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BBC reports the co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the Alps intentionally locked the pilot out of the cabin and initiated the flight's descent into the ground:
The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, named as Andreas Lubitz, appeared to want to "destroy the plane", officials said.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the "black box" voice recorder, said the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.
He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.
Mr Robin said there was "absolute silence in the cockpit" as the pilot fought to re-enter it.
Air traffic controllers made repeated attempts to contact the aircraft, but to no avail, he said.
The story seems SN-worthy because it is an object lesson in the consequences for our lives when we put complex machines and systems into the hands of others. In this case it was a trained pilot who killed a plane full of people who were powerless to stop him. Another example could be engineers who sabotage a dam and wipe out entire communities downstream. We mostly don't think about stuff like this because there is an invisible web of trust, sometimes called a "social contract," that leads people to get on a plane, or go to work, or take their kids to school without giving it a second thought. But when that social contract unravels, all bets are off...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:46PM
> If... This turns out to be another ISxx related plot
And if it doesn't? What conclusions will you draw from that?
Here's an interesting fact. [unc.edu] Since 9/11 there have been more than 200,000 murders in the US. Of those, 50 of them were committed by people proclaiming some sort of islamic extremism as a motive. Not the only motive, just one of the claimed motives, some of the other motives being robbery, jealousy, etc. There have been so few terrorist attacks in the US that at least one american patriot felt he needed to fake one in order to make people understand the risk. [splcenter.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:08PM
Indeed. In fact you can go further. You can tot up all the "deaths by terrorist" across the world since 2001 and you still end up with a comparatively small number - a few hundred thousand at most. It sounds like a big number but worldwide, over 14 years? It's a rounding error. You're more likely to be killed by a faulty domestic appliance than a terrorist.
Where's the trillion dollar War on Washing Machines?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday March 26 2015, @05:32PM
It's trillion dollar war on a political agenda.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:14PM
Indeed. In fact you can go further. You can tot up all the "deaths by terrorist" across the world since 2001 and you still end up with a comparatively small number - a few hundred thousand at most. It sounds like a big number but worldwide, over 14 years? It's a rounding error. You're more likely to be killed by a faulty domestic appliance than a terrorist.
Can you? You start off needing a definition of terror. Someone hiding miles away when they blow up a bomb at a wedding party - terror? Or accident? Someone lobbing missile after missile into a prison, killing thousands? Terror, or collateral damage? Someone starving to death after an invading country causing chaos through the region - terror, or accident?
Traditional terror definitions (i.e. deaths affecting rich people - the stuff like the American funded Irish terrorists killing kids while they were out shopping) wouldn't come close to ten thousand, since the end of WWII.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:10PM
You won't hear any argument from me, but I doubt the people you need to convince (ie those who champion the war on terror) would accept your definition of terror. By making a point using their definition you are more likely to persuade them.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:22PM
What is their definition? The point is no matter how many people you include in "terror" victims, you still don't get to the level of deaths that the richest country in the world allows to occur for the simple reason of "freedom not to have health insurance", let alone the deaths from the "freedom to smoke cigarettes" (about 160 9/11s a year)
The people you need to convince are the people making the money - the Haliburtons, the Perinis, the Raytheons, the Carlyle Groups of the world. Convince them there's no money to be made, and their employees will stop the fighting.
(Score: 5, Informative) by isostatic on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:09PM
Here's an interesting fact. Since 9/11 there have been more than 200,000 murders in the US
Here's another interesting fact. Since 9/11 600,000 [harvard.edu] people have died in the US through not having health insurance.
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:35PM
If the Market had wanted those people to live, it would have given them health insurance.
It's nothing poysonal, it's just business. And it's just the Market doing it's job.
Irritable Duncan Syndrome [theguardian.com] can tell you all about it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].