Originally posted by silverkat:
Why was Boston the only town that panicked? Did anyone here in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, or Philadelphia notice this?
I think it has to do with where they happened to be located, and the inital decriptions.
Keep in mind that the first one was found on a support girder for I-93 bridge at the Sullivan Square bus stop - a spot perfect for a bomb to cause damage to public transport (buses, the subway) and to a major highway that goes from the city to points North.
The person who described the object didn't see any lights, just a black box with tubes that had wires.
I heard about it on the radio around noontime, and (I'm guessing here) those who had seen similar itmes and thought nothing of it before called to report seeing similar items in other similar locations...areas important to transportaion or where large crowds often gather.
A few people interviewed on the news reported having seen the signs earlier and didn't know what they were and when they heard the report of a possible bomb on the radio put the desrciption with what they had seen together and erred on the side of caution.
Originally posted by Weasel:
[QB]
What I wish they would just say:
"We regret that the general public are so incredibly stupid."
Originally posted by 56kz2slow:
The idiot that thought it was a bomb should pay. Talk about being paranoid. That person must freak out anytime a car is parked in a weird location for too long. What if someone throws away a microware or a coffee maker in a parking lot, will he call the cops again thinking there is a bomb.
Any object that is large enough to hold an watch and a stick of dynamite can be considered as a bomb. What about piss jugs along the highway, is that chemical warfare? Where does it end?
Edit to add:
Some cities have bylaws regarding where advertising can be put, if they broke a law, sure charge them for whatever the penalty is for putting advertisement without the proper permits.
Oh, they broke plenty of laws, no doubt about it.
Yes, the city of Boston does require permits to put advertising up - and the ad company never got it.
These people put signs on private property without permission, and trespassed on city and state land to erect some of the other signs.
The other part is the locations where the items were placed - along combinations of bridges and locations in which public transportation would be disabled if the items were in fact bombs, and all in spots where more than 1 type of transportaion (buses, trains, subway, roadways) or where large crowds frequently gather made the items seem more harmful than they were.
the 38 locations where the signs were found a lot of the spots in Cambridge and Boston co-incide with T stops (that's the subway in Boston), bus stops and overpasses.
Add into the fact that during the day, from certain angles and distances the signs were unlit, and that made the signs look like black boxes with little bulges on the bottom.
Add it the fact that not everyone in the city is familar with the show (until now) and that nothing on the signs said anything about ATHF made the situation worse.
Hell, I've watched a couple of eposides, and have never seen those characters until now.
So let's say a whole bunch of odd things pop up in public places, particularly in spots where large crowds of people gather or around multiple sources of mass transportation, in your area - which the authorities in your town have absolutely no knowledge of...with some of the things having images on them appearing to be flipping you off
in the post 9/11 era, what sort of response would you expect?