BOSTON, MA Wednesday, 1/31/07 – The nation mourns the deaths of hundreds of Americans during the simultaneous detonation of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. The devices, disguised to look like inocuous blinking "pac-men" were placed throughout the cities. For days prior to their detonation, they simply looked like a set of blinking lights. "I thought it was cute," said Stephanie Jones, 24, "in the city, this type of thing is common so nobody even considered the problem."
Boston was also on the target list for these IEDs, but an alert police officer on the Boston Police force identified the threat. Armed with this information, police officers canvassed the city and dispatched with most of the devices, and contained the damage of the three that did detonate through their security precautions. "These guys are the true heroes of our city," said lifetime Bostonian Bob Harrison, 56, "They are really on the ball." Sergeant Billy Costigan was credited with identifying the initial threat. "To be honest, I was worried about looking like a fool, seeing these stupid blinking lights, but when I saw the circuit board, batteries and packaging I decided I should do anything. Heck, I’m not trained in this – all they tell you in training is not to go near them. Obviously, now I am glad I took the chance of getting egg on my face and am happy to be doing my job."
Inquiries still remain for the rest of the cities. Already, security experts are lining up to criticise city leaders. "I can’t believe that these guys would let a cute set of blinking lights convince them that there was no threat. What do they expect – a big package with a countdown clock in the middle of the street with a sign on it that says ‘Bomb’?" "There was plenty of information available to stop this – it goes to show you how stupid our law enforcement is. I can’t believe they just never get it right."
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[Try this sometime - take a walk around a city and try to figure out where the bombs could be placed. Someone please predict for me when and where and how the next attack will occur before it happens instead of saying afterwards that you knew it all along. It's a big shocker that, when under attack, people in Boston are acting like human beings sometimes act in trying to defend their actions. Of course, critics are acting like human beings as well and completely ignoring their excellent example of hindsight bias.]
Great post, I’ve been trying to explain this at work all day but not nearly as well as you have done here.
If something sticks out like a sore thumb, chances are that it was meant to be seen.
Bombs are not meant to be seen.
Therefore, if something sticks out like a sore thumb, chances are it is not a bomb.
The decision to be made, given finite resources, is just how unlikely the potential bomb needs to be before it can be ignored.
However, in this specific case it was easy to tell upon inspection that these were NOT bombs. So, even if we set agree that all possible bombs even remotely likely to be real should be inspected, the fact that this set of them took sooooo long to be consigned to the “false alarm” heap is itself worthy of criticism.
“Well, it could been a briefcase nuke with a Lite Brite attached” is not enough to rationalize the reaction in Boston.
“The devices, disguised to look like newspaper stands (garbage cans, parked cars, etc.) were placed throughout the cities..”
Why is a circuit board with batteries and wires threatening to you? Would it be less threatening if it were made by sony or apple and sold in a friendly retail store?
Why aren’t cars and newspaper stands more threatening to you? Do you realize how easy it is to hide a bomb in a parked car?
Pass the word:
Peter Berdovsky Legal Defense Fund
Law Office of Michael L. Rich
74 Newport Street
Arlington MA 02476