Explosion in Manchester UK
- Thread starter Mr P
- 356 comments
- 16,711 views
- 1,433
- Northern Ireland
Without wanting to sound too morbid, there are much, much more likely ways to be killed than from terrorism. I don't have figures to hand (might try and do some rough calculations later), but I'd be 99.9% sure that a car crash en route to the concert/show would be one of them.
Assuming last night's concert was sold out, even if you knew in advance an attack was going to happen but went anyway, the odds of being killed would still have been about 1 in 1,000.
(EDIT, just for clarity: the odds of being a victim of terrorism at any particular public event - where you don't know in advance which one(s) are a target - can only be higher, likely by orders of magnitude.)
I know bringing up numbers/odds sounds very cold, and none of it will be of consolation to the victims, but with the unique way terrorism is covered and politicised, it becomes increasingly important to maintain perspective. If @Famine 's argument on principle doesn't convince you, statistics tell you the same thing - you absolutely don't need to fear how you live your life because of terrorism.
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- 1,831
- England
- Player_7421
- Player 7421
Thank you for that. That has calmed me down quite a bit.
- 1,971
- Seattle, WA
I believe 1 in 45,000 are the odds/numbers you are looking for, this is for the odds of being killed in a terror attack in general not just for last night's concert. I keep seeing them tossed around, no idea how valid they actually are, but the claim doesn't seem outlandish.
- 28,470
- Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Johnnypenso
My odds of dying in a car crash are pretty slim but it doesn't stop me from taking driver training or from being alert and aware at all times. Rational people act cautiously even when the possibility of disaster is very slim.
- 87,618
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
I must have missed the memo where pubs, pubs, hotels, restaurants, trains, parks, shops, hotels, a Remembrance Day service, railway stations, shops, railway stations, railway stations, Warrington town centre, a street, railway stations, Manchester, railway stations and countless town centres were military targets.
But you live and learn.
- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
It seems utterly outlandish.
I'm afraid that you simply might not know what you're talking about.
- 1,971
- Seattle, WA
Are you arguing that the IRA and ISIS/Al Qaeda and the nature of each conflict respectfully are one in the same? Because they are absolutely nothing alike. I'm not sure what you are driving at here. I didn't say the IRA did not attack civilian targets, I said they attacked military targets more often than not.
And frankly I find it rather offensive that comparisons are being made to the IRA in general. One scan of the media today (see ABC news) and you can see this foul comparison being made in the wake of a horrific terror attack on mostly young kids. Seems like an awful attempt to diminish the impact of this event to me.
- 87,618
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
I'm not sure that's a sentence any human being has ever conceived of before. To whom is it offensive, the civilian-targeting Irish republican paramilitary or the civilian-targeting Islamic State republican paramilitary - only I'm not sure you'll find anyone who has any opinion of either that isn't "They're all a bunch of 🤬."
Nope. I'm saying exactly what I originally said, which was that we didn't stop going to places out of fear that the IRA would blow us up in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and we sure as hell shouldn't stop going to places now out of fear that Da'esh will blow us up.
And as the IRA blew up our shopping centres, towns, railway stations and pubs, I think we had a great deal more to fear back then.
The IRA blew up the entire centre of Manchester in 1996. It was the second most expensive terrorist attack in history (and guess what? The IRA also did the most expensive terrorist attack in history) at the time, and they have only been surpassed by 9/11.
It injured 200 people with the Euro 96 match the following day (you know, kids just going to see football), the timing was a little callous to say the least.
Dotini
(Banned)
- 15,742
- Seattle
- CR80_Shifty
I see that several members have posted the odds of being killed in a terror attack are minuscule. Indeed so trivial that there is no justification for citizens to change their behavior. Just plain bad luck or statistical anomaly for those kids and their parents to have been killed in Manchester, eh? Not to worry, then. Paradoxically, governments have at least stated their good intentions to step up efforts to prevent such attacks with more barricades, police, detection and the like - though they all agree any amount of the measures will be insufficient to stop the truly determined individual from accomplishing their dirty work. In such an ambivalent moral environment, it may be pointless to go in search of root causes, because likely there is no going back, no possible change in the policies and actions which brought about this situation.
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- 1,971
- Seattle, WA
And I agreed with that part of your post, that we shouldn't give in.
And most of those injuries were from flying glass. Was the intent of the 1996 Manchester attack to inflict a maximum number of casualties in the most gruesome way possible? It certainly doesn't seem that way, it seems like the infrastructure was the target. Am I missing something here?
Yesterday ISIS was celebrating the deaths of children. I just don't see how this is a legitimate comparison to ISIS and other Jihadi terror groups. Again, what am I missing here?
- 1,433
- Northern Ireland
What makes it difficult to put a figure on it is establishing a set of assumptions that's actually informative about how terror attacks are targeted, and how people live their lives around those targets.
If you assumed that anyone, anywhere, could be a target, then generally the odds of being a victim of radical Islamic terror in the UK, in the past 12 years, would be roughly 1 in 650,000. If you assumed you were always going to be at the scene of each attack on the day, I think (and this is a very rough calculation) it falls to about 1 in 700. Neither of those assumptions are very useful though, so sensible answers probably (but not necessarily) lie somewhere in between.
I agree. Rational caution is a different matter from being overly fearful, which is what I was addressing.
Roo
Premium
- 7,445
- Hampshire, UK
- GTP_Roo
For personal interest I looked this up in the wake of the Westminster attacks.
Wikipedia, which references the government's own figures, put the number of people killed on Britain's roads at around 1,700 - 1,800 a year.
As it happens, The Telegraph ran an article today on the number of people killed in terrorist attacks in the UK - around 90. A House of Commons briefing paper from June 2016 suggests 53 from 11th September 2001 to the date of its publication (52 from the 7/7 bombings plus Lee Rigby); adding the 5 from Westminster, the 22 from Manchester and Jo Cox, who was murdered a week after the date of the paper, brings us to 81 in nearly 16 years. Obviously how you define a terror attack as opposed to murder affects the numbers. One other thing to note - these are only attacks on British soil, not UK, so don't include Northern Ireland.
tl;dr - about 6 deaths a year on average since 2001 from terror attacks compared to about 1,800 deaths a year on Britain's roads.
- 30,021
- Cuddington, Cheshire
- JDA1982
There's a young Muslim girl I manage at work, she's only 21 and she came in this morning looking just as sad and upset by what happened as the rest of us. Manchester is her home and she couldn't see the sense in what happened.
Anyone, and I mean anyone, who feels like the solution is to get rid of immigrants or those whom they percieve to be immigrants (there are a lot of British Muslim's in the UK born and raised here) are way wide of the mark.
There are extremeists in many cultures and walks of life, look at the man who killed Jo Cox, and we've already discussed the IRA (who have killed plenty of people during their time). There are plenty of attacks each year in different countries that are not caused by ISIS or Muslim extremists. Sure ISIS are a plague, but wanting to go after any and all Muslims is no less extreme than viewing the western world as evil.
Manchester for all it's faults is a city of people who are proud to stand together whatever race or religion and we're stronger for it.
Anyone, and I mean anyone, who feels like the solution is to get rid of immigrants or those whom they percieve to be immigrants (there are a lot of British Muslim's in the UK born and raised here) are way wide of the mark.
There are extremeists in many cultures and walks of life, look at the man who killed Jo Cox, and we've already discussed the IRA (who have killed plenty of people during their time). There are plenty of attacks each year in different countries that are not caused by ISIS or Muslim extremists. Sure ISIS are a plague, but wanting to go after any and all Muslims is no less extreme than viewing the western world as evil.
Manchester for all it's faults is a city of people who are proud to stand together whatever race or religion and we're stronger for it.
Robin
Premium
- 16,799
- United Kingdom
The UK threat level has been upgraded to the highest level 'critical' meaning an attack is immenent and the Army has been deployed. Wow.
They must have found something out from the investigation, maybe he is working with others.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40023488
They must have found something out from the investigation, maybe he is working with others.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40023488
- 17,337
- United Kingdom
This is just my two cents on the matter, your opinions may differ, but IRA proxy bombings are one of the most disgusting and repugnant acts of terrorism I can think of. They may not have had the body count but as a device that demonstrates a truly evil mindset it takes some beating in my opinion. The campaign of terror waged by the Irish minority lasted much longer than we've so far had to endure from the Islamic minority, and for me personally came much closer to murdering a family member than anything ISIS have done thus far. I wonder if there is much of a difference between Irish-Americans and American Muslims in how they view attacks made by people in their name.
- 30,021
- Cuddington, Cheshire
- JDA1982
They try all the time, it's inevitable that some will happen before anyone can act. You can't police people to the extent that you can stop things before they happen all the time. We're all poud that we live in a free society, if we start arrensting people on the basis that we think they are possibly going to do something before we are aware of them actively gaining the means to do it (i.e. building a bomb) then we're opening up pandoras box against freedom.Or it is a case of "we didn't catch this one, but at least we are now trying".
- 30,021
- Cuddington, Cheshire
- JDA1982
@Dennisch you tell me how you would monitor everyone who you suspect may be in some way connected to terrorist activity 24hrs a day?
We're constantly hearing reports of raids and bomb making equipment being seized and people being arrested due to connections with terrorists. The ones that get through we often don't know enough about, if we knew he was definitely connected to a cell or had bomb making equipment this wouldn't have happened obviousely. It's because of freedom we don't pick up every person who fits the "profile" and detain them just because we can, even without any actual proof. But if we go down that route then we're basically extremsists ourselves.
We're constantly hearing reports of raids and bomb making equipment being seized and people being arrested due to connections with terrorists. The ones that get through we often don't know enough about, if we knew he was definitely connected to a cell or had bomb making equipment this wouldn't have happened obviousely. It's because of freedom we don't pick up every person who fits the "profile" and detain them just because we can, even without any actual proof. But if we go down that route then we're basically extremsists ourselves.
- 31,713
- Buckwheat City
- Dennisch
Incredibly simplistic argument. And I know you're more intelligent than that
My reply to that was the 3rd quote in the post, a post by me.
According to a lot of people these are isolated cases, and only a small amount of people are radicals. Surely the services around the globe are capable to monitor only a few radicals?
Or are the services around the world underestimating the amount of people who they actually need to monitor, or are they not telling us that they're not up to the task?
edit.
Let me add something.
What pisses me off the most, apart from children being targeted, is that yet again this perp was known the authorities. This has been the case far too often. It shows gross incompetence in the world of anti terrorism services. If the perp is someone completely unknown, without any known ties to radicals/ism, then you can say that that someone couldn't be stopped. But yet again, the services failed. Gross incompetence. That is what I see.
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