Nazi propaganda, then start counter-striking white churches and leave Black Panther stuff, etc-- it will appear as if the whole fabric of the country is coming unravelled at the seams. Even random arson and forest-fires all across the country will accellerate the process.

If it hasn't started already, by now, random attacks aping your tactics across the country will probably get started, and you can just let the chaos unfold. The authorities will be so tied down, paranoia will spread, etc etc.

As for reading this and being "investigated", maybe, but I'm sure we're not the only ones talking about this sort of thing, and it would be fairly evident from context that we're operating on hypotheticals. I'm sure that actual, devoted terrorists have already thought of all this, and probably crazier stuff we've not thought of because our minds just don't gravitate in the same way their do. Most of us on this board are inherently civilised and I'm sure there are places our thoughts just do not instinctively go.

[EDIT]: In fact, look at most of what I've outlined-- attacks on infrastructure; things, buildings, objects. It's possible that everything I outlined could be done with no casualties at all, if a terrorist organization wanted to strike and maintain a no-or-low body count so the authorities don't prioritize them. Just push inconvenience and economic downfalls on the US long enough and things will get angry on their own. In the USA, you need to hit us where our priorities are: money. Mass-casualty actions bring people together and unite folks in the face of adversity. Strike at financial stability, though, and people start hoarding, distrusting their neighbors, stealing, looting...

[Ender]

I buy 5 plain old nondescript white vans - the same kind you see all over the damn place. I steal a bunch of liscense plates, cut them in half, mix them up, and reweld them to create ones that look real to anyone who sees it but don't exist. Then I split the teams up into 3 man groups and send them around the country with duct tape, blades, video cameras, and laptops.

They go to large populated areas eg a shopping mall, grab someone, and cut off their head. Go to a random starbucks and upload the video through the complimentary wifi. Repeat as long as you can.

Oh, and like 18 suggested, try and make it look like a bunch of different extremist organizations are copycatting. Get the terrified public to turn on innocents like they did after 9-11.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Ten million dollars is probably enough hard cash for you to attract the interest of some venture capital investors on a low scale. Use the money and the accompanying loans to buy a chemical plant, and intentionally sabotage it so an equivalent of the Bhopal Incident happens in an major American city.

I fail to see the need to purchase a chemical plant or refinery in order to either sabotage or destroy it.

After all, the 9/11 crew didn't need to purchase 757's to pull of their mission.

You don't even need $10 million to cause terror and/or massive economic disruption. If you're patient, it's more than enough money to train and infiltrate your operatives into areas where they will be accepted - because they have necessary certifications and job experience - as well as effective for your goals.

*shrug* I'm not seriously interested in spending a lot of time on these scenarios; I think they're stupid at best, since we already know al-Qaeda's modus operendi. That said you're probably right. I hope the FBI chaps reading this thread are less concerned with us and more rightfully concerned with the possibility that any of these methods may not have already been accounted for.

That said, the purpose of speculation like this should be to determine counters for the proposed attacks, not to simply propose them; that's really the only moral way to be making these discussions. Though they're certainly neither illegitimate nor unwise. I've had extensive discussions on the viability of using massed explosives in a large bulk freighter to imitate the Halifax Incident before, for instance, and how we could reliably scan all incoming port traffic for non-nuclear explosives like that, which would be difficult.

[Lord Zentei]

Suicide boming is not prohibited, but obviously the benefit would have to be there.

I misunderstood your earlier post then:

The problem is that you don't have the manpower to pull such a thing off unless you changed your tactics. Suicide bombing is out (your people are too expensive for that) so if you wanted to do that you'd have to stick to things like the Tokyo subway bombing.

In that case, it's Congress, again.

[Broomstick]

You can also strike at oil tankyards, or, the ten-miilion bucks will allow you to buy a couple of Cessnas for either remote-control operations or a suicide operation to kamekaze into oil storage facilities.

I realize that after 9/11 everyone is convinced all airplanes are the poor man's cruise missile, and arguably airliners are, but it would have to be a honking big Cessna to do significant damage to oil storage facitilies. Cessnas the size I fly have (accidently) crashed into storage tanks and the usual result is a crumpled hunk of aluminum sliding down the side of a storage tank that just had some paint scraped off it. It's not impossible to do major damage with a small airplane, but simply crashing it into something usually isn't the most effective way to do it. Small airplanes have neither the mass nor the speed to make good battering rams - your average SUV is 5 to 10 times heavier and achieves higher speeds than small airplanes with the advantage of being much, much easier and cheaper to obtain and fuel.

One day sitting around the airport a bunch of us did figure out a way to sow terror, death, and destruction with bog-standard C172's for under $50,000 but I'm not repeating it here. There would be some significant difficulties during the prep phase but once you launch things get fairly simple, and simple is the key to success most of the time.

As for reading this and being "investigated", maybe, but I'm sure we're not the only ones talking about this sort of thing, and it would be fairly evident from context that we're operating on hypotheticals.

Yes, if you keep it general. Get specific like "I'll go down to Zeke's Firepower Emporium and purchase X rifles of Y type with # of ammo of type Q..." and you'll attract more attention.

Which does happen. At one point an e-mail list I'm a member of started getting VERY specific and detailled questions on how to modify a Quicksilver ultralight to spray (alledged) agricultural chemicals, among other things, down to preferred tubing materials and diameters. Terrorists have to do their research somewhere, after all.

We've also had at least two suspicious characters taking flight training and sightseeing flights in the Chicago area. Someone asking to fly to photograph something but taking pictures of other things instead, as an example. Asking about radar blind spots. Does that automatically make them terrorists? No - but it does mean the FBI were wanting to ask them a few questions. The fact our government has incompetents and fearmongers does not make such individuals automatically innocent, either.

But I'd say the biggest flaw I see with most on-line discussions of how to perpetrate terrorism is that they are made more complicated than necessary. Truly most people in the world must be benevolent, because very few actually do cause this level of trouble.

[Patrick Degan]

If you want a stike that makes for maximum psychological impact, you go with a simplified version of the Black Sunday (Clive Cussler) scenario. Blow up a regular season NFL or NCAA football game, a NASCAR race, or a Major League Baseball game —a sporting event attended by thousands and broadcast on national TV but which would not have the sort of security detachment assigned to a playoff or championship. Buy some beer trucks, drive them to the target stadium, and use your small explosives to trigger off your very large fertiliser bombs which you've got where the beer racks were. You won't even be spending $2 million on the scheme. And don't bother with claiming responsibility afterward. Just let fear do its work on the American public.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The IRA got all the terror they needed in nailbombings, look at Omagh. For a more widespread strike, look to the '96 bombing of Manchester city centre. A truck bomb goes off with a warning beforehand that evacuates everyone just in the nick of time. Huge damage to local industry requiring years of rebuilding. That anyone could sneak in to the centre of one of the busiest metropolises in Europe and detonate such a large bomb beggars belief to the common man. Some people really do think we, as a consequence of these new terror laws and CCTV systems and computers and forensics etc., have the power you see on TV to stop bad guys doing this kind of thing.

To be honest, I can only emote shock at how we've come this far and not had al-Qaeda carry out such attacks on Western soil. True enough, Americ and and British soldiers are somewhat easier prey over in Iraq and A-stan. People feel it, but not as they would if they had to worry about going to the local mall without being blown to hell.

Terror attacks from nailbombs in city centres and lone snipers playing certain areas then vanishing would evoke a response by the public. You could carry out simultaneous attacks on infrastructure such as vulnerable refineries, pylons and waterworks to make the long lasting impact harm the country.

Either the terrorists are stupid, or I have newfound respect for our intelligence services. Option 3 is less acceptable; we're just lucky.

[aerius]

Gotta agree with Patrick Degan, blowing up an NFL game on live TV would probably be the next best thing to another 9/11 in terms of creating public panic and terror. If the goal is to terrorize the public, then the above combined with random streetside nailbombs, carbombs, and sniper shootings would be the way to go. I'd also try to derail some passenger trains or subways while I'm at it.