The FBI stopped a terrorist plot to blow up the Holland Tunnel and, ah, flood Wall Street with the millions of gallons of water that would somehow make their way through the tunnel (without paying the toll, mind you) and bash their way out of the tunnel and up and down that Street of Walls.
Actually, this isn’t really funny. The death toll from the explosion would have been huge. An explosion in a confined space causes far more damage than an explosion in an open area. A car bomb or two in the middle of the tunnel would have been horrible, indeed.
However, no, the water would not have made its way uphill to flood Wall Street.
Sources said that New York City officials believed the plan could conceivably work with enough explosives placed in the middle of the tunnel, which runs underneath the river bed, a source said.
But others doubted the plot was feasible.
“You are talking major, major explosives and knowledge of blast effect to make this happen,” said another senior counterterrorism source.
Besides bedrock, the tunnel is protected by concrete and cast-iron steel.
Experts also said that even if the tunnel cracked, the Financial District would not be flooded because it is above the level of the river.
Yeah, that gravity thing sucks—I don’t think the terrorists have figured out how to get around it yet. But I sure hope they keep trying. That oughta keep ’em busy—and not blowing stuff up—for years.
Note: the title of this post is from an old gag my father taught me. You walk up to someone and breathlessly announce, “Did you hear? The Holland [or Lincoln] Tunnel is underwater!” Nearly every single time, the victim will respond, “No! What happened?”
Yeah, it’s a dumb joke. But I kid you not about the success rate. At least, if you lived in the NY-Metro area and tried it. It worked even into my college years.
So did the old snake-in-a-can. Yes, I am full of an appreciation for low humor. Why do you ask?
This is an obvious disinformation campaign by terrorists trying to convince us that they’re morons.
They can’t possibly be that dumb.
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I remember being amazed to find that the Holland Tunnel was underwater … when I was about six years old.
This story got played in such a bizarre way by the local media.
The foiled-terror-plot-du-jour — a planned attack on the Holland Tunnel — came with the ominous subhed that terrorists wanted to flood Lower Manhattan. The only flaw in the plan was, um, that it couldn’t happen, since Lower Manhattan is ten feet above sea level. (These terrorists also had a plan to coat Paramus, New Jersey in marshmallow fluff . . . except, um, that couldn’t happen either.)
As a white liberal, I sure hope the authorities didn’t use phone taps or any other method of surveillance to catch these guys, since that would be rather unsporting of us.
It all reminds me — as so many things do — of the classic 1984 film C.H.U.D. I searched a bit for the actual lines, and was unsuccessful, but towards the end of the picture, the good guys think they might destroy the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers by flooding the sewers of Soho with flammable gas and igniting it. One of the characters says something like, “But that could destroy nearly all of Lower Manhattan!” To which the next character says something like, “So what’s your point?” Something about the blow-up-the-Holland-Tunnel story reminded me of that, but maybe I’m just being a snarky Brooklynite.
Also, this story reminds me of “Holland Tunnel Dive” by the early-80s experimental band impLOG, but it was sort of a dumb song and doesn’t deserve to be remembered anyway. (Be grateful you aren’t walking around with as much useless information in your head as I have in mine.)
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Maybe they thought they could flood Wall Street because it is in “lower” Manhatten…
Too bad our overlords at the New York Times have decreed that listening in on terrorists’ communications or tracing their financial transactions is an unacceptable violation of privacy. Expect to see them print an expose naming all the agents who gathered evidence of this plot, along with home addresses for mail-bombing convenience, if the Bush Administration violates the spirit of international law by refusing to drop charges against the plotters.