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Comment by thursday0987 | Hacker News Reader

> Terrorists prefer simpler approaches.

that is a very dangerous assumption to make.

Why? It’s likely the reason why we have seen terrorist attacks where people drive into crowds of people. Cars and trucks is everywhere, its easily accessible. I would argue that the other way around is the dangerous assumption, that people will NOT use the easiest accessible means to hurt other people.

> Why?

Because the goal is reaching the goal, not the process.

Undoubtedly, if s terrorist group has access to this stuff, they won't reject the idea of using it just because driving a van or yielding a knife might appear simpler.

We're talking about lines of thinking that planned hijacking three commercial airplanes simultaneously to fly them into high visibility targets.

How is spreading poison something that's outlandish when compared to that?

And also, arguably this case is already the doing of a terrorist group. I mean, the end goal obviously was to get opposites to think twice for fear of risking their lives.

Bin Laden’s Al Qaida was very unusual in its long term planning. Most terrorist attacks by other groups have been unsophisticated.

> Bin Laden’s Al Qaida was very unusual in its long term planning. Most terrorist attacks by other groups have been unsophisticated.

And, IIRC, most recent terrorist attacks have been committed by isolated individuals who radicalized, and they only used means that a motivated regular person could assemble. They didn't have the material backing of any organization sophisticated enough to manufacture a military nerve agent.

Though, I suppose if a specialist like a chemist got radicalized, then we might have a lone-wolf attack with a sophisticated poison.

It has happened in the past. Japan had a sarin attack[0] and the US had the anthrax attacks[1].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_(Japanese_cult) [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks

The simplicity comes from a forcing function though. Complex attacks involve more people and are thus more likely to be found out.

nitpick: they hijacked FOUR planes but the fourth group of hijackers couldn't control the mob about to rip them apart so aborted the mission. [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93

But what if we deal with a country-terrorist problem?

It is well grounded in facts. 80 people in Nice were murdered by something everybody had access to. The most sophisticated attack was plane tickets and boxcutters.

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