“Shaving Cream Cans on a Plane”
(The following is a column I wrote for this week's school newspaper. The question presented is "Is America safer now than it was before 9/11?" Keep in mind that this is definitely meant to piss people off and get me into trouble, but nothing in the article is meant in seriousness or, likely, could actually work. Enjoy. :D).
Here’s a clever idea for smuggling a bomb on a plane, written by yours truly, that are currently not restricted by US air travel laws and regulations:
Acquire C-4 (hey, you’re a terrorist-you’ve got funds) and build it into a metallic container of some sort. Steal from Jurassic Park and make it a Barbasol shaving cream canister. British special forces use 8 pounds to blow through 8x8x8 steel beams, so a pound or two in a can of shaving cream should be more than enough for your needs. Insert a blasting cap into the canister and install a short-range radio transmitter. Setting the cap to detonate after receiving a specific radio signal shouldn’t be hard for someone in your fanatical organization-that’s why you keep the tech nerd terrorists around. Sure, they never shut up about “World of Jihad” or whatever MMO they’re playing, but damn do they come through in a pinch.
Install the radio transmitter into a pen or similarly metal-and-plastic sort of instrument that you carry on your person. The small size of it will make the itty-bitty radio bits difficult to identify by the lazy and underpaid airport security rent-a-cops/Homeland Security lackeys. When your captain comes on and cheerfully announces that you’ve reached 30,000 feet, pop that pen and set off the blasting cap. C-4 detonates at 8,000 feet per second, which should be more than enough to blow an enormous hole in the airplane, if not rip the plane in two. From there, thank your leader/deity/mother for allowing a successful mission.
So maybe all of these things aren’t viable and would require a lot more thought than I’ve given them in fifteen minutes and a few wikipedia pages, but you get the idea-here’s something not too difficult to come up with that could pretty easily be worked into something viable if you had just the right amount of craziness and ambition. As it stands, radio transmitters, shaving cream cans in carry-on luggage, and pens are not restricted by FAA regulations for passengers.
We’re safer than we were before 9/11 against the kinds of attacks that we’ve encountered, but I don’t see anything that suggests that we’re safer in general. As the terrorists have gotten cleverer, we’ve simply become more reactionary. With a little ingenuity and a lot of research and money to throw around, you can confound and surprise the Department of Homeland Security, too! Given their budget, this isn’t much of a surprise, but even still-it won’t be until someone does something dangerously clever with shaving cream cans in luggage that shaving cream cans and aerosol will be banned from all flights.
Another terrorist attack is inevitable. It will probably target something big and nasty that we don’t want blown up. It will probably be enacted in some creative way, some way we don’t expect. It will probably lead to a whole new round of reactionary regulations and restrictions on some mode of travel, allowable item, etc. The terrorists will have moved on from that approach already. We will continue to be a step behind.
We can get smarter, or we can get more afraid. The choice is yours.
This is your America.
Here’s a clever idea for smuggling a bomb on a plane, written by yours truly, that are currently not restricted by US air travel laws and regulations:
Acquire C-4 (hey, you’re a terrorist-you’ve got funds) and build it into a metallic container of some sort. Steal from Jurassic Park and make it a Barbasol shaving cream canister. British special forces use 8 pounds to blow through 8x8x8 steel beams, so a pound or two in a can of shaving cream should be more than enough for your needs. Insert a blasting cap into the canister and install a short-range radio transmitter. Setting the cap to detonate after receiving a specific radio signal shouldn’t be hard for someone in your fanatical organization-that’s why you keep the tech nerd terrorists around. Sure, they never shut up about “World of Jihad” or whatever MMO they’re playing, but damn do they come through in a pinch.
Install the radio transmitter into a pen or similarly metal-and-plastic sort of instrument that you carry on your person. The small size of it will make the itty-bitty radio bits difficult to identify by the lazy and underpaid airport security rent-a-cops/Homeland Security lackeys. When your captain comes on and cheerfully announces that you’ve reached 30,000 feet, pop that pen and set off the blasting cap. C-4 detonates at 8,000 feet per second, which should be more than enough to blow an enormous hole in the airplane, if not rip the plane in two. From there, thank your leader/deity/mother for allowing a successful mission.
So maybe all of these things aren’t viable and would require a lot more thought than I’ve given them in fifteen minutes and a few wikipedia pages, but you get the idea-here’s something not too difficult to come up with that could pretty easily be worked into something viable if you had just the right amount of craziness and ambition. As it stands, radio transmitters, shaving cream cans in carry-on luggage, and pens are not restricted by FAA regulations for passengers.
We’re safer than we were before 9/11 against the kinds of attacks that we’ve encountered, but I don’t see anything that suggests that we’re safer in general. As the terrorists have gotten cleverer, we’ve simply become more reactionary. With a little ingenuity and a lot of research and money to throw around, you can confound and surprise the Department of Homeland Security, too! Given their budget, this isn’t much of a surprise, but even still-it won’t be until someone does something dangerously clever with shaving cream cans in luggage that shaving cream cans and aerosol will be banned from all flights.
Another terrorist attack is inevitable. It will probably target something big and nasty that we don’t want blown up. It will probably be enacted in some creative way, some way we don’t expect. It will probably lead to a whole new round of reactionary regulations and restrictions on some mode of travel, allowable item, etc. The terrorists will have moved on from that approach already. We will continue to be a step behind.
We can get smarter, or we can get more afraid. The choice is yours.
This is your America.