Airport Security Theater

The security checks at airports serve very little use in preventing the destruction (through a small explosion) of an aeroplane, given that after going through the security checks it is perfectly trivial to buy large quantities of pressurised containers and accelerants.On the other hand making sure no one has guns on a plane seems worth queueing at the metal detectors for. Maybe that is just me being anti-gun though...

You can't crash airliner because you can't get into cabin anymore. So most terrorists can do is kill everyone on board, which is the same as to blow a bomb elsewhere (you underestimated potential harm of bomb in security line), and they already are doing that. So those rigorous checkings in airports only hurt normal people, and do nothing for security.

Don't know what security on airports would think about that one today, heh.

Wouldn't that be detonating the bomb on the airport instead? This whole security theater only plays into terrorists' hands. Yes, it may be more difficult to board a plane with explosives nowadays, but on the other hand we have hundreds of people stuck in a line trying to pass through security one-by-one, dropping potential liquid explosives into a single bin!

Two things have made the US safer1- Pilots with guns & keeping the doors closed for the full flight2- Passengers not willing to allow others on the plane do harm to the plane. If passengers see things happen now, they will stand up and makes attempts to stop them. We won't have a 9/11 style hijacking. Even if someone gets a box cutter in, people will take them down before they'll let them take the plane.I can't imagine how these body scanners would make us significantly safer.

I think you are right.Being in a closed cabin at 30,000 feet means that the size of the explosion has to be a lot smaller than on the ground to have the same impact. Additionally, guns can lead to lead to 9/11 situations.More importantly, TSA probably won't defend against a state level threat, but it keeps crazy people from doing ridiculous stuff. Take a look at this pre-security list of incidents: (remember, a lot less people flew back then)<a href="https://en.wi

Before 9/11, you didn't even need to have a weapon. Often saying that you had a bomb on you would be enough (just like how some robbers only use a note they pass to the teller). People don't do it anymore because they know passengers will fight back after seeing what happened to the hijacked 9/11 flights.

How about just seeing if they are carrying a bomb? The additional scope creep reduces the chance of a bomb being detected.Sure, a trained person can probably kill with dental floss, but nowadays between the armored cockpits and the willingness of passengers to swarm a bad guy the risks of anything but a bomb are pretty low.

Being given control of the aircraft is secondary. You've condemned 200 odd people to death cause of one person on the flight. A small bomb, any thing to disrupt the flight will do that. (This is very easy as opposed to going to a theater or other urban crowded locations and staying alive long enough to take out that many people). The point being your only option is to lose everyone on the plane. Is that a casualty you're willing to accept. Security works by deterrence. If every time so

It's important to remember that bombs are only ever dangerous on planes, and nobody would ever think of detonating a bomb in a packed security queue.