Monday, December 28, 2009 at 9:46 pm by Darryl
We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Everyone who is panicking and/or trying to gain a political advantage through fear over the “underwear bomber” needs to write the above 1000 times on the blackboard after class.
The fact is, the terrorists win from such panic and hyperbole. I said this during the Bush administration and it is equally valid during the Obama administration. It amounts to aiding the terrorists. They win by scaring people, not by killing people.
The reality is that we can choose to fly or to not fly. And in deciding to fly, we incur risk, the same way we do from riding a bicycle or driving a car. The risk of death on an airplane from a terrorist attack is very small, but not zero. And the risk will be very difficult to reduce until carry-ons are banned, clothes are issued by the airline, and invasive searches talk place during pre-boarding screening. These measures are unacceptable.
The risk of death or injury while driving a car can be greatly reduced with a 25 mph national speed limit. It ain’t gonna happen. We drive 65, or 45 in the snow and we know, subconsciously, our risk of death goes up. And those activities increase risk measurably higher than dying of a terrorist attack in a jet.
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
The obvious conclusion always was and always will be that there’s no way to prevent any unknown individual from attempting to kill any other unknown person or persons. Even Hitler couldn’t do it, and he had the entire German Army at his totalitarian disposal. Besides, if it weren’t for his own father filing a report a few weeks ago, AbdulMutallab wouldn’t have been on any list, let alone the “suspected ties” watch list.
Yet even including air terrorism, air travel is still multiple times safer than driving a car.
If people were really concerned about the microscopic effect of airplane terrorists on air travel safety, they’d maintain their wireless Internet connection and take the train. But the (literally) billions-to-1 chance of death by airplane terrorist doesn’t appear to be worth the extra time. Even if that extra time is in a sleeper car on a comfortable, fully-reclined bed when you’d be sleeping anyway.
Americans have already voted on this issue by way of their mode-of-travel preference.