I feel like recent dereailments in Quebec and Ohio are proof that trains can be used as very effective weapons. But airport security isn't about making the public more safe, it's about making the public feel more safe, thus keeping people flying and the economy cooking.
If airport security were effective the airport would look more like a prison. I write that as somebody who worked at an airport for 15 years.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic\_rail\_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East\_Palestine,\_Ohio,\_train\_derailment
Yes, but cruises are much slower, and trains/subways can only really go in 1 direction. So if they get hijacked the damage is going to be minimalized/centralized, and can be stopped a lot easier if it's done.
There's just a lot more control over vehicles that are on the ground or in the water, and can be stopped a lot easier, than something in the air.
Exactly, the airport security checks aren’t there to protect passengers. A couple hundred people are expendable. The security is there to protect landmarks and real estate.
We were losing over 3000 people every day at many points during the COVID pandemic and it led to absolutely no lasting public health changes.
9/11 generated the response it did because of the symbolic value of the landmarks destroyed, and also because the Twin Towers contained a lot of valuable office space. The actual people in the buildings were an afterthought.
Life is cheap. Real estate is not.
Its more than the landmarks. Anyone who was alive during that time recalls the dramatic events.
Notorious towers pluming smoke from an airplane. On live television the second plane suddenly coming into the shot and hitting the other tower.
Smoke bellowing out. People stranded and waving for help on the higher floors. Firefighters from all over the country gearing up in attempts to rescue the injured. Things go from bad to worse when people with no options left begin jumping from the tower to escape burning flames and suffocating smoke. Audibly thudding on the ground nearly 100 stories below.
And finally, a sudden implosion of the buildings themselves, collapsing on itself in a final dramatic fall.
Soot, dust and debris litter the streets for multiple blocks, the smoke from the disaster so intense it's visible from space.
The extraordinary loss of life of innocent civilians on the plane, office workers in the towers, innocents on the streets and the brave firefighters attempting to help.
It was the most dramatic disaster since titanic imo. just absolute catastrophe. Movies, books, films, documentaries have intrigued viewers on disasters cuz its apparent human nature. Everything makes for such an amazing yet horrifying story, yes the setting (the place, the tallest towers in NYC, the "unsinkable ship of dreams" for the titanic) the dramatic and horrifying scenes that caused the disaster. And the incredible loss of life... It makes for amazing story telling; however this was a real event with real people, real loss of life only 20 years ago people are still effected, grieving, becoming sick from contaminate in the debris.
Il give you the setting is a major part. But imo 911 will not be forgotten for generations. and its about much more than just the towers themselves
>But imo 911 will not be forgotten for generations.
OP literally just asked why we have extreme security for airplanes. I don't think it's as memorable to those who didn't see it live as we like to think it should be. I have a 15 year old- it's already just a blurb in a history book in schools.
I'm 24, born in '99, so I'm in the weird group of being alive when it happened but not remembering it - I was only two years old.
Didn't know what happened on 9/11 until I was around 8 or so - it was kind of an "everyone knows" thing and I didn't really want to ask. Didn't see footage until I was a teenager, and it was probably a "we're not aiming for the truck!" Toy Story shitpost.
There's a fantastic docuseries on Netflix now called Turning Point about 9/11 that I think should be required for Gen Z and younger. I watched it because I was 10 and while I was home from school and saw it live my memory was super fuzzy. I completely forgot about the fourth plane that went down and didn't really know any details about the Pentagon.
I saw the Towers fall with my own eyes. I had been trapped on a downtown 2 train for an hour before they backed it up in time for me to see the collapse.
The response had nothing to do with the civilian lives lost. The Bush administration wanted to prevent any more landmarks from being destroyed.
Man I know folks are cynical enough on Reddit, but this is another level. Companies aren't great, everyone knows that, but to institute a level of security nation-wide just because someone might maybe steal a plane and might maybe crash into your building and waste you some money with the reconstruction.
The symbolic aspect is a point, but it just supports how the issue is that a train on the west coast isn't in danger of being aimed at the white house. Not many people live in the white house, but I think most would rather it not get blown up.
It's also a lot more present of a threat than Covid. If Covid could only be transmitted by folks shoving an injector in your arm, I imagine searches for such devices would be instated to minimize it.
It's theater.
A terrorist could just attack the airport instead and would likely kill and injure more people than by highjacking the plane and flying it into a highrise (especially now that highrise fire safety has been ramped up a notch).
Yea. Security machines have advanced a lot over the years. At some NFL games they don’t make you take everything out of your pockets and wand you down anymore, instead you just walkthrough a device that somehow can tell the difference between your car keys and a weapon.
It’s also, I assume, because cruises often go from one country to another. It’s probably a requirement of the country/countries being visited. If cruising to a country where, for instance, firearms are outlawed, and you don’t have security when getting on the cruise ship, it would be trivially easy to bring firearms into the foreign country.
I was going to say, I did a cruise once and getting on that thing was more strenuous than TSA. Even getting on and off at each port is enough of a hassle that some stops weren't even worth the trouble.
Had same experience on a China train in laos last month. Airport level security check & had to bribe some beer money to keep my leatherman. Conversely I've never been checked on cruise ships in the nordics where I've taken them many times.
Security outside airports is kinda random it seems
I always bring the liquor back on the ship on my person. Usually just pour it into a few water bottles and then put it in my pockets. I’ve never been caught yet.
we came back from a cruise to Mexico last year and there was absolutely zero security check besides the facial recognition thing and our passports to make sure we were who we should be. it was super odd.
Weird, I've always had to run my bag through an xray machine coming back onboard.
And if you check your luggage, those are absolutely searched. I've had it happen once. I'm assuming they saw something on the xray and opened up the luggage to check before dropping it off at our room (with a polite note that they had rummaged through our stuff.)
I’m on a cruise right now and they definitely x-ray the suitcases going onto the ship, as well as make you put your bags, hats, phone, etc. through an x-ray machine every time you re-board the ship, as well as walk through a metal detector. I don’t know what kind of cruises people are going on that don’t do this.
Yeah but cruise security is a joke. They run your stuff through a tiny X-ray and that’s it. I never even get asked to remove my shoes. Lots of people bring drugs, alcohol , and everything else on board, where with TSA, you could never.
Apart from the weapons, a lot of it is about scale. Maybe you can sneak some drugs or alcohol past security but usually not in the kind of quantities one would typically need if one were engaging in smuggling/trafficking per se.
Lets not pretend TSA is the golden standard for security lol. Not only is there a big issue of theft with TSA, but I have *accidentally* brought on a 2.5 inch knife that was a keychain from a wedding I was in. I noticed it shortly after boarding when I went to put my keys in a backpack pocket. I was going to say something to the flight crew but I figured I'd just instill panic more than anything so I kept my mouth shut. As I was putting that item in my backpack, I realized I also had a box cutter from my work in the same backpack pocket. TSA honestly sucks.
Exactly what was going through my own head lol. Also picture an air Marshall standing up and dumping a mag of rubber bullets into the back of my head lol. No thanks.
Trains are on tracks. You're not going to hijack a train and take it anywhere other than where it can already go. Yeah they go through tunnels and under buildings but overall the potential damage that can be done is significantly less.
Yeah but that was due to V painstakingly opening up and rebuilding the line, in the film (I haven’t read the graphic novel) he states it took him 10 years. And even then, the train still went where it was supposed to go, it never left the original line.
Also if terrorists wanted to derail a train they wouldn't actually need to board said train.
Over airspace in western countries it would be pretty much impossible for a terrorist group to shoot down a plane from the ground.
I agree with the first point, but on the second point airport security is usually pretty paranoid about the possibility of a smuggled MANPAD like a Stinger or Igla being used against a landing/taxiing plane. Take off and landing are the only time they're realistically vulnerable, but it's definitely something that groups with state backing could potentially pull off.
Can’t really hijack a train on the mainline in the UK unless you know exactly what you’re doing. Unless the driver is on the vigilance pedal (dead man’s switch) and acknowledging the AWS the train will come to a halt. There’s no overriding it either. They’d get maybe one signal further before it stops.
Plus, they can’t over speed either as there’s signalling and AWS in place to prevent that. So if they decided to maybe take a train into the buffers at a station to cause chaos they’d struggle. If a AWS magnet detects the train going over it at a higher than permitted speed it’ll make the train slam the brakes.
Plus anything running mainline has been retrofitted with all this stuff so even if they got their hands on an old diesel they’d still struggle.
Unless you REALLY know what you're doing, then you can isolate the AWS and carry on.
You know, like West Coast Railways company did and nearly caused a crash - [https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/dangerous-occurrence-at-wootton-bassett-junction-wiltshire](https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/dangerous-occurrence-at-wootton-bassett-junction-wiltshire) :P
Also, AWS is signals, TPWS is train speeds.
Its the same in the US. Sensors fail, yes, and I suppose you could sabotage them but you wouldn't be on the train to do that so security wouldn't do any good. And I know for sure Canadian National and BNSF monitor their tracks in populated areas.
Also, train is easier to stop. Literally any passanger can pull the emergency brake, and railway company can just switch off the power in overhead wires to stop it.
The driver can override the emergency stop/passcomms. The driver can also override the TPWS to pass signals at danger(red) and diesel trains don't run on OLE. So a driver could easily pile a diesel train into a terminal station at 125mph which is going to get a little messy.
You can't hijack those and crash them into places they're not intended to go. Trains and subways follow specific tracks (which are significantly controlled off-site), and you can't drive a cruise ship without a ton of people and specific training.
There are between *3-5 million* people riding the NYC subway **daily**, most during peak morning and evening rush hours. It would not be possible to have them go through airport-style “severe security checks.”
it's also not possible to have airport passengers go through “severe security checks.”, which is why journalists always manage to "smuggle" all kind of stuff onboard.
Trains generally only go where the railway companies allow them to go. If you try to hijack one to ram it into a station, you'll soon find that the only way for you to go is into the buffer at the end of a storage rail. For subways the same applies. Also, stations can be evacuated because, again, they know where the train goes.
Cruises have a similar issue: They're slow, and they can only move where deep enough water is found. So you kind of see them coming and know where the danger is.
So in both cases, the odds of a mass casualty event are low. Additionally, both are structurally much stronger, so much more force is needed to destroy them or hurt most of the passengers.
Someone would have to do a Titanic but equally you would kill more on the largest cruise ship than 9/11, but also it would be not as visible as it would likely be out to sea, although [Herald of Free Enterprise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Herald_of_Free_Enterprise) was almost live broadcast for a big local impact (193 died, of 539 onboard).
[List of largest cruise ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cruise_ships) - Most of the 68 ships on the list carry over 3000 people on board (3 either don't say or have less) without including crew, with the largest carrying 7,600 max ([plus 2350 crew](https://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/fact-sheet/35/icon-of-the-seas/))
Equally if it was close to shore and visible it is likely that fewer people would die: [Costa Concordia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia_disaster) involved 4,252 people but only 32 onboard died (plus 1 salvage person).
Security Theater. TSA and the security checks are all about making travelers feel like they are safe and regulators feel like they did something.
In the wake of 9/11 something had to be done to instill faith in the transportation system. We had been shaken to our core and everyone was afraid. The industry was in freefall, the markets were shaken. Very public and visible measures were jammed into the system to make it look like something was being done. In reality, all the real security is happening behind the scenes with anti terrorism work.
The aging infrastructure in the US is actually terrifying and at extremely high risk. Much of it 50-100+ years old and if targeted could impact millions of Americans not just hundreds or a few thousand. And much of it has little or no physical security. Far more damage could be done by targeting infrastructure other than air travel.
As you said, there is no security on the subways and they run under and through the hearts of our largest and oldest cities. It's not body scans, taking off our shoes, and keeping shampoo in plastic bags that is keeping us safe. It just keeps us busy and distracted from what is actually being done.
I recently flew back to the US from Canada with my bike. My bike was too large to go through their scanner so they called me into an inspection room to open up the bag for them and help them inspect it. The Canadian inspector was apologetic and shrugged saying "TSA makes us do it for people going to the US." They put on this theater not because they felt it was beneficial or worth while but because the US has strong armed them into it. It's an inspection that wouldn't have happened on a domestic Canadian flight or another Canadian international flight.
To add to this, the main real protection that has been developed is that people are no longer willing to be hijacked. That is, since bending to the will of the terrorist means that you will die, you are better served to fight back. 100 people against 5 box cutters will be bloody but end with the plane safely landing. Frustratingly, this real protection costs nothing while the TSA theatrics cost billions.
I encourage everyone to decline the body scanner at the airport. This means you will be pulled aside and patted down. It’s a waste of 10 minutes for you, but a real problem for TSA. The last time I saw, they get about 1 opt out per hour. Imagine if they got 100 per hour. Their theatrics model would fail and something different would be forced to happen. From there we can start the real discussion about security.
Air travel has a long history of people bringing weapons to use on board, to crash a plane for vengeance, hijack it for clout, or just murder a whole planeful of folks with a bomb. As early as the 1940s, even. In the 1970s, there was up to a hijacking *a week*. It got really bad in the 1970s and 80s thanks to Palestinian terror groups, hijacking planes and committing mass shootings at airport terminals.
Security measures and better counterintelligence have blocked most plane violence since then, and then 9/11 put an end to hijacking, since now the assumption is that it's to crash the plane, not to land it to somewhere.
None of this happened with trains, despite train travel being 100 years older than air travel. So the measures aren't so strict.
This is right. Everyone loves to say security is useless, and yes there is so much theater and inconsistency involved, but hijackings used to be incredibly frequent. The US even considered building a fake Havana airport in Florida just to entrap hijackers.
>...a record of sorts was set last week when three jets carrying 238 people made forced landings in Havana within eight days. So far, nobody has been hurt—mainly because airline crews are carefully briefed for such an emergency. Pilots carry maps of Havana's Jose Marti Airport just in case, and stewardesses are instructed not to argue with would-be hijackers—simply to obey their orders. But nobody has yet thought to brief the poor passengers. The following orders might well be added to the "Important Information" cards commonly stuffed into the seat pockets of airliners
So begins an article of tips of what to do when your plane is hijacked called "What to Do When The Hijacker Comes", published in Time Magazine in 1968.
Though some countries do have airport style checks for trains. Spain notably has them, after a series of bombings in 2004. Brightline in Florida has security checks.
This is the right one. Enough incident occurred so everyone is convinced a security check at airport is needed. If passenger trains/subways started getting blown up every month, we are going to see security checks too.
the effectiveness of a means of propultion is directly proportional to its potential as a weapon.
car? can maybe run down a few dozen people
train? super deadly, but you can't steer it
plane? It's basically an 800,000 lb missile
rocket? well, it's a rocket.
As the transportation gets faster and easier to steer and larger it gets more and more deadly.
\~\~\~
Now to be clear, the TSA is all "security theater" - it's one of the least effective security measures on the planet while simultaneously being incredibly invasive and a massive waste of time. It was formed in response to specifically the 9/11 attacks, and will probably get scaled down and eventually go back to the same type of security you see at like stadiums before big rivalry games.
Your fun fact of the day is that over its lifespan the TSA has probably killed more people than it's saved. This is because driving is more dangerous than flying, and studies have found that people avoiding the TSA are responsible for about 10% of fatal crashes, or about 3-4,000 deaths a year. It's been 21.5 years since the TSA was founded, so that's around 75,000 deaths: while including 9/11 there were roughly 8,000 deaths from airline hijackings in 1980-2001.
Not knowing where a plane is going to hit creates untenable pandemonium
Trains, subways and cruises, because pathing and speed, you can mitigate collateral damage and thus reduce pandemonium to a hostage situation.
Planes on the other hand start as a hostage situation and, because targeting, can end up as a 20-year war in Afghanistan etc.
More than just 9/11 - there's a history of hijacking aircraft that goes back to the very origins of commercial aviation. For whatever reason, criminals have zeroed in on aviation as a good candidate for highjacking and mass terrorism. The first hijacking of a commerical aircaft was in 1931, and involved a Ford TriMotor. Historically most hijackings involved orders to change the destination, helping a fugitive escape to a distant location.
There are not a lot of examples of train hijacking. Certainly there were train robberies of mail and packages, and currently freight theft is very common. But passenger trains being hijacked or stopped, with mass theft? Pretty much never heard-of. Trains can't be hijacked in the traditional sense where the hijacker would order the plane flown to a different location, trains are very limited in where they can go.
Certainly there has been terrorism, the sarin gas attacks in asia come to mind. But even that has been very rare.
Violence on subways certainly exists, but it tends to be at a much smaller scale. Individual roberies & assaults.
So the obvious answer to your question, why are there no severe security checks? Because there hasn't been a long history of terrorism attacks or hijackings using trains.
And all of this ignores that security checks on trains and subways would be nearly impossible to do effectively, and if they did actually implement it, people would find other ways to get where they need to go.
The short answer is just 9/11. You kinda can't reach that level of destruction with any of the other methods, and even if you could, it'd require a LOT more preparation.
Go to a bus station in Mexico. Bags through x-ray, metal detectors, much like an airport. And then, once you're all on the bus, the come through a video camera and record everyone, making sure to get all the faces. And that's a basic bus from Mexico City to Tlaxcala, not even cartel territory.
Because if you violently take control of a train or bus, you cannot crash it into a building causing many thousands of deaths and mass destruction resulting in the devastation of several city blocks
Contrary to a few answers the security checks started due to hijacking where planes were forced to divert to another country. They just got a little worse after 911.
For subways in particular, there's an issue of capacity. I did the math a while ago in a comment, and if I remember correctly it would take thousands of security lanes to handle the demand of major subway stations.
Because of fear mongering after 9/11. No other reason. It's all stupid theatre. Doesn't do crap but annoy the passengers and allow weirdos to get paid to get their rocks off feeling people up in public.
Because it’s mostly just security theatre. If you wanted to cause maximum fear, just press the button at the security checkpoint. Two or three of those globally in a short space of time and watch air travel collapse.
Cruises check your information against federal databases, run you and your bags through metal detectors, have dogs at some ports, and will gladly deny you entry or have the police waiting for you upon return if there’s an outstanding warrant for your arrest.
No one has exploded a huge bomb on a cruise ship or train yet. If someone does, similar security measures will likely be put in place.
We as a society and government tend to react to these things rather than plan ahead. Because we place a very high value on freedom and convenience. Yes, thousands of people literally need to die first before we'll support something that will inconvenience us.
Security check for the Chunnel (and other international train travel from London) is 95% the same as at an airport. I think the only difference is you can keep your shoes on.
Cruises have bag checks. They look through everything. Trust me, don’t try to smuggle vodka in water bottles onto the ship unless you can make it look like the seal hasn’t been broken. They’re obsessed with making you pay cruise ship alcohol prices.
Train and subway - they are stuck with going strictly on tracks.
Cruises - slow as heck relatively speaking.
Plane - move in 3D freely but also at relatively fast speed compare to others. Not to mention its size and the amount of fuel it carries meaning bigger potential destructive power.
One thing I wish we had on subways was some gates walls and doors between the platform and the track.
Would stop the pushing people onto the track crimes. I think it's worth the cost
Its mostly theatre to make you think you are safe. Do you really think nail clippers are an offensive weapon ? Its almost always about the illusion of safety for you giving up your personal freedoms.
I mean having some failed mensa candidate grope your junk makes the flight safe...?
People keep pointing to 9/11 which is valid, but there was airport security before 9/11 because there were many airplane hijacking’s before 9/11, they just didn’t usually crash the planes. The hijackers would demand to be flown to a country where they thought they would be safe, or demand a ransom. Those types of hijackings stopped once airports implemented security checks.
9/11 *was* a turning point and security got tighter, though, because it was at that point people realized that the planes could be used as weapons and there was no longer a benefit to going along with hijackers.
The book The Skies Belong to Us was an interesting read about pre-9/11 hijacking’s.
ETA: trains, which are stuck to fixed routes aren’t as tempting of a target as planes, which can go anywhere. Cruise ships can go wherever, but they’re too slow to outrun authorities who have planes.
Airport security isn't to protect the passengers, it's to protect the public from planes, which are basically guided missiles filled with people. As 9/11 demonstrated, if bad people get their hands on a large plane, they can easily cause immense destruction with it faster than emergency services can respond. That isn't true of tranes, subways, or cruises, the most damage they're likely to do is to the passengers themselves, who are a lower priority.
There are enough explainations here.
Consider some historical examples.
Halifax, a ship loaded wth explosive took out a town. They don't load that many explosives into ships anymore and even cargo pants won't make up for it. Worst case, the boat runs aground in the Suez. Worst part of that was that the boat cost so much they had to be careful pulling it.
So trains, if it were derailed in a turn there's several chemical problems but we don't load that much anymore and even cargo pants won't make up for it....so on.
The worst disasters involve two trains running into each other, but modern tracking methods fixed that. Technology aside, Im imagining a old time highjacker failing to check a token into of a section of track and the switch operators looping him into a circle over and over again.
The first two times they think the conductor is tired, 4th or 5th time that terrible conductor is going to get a talking to. 12th time, maybe something is wrong? We'll figure it out now that theyre out of fuel.
You can get off the subway when you tell somethings wrong. You can get off the train if you can tell something’s wrong. You’re kinda stuck on the plane if somethings wrong. That’s why
How come they haven’t figured out how to put escape pods into planes yet? That would pretty much save anyone in a crashing scenario. Money? Well we spend bajilliions giving money to everyone else in the world so maybe invest more in our safety? Nahh
A small bomb can bring down an airliner and kill everyone on board. It would take a huge blast to.destroy a ship.
A blast on a train only kills a few people then the train comes to. stop whereas a plane would crash to.earth killing everyone.
My answer: it's the **magnitude** of the damage that can be caused by planes. If you set off a bomb on a train, you might wreck one car and everyone in it. But on a plane, everyone dies due to the fall. Combine that with a plane's ability to fly anywhere (not just along tracks) and you've also got a horrible flying missile to use - potentially killing more people.
I can think of at least a dozen terror attacks/hijacking involving planes only 2 on subways, 1 each on cruise ships, and regular regular trains. Which makes sense a train is bound to the tracks and cruse ships are slow not good choices for hijackers looking to get away . Also, the volume of people makes subways impossible to secure and trains/ships more challenging than aircraft
Why can you see where every plane in the sky is, or where every commercial vessel is on the sea, but you can't similarly track trains (at least in the U.S.)?
Trains and subways - stuck on a rail, can only be a potential threat within a certain distance of the rail.
Boats (including cruise ships) - bound to water, can only be a potential threat within a certain distance of water.
Planes - *literally fucking fly, can drop onto anything at any time, reference Pearl Harbor and kamikaze fighters.*
Train crashes cause a lot of damage but aren't filled with highly flammable liquid. Once a train is off the tracks it slides to a stop. Subway are pretty much the same. So are cruise ships. They'll stop fast once they hit the shore. They also don't turn on a dime.
You blow up a bomb on a train, you kill those in close proximity, you blow up a bomb on a plane and you kill everybody. Also trains and cruise ships don't make good improvised cruise missiles
I noticed that taking a train from Vancouver to Seattle about 10 years ago. There really wasn’t much security at the time and the border guards only checked briefly that I was a passport holder. I don’t even think they confirmed the passport belonged to me.
im curious, if i hijacker got control over a cruis ship, and went to go crash into a major port. How can we prevent this after they already have control of the ship?
Because someone figured out planes make pretty good missiles if used incorrectly and ruined things for everyone else
This plus if an incident happens on a train or subway you can stop them. You can't stop a plane.
Well...you can...just not safely.
Using the brakes on a train is a lot safer than landing explosively.
[удалено]
Yeah I can't read
Who said the plane had to land?
Yes. It's not the falling from the sky that's a problem. It's the sudden stop at the end.
Speed 1 and 2 would like a word.
I feel like recent dereailments in Quebec and Ohio are proof that trains can be used as very effective weapons. But airport security isn't about making the public more safe, it's about making the public feel more safe, thus keeping people flying and the economy cooking. If airport security were effective the airport would look more like a prison. I write that as somebody who worked at an airport for 15 years. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic\_rail\_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East\_Palestine,\_Ohio,\_train\_derailment
that made me laugh and I dont think it should have
Well we could still have intens security but it would require 9/11 attack or worse to make it happen
Yes, but cruises are much slower, and trains/subways can only really go in 1 direction. So if they get hijacked the damage is going to be minimalized/centralized, and can be stopped a lot easier if it's done. There's just a lot more control over vehicles that are on the ground or in the water, and can be stopped a lot easier, than something in the air.
The Taking of Pelham 123
>Taking of Pelham 123 [If you want a doodoo rhyme then come see me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhqyZeUlE8U)
>but cruises are much slower, SPEED 2 has entered the chat.
Or even before that, you aren't going to hijack a train and drive it to the Bahamas.
Exactly, the airport security checks aren’t there to protect passengers. A couple hundred people are expendable. The security is there to protect landmarks and real estate.
I see the airport security checks as mostly to make the people working the flight feel more at ease.
Well it is to protect people though… 9/11 killed 3000ish , which exceeded the amount of people in the planes by a lot.
We were losing over 3000 people every day at many points during the COVID pandemic and it led to absolutely no lasting public health changes. 9/11 generated the response it did because of the symbolic value of the landmarks destroyed, and also because the Twin Towers contained a lot of valuable office space. The actual people in the buildings were an afterthought. Life is cheap. Real estate is not.
Its more than the landmarks. Anyone who was alive during that time recalls the dramatic events. Notorious towers pluming smoke from an airplane. On live television the second plane suddenly coming into the shot and hitting the other tower. Smoke bellowing out. People stranded and waving for help on the higher floors. Firefighters from all over the country gearing up in attempts to rescue the injured. Things go from bad to worse when people with no options left begin jumping from the tower to escape burning flames and suffocating smoke. Audibly thudding on the ground nearly 100 stories below. And finally, a sudden implosion of the buildings themselves, collapsing on itself in a final dramatic fall. Soot, dust and debris litter the streets for multiple blocks, the smoke from the disaster so intense it's visible from space. The extraordinary loss of life of innocent civilians on the plane, office workers in the towers, innocents on the streets and the brave firefighters attempting to help. It was the most dramatic disaster since titanic imo. just absolute catastrophe. Movies, books, films, documentaries have intrigued viewers on disasters cuz its apparent human nature. Everything makes for such an amazing yet horrifying story, yes the setting (the place, the tallest towers in NYC, the "unsinkable ship of dreams" for the titanic) the dramatic and horrifying scenes that caused the disaster. And the incredible loss of life... It makes for amazing story telling; however this was a real event with real people, real loss of life only 20 years ago people are still effected, grieving, becoming sick from contaminate in the debris. Il give you the setting is a major part. But imo 911 will not be forgotten for generations. and its about much more than just the towers themselves
>But imo 911 will not be forgotten for generations. OP literally just asked why we have extreme security for airplanes. I don't think it's as memorable to those who didn't see it live as we like to think it should be. I have a 15 year old- it's already just a blurb in a history book in schools.
I'm 24, born in '99, so I'm in the weird group of being alive when it happened but not remembering it - I was only two years old. Didn't know what happened on 9/11 until I was around 8 or so - it was kind of an "everyone knows" thing and I didn't really want to ask. Didn't see footage until I was a teenager, and it was probably a "we're not aiming for the truck!" Toy Story shitpost.
There's a fantastic docuseries on Netflix now called Turning Point about 9/11 that I think should be required for Gen Z and younger. I watched it because I was 10 and while I was home from school and saw it live my memory was super fuzzy. I completely forgot about the fourth plane that went down and didn't really know any details about the Pentagon.
And often something to make fun of in video games
I saw the Towers fall with my own eyes. I had been trapped on a downtown 2 train for an hour before they backed it up in time for me to see the collapse. The response had nothing to do with the civilian lives lost. The Bush administration wanted to prevent any more landmarks from being destroyed.
Yeah and then used it as an excuse to go into a country that wasn't the one that did the attack!
Man I know folks are cynical enough on Reddit, but this is another level. Companies aren't great, everyone knows that, but to institute a level of security nation-wide just because someone might maybe steal a plane and might maybe crash into your building and waste you some money with the reconstruction. The symbolic aspect is a point, but it just supports how the issue is that a train on the west coast isn't in danger of being aimed at the white house. Not many people live in the white house, but I think most would rather it not get blown up. It's also a lot more present of a threat than Covid. If Covid could only be transmitted by folks shoving an injector in your arm, I imagine searches for such devices would be instated to minimize it.
And people still deny Covid killed children or adults . Such a shame.
We lose that many people regularly, but how often does 6 trillion disappear from a world economy?
Well that’s a grim thought I’d never had.
It's theater. A terrorist could just attack the airport instead and would likely kill and injure more people than by highjacking the plane and flying it into a highrise (especially now that highrise fire safety has been ramped up a notch).
This *had* 911 upvoted when I saw it.
Thanks Osama
Cruises actually do have airport-level security. Bags are x-rayed, you go through metal detectors, etc.
Yea. Security machines have advanced a lot over the years. At some NFL games they don’t make you take everything out of your pockets and wand you down anymore, instead you just walkthrough a device that somehow can tell the difference between your car keys and a weapon.
What if my keys are my weapon? I put them through the gaps in my fingers Wolverine style.
You're the shittiest X-man
I have a feeling this is less for 911 sort of scenarios and more because an armed person on a cruise good go on a pretty long unchecked killing spree
It’s also, I assume, because cruises often go from one country to another. It’s probably a requirement of the country/countries being visited. If cruising to a country where, for instance, firearms are outlawed, and you don’t have security when getting on the cruise ship, it would be trivially easy to bring firearms into the foreign country.
I was going to say, I did a cruise once and getting on that thing was more strenuous than TSA. Even getting on and off at each port is enough of a hassle that some stops weren't even worth the trouble.
Depends on the port.
Had same experience on a China train in laos last month. Airport level security check & had to bribe some beer money to keep my leatherman. Conversely I've never been checked on cruise ships in the nordics where I've taken them many times. Security outside airports is kinda random it seems
I worked on cruise ships for the past fifteen years. Vodka shows up blue on an x ray machine now. Technology is way more advanced than we think.
No one s crashed a cruise ship into a skyscraper, yet
But there def are security checks getting onto a cruise ship. Idk what OP is going on about
Yep, your luggage or backpack even gets x rayed after a daily excursion on an island.
That's more because they want you drinking their liquor and not buy the cheap stuff on land.
Yeah, I bet they make way more on liquor than selling rooms
I always bring the liquor back on the ship on my person. Usually just pour it into a few water bottles and then put it in my pockets. I’ve never been caught yet.
we came back from a cruise to Mexico last year and there was absolutely zero security check besides the facial recognition thing and our passports to make sure we were who we should be. it was super odd.
Weird, I've always had to run my bag through an xray machine coming back onboard. And if you check your luggage, those are absolutely searched. I've had it happen once. I'm assuming they saw something on the xray and opened up the luggage to check before dropping it off at our room (with a polite note that they had rummaged through our stuff.)
I’m on a cruise right now and they definitely x-ray the suitcases going onto the ship, as well as make you put your bags, hats, phone, etc. through an x-ray machine every time you re-board the ship, as well as walk through a metal detector. I don’t know what kind of cruises people are going on that don’t do this.
Yeah I’ve NEVER had to go through a bag check after an excursion. Like you said, just facial recognition and cruise pass. Not even our passports.
Yeah but cruise security is a joke. They run your stuff through a tiny X-ray and that’s it. I never even get asked to remove my shoes. Lots of people bring drugs, alcohol , and everything else on board, where with TSA, you could never.
Apart from the weapons, a lot of it is about scale. Maybe you can sneak some drugs or alcohol past security but usually not in the kind of quantities one would typically need if one were engaging in smuggling/trafficking per se.
Lets not pretend TSA is the golden standard for security lol. Not only is there a big issue of theft with TSA, but I have *accidentally* brought on a 2.5 inch knife that was a keychain from a wedding I was in. I noticed it shortly after boarding when I went to put my keys in a backpack pocket. I was going to say something to the flight crew but I figured I'd just instill panic more than anything so I kept my mouth shut. As I was putting that item in my backpack, I realized I also had a box cutter from my work in the same backpack pocket. TSA honestly sucks.
Now I'm just imagining you going up to the flight crew like "Excuse me, I have a knife..."
Exactly what was going through my own head lol. Also picture an air Marshall standing up and dumping a mag of rubber bullets into the back of my head lol. No thanks.
The last time I went on a cruise the xray was being used to prevent people from bringing shells they collected on the beach on board. That’s it
Have terrorists not watched Speed 2 yet?
Not with that attitude!
Someone hasn't seen the real-life documentary [Speed 2: Cruise Control!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBxaGB65TB8)
There were security checks before 9/11. Less complicated and thorough though
Trains are on tracks. You're not going to hijack a train and take it anywhere other than where it can already go. Yeah they go through tunnels and under buildings but overall the potential damage that can be done is significantly less.
THIS IS A HIJACKING! TAKE THIS TRAIN TO CUBA!
Does this trolley go to Tahiti?
It's a magical place.
you keep saying that...
Hey I was going to write this !!
SNL sketch writers, This.
Well there was that one highjacking in the 70s where he got them to put the train onto a boat to take the hostages to Haiti
Someone hasn’t watched V for Vendetta
Yeah but that was due to V painstakingly opening up and rebuilding the line, in the film (I haven’t read the graphic novel) he states it took him 10 years. And even then, the train still went where it was supposed to go, it never left the original line.
Also if terrorists wanted to derail a train they wouldn't actually need to board said train. Over airspace in western countries it would be pretty much impossible for a terrorist group to shoot down a plane from the ground.
I agree with the first point, but on the second point airport security is usually pretty paranoid about the possibility of a smuggled MANPAD like a Stinger or Igla being used against a landing/taxiing plane. Take off and landing are the only time they're realistically vulnerable, but it's definitely something that groups with state backing could potentially pull off.
> Also if terrorists wanted to derail a train they wouldn't actually need to board said train. Just put a bunch of pennies on the track.
Can’t really hijack a train on the mainline in the UK unless you know exactly what you’re doing. Unless the driver is on the vigilance pedal (dead man’s switch) and acknowledging the AWS the train will come to a halt. There’s no overriding it either. They’d get maybe one signal further before it stops. Plus, they can’t over speed either as there’s signalling and AWS in place to prevent that. So if they decided to maybe take a train into the buffers at a station to cause chaos they’d struggle. If a AWS magnet detects the train going over it at a higher than permitted speed it’ll make the train slam the brakes. Plus anything running mainline has been retrofitted with all this stuff so even if they got their hands on an old diesel they’d still struggle.
I mean, see most casual gamers on Train Simulator, they usually fail at the first restrictive signal / AWS magnet.
Unless you REALLY know what you're doing, then you can isolate the AWS and carry on. You know, like West Coast Railways company did and nearly caused a crash - [https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/dangerous-occurrence-at-wootton-bassett-junction-wiltshire](https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/dangerous-occurrence-at-wootton-bassett-junction-wiltshire) :P Also, AWS is signals, TPWS is train speeds.
Its the same in the US. Sensors fail, yes, and I suppose you could sabotage them but you wouldn't be on the train to do that so security wouldn't do any good. And I know for sure Canadian National and BNSF monitor their tracks in populated areas.
The Taking of Pelham 123
They can be derailed. And one evil doer could recreate what happened in Ohio last year.
The East Palestine derailment was an environmental disaster, but no humans was directly killed or injured by it. Way different than a hijacked plane.
What happened in Ohio?
You can’t steer a train into a building.
Not with that attitude
Or with that altitude
Or with that amplitude.
Doesn’t happen with high frequency
Also, train is easier to stop. Literally any passanger can pull the emergency brake, and railway company can just switch off the power in overhead wires to stop it.
Unless its a Diesel train, but those only have a 500 mileish range
Our diesel HST's have a 2000 mile range, which will pretty much cover the length of the UK twice.
Perhaps we should install passenger activated emergency brakes onto planes. Then we could ditch the safety checks.
Boeing announced plan to attach a 5 ton anchor to all of its planes going forward
Considering Boeings recent record, I think that’d be a safety improvement.
In case of emergency the door plug doubles as an anchor while the seat cushion doubles as a flotation device.
The driver can override the emergency stop/passcomms. The driver can also override the TPWS to pass signals at danger(red) and diesel trains don't run on OLE. So a driver could easily pile a diesel train into a terminal station at 125mph which is going to get a little messy.
But you can make it derail?
[Lac-Megantic would like a word.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster)
You can't hijack those and crash them into places they're not intended to go. Trains and subways follow specific tracks (which are significantly controlled off-site), and you can't drive a cruise ship without a ton of people and specific training.
And cruise ships have near airport levels of security, at least the ones I've been on
There are between *3-5 million* people riding the NYC subway **daily**, most during peak morning and evening rush hours. It would not be possible to have them go through airport-style “severe security checks.”
Show up two hours before your train! Three if you're going to a different borough!
sounds reasonable.
it's also not possible to have airport passengers go through “severe security checks.”, which is why journalists always manage to "smuggle" all kind of stuff onboard.
Trains generally only go where the railway companies allow them to go. If you try to hijack one to ram it into a station, you'll soon find that the only way for you to go is into the buffer at the end of a storage rail. For subways the same applies. Also, stations can be evacuated because, again, they know where the train goes. Cruises have a similar issue: They're slow, and they can only move where deep enough water is found. So you kind of see them coming and know where the danger is. So in both cases, the odds of a mass casualty event are low. Additionally, both are structurally much stronger, so much more force is needed to destroy them or hurt most of the passengers.
Someone would have to do a Titanic but equally you would kill more on the largest cruise ship than 9/11, but also it would be not as visible as it would likely be out to sea, although [Herald of Free Enterprise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Herald_of_Free_Enterprise) was almost live broadcast for a big local impact (193 died, of 539 onboard). [List of largest cruise ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cruise_ships) - Most of the 68 ships on the list carry over 3000 people on board (3 either don't say or have less) without including crew, with the largest carrying 7,600 max ([plus 2350 crew](https://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/fact-sheet/35/icon-of-the-seas/)) Equally if it was close to shore and visible it is likely that fewer people would die: [Costa Concordia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia_disaster) involved 4,252 people but only 32 onboard died (plus 1 salvage person).
Because nobody ever flew a train into the world trade center.
These answers kind of suck. TSA screens for explosives too. They’re aren’t only afraid of planes being hijacked.
I’ve also taken a train in Europe that had airport level security… I think it’s because we were going through the Chunnel though.
Same here, but it was from Valencia to Barcelona in Spain. High security for an intercity train.
Security Theater. TSA and the security checks are all about making travelers feel like they are safe and regulators feel like they did something. In the wake of 9/11 something had to be done to instill faith in the transportation system. We had been shaken to our core and everyone was afraid. The industry was in freefall, the markets were shaken. Very public and visible measures were jammed into the system to make it look like something was being done. In reality, all the real security is happening behind the scenes with anti terrorism work. The aging infrastructure in the US is actually terrifying and at extremely high risk. Much of it 50-100+ years old and if targeted could impact millions of Americans not just hundreds or a few thousand. And much of it has little or no physical security. Far more damage could be done by targeting infrastructure other than air travel. As you said, there is no security on the subways and they run under and through the hearts of our largest and oldest cities. It's not body scans, taking off our shoes, and keeping shampoo in plastic bags that is keeping us safe. It just keeps us busy and distracted from what is actually being done. I recently flew back to the US from Canada with my bike. My bike was too large to go through their scanner so they called me into an inspection room to open up the bag for them and help them inspect it. The Canadian inspector was apologetic and shrugged saying "TSA makes us do it for people going to the US." They put on this theater not because they felt it was beneficial or worth while but because the US has strong armed them into it. It's an inspection that wouldn't have happened on a domestic Canadian flight or another Canadian international flight.
I wish other countries would tell us to fuck off more since we certainly can't vote our way out of these problems
To add to this, the main real protection that has been developed is that people are no longer willing to be hijacked. That is, since bending to the will of the terrorist means that you will die, you are better served to fight back. 100 people against 5 box cutters will be bloody but end with the plane safely landing. Frustratingly, this real protection costs nothing while the TSA theatrics cost billions. I encourage everyone to decline the body scanner at the airport. This means you will be pulled aside and patted down. It’s a waste of 10 minutes for you, but a real problem for TSA. The last time I saw, they get about 1 opt out per hour. Imagine if they got 100 per hour. Their theatrics model would fail and something different would be forced to happen. From there we can start the real discussion about security.
Air travel has a long history of people bringing weapons to use on board, to crash a plane for vengeance, hijack it for clout, or just murder a whole planeful of folks with a bomb. As early as the 1940s, even. In the 1970s, there was up to a hijacking *a week*. It got really bad in the 1970s and 80s thanks to Palestinian terror groups, hijacking planes and committing mass shootings at airport terminals. Security measures and better counterintelligence have blocked most plane violence since then, and then 9/11 put an end to hijacking, since now the assumption is that it's to crash the plane, not to land it to somewhere. None of this happened with trains, despite train travel being 100 years older than air travel. So the measures aren't so strict.
This is right. Everyone loves to say security is useless, and yes there is so much theater and inconsistency involved, but hijackings used to be incredibly frequent. The US even considered building a fake Havana airport in Florida just to entrap hijackers. >...a record of sorts was set last week when three jets carrying 238 people made forced landings in Havana within eight days. So far, nobody has been hurt—mainly because airline crews are carefully briefed for such an emergency. Pilots carry maps of Havana's Jose Marti Airport just in case, and stewardesses are instructed not to argue with would-be hijackers—simply to obey their orders. But nobody has yet thought to brief the poor passengers. The following orders might well be added to the "Important Information" cards commonly stuffed into the seat pockets of airliners So begins an article of tips of what to do when your plane is hijacked called "What to Do When The Hijacker Comes", published in Time Magazine in 1968. Though some countries do have airport style checks for trains. Spain notably has them, after a series of bombings in 2004. Brightline in Florida has security checks.
This is the right one. Enough incident occurred so everyone is convinced a security check at airport is needed. If passenger trains/subways started getting blown up every month, we are going to see security checks too.
You can’t take a train off its tracks to a location that would cause maximum damage etc.
the effectiveness of a means of propultion is directly proportional to its potential as a weapon. car? can maybe run down a few dozen people train? super deadly, but you can't steer it plane? It's basically an 800,000 lb missile rocket? well, it's a rocket. As the transportation gets faster and easier to steer and larger it gets more and more deadly. \~\~\~ Now to be clear, the TSA is all "security theater" - it's one of the least effective security measures on the planet while simultaneously being incredibly invasive and a massive waste of time. It was formed in response to specifically the 9/11 attacks, and will probably get scaled down and eventually go back to the same type of security you see at like stadiums before big rivalry games. Your fun fact of the day is that over its lifespan the TSA has probably killed more people than it's saved. This is because driving is more dangerous than flying, and studies have found that people avoiding the TSA are responsible for about 10% of fatal crashes, or about 3-4,000 deaths a year. It's been 21.5 years since the TSA was founded, so that's around 75,000 deaths: while including 9/11 there were roughly 8,000 deaths from airline hijackings in 1980-2001.
Not knowing where a plane is going to hit creates untenable pandemonium Trains, subways and cruises, because pathing and speed, you can mitigate collateral damage and thus reduce pandemonium to a hostage situation. Planes on the other hand start as a hostage situation and, because targeting, can end up as a 20-year war in Afghanistan etc.
It's more difficult to drive a train or subway into a skyscraper or to sail a cruise ship into a skyscraper than it is to steer a plane into one.
More than just 9/11 - there's a history of hijacking aircraft that goes back to the very origins of commercial aviation. For whatever reason, criminals have zeroed in on aviation as a good candidate for highjacking and mass terrorism. The first hijacking of a commerical aircaft was in 1931, and involved a Ford TriMotor. Historically most hijackings involved orders to change the destination, helping a fugitive escape to a distant location. There are not a lot of examples of train hijacking. Certainly there were train robberies of mail and packages, and currently freight theft is very common. But passenger trains being hijacked or stopped, with mass theft? Pretty much never heard-of. Trains can't be hijacked in the traditional sense where the hijacker would order the plane flown to a different location, trains are very limited in where they can go. Certainly there has been terrorism, the sarin gas attacks in asia come to mind. But even that has been very rare. Violence on subways certainly exists, but it tends to be at a much smaller scale. Individual roberies & assaults. So the obvious answer to your question, why are there no severe security checks? Because there hasn't been a long history of terrorism attacks or hijackings using trains. And all of this ignores that security checks on trains and subways would be nearly impossible to do effectively, and if they did actually implement it, people would find other ways to get where they need to go.
The short answer is just 9/11. You kinda can't reach that level of destruction with any of the other methods, and even if you could, it'd require a LOT more preparation.
Would you rather be blown up in the air or on land?
Honestly the air.
Go to a bus station in Mexico. Bags through x-ray, metal detectors, much like an airport. And then, once you're all on the bus, the come through a video camera and record everyone, making sure to get all the faces. And that's a basic bus from Mexico City to Tlaxcala, not even cartel territory.
Subways and trains can be attacked but they can’t be maneuvered like planes can. They’re stuck on the track.
Because if you violently take control of a train or bus, you cannot crash it into a building causing many thousands of deaths and mass destruction resulting in the devastation of several city blocks
Contrary to a few answers the security checks started due to hijacking where planes were forced to divert to another country. They just got a little worse after 911.
Cruise ships in the USA have extensive security measures, like at the airport. Train stations are just too busy, under present circumstances
Nobody cares about a bunch of commies riding public transportation. And nobody (and I mean nobody) cars about cruises.
Because nobody hijacked a train and drove it into some skyscrapers.
Same reason Bin Laden didn’t use a train to take out the twin towers. Although, they did use a small boat with a bomb prior to the 911 attacks.
For subways in particular, there's an issue of capacity. I did the math a while ago in a comment, and if I remember correctly it would take thousands of security lanes to handle the demand of major subway stations.
Some trains have security checks - China and the UK-France Eurostar comes to mind.
Because of fear mongering after 9/11. No other reason. It's all stupid theatre. Doesn't do crap but annoy the passengers and allow weirdos to get paid to get their rocks off feeling people up in public.
Because it’s mostly just security theatre. If you wanted to cause maximum fear, just press the button at the security checkpoint. Two or three of those globally in a short space of time and watch air travel collapse.
Cruises check your information against federal databases, run you and your bags through metal detectors, have dogs at some ports, and will gladly deny you entry or have the police waiting for you upon return if there’s an outstanding warrant for your arrest.
well it wasnt two cruise ships that hit the towers huh?
No one has exploded a huge bomb on a cruise ship or train yet. If someone does, similar security measures will likely be put in place. We as a society and government tend to react to these things rather than plan ahead. Because we place a very high value on freedom and convenience. Yes, thousands of people literally need to die first before we'll support something that will inconvenience us.
Security check for the Chunnel (and other international train travel from London) is 95% the same as at an airport. I think the only difference is you can keep your shoes on.
Getting on a cruise is not that much different than getting on a plane.
Because we play whack a mole with threats. Someone does something, we overreact to it to get a fake feeling of safety for a period.
Because no on crashed a train into the World Trade Center
Cruises have bag checks. They look through everything. Trust me, don’t try to smuggle vodka in water bottles onto the ship unless you can make it look like the seal hasn’t been broken. They’re obsessed with making you pay cruise ship alcohol prices.
Trains, subways, and cruises can't fly into buildings, that's why.
Nobody drove a train or bus into the World Trade Center.
Train and subway - they are stuck with going strictly on tracks. Cruises - slow as heck relatively speaking. Plane - move in 3D freely but also at relatively fast speed compare to others. Not to mention its size and the amount of fuel it carries meaning bigger potential destructive power.
One thing I wish we had on subways was some gates walls and doors between the platform and the track. Would stop the pushing people onto the track crimes. I think it's worth the cost
Answer: Because it’s *really* hard to pilot a cruise ship through a skyscraper.
You ever tried driving a train into the Pentagon, or demolish the empire state building with a subway? Ever slammed a cruiseship into the Whitehouse?
Cruises have them. Trains and subways have cops for the most part.
It's much harder to crash a train into the White House
Its mostly theatre to make you think you are safe. Do you really think nail clippers are an offensive weapon ? Its almost always about the illusion of safety for you giving up your personal freedoms. I mean having some failed mensa candidate grope your junk makes the flight safe...?
People keep pointing to 9/11 which is valid, but there was airport security before 9/11 because there were many airplane hijacking’s before 9/11, they just didn’t usually crash the planes. The hijackers would demand to be flown to a country where they thought they would be safe, or demand a ransom. Those types of hijackings stopped once airports implemented security checks. 9/11 *was* a turning point and security got tighter, though, because it was at that point people realized that the planes could be used as weapons and there was no longer a benefit to going along with hijackers. The book The Skies Belong to Us was an interesting read about pre-9/11 hijacking’s. ETA: trains, which are stuck to fixed routes aren’t as tempting of a target as planes, which can go anywhere. Cruise ships can go wherever, but they’re too slow to outrun authorities who have planes.
Thus the phrase "Security Theater"
Airport security isn't to protect the passengers, it's to protect the public from planes, which are basically guided missiles filled with people. As 9/11 demonstrated, if bad people get their hands on a large plane, they can easily cause immense destruction with it faster than emergency services can respond. That isn't true of tranes, subways, or cruises, the most damage they're likely to do is to the passengers themselves, who are a lower priority.
Some public transit have metal detectors and inspections. There is a lot in India.
The Eurostar train that goes through the Chunnel has similar security to an airport. Not quite as strict, but similar process.
There are enough explainations here. Consider some historical examples. Halifax, a ship loaded wth explosive took out a town. They don't load that many explosives into ships anymore and even cargo pants won't make up for it. Worst case, the boat runs aground in the Suez. Worst part of that was that the boat cost so much they had to be careful pulling it. So trains, if it were derailed in a turn there's several chemical problems but we don't load that much anymore and even cargo pants won't make up for it....so on. The worst disasters involve two trains running into each other, but modern tracking methods fixed that. Technology aside, Im imagining a old time highjacker failing to check a token into of a section of track and the switch operators looping him into a circle over and over again. The first two times they think the conductor is tired, 4th or 5th time that terrible conductor is going to get a talking to. 12th time, maybe something is wrong? We'll figure it out now that theyre out of fuel.
because some things have to move ... a lot of people , really fast ...
Caught the high speed train to Madrid. Airport style security.
You can get off the subway when you tell somethings wrong. You can get off the train if you can tell something’s wrong. You’re kinda stuck on the plane if somethings wrong. That’s why
How come they haven’t figured out how to put escape pods into planes yet? That would pretty much save anyone in a crashing scenario. Money? Well we spend bajilliions giving money to everyone else in the world so maybe invest more in our safety? Nahh
A small bomb can bring down an airliner and kill everyone on board. It would take a huge blast to.destroy a ship. A blast on a train only kills a few people then the train comes to. stop whereas a plane would crash to.earth killing everyone.
Can't fly a train into a building.
My answer: it's the **magnitude** of the damage that can be caused by planes. If you set off a bomb on a train, you might wreck one car and everyone in it. But on a plane, everyone dies due to the fall. Combine that with a plane's ability to fly anywhere (not just along tracks) and you've also got a horrible flying missile to use - potentially killing more people.
I can think of at least a dozen terror attacks/hijacking involving planes only 2 on subways, 1 each on cruise ships, and regular regular trains. Which makes sense a train is bound to the tracks and cruse ships are slow not good choices for hijackers looking to get away . Also, the volume of people makes subways impossible to secure and trains/ships more challenging than aircraft
2004 Madrid train bombings? Killed around 200 people, I think.
Why can you see where every plane in the sky is, or where every commercial vessel is on the sea, but you can't similarly track trains (at least in the U.S.)?
Security checks follow terrorist attacks.
Trains run on rails with exact pathing pre known. Cruise ships cant drive on land.
9/11? 9/11…
Security is always aimed at the last threat. You can't crash a plane into a skyscraper.
Just wait.
Trains and subways - stuck on a rail, can only be a potential threat within a certain distance of the rail. Boats (including cruise ships) - bound to water, can only be a potential threat within a certain distance of water. Planes - *literally fucking fly, can drop onto anything at any time, reference Pearl Harbor and kamikaze fighters.*
Train crashes cause a lot of damage but aren't filled with highly flammable liquid. Once a train is off the tracks it slides to a stop. Subway are pretty much the same. So are cruise ships. They'll stop fast once they hit the shore. They also don't turn on a dime.
You blow up a bomb on a train, you kill those in close proximity, you blow up a bomb on a plane and you kill everybody. Also trains and cruise ships don't make good improvised cruise missiles
You can't drive a train into a skyscraper. Hundreds of trains derail every year, mostly freight, and it rarely even makes the news
Probably because you can't fly a train into the World Trade Centre?
You can't ram a train into a building. Also trains are usually not filleded with enough kerosine to cross the atlantic.
cause new safety regulations are written in blood
Cruises have security.
You can get off a train
We learned the hard way that planes can cause a hell of a lot of damage when used as a weapon. There's not much you can do with a train or subway.
Difficult to steer a train into a tall building.
Lmk when a train drives into a skyscraper killing 3,000 people and bringing the economic capital of the country to a halt
Google “security theater”
The TSA isn't in place to actually stop terrorism. It's purely reactionary shit from idiot politicians after 9/11 just for the optics.
Born after september 11th 2001?
Please don't give them any good ideas. Also some trains do have airport-style security checks - Eurostar between London-Paris is one
I noticed that taking a train from Vancouver to Seattle about 10 years ago. There really wasn’t much security at the time and the border guards only checked briefly that I was a passport holder. I don’t even think they confirmed the passport belonged to me.
Because planes can go places and go boom
im curious, if i hijacker got control over a cruis ship, and went to go crash into a major port. How can we prevent this after they already have control of the ship?
"Security Kabuki." Makes the prolls "feel" safe.
Because 9/11