Terrorist leaders are not about Terror

gwern

From "Academics Doubt Impact of Osama bin Laden’s Death":

"...Fifty-three percent of the terrorist organizations that suffered such a violent leadership loss fell apart — which sounds impressive until you discover that 70 percent of groups who did not deal with an assassination no longer exist.

Further crunching of the numbers revealed that leadership decapitation becomes more counterproductive the older the group is. The difference in collapse rates (between groups that did and did not have a leader assassinated) is fairly small among organizations less than 20 years old but quite large for those more than 20 years in age, and even larger for those that have been around more than 30 years.

Assassination of a leader does seem to negatively impact smaller terrorist groups: The data shows organizations with fewer than 500 members are more likely to collapse if they suffer such a leadership loss. But organizations with more than 500 members are actually more likely to survive after an assassination, making this strategy “highly counterproductive for larger groups,” Jordan writes."

From "Academics Doubt Impact of Osama bin Laden’s Death":

"...Fifty-three percent of the terrorist organizations that suffered such a violent leadership loss fell apart — which sounds impressive until you discover that 70 percent of groups who did not deal with an assassination no longer exist.

Further crunching of the numbers revealed that leadership decapitation becomes more counterproductive the older the group is. The difference in collapse rates (between groups that did and did not have a leader assassinated) is fairly small among organizations less than 20 years old but quite large for those more than 20 years in age, and even larger for those that have been around more than 30 years.

Assassination of a leader does seem to negatively impact smaller terrorist groups: The data shows organizations with fewer than 500 members are more likely to collapse if they suffer such a leadership loss. But organizations with more than 500 members are actually more likely to survive after an assassination, making this strategy “highly counterproductive for larger groups,” Jordan writes."

I'm not as enthusiastic about cryo as some here, and neither am I an expert in it. That said, my understanding of the procedure is that in successfully vitrified tissue it kills neurons via cryoprotectant toxicity but preserves neural structure and enough chemistry to make a pretty good guess about their internal state. You'll find neither in a brain scrambled by gunshot: at least in the damaged portions, and barring truly Clarkeian technology, that information is permanently lost to entropy.

Depends on how scrambled. If you take a porcelain vase and drop in on a hard floor, it will shatter. But you can put the pieces together. The bits of brain may be indistinguishable to the human eye, but unless they are literally creamed, the individual cells separated from each other on an individual level (a possibility - I don't know the specifics), it might be possible to re-assemble the bits.

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Terrorist leaders are not about Terror

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Terrorist leaders are not about Terror

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