Hi all, Pls do not be alarmed. I am just racking my brains for a idea of what kind of terrorist attack would kill a lot of people but leave the nature environment pretty unharmed. Becos in my story, environmentalists were looked upon as terrorists much like Osama and his gang. This was due to actions by ecoterror groups. So I need something big.etc to jump start the prevalent attitudes of my characters.
Contaminating water supply? Subway gas attacks? Bombings or hijackings? Man, this thread is gonna get us all on the CIA watchlist...
Bombing a dam. The flooding might kill thousands, but the terrorists might see the removal of te dam as restoring a natural balance.
the 'neutron bomb' has long been considered the perfect way to get rid of humans and leave the earth intact... which is why even though it's been invented, no one dares use it... the ultimate example of typical human stupidity which earns the species the right to be self-eradicated, imo... here's an interview with its inventor: http://manuelsweb.com/sam_cohen.htm
actually, the neutron bomb will impact all biological material to include animals, plants and insects. It's primary goal is to leave hard infrastructure like buildings, ports, roads, mineral deposits, oil pumping rigs . . . anything with stragic value . . . intact for the benefit of the attackers. It's not particularly "friendly" to eco-terrorist objectives because of the collateral environmental damage.
But hey what about attack the food supply at the source? Farms? I think that's a good source to attack. Becos the construction of farms regardless of type is seen as an enemy of Nature as many habitats in the past have been destroyed for construction of farmland. And to trace the problem to the source, our population is growing beyond what Earth can sustain. So the one way to halt more farms is perhaps to cull the human population, so-called culling. I have been racking my brains over the problem but then I have no idea how can we damage the farming sector and cause people to die in the good numbers to make people think that eco-nuts are evil. Don't worry but how this news got out. But one thing for sure is that the idea that this single incident and perhaps more to come has killed many people rivalling the recently terror attacks.
The eco-nuts must have done something that killed a lot of people but saved the environment in a way. I was thinking that someone said something in the Planet Earth Documentary that could really make some nut kill others if you look at it negatively. [Pls do not take this seriously, but there are some crazy nutcases that really do think in that way] When one tries to get at a number, my guess somewhere between 500 million people and one billion, no more than that. James Lovelock I think the Earth can safely support in a sustainable way and at a reasonable standard of living, about half of what it has today. And I think that would make the people happier and it would certainly make the planet happier. We'd have more diversity, productivity and the world would be a more sustainable place. Jeffrey A. McNeely http://www.betterhumans.com/blogs/videos/archive/2007/09/10/BBC-Planet-Earth_3A00_-Into-the-Wilderness.aspx
Does the environmental gain need to be something eceryone agrees is beneficial, or is it sufficient that the eco-terrorists perceive it as beneficial? For instance, forest fires are widely accepted among ecologists as necessary for the long term benefit of wilderness, despite the short term damage. A forest fire which not only burns forested land but also destroys many opulent estates and a couple major industrail centers may be considered a huge win for Mother Nature to the ecoterrorists, but most of the public would disagree. An attack that destroys Newark, New Jersey would poison a large surrounding area for decades, but its impact on the chemical industry would mean many of those chemicals were no longer available to distribute around the world Millions would probaby die, but te ecoterrorists would probably feel that they had diminished the threat to the rest of the world from an industry that produces pesticides, chemical fertilizers, fuel additives, plastics, fluorocarbons, etc. The aforementioned bombing of a dam might destroy a hydroelectric power plant, possibly an industrial center that produces large quantities of pollution annually, and create/restore broad aress of wetlands in the flood plain. Of course, many thousands of people could die as well. Fewer humans to waste the land... Perspective matters.
either way, I am starting to get how ecoterrorists probably operate. They value the life of Mother Nature more than humans. So I think killing humans to them is beneficial to the environment. I am thinking they might target the farming industry as agriculture had one of the biggest impacts on the natural world. But what terror attack can farmers abandon their land but leave the natural parts unharmed.
I would think most ecoterrorists would NOT target agriculture directly. Farmers work close to the land. Ecoterrorists may take issue with the use of pesticides and other agrochemicals, but not the agriculture itself. They'd more likely go after the agrochemical suppliers. Or they might target the meat farmers, if they were radical ethical vegetarians. But crop farmers? That's a hard sell.
In many countries where rice is the main cereal crop, rice cultivation is responsible for most of the methane emissions. Methane is twenty times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is. So the problem is how to destroy their crops. Farming also cause habitat destruction to create land for planting crops. Meat farming can be impacted by a Influenza A type-virus mutating to attack all lifestock, from chicken to beef.
This is incredibly simplistic, but here's a few ideas. - some sort of virus that spreads quickly, killing humans, leaving the wildlife immune. Could start out as an STD which can infect people thru other means. (Blood, saliva, etc.) Or, terrorists sneak into hospital rooms, injecting innocent people, who conceivably get better and go home and infect others. Or, they just randomly inject people on the street - a stick and run kinda deal and before you know it - everyone's sick and dying. - rabid animals. Lions, bears, snakes, sharks - things that attack, and they go bat crap crazy on the human population, killing everything in sight; either because they were trained to do so by said terrorists, or they are infected with some mutant virus injected by the terrorists. - some pop culture deal. You know, like a mass fad than sweeps the airwaves, kinda a Jonestown thing, but more widespread over the inet and cell phones. Your terrorists could download a virus into computers and phones, or manipulate the religious to believe End of Times is here, and cause a mass hysteria. Something with suicide and a mass following, orchestrated by the terrorists.
*Adjusts tin foil hat, checks to see that the NSA isn't watching* *The gold standard would be a biological attack. Plenty of diseases target humans without severely affecting animals. Fiddling with recombinant DNA to make a super virus wouldn't necessarily be entirely beyond the pale for a group of radical environmentalists. Airborne would be the best, but something as simple as contaminating the water supply of a city with botulin would create massive casualties. *A very specific example: Blow up Dubai's desalination plant. They'd be forced to ship in water in tankers at an enormous cost. Furthermore, Dubai's easily one of the most environmentally unfriendly and unsustainable cities on the planet. They're making golf courses in the desert, and dumping raw sewage into the ocean. Some notes on the ideas put forward so far: Neutron bomb is a terrible idea, environmentally. Neutron bombs aren't super special - they're just nuclear weapons that give off relatively less heat and blast. A neutron bomb would still pulverise many square miles, and irradiate the land for miles and miles. It's also grossly impractical, because neutron bombs are rare, and hard to make. Targetting farmers would be very popular with radical environmental groups. Remember, most food doesn't come from old Joe Farmer, down on the ranch - it comes from massive corporations, like Monsanto. Couple this with the PETA style animal rights activists, and farms could be a major target. Modern intensive farming techniques have a major environmental impact. Emma's notion of training tigers / sharks / manbearpigs is fun, but utterly impractical. You'd be better off stealing an ICBM* and using it to create a high altitude electromagnetic pulse, frying electronics across the target nation. This would be completely environmentally friendly, and it would smash the economy like a train hitting a tricycle. Also, people with pacemakers would cash in their chips. Oh, and aeroplanes would probably crash, as ATC systems fried. Wouldn't want to be undergoing neurosurgery at the time, either. *Virtually impossible, unless you have lots of people on the inside. Nicking a missile armed with nuclear warheads and successfully launching it would be an epic feat of doom.
Reengineer AIDS so that it becomes airborne. That right there will kill off millions of people, although it would take years to be effective it would meet all of your other requirements and could be believably be done by a small group of people as opposed to coordinated attacks on centers of industry all around the world. In turn, the death of all those millions would collapse the global economy and probably halt production of the drugs we do have to help counteract it's effects, thus killing even more people. The collapse of the economy leads to the collapse of govornment which leads to chaos and riots and mass murders. Think black plague style effects here, except worse because the incubation and contagious stages are longer and less obvious.
That's completely incorrect. Neutron bombs still release a huge amount of energy in the form of heat and blast. They merely release a larger percent of their energy in the form of fast neutrons (30% vs. a standard nuke's 5%). They were invented to irradiate the occupants of tanks, which are normally resistant to the blast and heat of a bomb. But back to the original question. Who says terrorism has to be a big flashy attack? It could be as simple as declaring an assassination campaign against those deemed "eco-unfriendly." Your eco terrorists could shoot or blow up CEOs and politicians in order to terrorize.
Actually, attacks on infrastructure would be much more devastating. If such econ-terrorists found a way to disrupt transportation or power (a few well placed explosives on highways, power lines, or other such connectors for example) that could hurt cities as much if not more than a neutron bomb and it would be much easier to pull off (remotely activated explosives on the lines, shaped charges for the roads, set of in stages sufficiently spaced to keep supplies and/or power cut off for up to a week). The key there is to keep the attacks small, spaced apart, and remotely triggered. Once they start triggering them, they're done placing explosives. Most of the damage would occur through the panic it would cause, rather than conventional damage, and it uses the weakness of cities against themselves, a particular irony the eco-terrorists would appreciate. And if they coordinate a bio attack on top of it...