Thinking like a Terrorist

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A friend sent me an e-mail today. In it he said that the threat of a Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) attack is 100% in America. I'm not sure I agree. Had he said 100% chance of terrorist attack in the days ahead, I would have not disagreed.
What is WMD anyhow? How many do I have to maim/kill to be “mass destruction?” Or can I simply hit you with a dose of Polonium or Thallium for the terror effect, kill a couple of hundred over a number of media frenzied weeks as they track the deaths by radioactive poisoning - does that count as WMD?
Can I just explode a couple of hospital radioactive waste containers, create a contaminated area on the Capital Mall and panic everyone while they take weeks to clean and decontaminate it all. Is that WMD? 
On the other hand, how about some good ol’ fashioned Islamic martyrs infecting themselves with some disease as Bubonic Plague or a viral hemorrhagic fever and go flying in and out of Newark, LAX, DFW and the like? Is that WMD? 
If it’s body count that is key to the definition, I suggest that the return on the effort to use “WMD” is not economical with most easily available things people call “WMD.” Or does the terrorist need to do a “Tom Clancy” and smuggle a 25 megaton weapons into a city center or the middle of a major metropolitan port such as Baltimore, Long Beach or LA?
Everybody likes to call chemical weapons WMD and while you can kill a thousand or more if you can get targets to bunch up in a perfect environment like a sports stadium or arena. But the truth is that is it darn tough to get a group of people to stand still that long once the delivery begins. 
That stuff is hard to transport and some of it, as you know, not very persistent at all. Prefer Mustard or Lewisite instead? Those are tough to deliver effectively, except by spray equipped airborne systems. First used in WWI, this stuff proved nasty, but hardly provided a knock-out blow to the target.
How about phosgene? After all, we can make that in the basement using commercially available chemicals that law enforcement traditionally does not track in terms of sales and shipments.
Meanwhile, I hear Tabun & Soman can be bought in some markets particularly in the former Soviet Russia (FSR). By default is a use of a Chem Weapon by definition WMD, even if the body count is pretty small? The answer is probably yes, if one uses the 1995 subway attack using Sarin gas in Tokyo as a indicator.
When you read about the use of Chem in WWI remember all the players used Chem in a big scale with chemical and artillery battalions and larger delivering the stuff. I don’t think terrorists really get a good return on their effort using a chemical weapon. Truth is, its nasty to use and to transport too. My personal feelings are that attaining martyrdom with a chemical attack will never get the same status as a good ol' fashioned explosive vest or vehicular IED.
How about a small nuke? You know, the kind we used to call “backpack” nukes and used to play with in Europe in the 1970s. Russians had em’ and I have heard more than one tale of former KGB types claiming that there were many pre-positioned in CONUS to destroy key networks and hubs for electrical grids and communications. 
Unless they hid them so well by now they are lost, or sold them to Achmed and his Muslim terrorist brotherhood buddies, some should have surfaced at one time or another. Since they haven't, I tend to consider that story 100% myth.
Of course the conspiracy types will tell you that is why Army, BATF, and NRC has EOD teams stationed everywhere across the US – to police them up when they surface. Even if not true, those electrical and communication hubs are still there and still relatively soft in terms of vulnerability. It's been more than a decade now, and if the TSA and DHS makes you feel safer - enjoy your delusional state, the rest of us are more concerned about cyber and EMP attacks, both low investment, hi return type attacks that could bring this nation to it's knees in a matter of hours or less.
What I’m thinking about here are electrical grids, telecommunications, internet and good ol’ fashioned land line hubs such as that famous one the NSA used to live at in Denver? But one doesn’t really need a nuke to shut down those hubs.
Timmy McVeigh showed everyone how it can be done. In fact, in many cases some of the hubs can be brought down by a very small, precisely placed detonation. One doesn’t have to kill a lot of people to shut down this country and kill it slowly if you target the key and soft vulnerabilities.
Kill some of those hubs such as those that are vital to the air traffic control (ATC) and you can kill plenty simply because of the chaos that would ensue. But, the nation would recover in a matter of weeks from the shock of it all. In a couple of months we would have lost a little more of our individual freedoms, but the threat would still be able to muster another more effective attack.

But the real way to kill America fast continues to be a pair of EMP weapons fired 100 miles high over each coast. That can turn the US into a preindustrial nation, resulting in 90% mortality over a 2-3 year period. In terms of return on investment, max punishment, and asymmetric warfare, this is the most likely and dangerous attack we face in our nation. It would make 9/11 become a footnote in the history books.That is if we ever recovered enough to produce books again after such an attack.
But if you don’t have aspirations to do EMP, which while not difficult, does require some planning and precision in execution there still remain viable alternatives. Just want to terrorize America, shut down the economy, and make her question her values, turn her back on more of the individual liberties and core values that once made America unlike another place on Earth, one doesn’t need WMD or even EMP. 
Instead, walk up into the “roped” area where hundreds of us stand densely packed waiting to go thru TSA screening, fire one magazine of AK-47 or AKM and then follow up with two frags while everyone has hunkered down. Actually, I would suggest White Phosphorus Grenades for the horror multiplication effect. 
A frag or two outta do the trick if Mr. Terrorist can’t get Willie Pete. My estimate the last time I stood in that line at 0600 on a Monday at my local airport was that about 200-300 of us would have died or been grievously maimed in such an attack. 
Then the attacker can walk back outside the terminal, guns blazing, get into their car, illegally parked at the curb and drive home and do it again at another airport somewhere in the US. It is no secret that the best targets are airports in “larger” small towns where they have manpower limitations, good in and out of the airports, and tend to be more lackadaisical in their approach to security.
That is why LAX, NYC, EWR, ATL, DFW are dumb choices for terrorists. Much softer targets exist at Birmingham AL, Richmond, VA, Indianapolis IN, Memphis TN, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Portland (OR), San Jose, Albany NY. You get the idea. 
Another selection criteria for my super evil terrorist would be to attack airports that have a high use by active duty military such as San Antonio, Norfolk, Charleston, Nashville, San Diego and the like. Kill a bunch of young soldiers. airman and Marines,  and Achmed the terrorist would be celebrated from one end of the pending Caliphate to the other.
Any of these attacks outta shut down the system for months, cause a tubing in the stock market and of course the economy and remind us once again that you can’t hug a terrorist like the folks in Berkeley plan to do when they get their Gitmo detainees. 
Any of those is very possible. But in terms of focusing on what is most likely all I can say is “Occams Razor” remains in effect, even for Achmed, but evidently not for “Big Sis” who is worrying about trying to stop the subtle and the sneaky. Funny thing is, attacks by these terrorists are rarely either. 
Instead they use what they have available, recon and hit an asymmetric vulnerability, and worry about the symbolic impact of their attack more than they do the body count. It is a subtle detail that the threat analysts who work for Big Sis tend to ignore. They do so at all of our peril.