Bruce Schneier: Drawing the wrong lessons from horrific events

Re:Bruce Schneier: Drawing the wrong lessons from horrific e... by einhverfr on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @08:53AM (#4322576)

I think a better comparison is to another major risk we take every day, which is getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, something which kills 35-40k people in the US annually. In fact, 3600 Americans lost their lives in car accidents in September, 2001, about 20% more than were killed in terrorist attacks in the US at that time.

Assuming a nuclear attack kills half a million people (small nuclear warhead detonated, for example, in a port), you'd have to have one of those in the US ever decade before it would be significantly more of a risk than being behind the wheel of a car.

And Anthrax? How many people died as a result of the Anthrax attacks in 2001? How scared are people of that? Heck how many people died when the USSR released weaponized anthrax over a small population repeatedly?

There are many risks which aren't worth worrying about.

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Re:Bruce Schneier: Drawing the wrong lessons from horrific e... by einhverfr on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @09:16PM (#4326696)

Just as a note, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to weaponized anthrax in the Sverdlosk accidents. While the exact death toll is unknown current counts are at most in the hundreds. We will probably never know the death toll in part due to coverups in part orchestrated by none other than Boris Yeltsin. However based on available data, weaponized anthrax just isn't that dangerous.

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