Men filming ferry ride raise suspicion [Tacoma, WA]

tribnet.com ^ | July 7, 2002

[Abogado]

A boat much smaller than a Ferry did some serious damage to the USS Cole... Consider, who would suspect a Ferry in a populated harbor?

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Hey, if you light 5 or 6 fires at different vital spots at once. Pandemonium breaks out and the ferry is on fire so much it can't pull in to the pier. Up here in Edmonds There aint no fire tug like in Seattle, as if when the ferry tug arrived 45 mins. later it would matter.

[cgbg]

I have a hard time imagining America "terrorized" by hijacked tugboats

How about if the bad guys drove a small truck with a dirty radioactive bomb in back on to a ferry with a destination of Seattle or San Francisco harbor?

Does that help your imagination?

[GretchenEE]

Death of a thousand cuts. Hit them at airline counters, parks, ferries (Because victims cannot escape while you shoot at them), airplanes, buses, inside buildings...

Bingo bingo bingo and I wish all of America would wake up to this scenario because it is obviously what terrorists do and if we don't plug the little holes, they succeed. They succeed in creatig chaos, fear, stalling our economy or worse, and taking over our lives and country the way an interior parasite does, until the host is so vitiated it cannot fight back.

[isthisnickcool]

AT THE LOCAL TACOMA MOSQUE:

IMAM MOHAMMAD MOHAMMAD: We must never kill innocents. And never kill Jews! No more bombings. I condemn the 9/11 attacks! Let us take the Christian values and be like them. Love and peace. And let's just have fun and take a few ferry rides!

/sarcasm off

[2sheep]

U.S. to Vaccinate 500,000 Workers Against Smallpox ~  32 & 33

[2sheep]

> That is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Prophets have long been saying that an Arab coalition (with Russia and China) will attack America.  Jews in Israel have been told for several years by the Lord to "prepare for refugees from America."

[Wonder Warthog]

"How about if the bad guys drove a small truck with a dirty radioactive bomb in back on to a ferry with a destination of Seattle or San Francisco harbor?"

Bad scenario. Setting off a "dirty radioactive bomb" in a FERRY on the water is a great way to minimize the effects of the radioactivity. To make maximum use of a "dirty" bomb, it needs to be set off on land in a high-people-density area.

Setting it off on the water pretty much guarantees that much of the radioactive material will sink to the bottom of the harbor---water is GREAT radiation shielding material.

[elfman2]

"electrical substations, as well as fuel depots. Ours are woefully defenseless"

Electrical, exactly! Re post #5.

[cgbg]

Setting it off on the water pretty much guarantees that much of the radioactive material will sink to the bottom of the harbor---water is GREAT radiation shielding material

So they set it off when the ferry gets to port in the city. If the prevailing wind is from west to east...

[Wonder Warthog]

Sorry, but I can't see your "guys with guns" (like the LAX incident) being terrifically effective on a ferry in Washington State. Washington "is" a "shall-issue" concealed carry state, and you can BET that a significant numbers of folks in the cars on the ferry have guns.

Explosives (or fires, as Big Ern points out) ARE a problem on a ferry.

[elfman2]

"As for getting close to an aircraft carrier, are you familiar with how close the ferry dock is to the shipyards, or how often the Washington State Ferries have mechanical or personel problems that put the ferries where thay ought not be? "

I recall someone posting here on 9/12 arguing that 911 was a piece of cake that could be done by any 20 reasonably intelligent people. Everything looks easy from a distance.

[livius]

I think the ME men videotaping the ferry in SF Bay a couple of weeks ago (there's a thread on FR about it, somewhere, if only I could find it...) also left in a car w no license plate. All in all, very similar.

[elfman2]

"Consider, who would suspect a Ferry in a populated harbor?"

Everyone now.

[Inkie]

If you can afford it, get a Sony Clie. Everyone thinks you're looking at your palm pilot but you're secretly taking pictures.

[elfman2]

"How about if the bad guys drove a small truck with a dirty radioactive bomb in back on to a ferry with a destination of Seattle or San Francisco harbor? Does that help your imagination?"

Waste of a dirty bomb. Don't talk to me.

[Inkie]

A ferry filled with people would make for an ideal hostage situation. Just think, they capture a ferry, threaten to kill off passengers one at a time, one every hour until The Blind Shiek is released.

And Moussaoui and all the prisoners at Gitmo.

Another argument for the death penalty and the immediate execution of enemy captured on the battlefield.

[Inkie]

"Taking out a ferry or bridge is way too difficult."

Seems to me that, a year ago, some might have said that taking out the World Trade Center would be way too difficult.

[Wonder Warthog]

"So they set it off when the ferry gets to port in the city. If the prevailing wind is from west to east...

Some large fraction of the radioactives will STILL end up underwater. A "dirty radioactive bomb" is more a scare word than an effective weapon. To disperse any distance at all, the radioactive material needs to form VERY SMALL particles. Only a tiny fraction of the solid material around the chemical explosive will be fractionated into this particle size range--the rest will be relatively large particles that will rapidly drop out of the air.

Another point is that most car ferry decks are pretty much ENCLOSED, again minimizing dispersal of any airborne material.

No--FAR more effective to set it off at some major intersection in the downtown business district.

[GretchenEE]

I don't think the terrorists are planning to shoot up the ferries. Blow them up, yes. Probably dockside, so as to start a fire and kill more people.