If Al Qaeda really wanted to mess with us...

[suzzer99]

So lets say we pull out of Iraq in a few years, then Al Qaeda pulls some big crap over here. What would our action be? Invade Syria? Do we just end up making it one Arab country for every major strike on our soil?

[econophile]

[ QUOTE ]
the best thing they could do is just infect a ton of martyrs with smallpox and just put them on planes and fly them all over the country

[/ QUOTE ]

isn't smallpox hard to get ahold of? or do crazy scientist in third world countries have samples?

edit: nevermind, someone already asked this. but i supposed the concept holds with other infectious diseases.

[cbloom]

There aren't really any supergerms like that which are accessible to terrorists. They're kept under tight security.

They could pretty easily fill a U-Haul with a fertilizer bomb ala Oklahoma City and blow it up inside the Holland Tunnel or something like that. Not only would you do damage but you'd create panic in the city and freeze traffic for weeks.

[CORed]

Tank car full of propane + thermite. 5+ years after 9/11, and rail yards are still insecure. A tank car full of propane makes a hell of a bomb if you can get it all to blow at once.

Chlorine or anhydrous ammonia cars could cause a lot of disruption, too. It might or might not cause a lot of casualties, depending on where the car was ruptured, wind direction and speed, etc. but it would certainly force mass evacuations and cause a lot of disruption.

Actually if they were really serious about screwing us up, they could have followed up 9/11 with lots of bombs in airport terminals when the lines to get through security were ridiculously long I really thought we were leaving ourselves wide open when we started backing people up in the non-secure part of the airport. They could have created havoc either with suicide bombers or just by leaving suitcases with bombs in the unsecured part of the terminal, but for some reason they never did.

[CharlieDontSurf]

AlQueda isn't dumb.

Fighting the US and its allies in Iraq and Afg does far more good for them as an organization then launching multiple attacks in US does.

The attacks in US are simply symbolic nothing more.

[eviljeff]

what if they removed all the flavor packets from Top Ramen?

[Waterfall]

For the Big Dig in Boston they basically replaced all the above ground highways through the city with huge tunnels. These things are enormous, took years to build, cost billions, and are very important infrastructure.

There have been numerous cases of the walls and ceilings leaking water, and over the summer a ceiling panel fell right off and crushed a woman in her car. So they are certainly not indestructible. I have thought of how damaging it would be if one of those Truck bombs was able to detonate inside and cause a collapse.

[gusmahler]

I've read that if, instead of attacking the WTC, they attacked the nuclear plant just upriver of NYC, they could have killed a lot more.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nu...ower-plant.html

[Rearden]

You realize that by posting in this thread the NSA is watching you.....

Just kidding (I hope)

If they really wished to impact quality of life in this country.... widespread and planned attacks on the nations power grid. Remember that blackout in NYC and most of the northeast a while back cause by some transformer failure in like Canada?.... yeah imagine that... a whole summer of random rolling blackouts cutting power to factories, banks, etc, likely very very little to no loss of life but it would cripple the economy of the region and eventually the country. I know very little about the inner workings of our countries power system but Im sure its not so redundant that there wouldnt be pinch points where a well placed bomb or series of bombs would knock out power to millions.

Of course the ultimate version of this is an EMP impacting a large urban area..... welcome to the 1800s instantly

Ive always thought that smuggling in a few RPGs into the country (or Stingers... afghanistan has a few lying around I think) and setting up shop near a few airports at random would empty the skies.

Additionally, New Years Eve... Times Square... I have never been there then but with an incredible concentration of people in an outdoor area I worry that its only a matter of time until something happens at such a gathering (Im surprised it hasnt already).

[El Diablo]

All,

I thought we'd see some hot Persian HIV chicks by now.