Massive attacks against trains in Spain/Madrid

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2004-03-12 12:17am

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:Safety Is All..

Yeah, it sounds like something I'd suggest. I'd make some ridiculously over safe recommendations if I were in the position to do so.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-03-12 12:22am

Montcalm wrote:If this attack is really by Al-Quaeda,then how long before they start blowing stuff in countries they didn`t looked at before.

list of country the hate.

USA
UK
France
Israel
Russia(not sure)

"Now adding"
Spain
(fill in the rest)

There not against specific countries, they are against the entire western way of life and anyone who comes close to it or supports nations that practice it. Thailand, India, Egypt, Indonesia and many others have all suffered from Al-Qaeda and friends.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2004-03-12 12:32am

For anyone who might have had friends in the area, the Spanish Interior Ministry has released a list of victims; here.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-03-12 12:47am

Frankly, I'm surprised that al Qaeda haven't hit the US' train system yet. Maybe it's just the one we have here in the Midwest, but after September 11, I would always board a train from school to home with my bag thinking how ridiculously easy it would have been for me to smuggle a bomb on board. The only ID checks are cursory, and the baggage rules aren't even enforced.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-03-12 12:50am

Every time I take the subway at rush hour, I think about how easy it is to sneak a bomb in.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-03-12 12:58am

Right. It's so simple that our first line of defense against that kind of thing happens to be our last, as well, being the CIA. If these people manage to get into the country undetected, we're fucked unless we get lucky and a local PD picks the guy up for possession of illegal explosives.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-03-12 01:11am

In Russia, they play an announcement in the trains reminding the passengers not to forget their personal belongings, and to report any unattended packages. They had that, when the first bomb scare began (6 or 7 years ago). Here in NYC, though, the only thing they have is a lousy poster telling the same thing (not nearly enough impact as an announcment played at every station).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2004-03-12 01:13am

Yeah, trains are easy targets. Especially during rush hour, could you imagine trying to stop and check every student's bag? It would be chaos.

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2004-03-12 01:15am

fgalkin wrote:In Russia, they play an announcement in the trains reminding the passengers not to forget their personal belongings, and to report any unattended packages. They had that, when the first bomb scare began (6 or 7 years ago). Here in NYC, though, the only thing they have is a lousy poster telling the same thing (not nearly enough impact as an announcment played at every station).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I think it's almost physically impossible to bomb any of the major UK train stations these days, especially King's Cross, last time I was there, they'd removed all the bins and the only one's left could only be unlocked by security personnel, security people were everywhere and they had warnings about bomb and terrorist threats all over the place, certainly I'd imagine things can only get tighter following this attack.

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2004-03-12 01:15am

Barring suicide bombing of course.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-03-12 01:19am

That's what I was about to say. You can never really stop them from blowing up, if they set their mind to it.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2004-03-12 01:29am

Darth Wong wrote: CANDU reactors have extremely thick steel-reinforced concrete containment structures, designed to withstand a direct hit from a fully loaded airliner. They also have a huge 20-storey tall building which is maintained at near-vacuum in order to literally suck up all of the released materials in the unlikely event of a breach. I'm not sure what German reactor containment structures look like. And AFAIK, the vacuum building is a fairly unusual safety feature.

I can't speak for German reactors, but I believe all US reactors are spec'd to take a fully loaded 767 or something. No vacuum building (which is pretty cool by the way), but attacking a nuke plant would be pretty bad return on investment, you'd need to hit it hard.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-03-12 01:30am

Durandal wrote:Frankly, I'm surprised that al Qaeda haven't hit the US' train system yet. Maybe it's just the one we have here in the Midwest, but after September 11, I would always board a train from school to home with my bag thinking how ridiculously easy it would have been for me to smuggle a bomb on board. The only ID checks are cursory, and the baggage rules aren't even enforced.

Just imagine what a couple four man teams, each with a sniper rifle, silenced pistols and some assault rifles could do. Add bolt cutters and a nice stash of small explosive charges, sufficient to blow up a railway track or bring down high tension power lines and you could easily have the near if temporary paralysis of a big area of the United States. Luckily Al Qaeda really only likes to launch single big attacks that stand out in a world full of minor terrorist attacks, followed by long periods of silence.

Symmetry · Post by **Symmetry** » 2004-03-12 01:58am

Howedar wrote:
Darth Wong wrote: CANDU reactors have extremely thick steel-reinforced concrete containment structures, designed to withstand a direct hit from a fully loaded airliner. They also have a huge 20-storey tall building which is maintained at near-vacuum in order to literally suck up all of the released materials in the unlikely event of a breach. I'm not sure what German reactor containment structures look like. And AFAIK, the vacuum building is a fairly unusual safety feature.
I can't speak for German reactors, but I believe all US reactors are spec'd to take a fully loaded 767 or something. No vacuum building (which is pretty cool by the way), but attacking a nuke plant would be pretty bad return on investment, you'd need to hit it hard.

I've heard that a 747 could actually breech the walls of some nuke plants, by flying in a parabolic course ending in a power dive. Of course, that would require an incredible amount of skill, much more than just flying into something, and anyways I don't know if the wings would snap off first, but then again, the terrorists could probably get a higher ROI by just flying into another skyscraper.

Symmetry · Post by **Symmetry** » 2004-03-12 01:59am

My condolences also.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-03-12 02:15am

My sister is taking a trip to Egypt tomorrow. It would be an understatement to say that I'm terrified after this.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-03-12 02:22am

Elheru Aran wrote: F-4 Phantom fighters??? I just don't think people would be wasting multimillion-dollar aircraft upon trying to smack down walls the size of those they use in nuclear plants... more like they were using computer modeling to calculate if the walls could stand a force equivalent to the impact of an aircraft that fit in a certain size range, and they used a F-4 as their example. That's what I figure, anyway... if they actually did, they were probably drone-piloting it.

The US military bought a lot of F-4 Phantoms, and has been pretty liberal in expending them for testing. What they did was build a section of the wall, and then launched a fuel though not weapons laden F-4 into it at about 600 knots using a rocket sled setup. The resulting damage was limited to scorch marks.

salm wrote:
i just read an article about these types of attacks on nuclear power plants. they said that a lot of plants would not be able to withstand such attacks. that´s why some folks were proposing to build high concrete nets to fend of air planes.
the article was talking about power plants in germany. i don´t know if powerplants in other countries might be safer.

Some folks ought to remember those things we developed fifty years ago to ward off the threat of missiles and suicide aircraft the first time they showed, those things called Surface to Air Missiles.

Howedar wrote:I can't speak for German reactors, but I believe all US reactors are spec'd to take a fully loaded 767 or something. No vacuum building (which is pretty cool by the way), but attacking a nuke plant would be pretty bad return on investment, you'd need to hit it hard.

The standard was probably a 707, many US reactors predate the 747-757-767 series. But anyway, simply hitting the reactor dome would be very hard, doing so at high speed and yet not having the controls torn off or locked up even more so. And even if they did hit and breach the containment dome, the plane still needs to have enough force to smash some very huge pipes and break open the reactor, which is generally 8-12 inches of steel set in concrete all before any radiation leakage can occur. And if it does leak, then its only getting out through that not very large hole in the roof, which will quickly be obscured by a vast amount of firefighting water and then probably sealed up temporarily by a tarp or something. Without a Chernobyl style steam explosion there really wouldn't be anything but short-lived radioactive steam to leak.

Post by **Kuja** » 2004-03-12 03:14am

Sea Skimmer wrote:The US military bought a lot of F-4 Phantoms, and has been pretty liberal in expending them for testing. What they did was build a section of the wall, and then launched a fuel though not weapons laden F-4 into it at about 600 knots using a rocket sled setup. The resulting damage was limited to scorch marks.

Wow.

Post by **Colonel Olrik** » 2004-03-12 03:44am

NEWSFLASH:

The spanish government has just admitted that remains of a suicide bomber were found in a train.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2004-03-12 03:46am

Colonel Olrik wrote:NEWSFLASH:

The spanish government has just admitted that remains of a suicide bomber were found in a train.

I didn't realise that Eta have ever been into blowing themselves up!

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-03-12 03:50am

Dude...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-03-12 03:50am

Well, I guess that clears up any doubt. It's Al-Quaeda for sure.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-03-12 03:58am

Out of curiosity, how the fuck did they determine that? I mean almost two hundred people died, I would think that the size of bomb required to do that would leave a suicide bomber as a reddish mist at most.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-03-12 03:59am

Fuck, they even say there were numerous, albeit, failed or aborted attempts in the past months and some sources see ETA and al-Qaeda as linking up on some jobs, but I call bullshit on that.

As for nuke safety, that's no problem, it's losing stuff that's the problem. The cargo pods used to transport stuff from Sellafield and Springfield nuclear plants and processing stations in the UK routinely have multiple carriage freight trains going over 100mph rammed into them and suffer not a scratch.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-03-12 04:00am

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:Out of curiosity, how the fuck did they determine that? I mean almost two hundred people died, I would think that the size of bomb required to do that would leave a suicide bomber as a reddish mist at most.

Never understimate forensic science. If a guy blew himself up there, he'll be detected even if it's a few cells of his cowardly brain smeared on a rock. No explosion is 100% destructive.