The geek threat [xkcd meets The Economist] | Hacker News Reader

The geek threat [xkcd meets The Economist]

economist.com

21 pointsmblakele8 comments

You'd think The Economist would bother to actually check instead of saying "let's hope the people who make the rules at the TSA don't read this particular xkcd comic."

Here is the TSA's response: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check-cartoo... Randall replied in the comments.

Randall's reply:

Randall Munroe Said...

> The batteries may be more dangerous than a bottle of water, but they are not more dangerous than a water bottle filled with liquid explosives.

Hey! I'm the author of that cartoon, and was delighted to see your reply. Thanks!

Certainly, a bottle of water is harmless, but I was actually assuming the water bottle was also an explosive.

Laptop batteries have relatively high energy density. The two batteries I travel with (which I've never had anyone object to, contrary to your stated policy) combine to hold roughly the same energy in a 6-oz bottle of pure nitroglycerine. This energy cannot all be released quite as rapidly, but my friends have made laptop batteries explode with enough violence to, in one test, take the top off a small tree (when nestled in a fork of the trunk).

I understand that practicality plays into the decision of what to ban, and the joke of the comic was mainly how silly it would be to explain to a security guard how you could make a bomb with the expectation that it would have a good outcome. The laptop battery is a borderline case at best.

But I really do think there are some pretty serious problems with our approach to airport security, and that the rules we've come up with are more the result of a desire to do something than out of a practical assessment of what would make us safer. Articles like this one make the point better than I could: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security

I mean, when liquids are confiscated, what happens to them? Are they destroyed with explosives, tested, or just thrown away? If they're just thrown away (or set aside until days later), what's the point of confiscating them at all? The terrorist can just try to sneak some through again the next day, since there are no consequences to failing.

Yet if you don't put on the show, I suppose the airline industry might collapse. I really don't know what the solution is, but I get frustrated dealing with restrictive security procedures whose practical intentions are simply to reassure me.

Yes, but could you make a bomb from a set of laptop batteries as easily as you could from a prepared liquid? That's the thing about prepared liquids, you can do all the chemical processing until the whole things is already practically a bomb. Regarding what happens to confiscated liquids, as the TSA person helpfully mentioned, they are working on a system to test liquids but they do not have one yet.

If you think about the TSA requirements, they are not stupid after all.

Personally I do not get why people complain about the TSA. After 9/11, when there were stories of the most terrible offenses against personal liberties, of people getting picked up on the streets and not seen or heard from again for years, the mainstream press did not utter a word.

But when people are forced to give up their water bottle there is all sorts of bitching and complaints. Because the shared assumption is that only muslims get wisked away in the middle of the night not to be heard from again and that, while regretable, is something that we have to live with for our safety. But the waterbottle thing happens to everyone, so it cannot be tolerated!

The NYTimes has an article on the same subject today, although sadly they did not cite xkcd: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/27fires.html?hpw

It leads the reader to believe batteries are more dangerous than the water. While that might be true, it leaves out the reasoning behind 3-1-1. The batteries may be more dangerous than a bottle of water, but they are not more dangerous than a water bottle filled with liquid explosives.

How about:

Batteries may be more dangerous than a stick, but they aren't more dangerous than a man poking you with that stick.

Batteries may be more dangerous than a kitten, but they aren't more dangerous than a kitten who is about to jump with claws ready on your face.

And the alt-text is intact!

And it yet goes to show that anybody smart can maim or kill others. Call it a MacGuyver-ism or something.

And yet in all these cases, it took intent.

Cases that could be done:

1. Self-inflict nasty disease. Anthrax/Ebola/H1N1

2. Surgery to put a bomb in a stomach. Im sure a chop-doc could do it in Tijuana for the right price.

3. Bomb in laptop or other computerized hardware.

4. Nerve agents: the local news showed barrels and barrels of a nerve agent and where you could find them. Wonder why no terrorist watches the news where this stuff can be easily found.

And the "best solution" is to have the company hire an anesthesiologist and put all passengers to sleep and stack them in racks.

Surgery to put a bomb in a stomach

Turns out that this isn't really viable. The human body is quite good at absorbing explosions.

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