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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   1631 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 22, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I assume that it require a lot of stars to align together in a bad way. There no way to receive the signal while at cruising height. 20 grams of petn is not that much - I doubt it could cause decompression even on a window seat. Let alone serious structural damage. Also it is explosive - there doesn't seems to be reports about it bringing fire. I think that there may be one critical moment if this happened in just the right time during takeoff, in just the right seat. And they may have just excluded the airport cell from firing the command.

I mean true, but I think this event is going to change security in airports. While this event didn’t down any planes because it was fairly careful and used small charges, it certainly will make security more concerned about things like cellphones and beepers and iPads on airplanes simply because this sort of attack is now possible even without the person being aware of the explosive, and even though the device itself still works. Had the tampered device not worked they would have gotten new ones long ago. So we know that as far as the end users knew the device worked and it wasn’t doing anything unusual. Now you have a new risk in the form of every cellular device that goes onto that airplane, even if you turn it on and can use it, it might still blow up.

Laptops have been screened since forever. As were any container that is enough to pack enough explosives to hurt a plane. Including every cellular device, of course. I'm pretty sure if Hezs put their pagers through the airports scanners, stuff would light up - but most of them probably were too busy with other things to fly to an international vacation, or they left their work pagers at home.

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