Has anyone travelled on Eurostar lately?

[earlgrey]

What security checks are in place? Are they the same as for air travel?

Yes, but faster. They scan you and your bags, but it all took less than 30 minutes for us when we went in Feb.

So, how do they make it faster without compromising on safety?

Not sure. We went through the 'door' to scan for metal stuff. All our bags went through the scanner. None of ours were pulled over for checking, but some were.

It is more like the checks used to be in air travel prior to the more recent allerts.

I don't suppost that you can Hijack a train and get it to go wherever you like, it being limited to the rails and all.

No, but you can make a massive hole in a tunnel.

You could but it would be an awful lot of trouble or relativley little disruption. there are many other methods of getting to the continent.

Life lost would be negligable - compared to crashing a plane into something or blowing something up

The Eurotunnel doesn't bother me in extremist muslim regards, it does rather bother me if white supremacists/england flag toting Bovver boots racists got hold of a way of making an explosive.

as i think they would think they had motive to blow up the Chunnel.

It would take much more explosive to cause disruption to Eurostar, than it would for an airplane. Airplanes are always balancing between safety and lightness, so they are much easier to blow up, iyswim.

That being said, last time I travelled, they made me put the pushchair through the xray machine (at London, not in Paris), which is something they didn't ever do on planes at that time.

However! that must be put into context. I mean food facists could want to blow up macdonalds, communists could want to blow up your town hall or election point.

M&S Bra wearing supremists may blow up Bravissimo.

Police find it much easier to infiltrate white supremacists, than Muslim extremists, anyway.

But Bra extremecists?

They have a really hard time infiltrating those.

(The fact they're imaginary may be part of the problem, though ...)

But what about liquid in bottles etc?

From what I know, the liquid in bottles thing was to create a small bomb. It takes quite a small bomb to ruin an airplane (after all, it's a thin pressurised container!). The Eurostar is a lot more sturdy.

small bomb in a pressurised plane with thinish walls= plane blown to bits, falling out of the sky= everyone killed. including people on the ground (possibly)

Small bomb in a train= small amount of damage to one carrage. This would kill the people in the acrriage, but probably not in the rest of the train. It would also be higly unlikly to damage the tunnel.

While this sort of thing would be devistating for the people in the carriage, it isn't on the same scale as a plane.

And to extraplate further, no-one checks when you get on buses etc.

Planes are high risk because of their constuction and because they fly in the sky.