Barge work is infinitely boring. You go up the river, you go down the river. Twenty minutes is a second in their lives. They are union guys who get a day off with pay for every day they work. They get paid and they party or go home to their families. The "Captain" passed out for whatever reason and the crew didn't respond appropriately. SNAFU is the term of the day. But your point that it is not that difficult to take out a bridge is right on. In Chaos Theory it is said that a butterfly flapping its wings in Houston may cause a hurricane in a far land. So who knows what the introduction of terrorism in the US of A might result in? I would hope it might be the demise of lots of bad guys but like I asked, Who Knows?
a butterfly flapping its wings in Houston may cause a hurricane
I think that's Brazilian butterflies that can cause hurricanes ;).
Tidbit from:
FastCompany issue 7, page 46, February 1997 If a Consultant Flaps His Lips in Yokohama ...
Consultant Debunking Unit
by Kate A. Kane
illustrations by Eric Palma
The father of the Butterfly Effect is Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at MIT. One day, while analyzing weather patterns, Lorenz left his computer terminal to get a cup of coffee. When he returned, he saw that his data points had gone haywire. A small change in his calculations had produced a major swing in his forecasts. That got him to thinking. And in a 1972 speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he posed a rhetorical question, "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"