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Yes, we need one anyway.

17 (21.8%)

No, we should take that elsewhere and keep this thread as-is.

27 (34.6%)

I don't care, let's see what happens.

34 (43.6%)

Total Members Voted: 75

[IronyOwl]

Apparently a female kamikaze blew herself up during a police raid on the flat of the supposed mastermind of the attacks, not killing anyone else, several people arrested.

It's an ongoing standoff, apparently. 1 suicide bomber dead, another suspect killed, 5 police with minor injuries, one police dog possibly dead, several arrests, and 1-2 suspects still holed up. The French police were going after the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks.

I was gonna say, surprising to think the supposed mastermind(s) would let himself be taken alive. Usually at that point they're ready to go out guns blazing.

Yeah, from what I've seen in the latest news is that police and army are kinda holding off at the moment, fearing the place is rigged with explosives. I'd say time for the army to use a nerve toxin that enters the body through the skin, so gasmask are useless. I mean, I suppose the 2 men left holed up are wearing those, or they'd be carried out snoring loudly on sleeping gas hours ago now

Sleeping gas might have helped also, yes.

On other news; I wonder what exactly the "threat to the entire city of Hannover" was that cancelled the friendly soccer competition between the Netherlands and Germany. The German chancellor of the province has stated that "the decision to cancel the match and evacuate was a correct decision, as the threat was real. The situation is now stable", but he cannot tell anything about the nature of the threat, since that is "classified".
Angela Merkel has called members of the government to Berlin for a special meeting on the event.

I sure hope it wasn't a dirty bomb they found and neutralized.

Eh. There does seem to be some fairly widespread activity, so the idea that there was really something there isn't totally ridiculous.

But a few days after a major terrorist attack, "a credible threat we cannot explain because it is confidential but can make sweeping decisions based off of because it is totally real" usually translates to shrieking little girl levels of paranoia over an email or metal cylinder or something. I'd be mildly surprised if it was an actual problem or credible threat, and eat my hat if it was something serious serious.

Also, dirty bombs aren't really dangerous, at least at the tech levels terrorists are likely to get them at. They're more for being scary and nuclear than actually messing things up, and more for messing things up than actually killing or even really sickening anyone.

[Starver]

I sure hope it wasn't a dirty bomb they found and neutralized.

Dirty bombs (as in the terrorist types, rather than 'deliberately dirty nukes') are over-rated.  The wider the dispersal, the less any lasting effect on bystanders, and rapidly it becomes near-background for all but a few unlucky individuals who might have been as hurt by the 'bomb' bit.  There's more insidious ways of achieving similar ends, that are unnoticed for longer and thus potentially more damaging, and I'd be more scared about those.

(Fakeedit: Slightly ninjaed, it seems.  So I'll add that 'sleeping gas' is a crapshoot.  Remember the Dubrovka Theater siege?)

[martinuzz]

(Fakeedit: Slightly ninjaed, it seems.  So I'll add that 'sleeping gas' is a crapshoot.  Remember the Dubrovka Theater siege?)

Completely different situation. Theater full of innocent bystanders vs small appartment with no innocents left unevacuated.
Also, the agent used in the Dubrovka theater isn't the only gas in existance. There's all kinds of gas that will incapacitate yet have less death risk.

[Flying Dice]

Yes, because learning from history is pointless and we will never do anything in the ME or anywhere else with similar issues ever again. Lessons learned from destabilizing a region and fostering conflict and poverty are clearly only applicable to that one region, because people never have similar motivations when in similar situations if they're not in the exact same place and time. 

That's not what you're doing and there is literally no one in this thread that does not think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake who are you arguing with?

Even the article which focuses on prisoners from ISIS who are immediately hard to find and prone to blowing up rather than surrender or else be executed admits that the interviews are anecdotal and not representative, and it also draws the line between Iraqis and foreign fighters which we've known for long. Understanding why stops being useful when the why means undoing the invasion of Iraq. Can't exactly bring Saddam from the dead.

In case the point whizzed over your head, I was noting that you were apparently arguing that "Hurr durr no takebacks in war, so why bother learning anything since we can't travel back in time?"

I'm having difficulty parsing this as anything beyond "You're dumb," followed by word salad.

Dude I was quoting you

That's funny, because the only person whose intelligence I was impugning was yours. Fitting, because this...

arguing against the ever surreptitious bigotry, hate and hatebigotry depends on what you mean by fanatic. You would find a range of beliefs and motives, and being a fanatic only means single-minded zeal. I don't know what is directed as who as everyone is being too vague, but eh whatever. As long as it's chill and devoid of passive aggressiveness.

...was, in order: two contextless partial sentences which don't mesh with each other, one comprehensible one, another nonsensical sentence, and a final non sequitur. Also, "most" does not equate to "literally every single one ever", and you also seem to have not noticed that what I said was that of the real fanatics fighting for ISIS most of them were likely born and/or raised in the West, not that most of the ISIS fighters born and/or raised in the West are real fanatics. There's a pretty substantial difference between those two arguments, and I thought that I'd phrased it about as clearly as I could, but evidently not.

[Starver]

(Fakeedit: Slightly ninjaed, it seems.  So I'll add that 'sleeping gas' is a crapshoot.  Remember the Dubrovka Theater siege?)

Completely different situation. Theater full of innocent bystanders vs small appartment with no innocents left unevacuated.
Also, the agent used in the Dubrovka theater isn't the only gas in existance. There's all kinds of gas that will incapacitate yet have less death risk.

Well, apartment with who-knows-what ventilation issues, including shared ducts all over the complex, necessitating even more evacuation than they likely did already.  Not sure what degree of evacuation they used, but if any, it was probably as minimal as possible (bearing in mind the likelihood of explosives, but at the same time not wanting to give substantial forewarning to those in the flat).  Probably the immediate neighbours (inc. above and below) would get a quiet knock before first-contact, but if they did more before they alerted the group concerned I'd be surprised.

And ask an anaesthetist about their job.  It's a preciously fine line between not-sedated-enough and sedated-to-death, that they have to ride.  And that's one individual, fully monitored, directly connected to the mixed-gas line that they control.  There's probably better gasses, but not one that is a guaranteed 'phaser on stun setting' whilst being harmless in all¹ effects.


Noting that IANASiegeSpecialist, and IANAnaesthetist neither, but I'm going by what I know as gained from reliable sources that are, thus my confidence.  New(er) information could change my opinions.


¹ Non-physical, i.e. discounting falling badly.

[Strife26]

No, sleeping gas in that kind of application isn't a thing outside of fiction. Plenty of things that would kill everyone inside, and a few that'd give you fun fifty fifty chances (and maybe a few that'd kill the first few in such a horrifying manner that the others would surrender, but I could go on forever).

[Helgoland]

You could probably try pumping the place full with airborne THC, ie weed smoke: It's got a fairly high LD50, and 'on the floor and giggling way too hard' is almost as good as 'sleeping or knocked-out'.

Then again there is such a thing as a fail-deadly switch, so incapacitating them in any way might be a bad idea anyway.

[TempAcc]

Weed smoke is safer :v
I mean, pumping the place full of nitrous oxide can just make a bomb hazard MUCH more hazardous

[Strife26]

Yeah, when you have one of those as a workable system, claim that it's purely for law enforcement use so you can skirt the chemical weapons ban, then sell it to whatever group you want. Buy whatever tropical island you like and retire in comfort.

[miauw62]

Would it be possible to just fill it with certainly non-deadly concentrations of sedative gas to make the people inside much more sluggish?
Assuming the vents thing isn't a problem, anyway.

[smjjames]

Would it be possible to just fill it with certainly non-deadly concentrations of sedative gas to make the people inside much more sluggish?
Assuming the vents thing isn't a problem, anyway.

This comes right back to the problem that anesthesiologists have, there is no one-size-fits-all concentration, some people may be more sensitive to it or less sensitive and theres body mass to take into account.

[Helgoland]

One would have to settle on an acceptable mortality rate. This may be unacceptable to some people.

[smjjames]

I have another idea, fill it with some sort of non-toxic smoke so they can't see a damn thing and have the good guys enter wearing thermal goggles.

[Sergarr]

Why not send in a remote-controlled drone to look inside for explosives?

If there are no explosives, then why not send in a remote-controlled flashbang grenade and then storm the building?

[TempAcc]

They could use some sort of robot to deploy several flashbangs consecutively with a interval of time between each flashbang to completely overwhelm them while their senses are bugging out. It would probably cause ear drum damage, but it wouldn't kill them.