https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e20020089
The September 11 attack: A percolation of individual passive support
Laboratoire des Milieux Désordonnés et Hétérogènes,
Tour 13, Case 86, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France
Corresponding author: a galam@ccr.jussieu.fr
Received:
7
February
2002
Published online: 15 April 2002
A model to terrorism is presented using the theory of percolation. Terrorism power is related to the spontaneous formation of random backbones of people who are sympathetic to terrorism but without being directly involved in it. They just don't oppose in case they could. In the past such friendly-to-terrorism backbones have been always existing but were of finite size and localized to a given geographical area. The September 11 terrorist attack on the US has revealed for the first time the existence of a world wide spread extension. It is argued to have result from a sudden world percolation of otherwise unconnected and dormant world spread backbones of passive supporters. The associated strategic question is then to determine if collecting ground information could have predict and thus avoid such a transition. Our results show the answer is no, voiding the major criticism against intelligence services. To conclude the impact of military action is discussed.
PACS: 89.75.Hc – Networks and genealogical trees / 05.50.+q – Lattice theory and statistics (Ising, Potts, etc.) / 87.23.Ge – Dynamics of social systems
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2002
