It’s monumentally tacky, but the first thing I thought of when I heard about the London public transportation attacks on Thursday was Sliding Doors. In the film, there are two concurrently running and radically different storylines: one in which Gwyneth Paltrow’s character catches her train in the London Tube and another in which her train’s doors close before she can get on.
This probably wasn’t too far from the truth for an untold number of people, and for one specifically that The New York Times reported about on July 9:
Paul Dadge overslept. That meant he reached the subway late, boarded a train at King’s Cross late, and ended up two trains behind—instead of possibly inside—the one ripped apart by a bomb deep in the tunnel outside the Edgware Road station at 9:17 a.m.
New Yorkers were reminded of the bombings whether they wanted to be or not. The day after the London attacks, the NYC public transit system was put on “high alert,” which meant a temporarily increased presence of uniformed cops wandering around the stations and subways. I found out later that the city had literally assigned one officer to every train in the city during rush hour, amounting to thousands of police officers, state troopers and National Guard members, standing around looking bored or vaguely menacing.
Having a uniform on every train is a weak semblance of security, and something that can’t and won’t practically continue, but really, as I suggested last month, there is no protection against terrorism. That’s why it’s terrorism. It seems kind of obvious to state but the AFP ran a story on the topic on Friday:
With millions of people converging daily on the subways of the world’s major cities, analysts say it’s nearly impossible to stop determined assailants carrying out attacks like those seen in London.
Militants have targeted public transport as a relatively easy way to sow terror in urban populations, which often have little choice but to use trains that are dangerously exposed to attack.
It went on to mention that the Tokyo subway system, which is the world’s largest and which has had tight security since the 1995 sarin gas attacks, is taking the additional step of removing most of the few trash cans still remaining in its stations. Authorities will also pay closer attention to passengers’ baggage but admit there is no foolproof security. Even hand-checking every rider’s baggage wouldn’t work as there other options for bomb placements including restrooms, trash cans and public areas.
9/11 was a blockbuster of an attack, but looking at the bigger picture, the events in Tokyo, Madrid and now London suggest that terror attacks in general have evolved to be quick-and-dirty, nearer the ground and hitting closer to home for many in the world’s largest cities.
“We always knew there was going to be an explosion in London,” said Dadge, the Brit who overslept. “It’s a question of when, not if. It’s pure coincidence that I was there then.”