Hello all -- I've been absent from the forum a couple of weeks as I've been doing some climbing in the Alps (including a successful ascent of Mt. Blanc!). I had a particularly unusual and ridiculous security story on the way there, although it does not involve airlines per se.

As you may know, the Eurostar has always used airline style security for its passengers, and along with the airlines, began requiring liquids to be in 100ml bottles in 1 litre bags. On my way to Paris, Eurostar security confiscated my half drunk bottle of Evian water -- but let me through carrying my ice axe with a 10 cm serrated alloy point. I guess ice axes aren't on their official list of prohibited items (thankfully)

Perhaps the explosive threat from liquids is a bigger (although minuscule) one than the chance you could commandeer the Eurostar with the axe and drive it into the Parliament building.

One of the things that they try to emphasize to us during X-Ray training is that you CANNOT allow yourself to be distracted by something you recognize in a bag. For example, if you see a swiss army knife in a bag, don't mark it, search the bag and let the passenger go. You have to finish analyzing the image first. Seems obvious but if you think about it, it would be easy to forget that you're not done after spotting someting when you've been on your feet for however many hours. This principle applies to more than just x-ray technique and it sounds like this may be a case like that I hope you reported the incident, because doing so doesn't have to be about getting anybody into trouble but rather improving security procedures/training on the whole. Stories like this are embarassing

Why should he report it? Why should either his ice axe or his water be considered a threat of any kind to the train? This kind of absurdity has got to stop.

Not a good idea. As has been mentioned on this board, if you find something on a plane and then are a 'good citizen' and turn it in all you do is subject yourself to hours of scrutiny, questions, delays, etc. Doing the right thing doesn't get you anything but grief. The best course of action seems to be to either leave it be or take it off the plane yourself and dump it when you get to the terminal.

I'm sorry, I forgot I was talking to an expert! You're absolutely right. In spite of the fact that the people on this board spend half their posting time complaining about how much time it takes to get through security, we should simply start thoroughly screening every single liquid that comes through the checkpoint to ensure that it's not liquid explosive. Who cares if you have to wait in line for 6 hours? Convenience over... convenience?? As for the ice axe, perhaps you forgot or maybe you just didn't know that exacto knives were the primary weapon used for 9/11 -- small weapons can be just as deadly as big ones.

You call it absurdity, but what I find absurd is the incessant complaining from a small number of people about legitimate security measures that are the entire reason they have the luxury to have their nose-in-the-air, complacent attitudes towards the whole process in the first place.

Or you could always go ahead and make the report after your trip is over @:-)

Ummmm, it was a train. Yes, it was a special train that goes through an expensive hole, but it was a train, not a plane. In general all of your luggage is carry on for a train trip. When commenting on security for rail travel one should not be focused on the particulars of air travel.

I have NO love lost for security, but consider this:

On a plane, you can make it go anywhere. You can fly it to NYC and crash it into a building, or you could fly it to a packed sports arena and crash it into the crowds. Either way you can kill many people.

On a train, you can only go on the tracks. You could possibly keep on the gas and crash into the terminal or run it so fast it goes off the tracks, but you can really only ever endanger the people ON the train, and at that you can really only endanger them by causing an accident to the train. The most effective thing to do would be to bring a bomb onboard and blow it up in the tunnel, costing billions to repair and (if the blast it strong enough which is highly unlikely) causing the tunnel to flood and killing a lot of people in it.

But with an Axe, what can one person do? At most they can commandeer the train (again, unlikely) and - what? drive it real fast? They probably have max speed limiters and auto-braking systems that prevent them being run off the track and being crashed into the terminal. So what can someone do to cause death and mayhem by commandeering the train? Not much.

So, I would submit that the major focus of train security would be explosives, and therefore it was probably more effective to concentrate on possible explosives rather than possible tools that could be used to take commandeer the train.

My .02 - not that it makes the situation any better/safer/clearer

Does the auto train through the Chunnel limit the cars to 100mL containers (sorry, please remove the gas tank, radiator, etc. You can buy replacement parts in France/UK)? If not, the OP's complaint is far from absurd.

What's absurd is that more people are not complaining.

No mention about limitations for liquids (other than alcoholic drinks) on the Eurostar website, nor in the (impressive) list of forbidden items (appendix to their conditions of carriage).

We're talking about a TRAIN, not an AIRPLANE.

Regarding 9/11, the fact that small knives were the weapon of choice by the 9/11 hijackers is not terribly relevant. The real problem that day was that the standard procedures for dealing with a hijacking was to cooperate so as to get the aircraft on the ground. I dare say that there won't be any more cooperation by either the crew or the passengers in the future.

You can't ban everything that is either sharp or could be made to be sharp. You'd have to ban knives and forks (even plastic ones), pens, pencils, screwdrivers, etc. Dull things can be weapons too. We should probably ban laptops. Can you imagine what would happen if you it someone over the head with a laptop?

You can call me absurd all you want. Nearly anything can be used as a weapon by someone intent on causing harm. We should certainly ban guns, explosives, large knives and obvious weapons. We should not ban water, wine, jam, and things that are not intended to be used as weapons. I hope that enough people wake up and realize the how idiotic all of this is, particularly with regard to TRAINS.

I can give you 191 reasons why this argument is weak.

Someone could do that in a movie theatre, a supermarket, a church, or an airport checkin counter. Do you think we should set up checkpoints and ban liquids at those places too?

Nah. We need checkpoints at everyone's front door. And bedroom door, since people might try to hurt their own kids. It's the only way to be sure.