What If Another Terrorist Attack Worse Then 9/11 Occurs?

[Ptarmigan]

What if another terrorist attack was to occur and the death toll and destruction made 9/11 pale in comparison, like a nuclear bomb going off in some major city?

[Yaelle]

Another attack as big or bigger would have the American people seeking more protection versus freedom for the rest of the lives of everyone old enough to feel the attack. They (we!) would no doubt choose to be videoed in plane bathrooms, curb most immigration, carry a national ID card, etc.

When lab rats do not know when pushing the feed bar might reward them (random reward, like a slot machine), they won't know when and where to fear an attack. Uneasiness will be a part of the American psyche.

The response would have to be swift and severe. This will be a tough decision for our President. Suppose the actual terrorists involved in that plot were hiding out in a remote place in an otherwise decent and peaceful country (the Philippines, say). Are we going to bomb the heck out of our friends?? It's not a nice scenario.

Some of you would say, take it to the centers of Islam -- blame all of Islam for not reining in their extremists. However, you can't blame innocents for being duped into donating money for what they thought was charity when it really went to terrorists, or being afraid of standing up to the terrorists for fear of deadly reprisal. That would be like killing all inner city residents who were there but "didn't see" the latest gangbang.

Deciding what the response would be and carrying it out would be a political career-ending move, no matter what the choice, though it would ensure reverence and history book chapters forever. It would take a leader with a simple ego who wants to make America safe for his great-grandchildren to make that call.

[Armedanddangerous]

I suspect we might be occupying Teheran and Damascus in short order. Maybe with Russian help.

[TASMANIANRED]

I don't know about the Constitution but Mecca may be gone.

[solitas]

They don't want anything FROM us. They simply want to DESTROY Western Civilization. Nuke a port or two and global trade shuts down for years resulting in depression unlike anything ever seen before. Unemployment at 25% or more. Closed borders. Mass deportations. As Franks says, the loss of the America we know and love. It's pretty ugly to contemplate.

Think smaller - and more economically devastating: forget the nukes and look at Britain 2 years ago. Hoof'n'mouth disease literally KILLED their markets and forced mass exterminations of healthy animals on the chance they they COULD have been infected.

H'n'M isn't fatal to humans, but humans can be (physical) carriers: Britain, many years without the disease, suddenly had it spring-up in various places pretty much simultaneously. Could the country have been a test case by terrorists? One could assume they have stocks of pretty much any virus/disease there is.

Imagine the same scale of H'n'M in the United States: kiss the beef industry goodbye. And the pork industry. Dairy industry. Wool. Horses. Not to mention field and building sterilization. What meat-animals are there that AREN'T affected by H'n'M?

And all this could technically be accomplished with a single loss of human life - so it'd DEFINITELY fly-below the DumAsCrap's radar. I'm not trying to be a tin-foil-hat-type here, but Britain never DID successfully explain how their (supposed) single animal imported into the country (the story I heard) got around so much to so many places in so short a time - compared to a bunch of people 'seeding' the animals and their fields from along the roadside.