this is a trickier decision than it might seem (although not if you're up for tenure or your department needs to improve its research rating).

The conventional wisdom in the computer security world is that algorithms are so hard to get right that it's safer to test them by publishing them than keep them secret but flawed. The continuing fiasco of electronic voting machines is just the extreme case.

My totally unfounded guess is that "professional" terrorists can think up enough of this stuff on their own. I'd be much more worried about the crazies (Timothy McVeigh) of this world picking up these ideas, especially as the powers that be appear to be totally focussed on threats from outside.

In the meantime, one can hope that suggesting human threats might also raise awareness of potential natural disasters: the worst fault line in the US is on the East coast and hasn't moved for 200 years, Long Beach Port (40% of goods by sea) has 3 major fault lines beneath it, flu pandemics, etc. Never mind the annual carnage on the roads and a child mortality rate worse than Cuba's.

Academics are academics because they value manufacturing status over more directly affecting the world. It is not so surprising that people would maintain their value structure, even when their actions are potentially self-destructive?

There are a lot of very sick folk out there and in a sense this reflects seeding the space with ideas - some may just grow in a very disturbed mind with rather bad consequences

I have been researching Service Science for just over a year and a aspect of consideration has been how one ensures institutional resiliency in the face of unexpected events - Karl Weick's work was very valuable in some of this research - It would seem that most imstitutions have some form of disaster management plan but in most instances it is IT related and does not deal with a host of possible scenarios such as these relected in the refrenced publication. It is suggested that institutions will need to engender a greater awareness and sense of resiliency to dal with any scenario that may well arise - there is also a need for trend identification these could be soft signals to watch.