Originally Posted by law dawg

Any scenario not involving explosives and many that do, assuming the explosives are being used in order to negotiate and not just pull the cord and boom!

Next time you fly imagine a hijacking happens. Most likely it'll happen up front, so if you're in the back you're out of the fight before you can even get in it. It will happen up front because that's where you gain control of the plane. You cannot control a plane without control of the flight deck. So it will be all over but the shouting by the time you 1) even know what's happening and 2) can get up front to leap into your remarkable action.

But, let's assume you're close enough to the action to do said leaping - are you going to? By yourself? Or do you somehow envision that everyone will jump up at the same time? You better hope they do, because if they don't you'll be conspicuous, to say the least. And conspicuous in this kind of event generally means "target." Ask the poor Israeli guy that jumped up on 9/11 by himself. He was killed within seconds by the terrorist sitting behind him waiting for a hero. It took United 93 at least 25 minutes and a vote to get rolling. They had to plan, get pumped up, talk each other into action, etc. I'll say that again - 25 minutes and a vote.

"The pax won't let it happen again" is a neat slogan but not much in the realm of reality. The last time most people have been exposed to real physical violence, much less death and murder, was in grade school.

If I was a bad guy I'd never let anyone talk, plan, plot or conspire. I'd kill several people from the get-go to get everyone's head down. Anyone looks funny, execute them. Anyone talks, executed. Anyone moves, executed. Whisper? Executed. And done so in a brutal, bloody manner. Let them hear the screams, smell the piss and .... and blood. People have no experience with that. When it does happen they tend to shut down.

That kind of directed violence has yet to happen again since 9/11. A bunch of EDPs and hijackers not using violence is not an accurate methodology or sample to determine how normal people will respond in the middle of a violent hijacking. Much like people jumped on EDPs on planes prior to 9/11 (they even beat one to death) but once faced with 9/11 they got their heads down. Because they were scared, and rightfully so.

Intellectually everyone says they'll fight back, but intellect goes right out the window under adrenal stress, which, as I said, is why the military and LE spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours training people to react instinctively.

To say it'll never happen again because people know what will happen is to ignore the lessons of history. You can watch videos of Jewish prisoners walking into the gas chambers, knowing what was happening, but not really believing it. Over and over again.

You don't rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training.