What I find brilliant is that they scan people and then have them step out of the machine. And if you do find something????? How about keeping people in the bullet proof tube so the blast is vented out the top, not across the check point.

Seriously, do they not expect someone to light off what ever then have once they are discovered?

People don't ask "And then...." nearly enough.

??

OK, I'll play.

TSA yells 'freeze' and tells the exposed evil-doer 'just stand right there'.

"And then"?

OK, if you're going to play, try presenting a more realistic scenario:

1. Threat is discovered.
2. TSA makes a little poo in his/her pants.
3. TSA yells "BRAVO" and runs to the furthest phone, suposedly to call the bomb disposal squad.

And then?...

My reply to the TSA would be that there is a branch of applied mathematics called "Queueing Thoery". It has proven very useful in assessing lengths of queues in retail, fast food restaurants, airline ticket counters, and so forth. It could also be applied to security lines. :-:

Queueing theory works very well in practice and requires minimal inputs (arrival rate, number of security checkpoints open, and it will give you the estimated queue length at any time). Then, you run simulations and/or different scenarios to find the acceptable queue length.

But then you might need people with more than a high school education wearing neat, blue uniforms!

I've never flown out of MDW and experienced it being anything other than a complete zoo. They're unprepared on the average day, let alone for something like this.

Out the top? You mean out the front and back, where the blue shirts are standing on one side and a queue of passengers waiting on the other? I've never looked closely at the construction of the scanners, never having gone through one despite many hundreds of thousands of miles of travel, but is that glass bulletproof? Even if it was, how much would that actually contain an explosion?

Also, if the goal was to attack the checkpoint itself, it seems likely such an attack would take place before the perpetrator ever stepped foot into the scanner. Why would they? There are far more people in line for the machines than after. And stepping into the scanner is asking to be discovered. Unless they think they can actually get something through, and just hit the panic button if caught.