(Getty)
James Joyner over at OutsideTheBetlway.com notes:
There have been precisely three attempts over the last eight years to commit acts of terrorism aboard commercial aircraft. All of them clownishly inept and easily thwarted by the passengers. How many tens of thousands of flights have been incident free?
Numbers guru Nate Silver did a little math over at FiveThirtyEight.com expanded that to a decade, counting six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas.
Using stats from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, if you include both domestic passenger flights within the U-S and international passenger flights whose origin or destination was within the United States, you find that there have been 99,320,309 such commercial airline departures. Dividing by six, you get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.
Collectively, these flights traveled 69,415,786,000 miles, or one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. That's the equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.
Do it by speed of travel in terms of miles. "Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne."
He even figures passengers: You had 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights where these incidents occurred. The rest of the flights have totaled 7,015,630,000 passengers over the past decade. The odds of you being on board a plane subjected to a terrorist incident over the past decade: one in 10,408,947. Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about one in 500,000.
Even if you were a frequent flier traveling on 20 flights a year, your chances of being struck by lightning are greater than being on a flight subjected to an attempted terrorist attack.
Should airports use body scanners that could potentially foil bombers - but maybe show more than passengers would like?
--Yes, our security is the most important thing
--No, they are too invasive
--Not sure
--Yes, our security is the most important thing
--No, they are too invasive
--Not sure
Vote in the comments section.
Comments
Safe for 8 years now 2 terrorist attacks in less than 1 year.
Hmmm.....
--Yes, our security is the most important thing.
WWGBD says: "Safe for 8 years now 2 terrorist attacks in less than 1 year."
From 1999 to 2009 "six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas."
The Fort Hood incident dates back to the Bush Administration during which Nidal Hasan repeatedly slipped through the cracks. Get your facts clear and in proper context before you try to indict someone. It doesn't matter if you don't like Obama. No one cares about that but people acting like children. Only facts matter.
"Good job Brownie."
"Mission accomplished."
"The system worked."
Obama should start a trillion dollar war with a country that never attacked the USA so that we can "fight them over there". That would prevent any terrorist from even thinking about setting his crotch on fire over Detroit.
WMD says: Obama should start a trillion dollar war with a country that never attacked the USA so that we can "fight them over there". That would prevent any terrorist from even thinking about setting his crotch on fire over Detroit.
It sure says something about our efforts in Afghanistan. This is an asymetrical war. There's no such thing as a front. Stopping terrorists is like playing Whack-a-Mole. Joe Lieberman is quoted in today's NY Times saying, "Yemen now becomes on of the centers of that fight." Now? NOW? Where the heck has he been? That kind of thinking is precisely the problem. We're going to be fighting terrorists long after Lieberman is dead. His thinking is already obsolete. Attitudes and strategies need to adjust to new reality. This ain't WWII and John Wayne ain't comin' to save your behind.
They aren't "terrorists"! They are "man caused disasters".
We are not fighting terrorism. We are fighting the "overseas contingency operations".
This WH is a "man caused disaster".
And we wonder why they are not protecting us?
Jihad Watch says: They aren't "terrorists"! They are "man caused disasters". We are not fighting terrorism. We are fighting the "overseas contingency operations". This WH is a "man caused disaster". And we wonder why they are not protecting us?
The important question here is what the man did but whether he was connected to al-Qaeda or not. We still haven't an answer but the answer is critical in determining how to proceed. There's a huge difference between a lone nut and a man dispatched by a larger organization. It goes to motive, responsibility and accountability, all of which our tax dollars must go to pay and which may also cost innocent lives if a mistake is made. Your precipitous nature would be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people and has resulted in disatrous policy decisions --you know, like invading Iraq. Boy, that sure stopped terrorists in their tracks! You don't want to make just any decision; you want to make the right one, or do you not care?
A great guy to read on this (a security expert) is Bruce Schneier.
schneier.com
The goal in Iraq was to get rid of Hussein and it was mission accomplished. Thank God!!
Hannah says: "The goal in Iraq was to get rid of Hussein and it was mission accomplished. Thank God!!"
Better check your history. The goal was to attack who attacked us after 9/11. That wasn't Hussein, even though they told us it was, along with a lot of other things we were told about Iraq that weren't true. The guy who DID attack the U-S never got caught, largely because we decided to invade Iraq, which was not a direct threat to the U-S and which was also a counterweight to Iran. The big winner in the fall of Hussein was Iran, emboldened ever since. Meanwhile, the place we invaded nine years ago, Afghanistan, is still a trouble spot and still costing us lives and money.
PT Barnum would've loved you.
WMDs were thought to be in Iraq, and were at one time. Remember the Kurds. But I think Bush wanted Hussein gone and he got that wish. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Afghanistan is a lost cause. They don't call it the graveyard of empires for nothing. The real problem is Pakistan. As far as Hassan, hasn't Obama been in office for a whole year. How do you account for the continued overlooking the problem? Maybe he needs to appoint an "I dropped the ball" czar.
Bruce said,
"PT Barnum would've loved you"
Bruce,
Nevil Chamberlain would have called you a friend.
"WMDs were thought to be in Iraq, and were at one time."
Yeah, try 1988, when the Kurds were gassed; why didn't invade then if WMD was such a big deal? Check your history. Hussein abandoned his WMD efforts entirely after Desert Storm. Invading that country again is a big reason why Afghanistan is now a lost cause, and I've been saying that Pakistan is the problem since 2002. (You'd do well to research the other articles I've written on this website.)
"...hasn't Obama been in office for a whole year. How do you account for the continued overlooking the problem?"
It's called the recession. Hasan was the fault of NO president. Warning signs were overlooked long ago by colleagues at Walter Reed. He would've committed his crimes no matter who was in the White House. True, it's simpler and ideologically convenient to politicize this, but that mistake is illusory.
"Nevil Chamberlain would have called you a friend."
--Repeating Donald Rumsfeld talking points is a fool's errand.
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