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Re: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Posted By: wintermute, on host 195.153.64.90
Date: Thursday, August 9, 2001, at 01:18:11
In Reply To: Re: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania posted by Jezzika on Wednesday, August 8, 2001, at 12:54:32:

>
> > winter"Now, me, I live daily with the very real threat of being exploded by communists"mute
> >
>
> When I first moved to London, I was amazed at how terrorism is a part of your lives. The family I lived with warned me straight off never to investigate a backpack, suitcase, whatever, left unattended in an Underground station. I think they thought of me as very naive.

Yeah. I once nearly had my suitcase detonated in a controlled explosion because I'd put it down for two minutes in a railway station. I was no more than 5 yards from it, and keeping an eye, when I saw a porter standing over it talking into a radio. It's well known that the risks of bombing is too high for them to bother investigating - they just treat every suspicious package as it it was a bomb. I just had to tell him it wasn't abandoned, and he called off the bomb squad, and then gave me a lecture on leaving stuff unattended.

> I'm not really scared of being bombed because I live near Cheyenne Mt. It's just one of those things you muse about.

For some reason, you dont worry about it, which is weird. At about the same time as the anecdote above, the IRA were bombing commuter trains into or out of London about once a month. Every so often, I'd get home to see a news article about a train that had been blown up that day, but because I didn't have any other way of getting into work, I just thought "I'm glad it wasn't me", and got on with life.

I suppose if you did think about it, you'd go mad.

winter"And that's why London railway stations don't have rubbish bins"mute

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