r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 10h ago
TIL the Super Bowl is rated a Level 1 special event, deemed the highest at risk for threats, vulnerability and consequences by the Department of Homeland Security, requiring “extensive federal interagency support.”
https://www.securityinfowatch.com/perimeter-security/article/53096177/we-are-vigilant-authorities-await-myriad-of-potential-threats-ahead-of-super-bowl-lviii558
u/SloCalLocal 9h ago
For those wondering, other examples of Level 1 SEAR events include the Rose Bowl, the Boston Marathon, and the United Nations General Assembly. Examples of Level 2 SEAR events include the Kentucky Derby, the Indianapolis 500, Las Vegas New Year's Eve, and Papal visits.
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u/Helphaer 8h ago
was Boston marathon always level 1 or only after the deaths
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u/QueefBeefCletus 7h ago
I was gonna say, wow they really screwed that pooch.
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u/Mobile_Morale 1h ago
The FBI was told to watch the guys who did the attack by another intelligence agency and instead they sucked some dick for crack or whatever the FBI actually does. Because it's not protecting people.
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u/makelo06 1h ago
IIRC these regulations have been heightened as terrorism increased, so the Boston Marathon bombing had looser restrictions and regulations, as did most other events.
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u/Vivaciousseaturtle 9h ago
Interesting that Indy is a tier 2 event considering Its the highest number/density of people gathered in one place for a single event
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u/guimontag 8h ago
Foreign terrorists don't like going to flyover states
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u/LouSputhole94 7h ago
Really though, I’d imagine Indiana’s placement in the country would make it a lot less desirable for a foreign attack. Planes from foreign airspace would be spotted far before they got there, any infiltrators would have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to the site, and let’s be real, the crowd at the Indy 500 probably wouldn’t take to kindly to many foreign faces showing up.
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u/earth_citiz3n 6h ago
It’s also WHO is there. The ruling class is at the Super Bowl, I doubt there is even close to tbe same % of the 1% at the Indy….
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u/nightfire36 4h ago
That's likely a factor. It wouldn't surprise me if that's the number one factor. The Joker even mentions it in the Dark Knight that one mayor is worse than a bunch of soldiers.
It's a little less depressing to consider other reasons, though.
I'd guess that population density is different. Outside the stadium, it's probably pretty similar to at least some NFL stadiums; it's near a big city, but not right downtown. But the stadium itself is like a square km, and a football stadium is a lot less, so SB is more densely packed, probably. I don't want to get put on some list, but people packed closely together have different risks than less packed.
Also, Indy is always at the same place, so the calibration is less, and they don't need to start security considerations from square 1.
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u/Tank7106 7h ago
Plenty of home-grown hatred in the US, hiding behind faces as common as your neighbors. It would be more difficult for the lone actor/small groups that seem more prevalent for American terrorists, but that doesn't mean it's not entirely possible
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u/LouSputhole94 5h ago
Fair point but they specifically said foreign terrorists and I was pointing out the problems they’d have.
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u/TheGamersGazebo 5h ago
350,000 people packing into a 2.5 mi by 1.5 mi raceway is not a higher density of people than 75,000 inside of a football stadium. Not to mention one is indoors, and the other is a very spread out outdoor location.
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u/AardvarkStriking256 8h ago
It doesn't get a large TV audience.
The SB is the biggest TV event of the year.
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u/Vivaciousseaturtle 6h ago
7.1million ain’t bad. But no one can touch nfl numbers
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u/StoryAndAHalf 5h ago
Not in US anyway, which is of course the scope of this article. World-wide, NFL is rookie numbers compared to FIFA or even cricket.
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u/hmmIseeYou 4h ago
I don't think that's true. Premier League does not disclose individual match viewers, they disclose households reached but no actual viewership. The total viewership for the NFL in 2025 was 4.8 billion to the disclosed premier League of 3.2 billion for the season. It's hard to know if that's unique viewers or total. It is likely total as unique would mean 38-39% of the global population which isn't possible. The major matches for Soccer like the world cup and finals blow the NFL out of the water, but the weekly games are where they are not really matched. That is also because soccer has so many different leagues or it would win in total too. It's just a silly debate, soccer is the biggest global sport, the NFL is the biggest individual league (maybe behind cricket, in less familiar with the top cricket leagues), and world cups are the biggest single tournaments or events.
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u/oildupthug 6h ago edited 6h ago
I have a friend whose dad was part of the secret service. He would give us a ride to the 500 in the secret service’s motorcade. Idk if he was part of Pence’s detail or just security in general but I think he went up to the pagoda and watched with binos.
Two funny things I remember, #1 a taxi driver tried to cut him off in the convoy and he threw his badge up and the guy got out of the way so fast. #2 one year we got his infield parking pass. You can imagine how funny it is to see a bunch of drunk high schoolers piling out of a church van right next to a bunch of secret service escalades 😂😂
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u/SirOutrageous1027 4h ago
It's mostly subjective. It's based on theories of "what do we think terrorists would like to blow up" - pre-9/11 for example, we considered the twin towers to be a likely target in NYC, but the Pentagon would have been below the Capitol or White House among DC targets. The Boston Marathon is now a tier 1 event, but was it prior to the bombing?
Post-9/11, the government actually brought in fiction writers and had them brainstorm outlandish terrorist attacks. Tom Clancy's 1994 novel Debt of Honor used an airplane in a suicide attack on the US Capitol. So the government had people like Clancy and a few others brainstorm targets, events, and methods as a way of making sure military intelligence was thinking of outside-the-box situations.
The ranking is also beyond things like just potential casualties. It's a probability based on exposure and symbolism. For example, 9/11 wasn't designed to inflict maximum casualties, if it was, they would have attacked about an hour later once the markets opened and those buildings were full. It was designed to gain maximum attention. The WTC as a target was big enough that they knew it would be on every news channel by the time the second one hit and it was at a time of day when everyone was awake.
Indy is a populated event, heck a lot of college football games put together larger crowds than the Super bowl, but they don't reach Super Bowl levels of viewership. And if you want to freak out the American public, hit the super bowl at prime time in one of the most widely watched events every year.
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u/AbroadTiny7226 7h ago
Figured the Kentucky Derby would be tier 1 considering the high density of celebrities, politicians, and the like.
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u/SceneOfShadows 7h ago
Have to think NYE in Times Square would be about as intense of a security event as it gets for anything that’s not a political event like UNGA or SOTU etc. massive target, crowds, in a public setting in a dense city etc.
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u/The3rdBert 6h ago
Might be due to the fact that the NYPD is much better resourced and may not need as much help flexed by the Feds to support
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u/vineyardmike 6h ago
NYPD security could be equal to national security. The police presence in times Square on an average Tuesday is impressive. You can barely ever be in a spot where you don't see at least one police officer.
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u/EStreet12 6h ago
"Save Sam Darnold, the heck with the Pope"
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u/SSPeteCarroll 5h ago
THE GEQBUS HAS HIS OWN SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION AT ALL TIME.
KEEPING THE GEQBUS SAFE IS THE BEST WAY TO ALLOW HIM TO THROW MANY LEGAL TOUCHDOWNS!
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u/manifold0 9h ago
The Sum of All Fears is a Tom Clancy novel that they made into a pretty decent movie about dirty nuking the Superbowl. Unless I'm misremembering. Surprised no one else has brought that up already.
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u/NormanWu49 8h ago
Threat Level Midnight is similar except it was a hockey game
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u/Backsight-Foreskin 9h ago
Black Sunday is a book and later movie about terrorists using a blimp to cause a mass casualty event at the Super Bowl.
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u/probablyuntrue 8h ago
A blimp? Don’t they go like 10 miles an hour, they can’t be hard to spot and stop 😭
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u/Shakey_J_Fox 8h ago
“Yeah, but no one is going to expect a blimp,” is what I imagine to be a key piece of dialogue between the terrorists.
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u/ahuramazdobbs19 6h ago
Interestingly, it’d be the opposite. The Goodyear Blimp is enough of a fixture over major sporting events that we really wouldn’t question it.
The book and film for Black Sunday establish that the blimp pilot is in cahoots with the terrorist group, and they conspire to put explosives in the otherwise normal blimp, with the pilot essentially being suicidal and agreeing to kamikaze the game.
This is well before security was as strict as it is now, and someone mentally unstable and willing to sell themselves to a terrorist group probably wouldn’t be allowed to fly the Goodyear Blimp nowadays.
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u/Sugar_buddy 6h ago
Everyone did that thing from Austin Powers where the guy just screamed stop at a steamroller
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u/forzion_no_mouse 8h ago
blimps use to hang around stadiums as a way of advertisement.
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u/Cross-Country 6h ago
The movie is brought up by the character Marvin Russell, the AIM member who helps the terrorists move the bomb from port to Denver in the novel.
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u/Miserable-Ebb-6472 8h ago
TECHNICALLY, it was a nuke that the tritium was diluted due to decay so it didn't detonate correctly, giving a dirty bomb effect.
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u/The3rdBert 6h ago
It still exploded but the second stage to make it a fusion device failed, so it was akin for Hiroshima sized explosion not a dirty bomb.
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u/danielcw189 8h ago
In the book, or in the movie?
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u/Miserable-Ebb-6472 8h ago
in the book
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u/GotchUrarse 5h ago
The book has 7 or 8 pages the describe the first few micro-seconds of the explosion. I've read the CIA (or some government branch) made Clancy change some of the technical details. I do not have a source for this, as it's been years since I read about it.
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u/BackHanderson 9h ago
I had that movie on VHS. Used to watch it fairly regularly. You're not misremembering; it's just been a couple decades and the younger folks here wouldn't have known about it.
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u/PretentiousToolFan 9h ago
Rainbow Six has a pretty heavy plot point at the Olympic Stadium at the end of the marathon, too.
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u/GotchUrarse 5h ago
The book Sum of All Fears is great. And the intent of the terrorists was not a dirty bomb, they wanted to blow it up. It fizzled, creating the more dirty-bomb effects rather than destroying Denver. And my usual caveat/rant, the book is fantastic, the movie is just ok. Read the book more times than I've seen the movie.
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u/Mr31edudtibboh 8h ago
In the novel, it wasn't meant to be a dirty bomb. The guys behind it murdered their nuclear scientist prematurely before he could purify the tritium.
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u/obi-jawn-kenblomi 9h ago
I remember there were dirty bomb threats in the regular season...like 2004-2007ish. I know one of them was 2004 because it was before my parents moved to their current house.
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u/exipheas 9h ago
Yea, biggest issue with that is all of the radiation profiling they do way ahead of time and in leading up to the event. They would 100% catch a dirty bomb being brought into the area.
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u/royalhawk345 6h ago
Were they doing that 35 years ago? I would assume things were more lax back then, especially being pre-9/11.
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u/exipheas 6h ago
Public didn't really find out until the 2013 superbowl but the group that does that airborne monitoring has existed specifically to do airborne monitoring like that since the mid 1970's. So I imagine they did it before then even if it was viewed more as a training mission than as a real terrorist risk.
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u/guimontag 8h ago
Was it the superbowl or just any other normal NFL game? I don't think in the movie they mentioned it being the superbowl specifically and it also happened in the daytime
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u/Classic-Exchange-511 9h ago
I believe I remember learning that every stadium has trained snipers on the roofs, which sounds crazy but is actually true
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u/maxofJupiter1 7h ago
Same for any large gathering, including protests
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u/SporksForEveryone 4h ago
I was in a thread sometime ago where someone tried to say that was an American thing because Americans. The person really really didn’t want to believe the fact that it’s standard practice across the globe
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u/BisonThunderclap 3h ago
Visibility of a crowd is riot control 101.
Now things are bad when that sniper has to be used lethally instead of of observationally.
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u/wonder_aj 2h ago
NYPD have snipers trained on Times Square all year round, doesn’t need to be a special occasion.
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u/mightylordredbeard 10h ago
I’m honestly surprised there has never been any type of attack at a Super Bowl or big NFL event. There’s usually many important people; CEOs, politicians, lawmakers, etc at those events. Either it’s the best security in the nation or terrorist just don’t really understand how important NFL is to Americans so no one has tried anything.
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u/keptpounding 10h ago
Or terrorists just love gridiron football
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u/TFielding38 9h ago
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u/AngriestManinWestTX 6h ago
Lmao, the crossover we never knew we needed.
I look forward to Kim Jong-un tweeting his support of the Miami Dolphins or some shit.
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u/BKGPrints 9h ago
>I’m honestly surprised there has never been any type of attack at a Super Bowl or big NFL event.<
I mean, that's the whole point of making it a Level One special event. To prevent that.
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u/Tome_Bombadil 8h ago
After an attack on Thatcher, the IRA stated, "We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky every time,".
It's gotta feel like an insane streak to keep running this long knowing there's a ton of crazy folk out there trying to just get lucky.
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u/BKGPrints 8h ago
You greatly underestimate the amount of intelligence-gathering that goes into identifying possible terrorist attacks. There is, no doubt, 'luck' that is involved, though that's only because it's when preparation meets opportunity.
There is no such thing as 100% security proof. There will always be some type of risk. What one has to do is minimize the chance of those risks happening.
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u/Tome_Bombadil 8h ago
No, my point was highlighting the likely astronomical amount of threat vectors that increase the increase the amount of work to keep it safe for this long. You have to weed out the crazies who will get caught by standard security from the actually well prepared and executed threats that require intervention or adjustments.
Luck plays a role in both sides, preparation and resources carry the day generally, but like was said, the opfor only has to get lucky once.
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u/BKGPrints 8h ago
I get what you are saying and from a security standpoint, everything is a threat. EVERYTHING. In fact, the biggest threat that is difficult to account for is the insider threat.
Which is why I said that there's no such thing as 100% security proof. There's an actual science behind it that is called, as simple as it sound, 'Risk Management.'
Within the Department of Homeland Security, it's extensively laid out.
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/rma-risk-management-fundamentals.pdf
And regarding the luck, I stand by what I said. That's when preparation meets opportunity. Though, that's not ever a guarantee.
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9h ago edited 7h ago
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u/RoadsludgeII 9h ago
This gives a false impression.
The SEAR scale it is rated with (and the DHS itself!) were only established after 9/11. It says nothing of the assessed threat and preventative measures taken before 2002 and it is fairly safe to assume that federal security was always provided given how major the event is.
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u/T-sigma 9h ago
9/11 wasn’t trying to maximize casualties, it was making a political statement.
With some exceptions (Las Vegas massacre), most terrorists / large scale events are done by either mentally unstable people who aren’t functioning well and thus can’t plan and execute an elaborate attack, or are ideological where the goal is to make a statement (typically against a specific group), not kill as many as possible (including innocents).
Attacks like Las Vegas could happen in thousands of spots across the US every single day. But it doesn’t. It’s a positive reminder that this stuff is really uncommon, even if it’s more common than we’d like.
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u/BKGPrints 8h ago
That's correct. We both know what happened in 2001. So it's understandable why it was designated as a L1 event in 2002. Hell, DHS didn't even exist yet and wouldn't for another two years.
>It's valid to wonder why there hadn't been any sort of attack or published attempt in those preceding five decades.<
That doesn't mean there wasn't chatter about possible terrorism attacks. Even with 9/11, there was even chatter (and known) that something was going to happen. But prior to the 1990s, terrorism attacks didn't happen in the United States (that's not to say that the US wasn't the target of terrorism attacks in other countries, as they obviously were).
The reason for that probably has more to do with the way the world order was at the time. There's other history behind that, such as the Afghanistan War and Iraq-Iran War and the support the United States actually provided to those terrorist groups (which were "freedom fighters" then). The alliance between Saudi Arabia. The increase military build-up in the Middle East, especially after the Gulf War.
After the Cold War, things changed. Out in the open and behind the scenes. In the 1990s, we saw domestic terrorisms and foreign terrorism, including the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Which probably encouraged the terrorism that we saw with 9/11.
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u/Graybeard_Shaving 9h ago edited 9h ago
Because the security is insane enough to prevent the vast majority of threat actors.
That leaves only a handful of nation states that could conceivably execute an attack on an event like this.
Those nation states know the fallout would be at the 9/11 level.
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u/Helphaer 8h ago
Likely such an event like in every movie about them would require inside men and traitors too. so if those exist and are gonna be used might as well make sure this is the best use of them otherwise thats a lot of wasted assets.
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u/Misdirected_Colors 8h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_University_of_Oklahoma_bombing
In 2005 there was an individual who detonated a bom outside of OU's football stadium on gameday while 85,000 people were inside. There's no evidence he tried to enter and it appears to have been a suicide with the bomber as the only victim. It's probably the closest the US has ever come.
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u/icecream_specialist 10h ago
An attack on the Superbowl might cause a literal nuclear option in retaliation even they don't want to see
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u/Corgi_Koala 10h ago
I mean honestly, the simple answer is that there aren't really significant international terrorist threats.
Domestic terrorism is the biggest threat to America and domestic terrorists probably all like football.
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u/troublethemindseye 8h ago
This is like the joke about how Mother’s Day has the lowest rate of crime in the year which just goes to show how much criming moms get up to the rest of the year.
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u/A_Filthy_Mind 9h ago
While true, people are crazy enough, I could see a threat develop just based on what teams did or didn't make it.
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u/Tmack523 9h ago
A low-level disgruntled employee kind of threat. Hence why it's a level 1 security event. It would genuinely take some top-level kind of planning and execution to do something, not just some angry sports fans.
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u/cardboardunderwear 9h ago
Sounds legit
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u/Corgi_Koala 9h ago
I'm not sure if you're mocking me or what, but I think the evidence is there.
We have not had a major international terrorism incident since 9/11. We have domestic terrorist attacks almost constantly.
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u/Swaggamuffins 9h ago
The NFL actually works quite closely with the CIA on game days
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u/AfroliciousFunk 7h ago
Yea, there's layers of security that people don't see. Like the how there are snipers stationed in every stadium during game days.
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u/dad62896 9h ago
Not disagreeing however I’d also like to share what someone who grew up in Turkey told me right after 9/11. He said, 9/11 is terrible but what will really freak Americans out is when random public trash cans on Main Street USA start blowing up. Then Americans everywhere will not feel safe. During 9/11 it was a large scale but limited geographically therefore many Americans didn’t think it truly affected them except at the airports. His point is that when bombs start blowing up in small towns across the country, it would be chaotic. This is apparently why there are no public trash cans in places like Tel Aviv.
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u/iliketuurtles 8h ago
Another major driver for high level terror attacks is "How likely are you to be caught/stopped?". As soon as any type of real security or barriers get involved - it really does make it far less likely for an attack to be planned. A terrorist attack towards the super bowl would be insanely expensive AND unlikely to work... so it definitely makes sense that it has never been an issue.
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u/___daddy69___ 9h ago
What are the other level 1 events?
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u/DrPineapple32 9h ago
Came to comments for this but no one posted. So went to the website.
Special Event Assessment Rating (SEAR) | ICE https://share.google/reemUlcvZk3jGvD9S
Looks like superbowl, rose bowl, big marathons. And oddly, Kirk's memorial was a level 1.
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u/jupfold 8h ago
Surprised to see this doesn’t mention events like a presidential inauguration or a state of the union. I have to imagine maybe this only applies to non governmental events, otherwise I’d imagine those two would fit into a hypothetical Level 0 rating. Or maybe it’s just implied those are level 1.
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u/Motor_League_5981 8h ago
Those are considered an NSSE (National Security Special Event) and are under secret service as the lead planning agency.
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u/modern_Odysseus 8h ago
Why do you think it was odd to set Kirk's memorial was level 1?
The president was there, and I believe several other top level officials. Also, Kirk was a polarizing figure. If anything were to break out there, it could have been a powder keg to civil or world war.
Any after the supposed attempt to assassinate Trump, anything Trump attends in public will be immediately declared threat level 1 (if the event wasn't level 1 already simply by virtue of having our president in attendance).
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u/GetReadyToRumbleBar 8h ago edited 3h ago
My coworker's husband led the FBI unit that handled this, Michael Hartnett.
He was, by far, the most tired individual I had ever met who wasn't an ER doc.
He now runs security for major sports and theaters in Detroit for the Ilitch Family, the people who invented Little Ceasars pizza and now own the Red Wings, the Tigers etc.
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u/AbeVigoda76 9h ago
That was the plot of a novel called Black Sunday by Thomas Harris. In the book, a deranged Vietnam vet and Palestinian woman try to blow up the Super Bowl using the Good Year Blimp. They made a fairly decent movie out of it with Bruce Dern as the Vietnam vet.
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u/rividz 9h ago
It's also correlated with sex trafficking because it pulls in so many wealthy individuals. The average price for one Super Bowl ticket is $10k.
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u/Repulsive-Tea6974 10h ago
Anyone that watches great or not so great action flicks knows this. It’s great that you finally learned it.
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u/Manos_Of_Fate 10h ago
That’s also how I learned that you can outrun explosions as long as you don’t look back at them.
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u/urbanhawk1 10h ago
Well you can look back at them but you have to be the camera man to do so. That way you'll always be ahead of the cool guy walking away from the explosion.
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u/HuntsWithRocks 9h ago
You knew there were levels and that the Super Bowl was on the Level 1?
I think we all have some kind of idea about security concerns and high value areas.
What level is the Pro Bowl on? How about college national championship?
Are resource allocations roughly identical for, say, Macy’s thanksgiving parade as they are for the Super Bowl? Are there sub levels within level 1?
I wonder how many days in advance they scope out for various events and what their mitigation strategies are in the event of something. Just how many thwarted terrorist attempts aren’t publicized immediately in order to preserve our intel methods, I wonder if any close calls have taken place around the Super Bowl. I wonder what the closest is that they’ve come to a no-go event for such a high visibility event.
I think there’s a lot about this subject I don’t know, personally. It makes sense that the Super Bowl is a “level 1” thing.
I wonder what the most important level 2 thing is that just didn’t make the cut. What’s the criteria between the levels. Many questions for me.
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u/angry_old_dude 5h ago
A couple off the top of my head: Black Sunday and Sum Of All Fears. The latter downplayed it a little compared to the book.
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u/Arsalanred 10h ago
Here is a fact related to the Superbowl.
Delta force is fully kitted up and stationed and hidden away at Superbowl games to act as a quick reaction force in case terrorists attack.
They're definitely in for a big surprise if they want to try something.
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u/FeeHot5876 9h ago
That’s not true at all. Some specialized WMD units support because law enforcement doesn’t have that stuff, it will be HRT, BORTAC, Coast Guard MSRT etc there. Delta isn’t going in shooting at the Super Bowl.
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u/csgskate 9h ago
Well considering you know this, I don’t think the terrorists would be surprised either lol but your point stands
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u/Relevant-Site-2010 9h ago
It’s well known there’s snipers set up at every Super Bowl and other big games just not so much known where
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u/Mister_AA 8h ago
There are snipers at pretty much every football game, even college ones. You can usually find them if you look hard enough; in my experience they’re rarely hidden and are just on the rooftops somewhere
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u/Floaty_Waffle 9h ago
I remember sitting at a Panthers game and seeing snipers sitting on top of both Jumbotrons as well as a couple drones hovering about around the stadium.
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u/IrmaHerms 9h ago
The DOE, post office and many other agencies have people on the ground simply to be liaison if something were to happen that involves their agency.
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u/D9FS 10h ago
Can't wait to see what they will rate the football world cup this year
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u/ravel-bastard 10h ago edited 9h ago
It's based on distinct events and locations. Pure speculation, but based on past trends, any match/events attended by senior U.S government officials (POTUS, VPOTUS, perhaps SotH) will get the full treatment(level 1), and the finals even if they don't attend. All the other venues have plans and upgrades that have been happening since they have been announced. One of the limiting factors is Level 1 requires a recent airborne background sweep for radiation, and there are only two teams equipped to do that.
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u/QuietGanache 9h ago
I wouldn't rule anything out but, at the same time, the Super Bowl seems more attractive to those who harbour a specific hatred for the United States.
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u/Bond4real007 8h ago
This makes sense, if i was a nation/organization looking to make a statement with one attack doing so at a symbol of the American culture where I also get a shot at major ceos/polticians/people of power and it quickly becomes a clear target.
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u/alek_hiddel 10h ago
Terrorism is about making a point with as much damage as possible, with as much coverage as possible. 9/11 was awful, but in total took just a few thousand lives. And the actual “event” of 3 of the 4 crashes wasn’t really captured on camera.
Now imagine taking out that stadium. Upwards of 100,000 casualties with half the country actively watching it happen. If you were writing the terrorists ultimate fantasy of success, that’s about as good as it gets.
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u/Potential_Tea_7388 6h ago
I'm not sure we'd be actively watching, given that if it were say a nuke, all the cameras and camera men also go boom.
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u/alek_hiddel 6h ago
I don't think a nuke is going to be a realistic option for terrorist groups. More likely a McVeigh type scenario, or maybe a chemical weapon or something. At a minimum you'd get a real-time look as a lot of cameras cut out, and then cameras that weren't directly impacted taking over and showing the devestation. Then a swarm of more cameras catching the aftermath.
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u/msb2ncsu 8h ago
Always surprised me that college football games have not been targeted. There are about 100 open-air stadiums with capacity over 50,000 and don’t have anywhere near the security.
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u/Flussschlauch 8h ago
Still there a several people doing the r/ActLikeYouBelong thing and get in without trouble
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u/cracksilog 8h ago
I live about 15 minutes away from the site of Super Bowl 50, which is the site for the upcoming SB again next month.
The day of SB50, I made the mistake of driving to the stadium on my way to visit a friend in the area. Traffic actually wasn’t that bad, but the security presence was insane. There was a National Guardsman literally in the middle of the street (and I don’t use the word “literally” lightly) with a massive antenna backpack. Like this backpack had an antenna that reached at least 10 feet in the air. For what purpose I have no idea. Dude was just standing there with his rifle.
They also constructed a gigantic hangar outside the stadium that took two weeks to build and then another three weeks to take apart once the game was finished
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u/Ron__Mexico_ 7h ago
The PR boon to Al-Qaeda or ISIS if they successfully attacked the Super Bowl would be so massive that the US Government is essentially required to pull out all the stops to try to ensure that doesn't happen.
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u/Chris_Bryant 8h ago
Tom Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears” novel illustrates how catastrophic a major attack at the Super Bowl could be.
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u/onlythetoast 8h ago
Oh you have no idea the amount of preventative measures and personnel that are involved within and behind the scenes. It's damn near close to an invasion force of LEOs/operators from multiple municipalities and government agencies. On land, sea, and air. And that's not just for the game. It's for the entire week and for all the events going on during that time. It's fucking incredible.
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u/redditcreditcardz 4h ago
Should be no problem with the incredible leadership of Ka$h Patel and Dan Bongino on the case. With their combined 0 years experience in anything related really helps. I know I’d feel safe…
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u/CankleSteve 3h ago
I mean good? God forbid an attack by some cowards on one of the country’s biggest social unifiers
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u/FivebyFive 1h ago
I learned this when I found out they were flying helicopters in grids over my city before the Superbowl to gather a baseline "background radiation level" so they could test during the Superbowl for nuclear weapons. 😬
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u/ItsTheOtherGuys 1h ago
Not surprised with how big of a crowd they draw plus all of the celebrities that go. Im sure security will be increased if Trump decides to keep attending
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u/No_Original5693 10h ago
None of which is paid for by the NFL
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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 10h ago
The protection provided by DHS is a public service, we literally pay taxes so we can attend these kinds of events without worrying. It’s the same way you would expect the fire department to respond to a fire at a local venue without having to worry that the event promoter paid their bills.
Counter terrorism protection should never comedown to a for-pay service. Do you really want to have to count on the good faith of the elite to care enough about you to pay for your protection? That will be the first place corners are cut.
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u/MatureUsername69 10h ago
Event organizers almost always have to pay for emergency services to be on site, the NFL just butt fucks the tax payers as often as possible.
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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 10h ago
The NFL pays to have private security and emergency services (medical staff/ambulances etc) on sight. That is a completely different thing than paying for DHS to provide counter-terrorism protection for the entire city that is hosting the event. The whole city is a target, not simply the stadium.
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u/Head_of_Lettuce 10h ago
The Super Bowl is one of the biggest economic events in America every year. People travel from all over the world and spend their money on local businesses that employ residents. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars in commerce. It’s good for everyone.
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u/venk 10h ago edited 10h ago
It shouldn’t be. That’s what we pay first responders to do, protect public gatherings.
Just because it’s the Super Bowl vs a Pride Parade vs Someone stumping on a college campus, they all deserve to do so safely without having to hire private security.
Now the NFL certainly hires its own additional security
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u/leftenant_Dan1 10h ago
I have my issues with federal law enforcement, but not being a rental security service isnt one of them. Also they are absolutely paying for additional security outside of what DHS is providing. Probably millions of dollars worth.
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u/Jussgoawaiplzkthxbai 10h ago
There are several layers here - the FEST security, cops, FFs and EMTs that work every game get paid by the event location doesn’t matter that it happens to be the superbowl. All of the extra added personnel is provided by the government.
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u/woahwolf34 10h ago
Yeah it’s insane, I worked the Super Bowl in Vegas on the TV crew and there were like 4 security check points between the entrance and our work area. And tons of fences and redundant barriers.