Indigno

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...src=rss&rpc=22

This picture really just sums up the hilarity of the whole thing.

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BinarySurfer

What exactly was Turner Broadcasting thinking? Placing unknown magnetic lights under bridges in major cities?! Although it doesn't look threatening, the Trojan Horse didn't either, and today, Dirty Bombs and extracted warheads can be quite small. The panic is understandable and I fail to see the humor in it, but that's me.

Indigno

I'm not laughing because of the consequences - the lockdown - but because of the cause of it. The fact that little lights of the pixilated guy from ATHF caused this much chaos is humorous to me. I don't find it funny that there was a lockdown and a major panic, just the reason it was caused.

The same way that if the white house got a box from a sender with no return address. The bomb squad took it out to the desert and blew it up and it turned out to be a music box. The panic is understandable, and anyone would take these precautions, but in hind sight, it is kind of funny.

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BinarySurfer

Ah, okey, I see what you mean.

Infinite Recursion

Prime example of stupidity on Tuner's part, and the Post-9/11 mentality of Amercians.

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Indigno

I can understand the reaction, but it's still terribly funny.

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Arevos

I don't think it's understandable at all. If terrorists wanted to blow up a bridge, I rather doubt they'd draw people's attention to it with flashing lights before it detonated. Furthermore, close examination of the item would confirm that it was harmless - there isn't any space there to pack a sufficient amount of explosives to do any serious damage. Sure, take reasonable precautions, but blowing the things up and shutting down half the city with hundreds of police officers isn't reasonable; it's just schizophrenic paranoia.

Secondly, the only benefit of dirty bombs is that they have sufficient media hype to cause deaths through panics and stampedes. They're about as dangerous as taking a drag on a cigarette. According to the US Department of Energy, even a dirty bomb were detonated beside you, and you stayed exactly where you were for an entire year, and nothing was done to clean up the radioactive material, you still wouldn't suffer a fatal dose of radiation.

As for extracted warheads - do you mean a conventional warhead, or a nuclear warhead?

BinarySurfer

I didn't intend to imply that I thought the precautions the police took is understandable, but I ment to mean is that the fear is understandable. Sure, after the first number of them are seen as harmless, the panic becomes ridiculous. On the event of finding the first, under a bridge, in a major city, would raise alert. (How is that a good way to advertise? The press on the event?)
When I said "extracted warheads", I was talking about the nuclear type. You know, level a city in a blink of an eye. We all know the Russians lost track of countless silos and warheads, and who knows what they did with the ones they did keep/find years ago.
And of course, if it truely was a bomb, they wouldn't make it shinny and visible. I was focusing on the inicial panic. The crazy precautions they took are extreme.

Arevos

Yes... Okay, I agree it's understandable, from a psychological perspective at least, because human beings are typically very bad at assessing risk accurately. Parents fear guns more than swimming pools, pedestrians fear murderers more than cars. In our lives, the things that are most likely to kill us are familiar, whilst the things that we are most afraid of, and are least likely to kill us, are those exceptional events that make the headline news (which by their nature must be exceptional and rare, otherwise they wouldn't be news).

But I find it hard to pin the blame on the guy who thought up the advertising scheme, merely because he overestimated the intelligence of the city authorities.

Indigno

I want one of those lights for my bedroom.

Also, I doubt that a nuclear bomb would fit in something that small.

And the fact that the signs are flipping people off are also a good hint that it's a joke.

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