Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2004-07-09 05:08 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2004-07-09 05:08 pm
Ways to destroy a major city
You know, maybe it's not a good idea to go from reading about MIT hacks to seeing articles about terror warnings and stuff... it just gives you an idea of how futile it would be to thwart someone really creative.
Let's use my hometown as an example. It's probably one of the most heavily fortified anyway, seeing as how all the government agencies and bigwigs are clustered here, but it'd still be pathetically easy to cause large-scale destruction. For example, many trains run through DC, and not only passenger trains: think big tanker cars filled with raw manufacturing materials and chemicals, specifically chlorine gas, which is deadly if inhaled. The train tracks are not well-guarded--just ask any of the graffiti rats who hang out in the tunnels, who could hitch a ride on the back of one of these trains easily. Get on, plant explosives on a tanker of chlorine, get off and get the hell out, and soon an entire tanker car's worth of poisonous gas is spreading through the city.
Synthesis of high explosives is not as difficult as one might think, as was demonstrated beautifully in Fight Club. Glycerine, nitric acid, and sawdust yield dynamite. With some careful covering of one's tracks it's wholly possible to obtain the ingredients for TNT from chemical supply stores. Even lesser stuff like napalm is easy to make with gasoline and any number of things. Set off a few pipe bombs next to a propane tank. Set off any of the substances described above next to a Texaco or gas main and watch the fireworks. Remember "Carrie?" Yep.
And have you any idea of the laboratories that are just across the river from DC? I'm referring in particular to the ones where they study diseases, the ones that house the world's last sample of smallpox. If broken into they could release any number of potent biological weapons.
We're talking here stuff that I could do if I was antisocial enough. Luckily for my fellow DC residents, I'm not, but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who are. Let's just hope they're not creative.
*laugh* This is fun. Takes me back to the old days, man, when I was a homicidal eighth-grader with a floor plan of the school in my room that was all marked up with places to put bombs. Never to be implemented, of course, but it's rather therapeutic to plan it out. Same concept here, only on a larger scale.
Let's use my hometown as an example. It's probably one of the most heavily fortified anyway, seeing as how all the government agencies and bigwigs are clustered here, but it'd still be pathetically easy to cause large-scale destruction. For example, many trains run through DC, and not only passenger trains: think big tanker cars filled with raw manufacturing materials and chemicals, specifically chlorine gas, which is deadly if inhaled. The train tracks are not well-guarded--just ask any of the graffiti rats who hang out in the tunnels, who could hitch a ride on the back of one of these trains easily. Get on, plant explosives on a tanker of chlorine, get off and get the hell out, and soon an entire tanker car's worth of poisonous gas is spreading through the city.
Synthesis of high explosives is not as difficult as one might think, as was demonstrated beautifully in Fight Club. Glycerine, nitric acid, and sawdust yield dynamite. With some careful covering of one's tracks it's wholly possible to obtain the ingredients for TNT from chemical supply stores. Even lesser stuff like napalm is easy to make with gasoline and any number of things. Set off a few pipe bombs next to a propane tank. Set off any of the substances described above next to a Texaco or gas main and watch the fireworks. Remember "Carrie?" Yep.
And have you any idea of the laboratories that are just across the river from DC? I'm referring in particular to the ones where they study diseases, the ones that house the world's last sample of smallpox. If broken into they could release any number of potent biological weapons.
We're talking here stuff that I could do if I was antisocial enough. Luckily for my fellow DC residents, I'm not, but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who are. Let's just hope they're not creative.
*laugh* This is fun. Takes me back to the old days, man, when I was a homicidal eighth-grader with a floor plan of the school in my room that was all marked up with places to put bombs. Never to be implemented, of course, but it's rather therapeutic to plan it out. Same concept here, only on a larger scale.