I was flipping through the TV news quite a bit last night. The big story, of course, was the Madrid train bombings. Once the newsies got through details of the carnage, almost invariably the next story was: Could it happen here?
Good question. I directed it to my crack Resonance staff to the mystery. After hours of intensive digging, we came up with the following complex formula:
Thousands of travelers + pouring in and out of + cramped train cars + with unchecked baggage, which could contain explosives = Yep, it could happen here.
Ooops. I didn’t make that very dramatic, did I? Nor did I have a terrorism/security expert from X university pontificating on the foreign chatter. Darn it. Guess that’s why I’m here, and not making the big bucks on TV news.
I pick up one thing, however, from watching several of those reports. In the last couple years the U.S. has spend approximately $100 million shoring up train security, as opposed to $11.8 billion for airline security. Granted, much of Al Qaeda’s attention has reportedly been on airplanes, but still that ratio seems quite imbalanced.