Someone actually did try a 9/11 style attack back in the 1970s. A man named Samuel Byck tried to hijack a passenger jet with the goal of crashing it into the White House and assassinating President Nixon, but instead of hijacking a plane in flight, he boarded one by force and demanded that it take off—which did not happen.
I wonder if we’d be better off if it’d succeeded earlier. Getting competent at preventing and/or responding to specific attack mechanisms seems likely to be better done earlier in history, when there are at least smaller crowds for the new norms to be worked out upon.
A single plane in the 1970s, followed by the recognition that hijacking is just no longer tolerable (destroy the plane before letting an attacker take control) would perhaps have been fewer lives lost than 9/11/2001.
Someone actually did try a 9/11 style attack back in the 1970s. A man named Samuel Byck tried to hijack a passenger jet with the goal of crashing it into the White House and assassinating President Nixon, but instead of hijacking a plane in flight, he boarded one by force and demanded that it take off—which did not happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck
I wonder if we’d be better off if it’d succeeded earlier. Getting competent at preventing and/or responding to specific attack mechanisms seems likely to be better done earlier in history, when there are at least smaller crowds for the new norms to be worked out upon.
A single plane in the 1970s, followed by the recognition that hijacking is just no longer tolerable (destroy the plane before letting an attacker take control) would perhaps have been fewer lives lost than 9/11/2001.