I am curious to find out how many reports they got from riders who saw the researchers. I know that if I saw someone releasing gas like in the picture in the article, I'd quickly find someone to talk to about it.
That said, hopefully they can validate models which will provide optimum locations for detectors, as well as action plans once a detection occurs, such as kill all cars near the detection and change venting airflows.
A guy in one of my old units used to carry a clipboard in the Army everywhere he went. He explained to us some years later that the clipboard was how he avoided being chosen for work details for years and years. Phenomenally clever idea.
Similar note, I found I could walk out of class anytime in high school and wander the halls as long as I looked sufficiently stressed. As long as you look like you have a purpose people will not bother you (unless you look like you have a purpose that you aren't fulfilling I suppose).
Yeah, totally. It works for avoiding too much attention from authority figures. I will never forget one time I was having a BBQ in an unauthorized area with my mom and ex-wife when this fat Air Force dude rolls by on his Segway. I turned to them and said "Just look like we're supposed to be here" but both of them, not being very good liars, continued with the deer-in-headlights look that guaranteed the guy started asking questions and eventually got us kicked off that part of the beach.
There have also been a few PSAs that I've seen over the past few weeks. I'm sure not every subway rider saw these and was thus okay with what was going on, but a fair bit probably did. I learned about the tests all the way up in Albany, I assume there was a more robust announcement in the city itself (but maybe not).
I'm a daily rider on the 4/5 and C lines, and I didn't see the ads for this. A semi-random sampling of my colleges where I work (upper east side) saw mixed knowledge about the tests.
I once called the police in London, because there was a group of men in masks using angle grinders on the door of a bank while the alarm was going off, and the operator said 'well if they're doing it in broad daylight I doubt they're up to no good'. Fine.
In terms of the potential for economic damage, a full-fledged bioweapon attack is not all that much more effective than a low-sophistication attack (or several, staged at the same time).
So while it is useful to understand the way subway systems may disperse particles, this kind of research does not reduce the risk of economic damage from low-sophistication attacks targeted at the subway system.
It is difficult to obtain Anthrax or similar chemical agents, and the number of people needed to pull off a successful attack is fairly large. Machine guns or simple explosives (like those used in the Boston Marathon attack), however, are 100x more likely to succeed and cause the intended economic damage, so long as they either create a fear of traveling by subway or lead to security checkpoints that drastically reduce the subway's throughput.
The key takeaway, in my opinion, is that nobody with access to the NYC subway really wishes to harm it or do terrorism.
Fear is a huge part of any terrorist endeavor and small invisible particles killing you while you commute is far scarier than someone with conventional arms. Further, NYC subways would be closed for weeks, the US's largest city and an economic powerhouse would grind to a halt. The economic damage is such an event would be huge.
It would be very easy for a single unskilled attacker to kill upwards of 20 people using a conventional firearm or stuff that can be found at any hardware store.
I'd estimate that such an attack would result in the subway being closed for weeks, particularly if several happened successfully a few days apart.
Similarly, small explosions dispersing any remotely harmful smoke or chemicals (even chemicals that are easy to obtain) would be amplified by media coverage, and politicians would close the subways as a knee-jerk response.
Sure, an actual banned bioweapon/chemical would be worse, but my point is that terrorism (the tactic not the alleged existential threat) works because it requires little skill, technology, or access to difficult-to-obtain materials to create fear.
Why are you framing the loss of life solely and exclusively within the bounds of economic damage?
Obviously there are cheaper ways to cause more expensive damage. That's not what terrorists care about and that's not what potential victims of terrorism care about.
The point of a terrorist attack on the subway would be to get the subway closed for a while. Every day it is closed, the city suffers economic damage.
The point of a terrorist act causing loss of life is to create the fear that will cause economic damage, not to somehow wipe out lots of civilians.
In a war, the willingness to kill civilians is proportional to the need to do so to make an impact on the opponent's will to fight. Obviously nobody would prefer to kill civilians over combatants, but all militaries will do it without hesitation if circumstances dictate.
This is super important research, due to what the article calls, "low security threshold and high passenger count".
I wish the research results would be given to the public, though I understand why we won't see the results for some time, or possibly never.
It's also kind of scary that their only listed "remediation" is to have more accurate contamination maps. It really hits home the concept that, once a bad guy actually gets a weapon to a crowd, there's not much more that can be done.
Part of the idea behind "more accurate contamination maps" is to mobilize the appropriate response -- personnel, drugs, and so on. So it isn't just about knowing where to clean up (although it involves that, too).
These sorts of tests also aim at helping guide the first response. For a long time, there was an ongoing debate about the proper response to an attack on a subway (it's probably still going on, but I haven't talked with this crowd in a few years). For example, suppose a CCTV spots a bunch of passengers going down in a particular terminal. Should you shut down the ventilation system, in order to try to contain the material? Or should you crank up the system, in order to dilute the hazardous material? How should those decisions change depending on the type of material, the amount released, the atmospheric conditions, and the timing of the response? Should you stop all trains in the tunnels, or should you run them to the nearest station for evacuation? All of this requires estimating potential health impacts, to those on the platform, in the rest of the system, and downwind of the affected stations.
> ...there was an ongoing debate about the proper response...
I don't know about subway specifics, but the matter was settled a long time ago for buildings - and it didn't take long to arrive at the conclusion. Containment is the policy. The first thing that happens when any toxic substance is suspected, in a security conscious facility, is the shutdown of HVAC followed by the restriction of uncontrolled movement (elevators sent home, security posted in stairwell, etc). Even in areas equipped with filtration systems (like mail rooms). I've never heard anyone suggest dilution, you'd have to have NBC sensors that can instantly detect every toxic substance in order to avoid unknowingly spreading anthrax piggybacked on an irritant like CS. Such sensors do not exist.
Therefore, the best offense is reducing the chances that such bad guys crop up in the first place by diplomacy, peace, foreign aid, and just friendly relations with our neighbors.
This might not seem like the place and time to preach peace, but now is as good a time as any.
I appreciate the research, but I'm not sure what could possible be done to change the situation materially. "Making more accurate contamination maps" strikes me as only useful in a really best case scenario.
A very fair point, but in this case installing filters or a reasonable hope for decontamination isn't really an option; the only thing we can do is prevent, detect, and evacuate.
Which makes faster detection a huge deal - I'd imagine one of the conclusions drawn from the results will be how best to detect ASAP without putting sensors literally everywhere.
I'm not sure that's feasible. It sounds like releasing an agent anywhere in the system is going to lead to it being pistoned through the entire system. You don't even need to do it at a stop. You'd need sensors at stops though, and presumably in the tunnels all along the way to sense a release. Nothing else would give more than a second or two of warning, that would initiate a lethal panic.
It's also easier to stop a train, get off a train, or prevent collateral damage in case of malice/accident. Survivors are also a lot more likely if there is an accident, mostly because of gravity.
Assuming passenger trains of course. I think a freight hijacking is far more likely. The danger posed by a hijacked freight are evident from the huge numbers of lives lost from exploding petroleum trains over the past few decades.
TSA isn't really for hijack protection, that was solved quite quickly after 9/11 with effectively impenetrable cockpits.
It's really for preventing destruction of the plane itself. A large bomb on a train underground could cause way casualties, which is why the strictness of the TSA is puzzling.
There are occasional random security screening for trains. Amusingly you can choose to decline them and not board, which makes it even more of a theatrical display than usual. I guess it's for the terrorists who want to get caught?
My understanding was this was done before. The main take-away was that anything spread by air in NYC subway wouldn't get too far as there is enough mixing with the outside.
For something that involves the US gov, anthrax, and a crowded public place, that was remarkably ethical.
Clickbaity title IMO, but I'm not sure what to suggest. I think the current title suggests malice on the part of the US gov, but they were actually just doing some interesting research.
NYC, DC, and Oklahoma City, among other places, have hosted a number of trials like this. Having just attended a conference on atmospheric transport and dispersion [0], I know multiple organizations use the resulting data to validate their transport models.
Subways are really interesting beasts from the point of view of people who try to model the transport and fate of airborne materials. The trains themselves pump material through the tubes, the cars entrain material in their wake, and the cars capture and carry material along with the passengers (meaning you can disperse material even after a car comes out from underground). All this is intermittent and bi-directional, following the train schedules. And then it's all tightly coupled to the city's above-ground airflow patterns, both because the train stations have massive ventilation exchange with the outdoors, and because there can be passive vents at street level.
Particles add another layer to the problem. As the article states, they deposit out of the air, and they can resuspend, e.g., due to human activity. They can also hitch a ride on people and things. They also get captured in ventilation system filters. Finally the rates at which they do all these things depends strongly on the particle size -- and the particle size can change due to things like coagulation.
"Bioterror research in the subway" brings to mind live virus or bacterial tests with "harmless" microbes like the tests over San Franciscon in the 1950's that may or may not have sickened (or possibly killed) residents sickened by the bacteria.
Though I wonder what testing was done to prove that the aerosol (made from wheat and corn starch, tagged with DNA) they they are spraying this time is harmless?
I think it's the juxtaposition of "US government," "bioterror," and "NYC subway system" (i.e. place with lots of people) that collectively sort of create the expectation that the story is going to be about the government doing experiments that put a bunch of civilians at risk. I think there's also a certain expectation set by the fact that it is a news story that it's going to be a news story about something at least arguably bad that the government did.
I'm not sure that the headline is even clickbaity--don't know how I'd rewrite it. But I can easily see someone reading it to go to the story with an expectation of malice or at least stupidity.
Well, they conducted airflow tests related to bioterror threats which is most of what makes the story newsworthy. But that's getting a bit long for a headline.
...man, I was all ready to get out the pitchforks in response to "bioterror" research in a public place, but it turns out it's more "fluid dynamics research prompted by the risk of particulate bioweapons". It's not a clickbait title, but it asymptotically approaches one.
In journalism school we were taught that a headline should be concise and honestly convey the meaning of the story. We hadn't yet heard about the progress of clickbait.
Let us not make wide sweeping statements about the journalistic relationship between one of the world's largest news organizations and one of the world's largest nations. Seems a bit blunt.
The highest profile US headline on the BBC front page right now is "US warned over high poverty by IMF", so I don't think they have a problem being critical.
That said, hopefully they can validate models which will provide optimum locations for detectors, as well as action plans once a detection occurs, such as kill all cars near the detection and change venting airflows.