On reducing terrorism power: a hint from physics

Serge Galam and Alain Mauger

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2003, vol. 323, issue C, 695-704

Abstract: The September 11 attack on the US has revealed an unprecedented terrorism worldwide range of destruction. Recently, it has been related to the percolation of worldwide spread passive supporters. This scheme puts the suppression of the percolation effect as the major strategic issue in the fight against terrorism. Accordingly the world density of passive supporters should be reduced below the percolation threshold. In terms of solid policy, it means to neutralize millions of random passive supporters, which is contrary to ethics and out of any sound practical scheme. Given this impossibility we suggest instead a new strategic scheme to act directly on the value of the terrorism percolation threshold itself without harming the passive supporters. Accordingly we identify the space hosting the percolation phenomenon to be a multi-dimensional virtual social space which extends the ground earth surface to include the various independent terrorist-fighting goals. The associated percolating cluster is then found to create long-range ground connections to terrorism activity. We are thus able to modify the percolation threshold pc in the virtual space to reach pKeywords: Percolation; Social permeability; Terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:323:y:2003:i:c:p:695-704

DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(03)00006-2

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