All indications are that there will not be additional terrorist activity, but we cannot be certain. Now is not the time to relax your guard. Do as any good doomer would do: keep your car gassed up, keep some cash stashed in a handy place, refresh your water stash, check your batteries, alternative fuels, etc., etc. You know the routine by now.

The Hungarian and I have had a discussion about this--you all would appreciate her mind sharpened by so many years of communist rule--and she thinks if there is mor activity, it might take the form of poisoning a water supply, blowing up a dam, taking over a nuke facility, something like that. We doubt it will be a bomb or another airplane attack because they know we'll be on the lookout.

Again, odds are there won't be another attack, at least not any time soon. But better to have and not need than the other way around, huh?

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

Answers

I agree any more airplanes are unlikely.

I'm not ready to rule out bombs. Like the suitcase variety that are supposed to be spread around. (As we speak, an Amtrak train out of Boston was boarded just short of Providence, apparently for that kind of a suspicious.) What concerns me is the Pentagon bombing. There were rumors yesterday that the part of the building that collapsed was tuned in to our most sophisticated satellite equipment, or something like that. Shades of when y2k knocked out our lead satellite for 3 days.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

true that!

Already trying to keep everyone used to filling up the tanks everytime they go out. How are prices for gas in your area?

yesterday, Dad paid 1.42 which is the average around town. We pay 1.39 at BJ's but that was last weekend.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

Gas was selling today for $1.29 where I live in NJ. No lines.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

As has been said often and loudly in the last few days, this is the beginning of a new war. If that is indeed true, then we need to think about how terrorists operate. For instance, the IRA is very fond of hitting large shopping areas just before Christmas. This is why you will find no public trash cans in the streets or public buildings of Britain. Bomb threats are made to shopping malls and public buildings on a weekly basis, causing evacuations (which is why my father's little retirement business in a provincial mall went bust and he now exists on a state pension). Sometimes the threats are real and shops and jobs are lost.

Bombs are placed without regard to who might be in the vicinity at the time. Any good terrorist-with-a-cause will tell you, "If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem." That includes babies and small children. Sometimes a warning is called in but bombs have been known to explode before planned (oops, sorry, didn't mean to blow up those children).

Home-made mortars shell places like the Admiralty (Navy HQ in London) and other public buildings. I remember especially the Admiralty attack because I had a friend in reception at the time--hit the floor and slid under a heavy desk. His assistant was also there and still winces every time she hears any large thump. He was in the Falklands so wasn't too shaken.

Anyway, the point of this long, boring post is, get your Christmas shopping done early or by mail. Remember that a bomb can and often does take out electricity, gas, phones, cable (gasp!) and/or water, or disrupt rail or subway or tunnels. Try to avoid traveling at peak hours if you can. If not, choose the mode of transportation least likely to attract attention--bus instead of subway, for instance. Inconvenient and slow, sure, but safer.

Last I heard, there were ten known terrorists related to WTC still unaccounted for. That number is, of course, only those known to be associated with this Dantean hell. God knows where they are, known and unknown, or what they plan next. Apparently, officials still expect other acts to follow. And you know if we retaliate somewhere, there will be payback. It's already planned, I'm sure, just as this atrocity was planned for a year or more, so all someone has to do is make a phone call, saying the equivalent of, "Go!"

Just godo old doomer thinking, something we've kinda gotten away from in the last year or so.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001

I have this deep down bad feeling that things are just beginning. Over the past 6 to 9 months, I have had the feeling of dread or fear, almost putting me into a severe depression. Watching Tuesday, it was kinda like I had seen it all before. Was it in a dream?

They talk about handing bin Laden over. That won't stop it. He isn't the sole mastermind. He has his staff of planners. If we take only him, it will serve as nothing more than to rally his scum sucking no life bottom dwellers.

As much as I hate violence (and I do...) this country needs to strike hard at his organization. We need to put FEAR into their souls. We need to drive it into the tiny amount of gray matter which (I suppose) they have that if they do this again, they will be eliminated. Totally and completely eliminated.

Feeling very sad. I just don't think it is over.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2001