Terrorist Attacks

Potential Terrorist Attacks

Potential Terrorist Attacks

             A terror organization might seek to attack on a large scale again and New York could be attacked; however, it is possible another smaller metropolitan area could be targeted.  

            Today, terrorists have options other than a strike against New York City.  Liquid gas storage depots, chemical factories, and bio labs are situated within many cities, and each is potentially a huge bomb surrounded by a large vulnerable civilian population (Kingsbury, 2010).   Also, radiology equipment at hospitals, storage tanks of nuclear waste at power plants can be used to make radioactive dirty bombs (Chalk, 2005).    

            Some venues can have a national knock on effect.  A dirty bomb placed in a major shipping seaport would kill few people, but the threat of thousands of radioactive containers being shipped across the USA would necessitate each container be examined before shipping and this would paralyze the nation (Chalk, 2005).  For immediate effect, none of these would create the heightened and prolonged fear of a deliberate attack that intended to kill and maim people.  Bombing is still the one kind of attack that causes maximum fear and distress.

            Terrorists are able to use propaganda to let the effects of their action to be known to a wide circle outside the immediately affected area by “hijacking the media, including the newspapers, television networks, and social media to achieve this.” The Internet is especially powerful technology that terrorists are exploiting for the spread of propaganda and radicalizing new recruits (Aly, 2017).

            Whether future attacks are in New York or in a smaller metropolitan city the terrorists can cause harm and use social media to spread their propaganda and publicize their actions.