so an attack is imminent

[myoriginal3]

AIBU to be a little freaked, living in London?

But it really pisses me off when people post that this is different to the IRA because this new breed of terrorist doesn't give warnings and I really wish people wouldn't post that. its bollocks. Terrorists don't give warnings. None consistently give accurate warnings. The UVF didn't and the IRA didn't either.

and half the time their bombs went off before the were supposed to or the fucker supposed to phone in the warning got it wrong.

Although, the lack of any even half-hearted attempt at warnings does indicate that these terrorists don't actually want anything - just death/destruction/disruption of the way of life.

Kildora - well love, darling, sweetie...funnily enough people/parents/just like us weren'ty too keen on us killing their kids, sweetie/darling...so pop off and get some perspective, there's a dear.

Plus, security services have been saying for a long time that attacks would move to the provinces. It's hard to attack London and the population, businesses and organisations are hyper aware and well practiced in spotting and preventing problems. The thinking was as it was becoming so hard to attack London terrorists would move to softer targets outside the capital. And they have.

Absolutely. 30-40 kids at our insignificant village football practice, this evening. Easily 4-5 dozen people on an interurban double decker through the county in the late afternoon on a weekday, packed suprmarket on a Saturday morning, up to 100 people around the visitor centre in a nearby country park on a sunny bank holiday weekend. While these are unlikely targets, they are largely unprotected and an attack on any of these things could be highly devastating.

While panicking won't prevent anything, none of us have room to be complacent, even those of us living in an insignificant village.

I also remember the IRA days. Our office's internal phone directory actually started with a page telling you how to respond and what information to ask for if you received a phone call which was a bomb threat. Bomb scares/threats were part of every day life.

Loughinisland

Greysteel

The Ramble

Look them up.

Nowhere is safe. And that's the point.

The IRA was different for me because I was a child/teenager, even though people were killed in a bomb 20 minutes from where I lived and was present for a couple of evacuations I don't remember ever actually being scared.

I think there is another difference too though. The internet and rolling news. If we go back 25 years I wonder, given the time this was announced, if we would have even known about the threat level being raised until tomorrow? I doubt we would have had a news flash, after all what benefit would that have? Has it made a difference knowing this tonight? It may have been on the radio or teletext but my feeling is we would have actively had to sought the information out.

I remember the couple of weeks after September the 11th. I didn't have the internet or even Sky TV. I had just had my son and remember obviously checking teletext for updates. Really though I just had to wait until the next news broadcast for more information.

I don't have an opinion on if this is better or worse (it can certainly be both). Just that it is very different.

Where I live we have a serious gangland problem.. think gang members seeking each other out in public no regards for innocent bystanders
There is a huge armed police presence in my area.. at first I was terrified but now months later it's a comfort to see them knowing any threats are being taken seriously..
IMO the threats aren't anymore serious than generations before us.

RIP to those who lost their lives on Monday night ⭐️

I agree, I think the internet makes it feel worse perhaps. Before people were reliant on the tv/radio etc, now not only 24/7 access to rolling news, but 24/7 access to everyone else as well, other people reactions, theories or whatever.

Id forgotten about the what to ask if you got a bomb threat call, we had that at work too.

But it really pisses me off when people post that this is different to the IRA because this new breed of terrorist doesn't give warnings and I really wish people wouldn't post that. its bollocks. Terrorists don't give warnings. None consistently give accurate warnings. The UVF didn't and the IRA didn't either.

I agree too. To say the IRA didn't target civilians on the British mainland is a nonsense, it was a key plank of their campaign, especially in the early to mid 90s. They were placed in shopping centres and train stations, it was indiscriminate, just like the Manchester attack and children were killed too.

I think the difference is that rolling 24 hour news, clickbait driven internet news sites and Facebook didn't exist back then. There wasn't the saturation coverage, the TV news was less sensationalist.

PlanIsNoPlan perspective? PERSPECTIVE?!

You are on a thread, hours after the murdering of children by a terrorist, saying we should fucking apologise!

Never you mind that those children bombed nothing. Or that Isis has killed thousands of its own countrymen (so are hardly fucking weeping over war casualties themselves) or that their end goal is the destruction of the west, not an apology for the war.

Oh no no, everyone else has the problem of no perspective

Fucking apologist. Vultures always appear on these threads.

I have to say, I really hate this rhetoric about "letting them win" and "don't be scared, that's what they want"

They don't win if we are scared, they don't win if we hide in our homes, they don't even win if they kill. It's murder. We don't say a murderer has won if they kill someone. Or if people are scared after a murder has happened, the murderer hasn't won. There is no winning here. ISIS are winning nothing. We are winning nothing. We are panicking and grieving and dealing with and getting on and wash, rinse, repeat. And that's all we can do. People are scared. There is nothing wrong with that. Stop trying to make people feel bad for their instinctual responses to a traumatic event. Fear is a natural process we all have to work through in our own ways. Being afraid has no impact on ISIS. They will do their thing whether you are or you aren't.

I disagree that the internet makes things feel worse - nothing can feel worse than your child being killed, nothing can compare with that, nothing could be worse than that for anyone to bear.

I had just had my son and remember obviously checking teletext for updates. Really though I just had to wait until the next news broadcast for more information.

By way of illustration how much has changed in a few short years. At the time of 9/11 I was on holiday in the Lake District with four friends. At the time we didn't have mobile phones and there wasn't a TV or internet in the cottage. We didn't find out about 9/11 until three days later when we went into the nearest town to buy a paper.

access to everyone else as well, other people reactions, theories or whatever.

Indeed, and they are competing. Dragging up "experts" at short notice to speculate wildly, reporting rumours. The Express reported last night that there was a gunman outside the hospital. Of course they did, they are having to compete with every other news site that was begging for clicks.

The BBC got slated (and always does) on Twitter for not reporting stuff other outlets were. That's because the BBC are the only ones doing anything properly anymore because they have to. Where are you going to go to for info? The site who are still saying that the security services don't know the perpetrators identity or the site who have his Facebook profile up?

Obviously some news sites are more reliable than others but if The Express (for example) is willing to report every rumour they are bound to be right sometimes and then their behaviour is rewarded and encouraged.

BoysofMelody

It's crazy isn't it?

I was in the hospital and only found out at 5ish when I went home. I heard two women saying "Yes, two planes crashed" when they walked past me and that was the only inkling of a clue I had. By the time I found out the whole thing was over.

IchangedM yes, now it would be all over Facebook and Twitter. I knew this whole internet lark was a bad idea.

I disagree that the internet makes things feel worse - nothing can feel worse than your child being killed, nothing can compare with that, nothing could be worse than that for anyone to bear.

I think the point is that the internet and 24-hour rolling news 'makes things feel worse' for those who are not directly involved, by allowing people to immerse themselves in every detail, theory, and grieving eyewitness report. No-one is suggesting that the internet is making people feel more upset than those who have been directly affected.

I can understand why people are frightened and alarmed but it's really really really important to keep perspective of actual risk. The actual risk of any of us being caught up in a terrorist attack is infinitesimally small. They aren't going to target your suburban football practice or your local Sainsburys, they just aren't.

And its important to realise that the Conservatives have an agenda here and a motive to accentuate the threat level to make us all as frightened as possible, as it feeds into their narrative.

Vulture, really? If that makes you feel better to call me that. My son was a baby when our PM Blair started to bomb another country against my wishes - many children were killed then and many since and many will be.... and we now have to live with the consequences. We need to stop the killing... we were wrong to start this.

And the current situation is nothing to do with the IRA - but you would think we could apply what we learned through that process

• the reduction in the death of innocents, to now. We need to admit

that we aren't always right.

Stop trying to make people feel bad for their instinctual responses to a traumatic event. Fear is a natural process we all have to work through in our own ways.

There is nothing wrong with being scared. But it's not true that fear is some independent force you have to process and cannot control.

Fear is contextual- think of being at home when there's a power cut. It feels much more scary if you are by yourself and it's late at night than if you're with other people and it's early evening, when in reality you're no more at risk. Fear is also social and spreads easily: if the people around you are scared, you probably will be too. So each of us trying to control our own fear helps ourselves but also everyone around us.

And its important to realise that the Conservatives have an agenda here and a motive to accentuate the threat level to make us all as frightened as possible, as it feeds into their narrative.

I think another poster has already given the ultimate answer to posts like these:
Knowing that we live alongside cockwombles that spout this kind of nonsensical bollocks is more worrying if you ask me!!