Alternate 9/11 TLs...Plausibility

Nerve Gas 9/11: on September 11, 2001, terrorists release VX gas into the New York Subway system.

This one could be quite effective. The Tokyo attacks in 1995 were less than brilliant and still affected over 1000 people (only 13 killed). If al-Qaeda learnt from Aum's mistakes and delivered the VX more effectively they could easily kill as many they did with the planes.

It would be interesting to see how this affected public transport in the aftermath. We had massively increased airport security, it would be hard to implement something like this for trains. This could be a more localised problem though, as the most used subways tend to be in the Eastern US, whereas planes are everywhere.
 
That would probably be considered a WMD attack as well. The ships carry enough LNG that has the explosive capacity 55 times that of the bomb at Hiroshima. I don't know how many ships it takes to fill that facility. Basically Boston is gone.

Edit: The Boston facility processes over a billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. I'm not sure if that is in LNG or CNG. The LNG explosion in Cleveland Ohio in 1944 incinerated a square mile of the city. A LNG ship carries 20 times that amount.

Torqumada

I'll probably use that next as a TL then:D:D:D
 
Depending on how patient the terrorists were, IMO a variation of the first scenario (using a biological agent) would have been the least difficult to pull off.
Take a handful of terrorists willing to become "martyrs", give each a container with the agent in question, and put each one on a different train during the busiest commuting times.
It would have taken a few days or weeks for the effects to fully manifest; but such an attack could have possibly killed thousands of people, created a panic, and disrupted the US economy for an extended period.
 
any idea how terrorists actually manage to blow up the CNG facility in boston????
how do you blow up a tank of CNG, anyway????
 
What about... blowing up a LNG/whatever tanker in the middle of the Houston Ship Channel? Would that hurt the U.S. economy more?

Marc A
 
Use ATGMs with shaped charge warheads?

Actually, instead of the facility, just hit one of the ships with the same in the middle of the harbor. The ships path takes them very close to the shore. I was working on a story about an attack being carried about by one of the groups sponsored by Al Qaeda from Bosnia.

Torqumada
 
Have them attack the the CNG facility in Boston harbor for nuclear weapon level devastation.
If you're willing to steal from JSF, what about an LNG tanker in New York harbor? It could light off storage tanks in New Jersey & take out Liberty Island, which has a real symbolic value.:eek:
 
On one hand, there are Russians who would do anything for money. On the other hand, who is the US going to blame for this? The Rodina, of course.

Scary thing is that there are some Russians (a very extreme minority of course) who would be ok with this.
 
Sort of, I remember reading some old Niven stories about the concept, mentioned by name, so I think it probably existed at least in theoretical form

Flash Mobs that is

Of course a Niven Flash Mob requires cheap physical teleportation of live humans ...
I don't really see that happening this millennium
 
Correction to my own post Scud - B
......
Not sure just how ASB it is for a bunch of Al Quaida to manage to launch one of these sucessfully. We are talking about the kind of folk who can forget to set their timers on their bombs to daylight savings time, and have them blow up in transport.

Gee, I thought that was a Hamas speciality,
and wasn't it more about refusing to acknowledge "Zionist Time" ?

Good riddance to bad rubbish seems strangely appropriate
 
If you're willing to steal from JSF, what about an LNG tanker in New York harbor? It could light off storage tanks in New Jersey & take out Liberty Island, which has a real symbolic value.:eek:

There isn't a LNG terminal anywhere in NY or NJ, so there isn't the opportunity to attack one in any of the harbors around NYC. Someone hijacking that ship is going to get noticed big time. Since they don't move very fast and are very large, they will be easy to find. Their best bet is to lay an ambush where the ships go to unload.

lng-carrier-boston.jpg


Look how close the ship is to shore in Boston Harbor. Put someone with the right kind of rocket in one of those apartments and they can hit the ship and possibly detonate it.

It's one of the reasons they want to build offshore terminals for LNG

Torqumada
 
There isn't a LNG terminal anywhere in NY or NJ, so there isn't the opportunity to attack one in any of the harbors around NYC. Someone hijacking that ship is going to get noticed big time. Since they don't move very fast and are very large, they will be easy to find. Their best bet is to lay an ambush where the ships go to unload.

lng-carrier-boston.jpg


Look how close the ship is to shore in Boston Harbor. Put someone with the right kind of rocket in one of those apartments and they can hit the ship and possibly detonate it.

It's one of the reasons they want to build offshore terminals for LNG

Torqumada

thanks for the pics....I am planning this TL already:D:D:D
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Nerve Gas 9/11: on September 11, 2001, terrorists release VX gas into the New York Subway system.

Poison 9/11: on September 11, 2001, terrorists release cyanide into New York and Washington D.C. water supply.

Scud 9/11: Al Qaeda manages to buy a cargo ship, and a scud missile, fit the scud on the cargo ship, sneak close to the U.S. east coast, and target the White House.

ICBM 9/11: due to careful bribery, Al Qaeda secured a mobile Topol ICBM, and launched the missile at the U.S.

Bush Dead 9/11: terrorists get hold of a LOT of explosives, and a truck, and blow it up outside the primary school he is visiting, Killing incumbent president, George Bush

Ehhh….Wrong guy….I think: after 9/11 (goes as in OTL), Osama Bin Laden is found to be hiding in….Iraq?????(in OTL, Rumsfield tried to frame Iraq at first)

So, which one of these is the most probable???and why?
After my smallpox 9/11, I’m gonna concentrate on another 9/11 TL
.....one of the above

1) A religious sect in Japan used nerve gas twice, so quite plausible. I would say less impact than actual 9/11.
2) Buy scud, sure. Scud will miss, most likely. The scud was built to be fired in groups. "To fire up a grid square", or kill one square kilometer. Think of it as long range (100 mile) artillery.
3) ICBM, don't see it.
4) Dead Bush, no.

The nerve gas is easiest. If you have a trained chemist, then you can make at least low quality nerve gas. The results in Japan would be disappointing to Osama. Making large quantities of pure nerve gas is beyond their ability.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
launching what amounts to a 1950s era V-2 from the deck of a cargo vessel - at the White House. I think the Circular Error on a Scud is something like 2 miles...so you could aim for the White House, but hit anywhere from RFK Stadium to The Watergate Hotel.

A soviet scud, launched from land is closer to 400m. Sadam modified them for range, making them much less accurate.
 
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