Reply to post: The web sure does more people get interested in such stuff...

Panicked WH Smith kills website to stop sales of how-to terrorism manuals

Chaironea

The web sure does more people get interested in such stuff...

... than that was the case with the publications openly available during my youth.

So it has obviously become a lot easier to get deeper introductions into the "How-Tos" of potentially dangerous activities. I can understand that that makes some people uncomfortable - especially those who may never have gotten in touch with suchlike.

For me, growing up in Germany where I was able to buy nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, H202, permanganates, glycerin, potassium nitrate and what not else while I was a kid, experimenting with all kinds of things that went "bang" was quite natural. That went on for several years.

We went as far as making cannons shooting steel spikes several hundred meters and electrically triggered bombs from fertilizers. Our muzzle-loaded guns shot 10 mm bearing balls clean through several petrol cans in a row. And we only stopped when one of us got a serious warning from police that they would interfere at his employer (we were around 17 by then) because he obviously had to have done some welding of parts there. He did not, he had a proper welding device at home, but it was sure not the time to argue with police about such details at that point.

Today we would be off far worse with such behaviour, probably for all times sharing a place in some directory of potential terrorists and dangerous misfits. It has ended up for me with a Ph.D. in chemistry instead and I have no terrorist tendencies at all, except sometimes in some evil dreams or fantasies.

I was by the way just today able to openly find and download all of the named books from the web, so whether some seller offers them or not is pretty irrelevant.

For me personally the question is not whether such information is dangerous or not, as it is in the world and you cannot keep it down by whatever means you use. It rather is a question of weighting such information. It may seem cynical to some, but the chances of being killed by some terrorist in Europe are remote compared to e.g. traffic, food additives or air quality.

So my Opel Astra Diesel is (alas) a surer killer than any of the books mentioned, at least in the numbers the model goes on our roads. And a lot more people die from fast food than from terror. One should keep that in mind before strirring panic among the people and trying to cut down civil liberties to achive a minimal effect on security.

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