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Re: OT: Debian Mailinglist server slow?



On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 12:22:21AM +0200, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:24:56 +1200, cr <cr@orcon.net.nz> wrote:
> > Never do it the easy simple way if you can do it
> > the hard complicated way.    ;)
> > 
> > Incidentally, even the truck-on-the-line won't normally cause a huge
> > death toll.   Trains are remarkably crash-resistant things.   If you
> > want to kill heaps of people, an airliner's a *much* better bet.
> 
> ..in the open, I agree, train impact survivors just escape into the
> neighborhood or the surrounding terrain.  Now, try that in a tunnel, 
> and then consider the common major metropolitan rush hour numbers.

True. But the difficulty of setting up a collision is correspondingly
much greater. An exploit on the signalling system alone probably isn't
enough; you'd have to coordinate it with a hijack of at least one
train, and you'd have a job to get it done quickly enough to avoid
someone noticing something odd was going on and cutting the
power. Again, there are far simpler methods of inducing disaster:
starting a fire, for instance, or using nerve gas, like in Japan. In
fact, if you stood at one end of a crowded Underground platform and
shouted "Nerve gas! Nerve gas!" you'd probably cause a fairly severe
death toll as people panicked and trampled each other to death, pushed
each other onto the track etc.

-- 
Pigeon

Be kind to pigeons
Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F

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