While most people will realize the email is not genuine, a small fraction will simply take the message at face value, and go on shooting rampages. Movie plot 3: Terrorists use unsolicited bulk e-mail (“spam”) which contain messages urging the recipient to kill everyone around them. They activate all the devices and bring down these 200 planes, many of them as they pass over major population centers. Easily concealed, they plant them in over 100 planes during normal flights, as well as in fedex “next daiy air” packages to an additional 100 destinations. Movie plot 2: Terrorists develop a tiny RF device that will disable computer avionics systems on commercial aircraft. Movie plot 1: Terrorists wait for an unusually dry season, then set as many brush and forest fires as they can, not only causing the deaths of many people in the parks, but over the following years claiming 100 times as many lives in additional respiratiory complications. Tags: contests, fear, movie-plot threat contests, movie-plot threats, terrorism Terrorism is a real threat, but we’re not any safer through security measures that require us to correctly guess what the terrorists are going to do next.ĮDITED TO ADD (4/4): There are hundreds of ideas here. The purpose of this contest is absurd humor, but I hope it also makes a point. This is not an April Fool’s joke, although it’s in the spirit of the season. And if I can swing it, a phone call with a real live movie producer.Įntries close at the end of the month-April 30-so Crypto-Gram readers can also play. The prize will be an autographed copy of Beyond Fear. Judging will be by me, swayed by popular acclaim in the blog comments section. The more grandiose the goal, the better.Īssume an attacker profile on the order of 9/11: 20 to 30 unskilled people, and about $500,000 with which to buy skills, equipment, etc. Change the political landscape, or the culture. Entrants are invited to submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios they can come up with. It is in this spirit I announce the (possibly First) Movie-Plot Threat Contest. They’re good for scaring people, but it’s just silly to build national security policy around them.īut if we’re going to worry about unlikely attacks, why can’t they be exciting and innovative ones? If Americans are going to be scared, shouldn’t they be scared of things that are really scary? “Blowing up the Super Bowl” is a movie plot to be sure, but it’s not a very good movie. Terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists exploding baby carriages in subways, terrorists filling school buses with explosives-these are all movie-plot threats. NOTE: If you have a blog, please spread the word.įor a while now, I have been writing about our penchant for “ movie-plot threats“: terrorist fears based on very specific attack scenarios.
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