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dusty

Was thinking about this lately. Here we have a city below sea level with levees all around it keeping the water out.
Wondering how many small explosions next to these levees would it take to flood this city at any given moment in the future?
Defending this city against storms is one thing. Against terriost attack is another.
We get it all rebuilt, they blow a few levees and flood it all over again.
Katrina has shown the way to really hurt America badly with just a few small bombs.

Dusty
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jwb7605 · Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:13 pm Post subject:

My thinking is that New Orleans is the last place terrorists are looking at ... "too well defended" with all the military running around, and all the cameras now pointed at it. That should be the case for the next few years, hopefully.

Somebody asked me a day or two after 9/11 "if you were a terrorist, where would you attack next"? My reply was the Hoover Dam. My thinking is still along those lines. Basically, if the terrorist planners are or were paying any kind of attention at all, they've figured out that if you let a lot of stored up water out with or without the help of explosives, really nasty things happen downstream.

dusty · Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:42 pm Post subject:

Give it two or three yrs. down the road. Flooded city, no warning, major loss of life and financial loss of a couple hundred billion again.
The dam target is a natural too. But it will take much more than a few small explosions to bring that down. Not sure a airliner direct hit would do it. That's a pretty substantial chunk of concrete there now.

Dusty
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jwb7605 · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:21 am Post subject:

All you'd have to do would be to visibly damage it.
Every engineer in the country could swear it was still stable, but the MSM would be all over it, bring out a couple of movie stars with the required expertise to testify in front of congress, and so forth.
It might not kill or even threaten anybody: it would just create the necessary panic.

Killing people is of secondary importance to terrorists, I think. The primary goal is to frighten people and get them to "negotiate", which is a spin on the word "capitulate". The question is whether an event like that would get the public to demand an immediate withdrawal from (say) Iraq and/or Afghanistan, or whether the public would demand we redouble the efforts there.

I B Squidly · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:40 am Post subject:

Blowing Glen Canyon Damn (Hoover's upstream sister) has been the shining fantasy of ecco-terrorists for thirty years (see the "Monkeywrench Gang). Each damn represents some seven years of continuous concrete pour not easily moved or altered. Current security makes it unlikely any Tim McVeigh or raghead could get the requisite tonnage of explosive anywhere near them. Moreover, the water levels are so low just now the desired effect would be a disappointment.
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