By the time something is damaged enough to not rain deadly debris or just plain crash mostly intact you're starting to get into Kiloton ranges. There aren't enough missiles in the world that aren't nukes.

Yes, but you can reach them before tehy're over very populated areas, but that depends on what sort of missiles they have.
I admit, pulverised is a word that's too strong, I meant blow it into smaller parts that probably makes the damage smaller than if a whole plane chrashes down.

Have to say, to me the Olympics seem to have lost a lot of their original purpose, it seems to be a lot of trouble, olympic cities taht can't be used anymore, enormouse investments, security problems, but then again, I'm not big into sports either, so I'll leave it to others to enjoy it and worry about it

Wow, I really don't think a government should be so frivolous...

SPORT IS NOT THAT IMPORTANT!

The UK Government are acting like those annoying over-aggressive parents at their kids soccer/football/netball/whatever games.

If the Olympics are that much of a threat cancel them rather than risking civilian lives FOR POINTLESS DAMN COMPETITIVE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY.

There are more important things a government should focus on... like you know... Education? Care for the elderly? Trials being held for serious crimes? Civilian rights?

The greater London area is home to about 7 million people. It's a pretty big area which doesn't really have anywhere safe to have stuff fall.

Hmm, wonder if they'll charge extra for SAMs for the rent.

Anyhow it's not so much of the importance of the sport as it is the large amounts of people in close proximity. But SAMs won't do shit unless they plan on hijacking another aircraft like we saw in 9/11, but terrorists aren't going that route anymore; it's so passé. All the cool kids are using suicide bombers, and biological/chemical agents to off as many people as possible. That would create more terror anyway and be easier to carry out without detection than hijacked aircraft.

Not sure what Britain does for it's special events other than placing SAMs on rooftops, but the standard operating procedure for any major event here in America is to divert all air traffic to follow a certain pattern that will give considerable distance between aircraft and the event taking place, or if the president visits to ground all air traffic altogether.

Perhaps it's all to create the illusion of security, because I see no practical reason to do this whatsoever. No terrorist would be so fucking stupid as to use aircraft against a sporting event when you just announced to the world that you're placing SAMs on rooftops.

Meh, gives the British army something to do I guess.

So instead of the turrorists (sic) bringing their own bangy stuff to the party they just have to buy guns locally off the usual suspects and fight their way to some super top quality MDK toys. Brilliant!

Not long after September 11th reactionary airport security measures came into place I put forward a theory that this had shifted the point of maximum effectiveness to the ground just outside security.

A year or so ago a fellow in Russia did exactly what I predicted would happen.

What I'm saying is, if you want less terrorism hire more Irishmen to plan your security.