A massive explosion happened yesterday in Nashville Tennessee leaving three people injured and causing major damage. The New York Times. Police responded to suspected gunshots when they found the RV and the RV broadcast a message saying it had a bomb on board, including a countdown. Police evacuated the area and prevented any deaths when the RV exploded. The RV was parked in front of a AT&T transmission building and caused service outages when the RV exploded. Possible human tissue was found in the area, though no fatalities are known at this time. The attack occurred in a busy part of town which was abandoned for the Christmas holiday.
My Comment:
I missed this story yesterday being busy with Christmas and with little information to go on. I'm covering it now even as more news breaks. Apparently a person of interest has been named in this case. I am not going to link to the articles though as I think it is irresponsible to name people at this point in the investigation. It's possible that the person named in the article is responsible for the attack but it is also just as possible that he merely sold the attacker the RV, thus the medias effort to dox him could be completely unjustified. It could end up being a Richard Jewel situation where the media names the wrong man.
As for the bombing itself, it's a very strange situation. There is a lot about this bombing that makes it unique and strange. The first thing that is off is that the attacker left a message warning people to stay away. That almost never happens and I can only think of a few situations like that where the attacker took efforts to spare people's lives. There were a couple of attacks like that during the Troubles in Northern Ireland but that's about it for people warning of an attack.
This tells us that whatever the goal was of the attacker it wasn't the typical "cause as many deaths and injuries as possible" goal of most terrorists. Instead the attacker went out of his way to try and spare lives. Not only did he pass on a warning he also chose his target at a time he knew everyone would be gone. Nobody was out in this busy business district because yesterday was the one day nobody would be there.
The choice of target seems pretty important here. Unless the attacker had a grudge against one of the local businesses it seems clear that the AT&T building was the primary target. Attacking that building took out the internet and phones for a large number of people. That appears to have been the goal for the attacker.
I will note that I could be wrong about that. The place of the attack could have been randomly chosen or it's possible that the attacker really did have a grudge against one of the other local businesses. But it seems to me that the true target was the AT&T building and thus this was an attack on our infrastructure.
So what was this attack? We might never know the motive. It could have been done in service of many different goals or ideologies and we won't know unless a manifesto is found. The choice of target leaves some pretty disturbing options though. It is possible that this was an effort to ferment an insurrection and could be seen as trial run for further attacks. It's even possible that this was a foreign effort, to go along with the massive cyber attacks we have seen recently. Without more information we just don't know.
The good news is that nobody died, that we know of. Though the attacker didn't seem to have that as a goal the bomb was powerful enough that a lot of people could have died if not for the actions of the police. We should be so lucky that attacks like this end this way, with no deaths, other then potentially the attacker.
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