From twitter, on the Christmas Bombing in Nashville

[solarbird]

I stress that we don't know who is responsible yet. I bring up other, less obvious possibilities in the thread. Hopefully, as I say in the thread, it was something personal. Original thread on Twitter.

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Tom Winter - @Tom_Winter
NEW: Police in Nashville, TN say they arrived at a 'shots fired' call this morning to find an RV with a recording playing saying that the vehicle would explode. Police sought to immediately clear the area and call on bomb squad and then the RV exploded near an AT&T facility.
10:09 AM · Dec 25, 2020

You know what this reminds me of?

Provisional IRA bombings in England in the 1970s.

Because of the warning.

It's a demonstration bombing. ProvIRA used to do that.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Demonstration bombings are still bombings, still terrorism. It's a demonstration of capability and will to use it.

2. The Provisional IRA didn't always call in warnings. These guys won't either.

3. They know not to use phones; too easily traced.

4. Recordings (computer-generated voices, no tracing) and amplifiers are cheap. There will likely be imitators, both real and as pranks. Don't take a chance: if you hear it, leave.

5. Some of the "pranks" will be from people who also do real bombings. Those are still terrorism.

6. If this continues and evolves, some of the no-bomb versions may end up being used to herd people _towards_ explosions which haven't yet happened. Pick your exits carefully.

Finally, 7: don't trust countdown times. If it says you have five minutes, assume you have two.

(Possibly not even out of intent, but out of sloppiness. But if they get response teams used to accurate timers, shorting one would get awfully tempting.)

As to who: it's _much_ too early to make any solid guesses.

But I can't help but note that Nashville is a deep blue city in a deep red state.

Hopefully that's a coincidence.

Because it could be. Maybe somebody had a Big Angry at AT&T, or some other business on the block.

Maybe it was personal. Maybe somebody got fired the week before Christmas. It's happened before. Usually those guys pick guns, but maybe somebody built a bomb.

We don't know.

If it was personal, none of these tweets really apply.

Personally, I think we're going to have a little fascist insurgency now, and from their perspective this is as good a day to start it as any, with a warning, rather than a casualty event.

But just because that makes sense doesn't mean it's what happened.

Maybe it's personal. We'll almost certainly find out, and hopefully soon - before this gets even more out of hand.

Me?

I'm _really_ hoping it's personal.

But all cards on the table?

I'm really kind of doubting it is.

ETA: As @pisa_lisa pointed out, this was a major 911 and telecom infrastructure disruption event as well, and AT&T confirms the explosion is the cause.

The odds of it being personal just dropped a _lot_.

Comments

[kathmandu]

Augh. Thank you for the analysis and tips -- I didn't know those details about how the IRA used to do it, and it will be useful in case it happens near me (crosses fingers against the prospect).

[solarbird]

Ah, not all of that is specifically IRA. Most of them are more general than that. It's the demonstration bombing that really makes me think of the old Provisional IRA campaigns.

That, and also hitting infrastructure with the demo. So a bit of those two. The rest are more general. But I said that.

[dewline]

Maybe you're right and setting up the telecom disruption was the point: set the stage so that people are less able to get reliable information. Assuming that this is part of a campaign, of course.

[solarbird]

We just don't know. But that 911 disruption is awfully, awfully interesting.

Could still be a coincidence, or a personal issue. Unlikely doesn't mean out of the question.

[typographer]

I just want to point out that AT&T laid off thousands on engineers this year... so you calculation of odds may be WAY off..

[solarbird]

We'll see. But if you count the bombings - as opposed to workplace shootings and the like - I think my odds estimation was reasonable.

If this had been guns, not bombs, I'd definitely have come down pretty hard on the personal-issue side. Not definite, of course. But probable.