It Will Be A Cloudy Day

We are starting week 4 of the C25K program, after taking a week off for vacation and a slow weeks due to illness.  Eldest Daughter is still feeling poorly, but the Lovely Mrs. Robb has gone out with me in her stead a couple of times.

Yeah.  She has started running at the place it took me two months to get to.  Sigh.

In any case, it looks like running in the morning stimulates the old noggin.  I was contemplating this old news about how the German Pirate Party managed to crash a drone right in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel at a campaign rally.

I came up with half a dozen ways that drone could have killed her, and possibly everyone around her, before I got out of the shower.

None required explosives.  None required guns.  Most required a basic knowledge of chemistry, a little skill, and (ideally) some planning.  One only required a decent grasp of physics.  Being an engineer by inclination and training, I also spent some time thinking about how you might defend against these sort of attacks.  There are possibly defenses.

Well, if I am being honest, not so much defenses as mitigation actions.  Heavy, impermeable blankets and breathing apparatus, for example.  Throwing your body over the Chancellor to protect her when a drone pops up may be heroic, but it isn't going to count for much if the drone starts spewing out an aerosol containing a nerve or biological agent.

In every scenario I could come up with, reaction time, followed by immediate movement, was key.  If you look at the image attached to the linked article, above, I would say that Merkel's security detail could have had half a second - maybe - to react to the drone before it did anything dangerous.

That is nowhere near enough time.

Easy to obtain.  Easy to deploy.  Easy to weaponize.

Incredibly difficult to defend against.

It is a much scarier world all of a sudden.  At this point, I think it is only a matter of time before a major political figure is assassinated by drone.

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