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Notes -
I feel like a marathon is generally the most impractical thing to protect possible. '40KM stretch of open road that's otherwise open to the public the rest of the year and has a plethora of reasons for randoms to be clustering around doing random things'
Yep. As tragic as the events of 2013 were, I think the correct security reaction would have basically been, "yeah, well, what are ya gonna do". Among major marathons, Boston also has the additional complications of starting in a small, rural town with narrow roadways that bunch everything up further. You can take the symbolic action of being fastidious about finish line security, but Patriots' Day is just not really amenable to creating a genuinely secure event.
What really annoys me is that every other race decided that these are just actually good security protocols in general, so you can't drop your backpack at the finish line without it being treated as a security hazard. Guys, no one is trying to attack our 5K fun run and if they were this bag drop rule would not move the needle. But once something is standard practice, you're done for.
And to make matters worse, since the runners end up quite spread out, it’s not like you can just move security with the leaders. You need to secure miles of area at once.
We really are lucky that “mass murder” isn’t on more people’s bucket list, and should do what we can to keep it that.
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