> He points out the ridiculousness of anti air missiles being installed in random flats
No, if that was his message, the post would be three words long ("Lunacy on stilts"). This is pure, unfiltered tabloid FUD:
> If one of those things is ever fired, either in anger or by accident, it'll shower white-hot supersonic shrapnel across the extremely crowded residential heart of a city.
As multiple comments courteously point out, that scenario has exactly zero grounding in reality.
Tell me, because I'm curious: what do you think will happen if the missiles are fired and hit their target? Will the target somehow vanish into thin air? If not, where do you think the pieces of it will go?
Yes that's a sarcastic tone I'm taking. I live in London and the thought of missiles being deployed around my city frightens me a great deal more than the vague possibility of a terrorist attack.
And what might such a target be? As a comment on the article says:
> The real damage comes from the thing you're trying to shoot down; all the missile is going to do is to prevent a lunatic from hitting a stadium, by making it have a near-miss. If that means scores die when a plane hits a tower block, instead of thousands dying when it hits the opening ceremony or 100m final, then it's done it's job.
Now, that doesn't make it any less security theatre, the main component of which is announcing the presence of the missiles loudly, but Stross' article is still pure FUD.
No, if that was his message, the post would be three words long ("Lunacy on stilts"). This is pure, unfiltered tabloid FUD:
> If one of those things is ever fired, either in anger or by accident, it'll shower white-hot supersonic shrapnel across the extremely crowded residential heart of a city.
As multiple comments courteously point out, that scenario has exactly zero grounding in reality.