The horrors of the Boston Marathon explosions have focussed attention on terror attacks in the United States. But how common are they?
The Global Terrorism Database has recorded terror attacks across the world – with data from 1970 covering up to the end of 2011. It’s a huge dataset: over 104,000 attacks, including around 2,600 in the US – and its collection is funded by an agency of the US government: the Science and Technology Directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security through a Center of Excellence program based at the University of Maryland.
There is a lot of detail in there – and it shows how there are actually fewer attacks now than in the 1970s. There were a total of 207 terrorist attacks in the US between 2001 and 2011. They went down from a high of 40 in 2001 to nine in 2011. The smallest number of attacks occurred in 2006 when the database recorded six. Between 2001 and 2011, it shows a total of 21 fatal terror attacks.
But the other side of that is the more recent attacks have been incredibly deadly – with 9/11 obviously dominating the data. This great post from the Washington Post points this – and more – out. It’s based on this report from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, reporting on last year’s GTD figures.
The biggest caveat about these figures is that these are all attacks, not necessarily those that cause more loss of life.
This chart of total attacks shows how 9/11 distorts the total figures – comprising 85% of all the terror deaths recorded. Those other peaks? The 1995 Oklahoma bombing and the 1984 wounding peak was the Rajneeshee bioterror attack where restaurants were deliberately contaminated with salmonella. One caveat on the 9/11 figures is the number of wounded – which here is not from teh GTD. As they say:
We report the number of wounded as unknown because of the wide discrepancy in reports on the World Trade Center attacks. Unlike total fatalities, no official totals have ever been given for injuries, and reports vary considerably. For example, some reports suggest that over 2,000 first responders alone were injured, while others suggest that total number of wounded is somewhere in the hundreds. The general consensus (though not “our” number) is that more than 2,000 people were injured in the attacks on World Trade Center towers 9/11. For further reference too RAND lists it as 2261, but even they note that it probably isn’t terribly accurate.
Very few parts of the US have managed to avoid attacks of one sort or another. We’ve mapped the database, using CartoDB. Click the image below to explore it.
US terror attacks interactive map. Click image to explore it
The data also shows how the nature of those attacks have changed too. As the Post points out: “Bombings have dropped in popularity over the last decade — accounting for just 27% of the attacks since 2001 … And, notably, guns have never figured heavily in US terrorist attacks”.
As Harry Enten writes, the Boston attack is unusual for a number of reasons:
About the only characteristic that perhaps doesn’t fit the conventional pattern is that it occurred at a sports event, rather than the target being a government building or business. Indeed, the targeting of ordinary civilian members of the public is the truly scary part of the Boston Marathon bombing: with the exception of the Atlanta Olympics bombing of 1996, the idea of attacking a sports event in the United States is novel and unusual.
The final point is a sense of perspective: bad as the number of US attacks are, there are far fewer there than in many countries around the world.
Here are the key findings from the report:
• The highest proportion of unsuccessful attacks since 1970 occurred in 2011 – four out of nine recorded attacks were unsuccessful
• From 2001 to 2011 California (40) and New York (19) experienced the most total terrorist attacks against the US homeland
• The three cities in the United States that experienced the most attacks from 2001 to 2011 were New York City (12), Washington, DC (9) and Los Angeles (8)
• The most common weapons used in terrorist attacks in the United States from 2001 to 2011 were bombs (53% of all weapons used) and explosives (20% of all weapons used)
• For the period from 2001 to 2011, biological weapons were tied with firearms as the third most common weapon used in terrorist attacks (both represented 8% of all weapons used). This is due to the anthrax attacks in October 2001
• From 2001 to 2011, the most common targets of terrorists in the United States were businesses (62 attacks), private citizens and property (59 attacks), and government (43 attacks)
• The three terrorist organizations with the largest number of attacks on the US from 2001 to 2011 were the Earth Liberation Front (50), the Animal
Liberation Front (34) and al-Qa’ida (4)
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