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Honolulu Lite
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Hawaii makes the
funny pages
It always makes me nervous when Hawaii makes the Fortean Times Online list of weird news stories. I mean, we do a lot of silly things in Hawaii, but for it to rise to the level of being featured on one of the Internet's premier silly sites is scary.But we made it the other day. Right in there between a story about an Australian testicle cooking contest and a blond Roman Catholic religion teacher fired for being too sexy, was the headline "Hawaii Public Invited to Terror Attack."
My initial reaction was, "What stupid thing did we do now?"
It turns out that the story came from this very newspaper, which I had somehow missed. It involves the upcoming Asia-Pacific Homeland Security Summit and Exposition, a gathering of government officials and security experts from about 40 countries to discuss ways to prevent terrorist attacks.
On the last day of the event, "the public" is invited to take part in a "community response exercise" that will allow them test how they would react to a terror attack in Hawaii.
That's the first silly thing about this event. I, as a member of the public, don't need to test how I would react to a terrorist attack in Hawaii. I know how I would react. I'd scream like a little girl, run around waving my arms in the air and then get very angry with whoever attacked us.
The second silly thing is that organizers of the summit want you to pay $25 for the privilege of pretending as though a terrorist attack occurred. Are they kidding? They want the public essentially to be guinea pigs in a fake attack so that summit participants can observe their reactions?
The third silly thing (I think there have to be at least three silly elements to a story before it makes it on Fortean Times) is the description of the exercise format: "The exercise is designed to provide a presentation of relevant background information through handouts and video media to achieve an interactive discussion. The format is tailored in three modules to maximize allotted time."
With that, organizers have achieved quite a remarkable thing: managing to make a terror attack sound boring.
The fake attack itself involves a terror group "under contract with Al Qaeda" chartering a large "recreational vessel" from San Diego, anchoring three miles offshore from Honolulu and sneaking in at night to conduct suicide bombings.
My problem with this scenario, aside from the fact that the worst screenwriter in Hollywood would not have conceived it, is the problem I have with all terrorist scenarios: Why are we giving these idiots ideas? Let the terrorists figure out how and where to attack us. Every time we say in public that our subways are vulnerable or our nuclear power facilities are easy targets, some knucklehead terrorist wannabe is taking notes. I'd rather we keep Hawaii off the terrorists' radar.
Thankfully, the three-page description of the fake attack and the public participants' role in it is so bogged down in bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo ("Module 2 -- Scene setting, table group discussion and reporting ... Facilitator selects a spokesperson from 3-5 table groups to provide players and response agency officials ...") that a would-be terrorist would likely fall asleep reading it.
Planning how to prevent terror attacks is fine. But if you are going to invite the public to take part, the least you can do is make the exercise interesting and not make them pay for it. That's just Fortean Times silly.
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