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An Unsinkable Ship?

Although it may not be very comforting, the truth is there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship. No matter how sophisticated the safety features or how impressive the size, all ships are vulnerable given the wrong circumstances.

"You can have all the safety in the world and it's not going to help you if you hit a bomb," points out Dr. Robert Ballard, who recently explored the wreck of the ocean liner Britannic, which sank during World War I off the coast of Greece, the victim of either a bomb or a torpedo. The sinking of Britannic was especially tragic -- not only because it followed so closely the sinking of its sister ship, Titanic, in 1912, but because extensive safety improvements had been made to the ship to avoid just such a repeat disaster.

While bombings are no longer a daily threat for most ships, danger still lurks in the form of fires, groundings, collisions and worse. So engineers, designers and human systems analysts are continually devising new ways to keep ships where they belong -- on, not under, the water.
(Source)

Now we take this same idea and apply it to the attack on the World Trade Center. (BTW, I do not personally regard the attack, or the loss of life, to be a tragedy, but rather as an horrendous criminal act.) No matter what we do, no matter what we build, if we do it grand enough, it becomes subject to criminal, extremist attack. We can place additional securities, we can educate the public as a kind of “neighborhood watch” system, we can fortify our monuments...

Well, fortification is obviously not the answer.

My uncle had installed a new security system in his home, with every window and every door wired, and with motion detectors in every room. He challenged me, asking how anyone could rob him. I explained it would be a simple task to crash through his living room window. The police were a good 15 minutes away, leaving me time to make of with a few expensive items. He said he could put bars on the window, whereas I pointed out that I could then through a chain on the bars and probably rip out his front wall with a pickup truck.

A lock on a door is designed to keep honest people honest. If someone really wanted to break in, no practical security measure could keep him out. A person would literally need to wall himself into a prison with all his worldly possessions. Your home would become a sort of living tomb, and how much fun could that be?

For the time being, education and neighborhood watch will have to do. We are, after all, our brothers’ keeper. And the only real assurance for success and prosperity is through the eradication of extreme criminals, and we are working on that.

Anyway, I fear that the Trade Center will not be rebuilt, certainly not on the scale it was, and that, my friends, is where the true tragedy of September 11, 2001, resides.

The United States of America is grand nation, formed by those who pulled up stakes and moved to a better land for a better life. Our expressions are formed on a grand scale, and to be anything less would be, well, less than what we are -- less than what we could be. To allow a terrorist organization to cow this nation down 107 floors to street level is to whip a person for daring look to the heavens, reaching for something better.

Humanity is greater than this planet. We are greater than this life we live. 107 stories in the sky is where we belong, and we know it. We, each one of us, belong on the largest cruise ships. We belong in the largest houses. We belong in the largest automobiles.

We belong on the Moon.

We belong with the stars.

The villainous, unimaginative, raucous children of humanity, those who so recently managed to topple their degraded adults, have already won a dishonorable victory -- partial, but a victory none the less -- against the valiant core of human endeavor. Where they had hoped for a return of a nation, and a world, to a dark age, they failed, but the scar remains, fresh and bloody. I fear our advances have been effectively slowed. Layoffs and firings across the nation and around the globe as a direct result of the attacks have effected individuals, families, and whole communities.

I believe the setback we now face will have a long and painful recovery,
Dan