Radio-controlled Exploding Mad Cows stampede the St. Patrick's Day Parade

Bruce Schneier posted a Terror Movie-plot-threat contest on April 1st and I missed it. Okay, so I'm late, but it's still going on. Click the link and you'll see he gives you a # of personnel, a 500k budget, and some other requirements. He wants help poking righteous fun at all the dopey policy-makers who act, at least, as if they know nothing about risk exposure or statistics and everything about impersonating Ted Baxter having a hissy.

Cut the blue wire...

Sleeper magicians from Chile planted in cities all over America start doing their magical rain dances. Rain won't stop for several weeks causing horrible floods. Thousands drown. Epidemic strikes and hundreds of thousands die. Millions lose their home. After the magicians have been identified and arrested, the president signs a law requiring every city to be covered by a roof. Dancing is outlawed.

Terrorists break into water treatment plants and taint the water with the chemical sodium cloride, causing the boiling point to the raised. Everyone's coffee, tea, and pasta takes longer to make, thereby slowing down the economy.

Terrorists use unsolicited bulk e-mail ("spam") which contain messages urging the recipient to kill everyone around them. While most people will realize the email is not genuine, a small fraction will simply take the message at face value, and go on shooting rampages.

And my winner is:

2 guys, one sniper rifle, one car. They drive around a major metropolitan area each morning, shooting someone in rush hour traffic. They then move to another city, and do it again. If you want to be really aggressive, have 4 or 6 guys in 2 or 3 cities, so that some shootings happen at the same time.

Aah geez. I thought I was gonna post a simple, funny ditty. That last one ranged to only 20 miles from here, with numerous false alarms called-in and plenty of turbocharged anxiety hereabouts. And, of course, lots of media trucks and media people, devoid of facts and full of seriousness, 24/7. About what? They hadn't a clue. They repeated what they were told by public safety folk who know not to speculate publicly, yet they went with the "24"-scenario wild goosechases to fill in their remaining time. So yeah, the Sniper idea isn't particularly Hollywood. It didn't need 20 to 30 guys. It was cheap. But it illustrates all the same.

Remember, the theme was, "They hate us for our freedom. We can't let the terrorists win."



Newsflash: They won. At least, if that's the metric.

Sure, it was a bogus statement and measure. A larger waffle cone of B.S. hasn't been served up to the public in ages. But hey, they won. In a rout.

How? With our help.

Huh? Have you read the newspapers lately? This country has changed, immeasurably, when it comes to what we will accept as "Americans" living up to their "Ideals." Our measure today is how badly can we kick someone's ass--John Wayne!--first stage, with nukes, no considerations af blowback. We are pridefully proud that an idea like Shock and Awe is our product, not that of Nokia or Sony. We are, in many cases, Christians who revere mercenary behaviour, a class of people that James, Mark or Matthew would not recognize nor embrace.

We are f*cked. I am sick.

By and large, this goes in the "Win" column because great powers only destroy themselves from the inside, smiling, bragging, and punching the sky all the way -- "We're number one!"

Rome was a mess. The Barbarians only pushed it over. Victorian England was a mass of contradictions of publicly stated values and privately exercised debauchery--a giant balloon of dirty hot air--self-congratulating poohbahs, poopoo-ing science as a "diverting hobby," priveledged people ignoring the fact that outside Belgrade Square, the rest of their practical world, London, was living with sh*t in the streets and sh*t on their boots.

What's that got to do with terrorism? Everything. If one is consumed with one's own righteous virtues, it's rare that one realizes how messily one is treading on the average lifestyles of others.

They hate us not "for our freedoms," but instead for what our continued freedoms require: Crappy policies that don't much forward the idea of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in their particular countries. Yes. That's it. Half-assed corporate PR in support of cheap oil which means supporting feudal families and friendly dictatorships which smile when we walk into the room. (Ignore the screams from the ante-room.) I feel like a poor man.

And so here we are, the guys who faced down the British in 1778 with Guerilla tactics--they called us terrorists--the folk who beat the Kaiser, Tojo and Hitler with grit and gristle, broke-back Liberty Ships and thin-skinned Sherman tanks.

That was then, this is now. We have done some amazingly stupid stuff under the guise of security and protecting ourselves. And voters have yet to punish the stupid--stupid being politician and media. Why no punishment? Stupid reason--"Because I voted for him/them/their words."

Rich Maurer of global security firm Kroll Int'l told CSO magazine a couple of years ago that 80% of security is psychology. Too right. And 80% of our security policy is parapsychology and pollyanna-based. An effective anti-terror initiative? A refresher course on statistics and a Red Team from DoD to escort decisionmakers around all the "plain-jane" threats that get no attention due to Wal-Mart bitching about distribution bottlenecks or petro-chemical companies who guard their facilities slightly better than 5th graders do their tree-fort.

And then, you've covered maybe 5% of the threat. Don't mean to be too sardonic here, but a certain cynisicsm is freeing. It allows you to be real, instead of parading about creating commissions and busy work. 80% of security *is* psychological.

And an uncomfortably large percentage of people, males usually, regard themselves as bold and brave bootstrappers decrying the Nanny State. That is until bad things happen. Then, the faux John Waynes scurry behind the Aegis of technology. Then, they look for a leader who reflects their true pathology and weakness; they turn into a puddle of girlish worry and acquiesce to Totalitarian Daddies who then...

Then what?

Cockeyed.com has a similar list from a few years ago.

[updated for slapdash typos]