Spyke
sopuli.xyz

Hmm, apparently terrorism is way less of a big deal than it seems like. This map covers 47 years, and only a few thousand (or maybe a couple of tens of thousands) deaths (rough estimate - am I wrong?).

Compared to maybe 3M excess deaths in Europe during covid...

41

The thing about terrorism is the sudden shock that comes with it. Someone is deliberately doing a terrible action. It mentally affects an entire nation.

I didn’t feel well for an entire week after Utoya, and I’m not even Norwegian.

22

The thing is: Terrorists are usually extremely stupid. It's kinda in the job description. Therefore a lot of them are caught before they can do much damage. Recent example from Germany: https://www.hessenschau.de/panorama/limburg-weilburg-17-jaehriger-soll-gewalttat-mit-waffen-und-sprengstoff-geplant-haben-v1,anklage-gewalttat-jugendliche-100.html

I'm not a big fan of the police (except when Sting is on the mic), but the authorities are doing a great job at catching them early.

6
knowonereply
slrpnk.net

Yeah right? Let's see a map showing all the deaths from bombs that have been dropped in the Middle East and North Africa in the same timeframe. While it's still a horrible thing to happen of course, it always amazes me how people in my country will act like a few people being killed in an attack is a huge tragedy. But then just treat mass deaths of civilians somewhere not in Europe like it's nothing

1
Sadbutdrureply
sopuli.xyz

I do think it's kind of human nature to be more shocked when bad stuff happens "here" or to people "like us".

When we hear about bad stuff far away there's a tendency to think that's normal over there, or it must be happening for reasons, that we just don't understand...

That's exactly why I think it's important to be aware of these tendecies/bias, and try to calibrate how serious problems feel against actual numbers harmed...

2

I see your point with this and I agree that something that's happening in your own country would hit you harder than an equal situation in another. I'm more pointing out the sheer disparity between the two that is the case the vast majority of the time and the reactions around that. Even if atrocities are more common in certain other countries, treating it with basically next to no empathy (or sometimes even thinking it's right that it's happening or just a natural thing) and then something very small in comparison happening here is given vast amounts more attention and empathy isn't something I can see as excusable. Especially given how often European countries have a hand in those atrocities happening. If it's a case of not understanding the context then again I don't think the default should then just be to not care about innocents dying. I'm not expecting people to go out and try and stop it or whatever but to do more at least than just shrug it off. Just because it's the norm to have this attitude doesn't make it right

3

This could be improved by changing the dot colors to reflect a second metric. I'm thinking color to refer to year. Would be an interesting way to interpret frequency visually.

20
lemmy.world

Russia:
300+ in Beslan school
200+ on Nord-Ost musical
150+ Crocus City Hall 2024
Multiple other cases with 100+ casualties.
Something is wrong either with the data, or the legend

11
Skuareply
kbin.earth

Beslan and Moscow are both off the eastern edge of the map

7
toofpicreply
lemmy.world

Ok, Beslan is, my bad. But Moscow is right at the right edge

3
Skuareply
kbin.earth

Just to back this up, I combined this map with OSM to show where Moscow is

8
fedia.io

...i am just asking questions, but in these places, were the intended consequences reached?..I truly do not wish to be provocative, but because there are so few examples, did they achieve their said goals?..were the goals incremental through extraordinairy circumstance, or do these same conditions exist in places where this particular "terrorism" was invoke?..

god that's stupid, sorry

10
gruereply
lemmy.world

The Basque Country still belongs to Spain and Northern Ireland still belongs to the UK, so... no, I guess?

I don't know enough about that cluster in the Balkans to even speculate on it.

god that's stupid, sorry

Asking if terrorism works isn't a stupid question. It's a very impolite question (from the perspective of people in power), and maybe even heartless, but not stupid.

22

For the Northern Ireland one it's a particularly messy question to answer because the attacks were not all working towards the same goal. Pro-UK paramilitaries were a huge part of the Troubles, it wasn't just pro-independence paramilitaries vs the British army

17

...i really was just asking, thank you for the honest answer...

6

The Good Friday agreement was signed regarding Northern Ireland, so they definitely got something for their efforts.

10

It's not stupid at all. many do not reach their ultimate goal, except the revenge type attacks. But sometimes their deeds lead to unreasonably heightened security measures that negatively impact everyone in the region.

Now conspiracy theorists sometimes state that some attacks may be false flag to get those uncomfortable security measures in place. But I think it's rather politicians using the incident to further unpopular measures and please the ppl who bribed them.

1

Hey! Eurovision says Israel is part of Europe! We should include their terror on these maps top then

But then their circle would be so huge, it wouldnt be any space for the other countries

8
guy
piefed.social

TIL there has been four terrorist attacks in my country

6
guyreply
piefed.social

Yes. I get Drottninggatan but the others? Is even the 2010 bombman here?

2

Examining Wikipedia, I've found the Trollhättan school stabbing with four deads, the Västerås IKEA attack with 2 deads and the Malmö school stabbing with 2 deads (both unfortunately not included in the list). The 2010 Stockholm school bombings probably don't count as the only person who has died was the terrorist himself. The map is bad in displying several terrorist attacks at the same place, e.g. Stockholm, where there at least occured the 2017 Stockholm truck attack (5 deads) and the 1975 West German embassy siege by the RAF (4 deads). Yet, it's odd that the circle size seems not to match with the number of dead victims on Wikipedia.

1

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Fatal Terrorist Attacks in Europe from 1970 to 2017 | Spyke