Get Rid of the TSA to Save Lives

Most people fear plane crashes, airplane terrorism and nuclear power accidents. However, these fears have resulted in stupid policies that increase deaths.

Planes are far safer than cars. The TSA and anti-terrorism pre-flight checks are ineffective at catching terrorism and create delays that cause people to change to driving for short and medium flights. People driving instead of flying likely causes an extra 200 deaths per month. A 2005 study places a lower conservative estimate of 300 additional deaths per year from TSA avoidance, air crash, and air terrorism fears.

The TSA in the USA costs about $8 billion per year.

All of the passengers and crew of airplanes know that they cannot allow terrorists to take control of the plane. 9-11 hijackings were already solved on the same day when the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 fought back to prevent terrorists from controlling the plane.

The main increase in safety and reduction in terrorist attacks comes from operations against countries and organizations that launch terrorist attacks.

In order to reduce traffic deaths, airplane security needs to be recreated with a focus on speed and convenience.

There also should be increased usage of the tens of thousands of smaller airports. This would allow faster loading and more direct commuter flights. Usually, large airports are poorly placed for short haul business commuters.

Nuclear Energy Already Saves 50,000 Lives Every Year From Air Pollution Avoidance and Could Be Increased to Save 400,000 Lives per Year

Similarly, nuclear energy is far safer than coal, natural gas and oil.

Nuclear power is generating 2500 Terawatt hours per year of clean energy. This displaces a mix of mainly coal and natural gas power generation. Air pollution from Natural gas causes 10 to 15 deaths per terawatt hour and air pollution from coal causes 30 to 70 deaths per terawatt hour. Existing nuclear continues to save 50,000 lives per year from air pollution avoidance.

New nuclear reactor designs that can be factory mass produced and have increased safety and efficiency would allow a rapid scaling of nuclear energy to provide 20,000 Terawatt hours per year of clean energy within two to three decades. This would save 400,000 lives per year and reduce global warming gases by about 30 to 50%.

Specific Accidents

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident was caused by a tsunami washing away the diesel fuel tanks to keep the reactors and nuclear fuel cooling operating. This resulted in 2202 deaths mainly from evacuating old people out of the potential radiation zone and one false claim of Fukushima related cancer. The radiation generated was not that much and if the radiation is below the level that is fatal then it takes a decade or two for high levels of radiation to cause cancer and for cancer to kill. The old people in Japan who were evacuated would have died from old age before any radiation-caused deaths if they ended up getting exposed to radiation levels far higher than what Fukushima caused.

There was a financial settlement to the family of a Fukushima worker who claimed his cancer was from the accident? The award was given because of politics and guilt and not scientific evidence.

The Chernobyl was a terrible reactor design that had no containment dome. Chernobyl caused about 200 deaths and might eventually shorten the lives of another 160 people by about 18 months.

Cutting the TSA and Jump Starting New Nuclear Power Build

If the TSA was cut then the funds could be used to effectively jump start advanced nuclear reactor power. A mix of research funding and subsidies with the $8 billion per year would enable nuclear to get rolling again.

SOURCES – Forbes, Wikipedia, Cornell University

Written By Brian Wang

27 thoughts on “Get Rid of the TSA to Save Lives”

  1. Yes, Israeli security! I live in Jerusalem, Israel and have experienced my share of terrorist attacks. Between Bus bombings, Car Rammings, and other matters I would trust Israeli security over anyone in the world. When it is a matter of life and death what do you want an drugged out amateur or a professional with combat experience?

  2. you sir, are an idiot who has no sense of scale and cannot wrap his miniscule head around risk. you sir, are the poster child for the inane thinking that goes on on some parts of the environmentalist world.

    watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17aE91SBMoY and ask yourself why you aren’t *begging* governments to invest into every damn option that we have to avert climate change right now, *including* nuclear power. Reflect on the fact that france took all of 30 years to become mostly carbon free in its electrical grid, wheras denmark started about 40 years ago, still hasn’t even come close, and is destabilizing electricity grids all over europe in the process even though it is 1/9th france’s size.

    And if that doesn’t work, reflect on yourself 20 years from now and realize that when we do hit the climate wall, that your inane thinking regarding nuclear was a large cause of us going over the edge, and if the damn environmentalists hadn’t gotten in the way of engineers in the US in the 1970s, we’d likely have already eliminated coal by now and be on track to stopping global warming in its tracks well before the danger zone was reached.

  3. *anybody* who is worried about climate change and doesn’t fully support nuclear power – fanatically support it in fact – is an idiot. hell, anybody who *isn’t* worried about climate change is either ignorant, in denial, or an idiot.

    we are in some seriously deep trouble here. if you have any doubts about that statement, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17aE91SBMoY and seriously examine your thought processes aftewards. nature doesn’t care about your political creeds or beliefs, it just grinds out reality moment after moment. If we get caught on the wrong side of that, we are toast (literally).

  4. In 1991 I flew in a regional Air Niugini flight to their outer islands.

    Knives? There were people carrying bows and arrows. Spears. Machetes. Deer. (Literally. Get a small deer. Wrap a vine or bit of cord around the shoulders and hips and join them together to make a handle. Pick it up and carry it on board as hand luggage. During the flight it wanders the aisle getting into fights with dogs, chickens and children.)

    Anyone trying to hijack that flight would be lucky to survive. I don’t think they eat people any more in that part of the country.

  5. Does that mean creating the conditions of a Chernobyl style exclusion zone across the rest of the world is a desirable goal?

  6. Sad to say but yeah, it’s not money that keeps me from flying more. It’s the fact that for a five or six hour drive I’m probably going to come out ahead on time, comfort, and flexibility if I just drive.

    TSA is a big part of that (although chairs that are substantially narrower than my shoulders, and the back of the seat in front of me being claustrophobically close, also figure in).

  7. Keeping guns & explosives out of the airplanes is a good idea. However, I’ve long thought that instead of keeping knives off planes we should hand everyone a knife suitable for cutting a steak or stabbing a hijacker.

  8. Yeah, and when I was a teen, people could fly with meaningfully dangerous weapons as carry on baggage. Meaningfully dangerous weapon DNE terrorist attempt. I myself have forgotten I had my (fairly large) pocket knife on me until airline security reminded me, and I can easily see somebody who carries concealed just forgetting often enough to generate those kinds of anecdotes.

    The 9-11 scenario became close to impossible part way through 9-11, witness flight 93. The only reason it had been feasible then was that people had been trained to think of a hijacking as a free trip to some exotic destination, not mass murder. These days somebody who tries it is going to be lucky if they’re not torn limb from limb, and no weapon that takes a patdown to find is going to change that.

    Hardening cockpit doors and arming the flight crew finished the job, and the latter was deliberately slow walked by administrations that hated the idea.

    I’m not saying no security is needed, in an age of terrorism. It’s the TSA, as presently constituted, that aren’t needed. Some airports use private security, instead, and they do as well or better on tests, without being as obnoxious.

    But the taking off your shoes and belt, the overly intrusive patdowns, (I get them every time, thanks to pads for incontinence showing up in the scanner.) they’re not really for safety. They’re security theater.

  9. The area round Fukushima is about as radioactive as Denver, and the Ukrainian grannies who sneaked back into the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and live pretty much exclusively on food they grow there, are healthier than the evacuees who stayed out. Disaster movies, and the public misconceptions arising from them, make no distinction between the massive dose of radiation you’d get from a nearby bomb blast, or handling a medical irradiation slug, and the thousand times weaker dose from even a meltdown like Fukushima. The first can definitely kill you in days, the second doesn’t even register on most statistical analyses over the next twenty years.

  10. TSA = Tremendously Stupid Agency

    By inducing the adoption of security theatre, the Terrorists have won!

  11. You know full well that the state of nuclear has more to do with Chernobyl and Fukushima and nothing to do with TSA funding.

    It’s a shame when people die, but people grieve and then get on with their lives. The state of nuclear has little to do with body counts so you can quote death from nuclear accidents till you’re blue in the face. Contaminated exclusion zones you cant cleanup or live in for a 100years, good luck convincing people it’s worth the risk. That bridge was burnt a long time ago.

  12. TSA is like amateurs after being woken up after their afternoon nap but the TSA hires thieves, pedophiles and molesters (http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story/18781511/congresswoman-reports-tsa-hires-criminals/). TSA needs to use the same methods as the Israeli airports do. I have been through Los Angeles Airport (LAX) and Ben Gurion Airport in Israel and the difference is night and day (https://bemusedbackpacker.com/2017/01/16/what-to-expect-at-israels-airport-security/)..

  13. Tho’ most of the goat pen is braying about yah, yah, get rid of the toads, I’ll take a somewhat contrary stance.

    Namely, that they’re actually beneficial. 
    In real terms. 

    SCENARIO is “copycat”. Someone (as once he did) devices a shoe bomb. Isn’t successful, but is caught. I have no hard figures but apparently over the next few years, no fewer than a few dozen people either tried a similar thing, or mocked up a shoe to see if they could sneak by the beetled brow of the TSA.

    SCENARIO is “crazy person” — from a friend who actually works FOR the TSA, as a SFO incoming line security checker, multirole, his anecdotes are actually somewhat concerning. At least 3–4 times a week, someone either inadvertently, or more likely intentionally, tries to pass the security check with a meaningfully dangerous weapon. And is detected. And questioned, to a degree which depends on attitude and dangerousness of weapon(s). Also, the invisible TSA (checked-luggage scanners) catches even more badness on a weekly basis. Quite a jitterbug operation. 

    There are perhaps 4 other scenarios that also benefit. 
    Every week.

    Just ✔
    GoatGuy

  14. ⊕1 old friend. Excellent recounting of the Bay Bridge silliness. 

    However, not a particularly new phenomenon: armed guards at banks, sometimes at liquor stores, increasingly at Malls, and of course depending on the sense of group-wealth, at schools, gymnasia and emergency rooms near you. 

    And what are they supposed to do, shoot people? Mistake a gun toting well-meaning and well-behaved citizen defending others as the perp, double pop to the head and torso? That doesn’t play out well. 

    Some are issued guns at the beginning of every shift that have blanks instead of bullets. And sealed barrels. No peeking. Blam, BLAM, BlamBlamBlam. Didn’t hit the perp. Well … the noise show made people variously scared and feeling later good about the effort. 

    Just ✔
    GoatGuy

  15. I agree. TSA was “developed” just to get people “comfortable” with the idea of their RIGHTS being violated in the false sense of security. Once people accept the idea of being searched, it makes it easier for the deep state socialist to institute even more and more intrusive and constitutionally ILLEGAL acts. And, the sheep (citizens) roll over and accept it. Once a government agency/program starts, it NEVER ends!

  16. I personally have no opinion on the TSA. I am 72 and never fly because I have nowhere I want to go. But when I see the kind of remarks I see here, I have to ask what you base your opinions on. What is the scientific data on the TSA effectiveness? That includes any crimes their very presence prevented.

  17. The old, established designs for fission power plants are expensive. The proposed future designs are quite different. The proposals say the reactors will not present any dangers, even if the operators walk away from them. And, especially if the approach of mass producing modular reactors is adopted, construction of a power plant would be much quicker and cheaper. I think nobody says regulations should be eliminated, but the regulations can be made far simpler with the modular approach, too.

    I believe there still is a bit of work do be done to prove out what the advocates say about those future designs, but the potential seems worth spending the required development dollars on to see whether the promises can be delivered. There are some small companies working in that direction now, but stepped-up investment would speed up getting to the answer of whether the potential can be made real.

  18. We can get rid of the TSA and depend on Al Queda not to hijack planes and crash them into large buildings and kill thousands.

    As for nukes they are kind of an expensive way of producing power. I know if we get rid of the safety equipment and the regulations nuclear reactors would be much cheaper. And maybe one of the reactors will never ever meltdown.

    By the way, lots of people dying one by one will never be as news worthy at lots of people dying at once. This is just a fact of life.

  19. The TSA was never put into place to save lives.

    It was put into place purely for optics to benefit the government in general, while benefiting certain parties in particular in said government with public sector union job patronage for perverts.

  20. I recall flying to a Battlebots competition very shortly after 9-11. And watching them at the airport put my combat robot through a fancy scanner, while reflecting on how easily I could have rigged it to function as an incendiary bomb without them even noticing. The titanium body would have made a dandy fire.

    When I got there, there was a single soldier with a rifle guarding the multiple lanes going into the Bay bridge. I wondered what he was there to do, shoot out the tires if he saw a van with an I (heart) Osama bumper sticker?

    Yes, the TSA is really about little more than security theater, and I’ve sworn that, if anybody gets caught trying to bring a bomb on a plane as a suppository, I’m going to stop flying rather than comply with the updated protocols. Having to take off my shoes because somebody built a shoe bomb is bad enough.

  21. Sadly perception drives opinion and voting.

    TSA will remain, just because it’s a perceptible way for people to feel safe.

  22. The TSA has always been about Security Theater. It has never prevented anything and was just implementing procedures after the fact. The public wants to seem secure to travel. Big waste of money.

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