On a scale of 1-10 how tragic was the Boston bombing?

Whenever there is a loss of life and horrendous injuries from an incident like this, it’s always a 10 in my honest opinion. Lives of many are forever changed after tragedies and the damage is irreparable.

I’m not exactly sure if it is in good taste to rate any tragedies on any type of scale but that’s just my opinion also.

Compared to all the other bombings in World History, 1/10.

Well, that’s certainly a matter of perspective. My life wasn’t actually altered at all, save for some traffic difficulties due to the local cruise port overreacting about a “suspicious” package of Spam or Khalua or something.

However, the lives of the parents who lost a child, or the lives of some of the injured, well, they have a completely different tale to tell.

Comparatively speaking, as @ragingloli said, this was pretty damn minor.

What a strange thing to rate on a scale.

Most people are acting like it’s a 10, as if some grizzly massacre wiped out a tremendous number of people. It was certainly a tragic thing, with innocent people dying or suffering injuries, but if we’re rating it, that implies that we’re comparing it to other tragedies. Compared to the Holocaust (or any war for that matter), 9/11, or even recent occurrences such as the one at Sandy Hook, it doesn’t really compare. I’d call it a 2.

What is the standard you are using to measure.

It wasn’t tragic in the true sense of the word. The meaning of that word has been so diluted over the past few decades that now all it signifies is “sad.”

@bookish1 The definition is pretty broad…

1. Causing or characterized by extreme distress or sorrow.
2. Suffering extreme distress or sorrow.

Death seems to fit here nicely, no?

Comparatively, I’d say pretty low. 1 or 2. I think the 14 people who died in the Texas fertilizer plant explosion is even more tragic. No one has even mentioned that because there is no possibility of turning it into a terrorist ordeal, so whats the point of covering it on the news…

I’d have to agree with a low score. Maybe 1. Barely.

I guarantee you that at least a dozen people were killed in traffic accidents that day in New England. Across the country, probably a total of 50–60 people died in accidents. Unanticipated deaths while on the road minding their own business.

Yes, this is a major issue for the people who lost limbs as a result of the bombing. But is it a national tragedy? No. The Connecticut shootings were a whole lot worse.

My neighbor who is grieving the loss of his 8-year old grandson thinks its pretty damn tragic. I’m sure the parents of the Tsarnaev brothers think it is pretty damn tragic. I’d bet money on saying that the others who were directly touched by the bombs would say on a scale of 1 to 10, it is a 10.

I don’t think it’s possible to equivocate pain and suffering.

There is no measurement scale for random acts of terrorism and cruelty and insanity.
It is what it is, just another blip of suffering that is indigenous to the state of humanity.
There is no new news under the sun, starting from the Crusades, the holocost, 9/11 and all other atrocities of the species. Sad yes, remarkable, not really.

As long as there are people these things will happen.

@Coloma – why start with the crusades? Why not back to Babylonia?

My opinion, a pointless quantification. The murder of even one innocent person, let alone a small child, is a tragedy.

Perhaps “significant” would be a better word than “tragic”? I, too am uncomfortable with the idea of rating a heinous act.

@elbanditoroso Might as well go all the way back to the garden when Eve manipulated Adam. If you believe that story, I don’t. lol

I don’t think this can be rated on any scale. It’s not fair to the victims of tragedies to do so. If you took the “biggest” (in terms of news coverage, for lack of a better measurement) tragedies that happened in this country… Newtown and Boston and compared them, and you said that Newtown was worse, people in Boston would be furious. If you said Boston was worse, Newtown would be in an uproar.

The only way you can even come close to comparing any of these events is the number of deaths… and even then, it doesn’t account for the countless other people hurt.

Compared to what?

I don’t think it’s fair to judge any loss of human life on a scale of 1 – 10. It will never compare to Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Let’s just leave it at that.

What is this, Bombing with the Stars?
I’m not going to hold my card up & rate something like that, but in terms of loss of life & energy of explosion, it was relatively minor, thank goodness.

To me the terrorist attack at the finish of the 2013 Boston marathon was just a blip on the radar screen of the on-going war on terror. However I’ll bet that there are thousands of people who witnessed this event first hand who would give it a 10 on the terror scale. Including the many family members and friends of the all of the innocent and defenseless victims. Which include 4 dead; 200 seriously injured (14 lost limbs) and the many who sustained minor injuries.

@SadieMartinPaul; (MIght you mean evaluate, rate, assess, judge, gauge, , estimate, appraise, analyze, rather than equivocate?

Equivocate: _ to prevaricate, be evasive, noncommittal or vague, dodge the question, beat around the bush, hedge, vacillate, shilly-shally, waver; temporize, hesitate, stall, hem and haw;_)

If it had been my child who was killed, it would be so far beyond rating…..You can’t say something is worse just because a thousand people were killed vs “only” 2 or 3.

I don’t believe tragedies can really be rated on a scale. If you want to rate something, then rate the impact of the event itself. But not by “how sad” it was. People died and got hurt, which is equally as tragic to their loved ones as in any terrible event.

What in the world is the point of comparing tragedies? Just because one thing is “worse” than another, it doesn’t mean the other is “better.” Could the dead be any more dead? Are the young couple who each lost a leg going to be comforted by the fact that cities in Haiti and China had larger catastrophes? I think this is a ghoulish exercise.

@Jeruba me too

I don’t know how you rate tragedies, but part of what made this so awful was the sheer senselessness of it. It should have been a day of joy and celebration. What is the logic behind what happened? There is no history of insanity on the part of the perpetrators. If this was supposed to be a political statement, why choose an event with international participation, and why did no group step forward to take credit?

It was a 6 at least. Only a few dead, but lots of dismemberments. Fortunately, it had a quick resolution.

What a bizarre question. Obviously no one you loved was harmed so it is like the earthquake in China, a momentary twinge when you see the carnage on the news then on with life!

I would not call this a tragedy. We are not talking about earthquakes or tsunamis. We are talking about a deliberate heinous act of terror, rooted in utmost hatred of Western civilization and democracy and freedom. If Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism are 10, then 911 was 9, and Boston was 8.

Compared to the WWII death camps, I’d have to put 911 at more of a 7, and Boston at a 1.

To me it’s more a matter of methodical evilness than sheer numbers of death. Nazism is 10 because it was large-scale systematic and extremely well-organized terror and mass murder. @Dutchess_III, what would you put between 10 and 7, that is not in the death camps and 911 category?

@mattbrowne The bombing of Hiroshima?

The firebombing of Tokio.

Nagasaki. But those would be 10’s too.

The carpet bombing of Dresden.

This might get quite philosophical now.

The Nazis attacked England and later the US. The brainwashed people demanded total war and they got total war. In retrospect, it’s okay to consider the mass killing of civilians a war crime or at least morally wrong. Imperial Japan attacked the US. Assessing the morality of nuclear contamination is even more difficult.

To me the only difference between 911 and Boston is being part of a global network or not. The two pressure cookers were about mass killings of innocent people. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was not so innocent. At least a large portion of civilians supported their regimes.

And a large portion of civilians supports the “war on terror”

A large portion of civilians replaced Bush with Obama. That wasn’t possible in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Democracies correct mistakes. Totalitarian regimes don’t.

@ragingloli There is a difference between not wanting to be blown up while going about your day and invading a foreign country such as Iraq under false pretenses. Many of us – even in America – got the nuances. Unfortunately, not enough to deter that terrible crime.

I just have a problem with people trying to downplay the nuclear terrorism against Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an argument that basically amounts to nothing more than “they deserved it”.

What about ending the war sooner?

@mattbrowne I think we unleashed an evil that apparently cannot be put back in the box even though it ended the war sooner. Let alone the horror to hundreds of thousands of innocents.

@janbb – We know this in retrospect. The Manhattan project was started because Einstein thought Hitler would soon have the atomic bomb and be able to spread Nazism around the globe.

“Enola Gay, you shoulda stayed at home yesterday…”

Even with the multiple tests, I don’t think the creators of the A-bomb knew how freaking ugly the results would be. I mean they knew it would be a huge explosion, but I don’t think they got how hideous and torturous radiation poisoning would be. Considering that many of the testers ended up with nasty kinds of cancer years later shows they didn’t really know how the radiation affected life.

It was the equivalent of “salting the earth” – You didn’t just bomb the people, you affected their gene pools for generations. I think if they really knew how evil these bombs were before they used one on civilians, there would have been a lot more hesitation.

@ragingloli: Not all Americans think like that. Please believe me. But we often get shouted down by the people who do…

Ragingloli has a problem with everything american!

@rooeytoo : You mean Colonial, don’t you?

I think she means American.

Thank you @Jeruba, that is exactly what I meant. It was such a strange response. It seemed as if it were implying that USA is a colony of Germany???? So I ignored it.

What did you mean @bookish1 ?

@rooeytoo: Maybe I should have used a ~ to clarify my intention. @ragingloli refers almost without fail to the U.S. as The Colonies and Americans as Colonials.

Apparently, some of the younger crowd in the left are just getting around to using this word when criticizing and expressing their hatred of the US. The Progressives have used it for decades and cried about the wrongs done round the world by the colonialism and people of white ancestry. I knew instantly what @bookish1 meant. Haven’t you seen Dinesh D’Souza’s film?

Uh oh, I must have been on the wrong side of the fine line when I responded to @bookish1, my answer seems to have disappeared. I didn’t think it was an attack, how about if I say @ragingloli always whines about USA. That seems to be an acceptable thing to say in the past.

I still see it.

It’s still here @rooeytoo. Maybe your phone or device isn’t refreshing properly.

@bkcunningham: What film are you referring to? Were you addressing me or @rooeytoo with that question?

I could possibly be losing my mind but I thought I responded to @bookish1‘s explanation. But sometimes I forget to hit the answer button before I leave the page, perhaps I did that. No biggie @ragingloli is just expressing her opinion, I must learn to not get my hackles up at the slightest provocation. I am only 68, I’m still a work in progress!!!

Parenthetically (or not), when I lived in England the British often referred to Americans as the Colonials.

You know, that just totally leaves Kansas out of the picture.

I was referring to 2016: Obama’s America, @bookish1. The anti-colonialism sentiment is explained pretty well in the movie.

@janbb – The British like to be funny. They often refer to themselves as non-Europeans. It makes football fans wonder why Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester play in European leagues…