Neil Smalley

Was having a chat with my brother the other day, he works in mobile telecoms and we were talking about ways in which a terrorist organisation could create chaos without actually killing or maiming anyone.

He has access to several suitcase size mobile phone jammers, that will jam all DECT and mobile phones in a mile radius. Now imagine 10 of these in 10 normal looking cars just driving around london all day.

They are'nt directional and since the cars would be moving(just) then they could'nt be traced.

The effects on london would be complete chaos.

Not that i'm condoning this sort of thing of course, but if we can think of it, some nutter can.

David Lock

A big snow machine on back of a truck driving around would soon paralyse the place. And the kids could have some fun.... DL

Sheepsplitter

How about a terrorist driving a van full of explosives across the Dartford crossing. If it was detonated in the middle and made the bridge unstable it would render the M25 loop useless. The knock on impact would be huge and would take many months or years to rectify.

Sheepsplitter

Well if it was done in the early hours with nobody around it would hopefully just kill the terrorist.
However your right I was stretching the 'non-lethal' bit a little ,but I don't suspect too many terrorists have the non-lethal bit in mind.

ScoobyTal

one suitcase full of damp leaves

could bring our rail 'service' to its knees

boomer

Neil,

you don't even have to use "technology" to cause major disruption.

Just wander around at 02:00am with a crow-bar and smash open one of those "telephone junction boxes" that are all over the place. Tear out the wires (or even pour petrol in and burn it) to create a massive job reconnecting all the phones.

Similarly with traffic light control boxes. Take out a few major intersections and watch the gridlock begin.

Or throw a few boxes of hypodermic needles on a motorway (this actually happened on the M6 several years ago). With more than one puncture per car, a spare is useless - thus traffic grinds to a halt.

Even starting a scare about fuel blockades can cause disruption due to panic buying (as we all witnessed a couple of years ago!).

Scarey,

mb

AnDy_PaNdY

Remember the IRA 'attacks' on the British motorway networks a few years back. It caused unbelievable chaos for many thousands of people and they only have to plant one bomb to make the threats credible.

Katana

Crash the internet. Millions of cybergeeks would injure themselves because they don't know what to do with their free time. A and E would have a busy week..

dsmith

Actually its simply amazing how quickly the guys on the ground can re-patch/repair/route-around telphone cable/junction breaks.

Given the number of these "terrorist acts" performed by your average digger driver almost everyday there's very little widespread impact - it tends to be very local (for any length of time).

Deano

dsmith

Actually a virus/DoS attack on the Internet these days causes by far the most impact for any non-lethal attack.

The nasty web-style ones can have a serious affect very quickly and whilst corporates can contain them relatively easily the effort and manpower expense can be huge. Few companies appreciate these days just how much they can rely on Internet Mail Working.

Deano

ChrisB

Erm, wouldn't they just use the tunnels instead?

I've gone south on the crossing in the Tunnel one time. The bridge was shut.

muppet paster

Why should some nutter bother ro think it up? Can't he just read it here?

Neil Smalley

MP

Yep, you just did

I'm sire the govt has thought of all this kind of thing, but it's easier to get support for restrictions of freedom once someone has done it and you can say 'look at what they did'.

muppet paster

[Hippy mode]

Contaminating all Starbucks products with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide would be cool! Confusion would be total!!!

muppet paster

Oh no man! Forgot to do this...























[/Hippy mode]