Talk:Ticking time bomb scenario

This does not actually describe the 'scenario' at all. It just states:

I'm not an expert on this so I feel unequipped to accurately capture the scenario in its' general form, without first doing some background research. Dunx (talk 20:51, 13 July 2014 (GMT)
 * 1) It is a thought experiment
 * 2) Which has been used in debating the ethics of whether torture can ever be justified
 * 3) What the consequentialist stance on the scenario is
 * 4) What opponents to this stance 'usually' respond with

This article is obviously biased.216.106.103.204 (talk) 19:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

you have to get rid of the siting of philip watts. he makes a variety of unfounded claims and quotes taken out of context with the goal of promoting a certain point of view. citing that article as credible is ridiculous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.103.179.203 (talk) 16:55, 3 August 2007
 * Anyone can edit, just take it out if you don't think it should be included. It certainly does contain a point of view: "We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I’ll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring 'Bush Step Down And take your program with you.'" The way to obtain a balanced point of view, however is not to remove all points of view, but to balance them. Right now about 75% of Americans agree with Mr. Watts. 199.125.109.122 14:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Counter arguments
I think the real cases where torture was used under the ticking time bomb dilemma, and where it averted calamity, should be included in this article. I'm talking about the infamous tale of Guy Fawkes, who was tortured until he confessed his plot to blow up Parliament, and the case of Abdul Hakim Murad. Murad was tortured by US forces until he revealed his plans to attack the CIA. Both of these cases show that the time bomb argument has validity, and should be included in the article to provide balance to the currently rather one-sided analysis. Although I'm not quite the man to write, I feel it should be included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Failspy (talk • contribs) 07:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The Gunpowder Plot wasn't a ticking time bomb scenario. Fawkes was caught in the act of trying to blow up Parliament, and the information he subsequently provided under torture was useless. -Father Inire (talk) 09:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah okay, thanks for the correction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.117.185.98 (talk) 17:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know the full details of the Murad case, but from what I understand, when he was originally arrested they found ample evidence and details of the plot among his belongings, including written plans and bomb-making equipment. This was prior to his torture. 203.217.150.69 (talk) 06:12, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Any presentation of a test case where torture was used effectively and beneficially would require, that the practitioners of said torture step forward and reveal themselves. these torturers would then be prosecuted. Thus the debate is overwhelmingly skewed in favour of torture's opponents. A discussion about the admissability and efficacy of torture would have to accept that firm evidence to its successful use, is thus preempted regardless of the true state of affairs. Then again, the absence of such evidence is resultantly of no indicative value. It is arguable that the mere non-existence of major terrorist attacks against the United States since 9/11 attests to the successful employment of torture.

One example to the extremely successful, though by no means edifying, employment of torture is the Gestapo in occupied Kiev as described in A Community of Violence: The SiPo/SD and Its Role in the Nazi Terror System in Generalbezirk Kiew. It illustrates that, backed by an overwhelming force and also coldly applying the most vicious interrogation techniques, even the most unpopular of regimes can almost competely eradicate the most determined irregular resistence. This somewhat emetic example is all the more potent given, that Nazi rule in Kiev relied on nothing but repression to establish itself, went out of its way to alienate the local popuation and that its enforcers' mind was a boiling cesspool of bias and miperceptions regarding their enemy. Soz101 (talk) 22:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You're talking about torture used for absolute population control, whereas this article is talking about using torture to find truth which would otherwise be unknowable. I don't know much about the Nazi rule of Kiev, were there any examples of this "ticking time bomb" scenario where the Nazis were able to prevent specific resistance plots using details learned under interrogation? 203.217.150.69 (talk) 06:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, respectfully, the absence of terror attacks on US soil since 9/11 cannot be linked to the use of torture unless we have an example of a time when there was a plot and it was discovered in advance using torture and then foiled. Without such an example, it's reminiscent of the Simpsons episode when Lisa convinces Homer that her rock must keep tigers away, since there are no tigers around. 203.217.150.69 (talk) 06:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * True, but according to a sourced quote at http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090425_8738.php: "After being subjected to waterboarding and other brutal methods in 2002, Abu Zubaydah explained that he and his "brothers" were permitted by Allah to yield when interrogators pushed them to the limit of their endurance. At that point, he provided information that helped the CIA capture Ramzi Binalshibh. The two captives then gave up details that led to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM, in official shorthand), whom Zubaydah had identified as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

This does appear to be a verifiable case when coercive methods 9some consider torture) were directly and proximately responsible for the obtaining of new and useful intelligence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.90.150.2 (talk) 18:21, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Still not the ticking bomb scenario though as the information did not prevent any attacks and the two subjects could have eventually been caught using other means anyway.Wayne (talk) 04:20, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the Gestapo in occupied Kiev: Gestapo torture was not employed for the purpose of what another editor termed, absolute population control. When encountering individuals whose mere existence was believed inimical to German rule, the gestapo, and other arms of the German occupation authorities, summarily murdered them. Thus for instance, Jews in hiding who had been captured, were very rarely interrogated under torture. The gestapo was merely interested in discovering these Jews' names and similar details, before murdering them. The Gestapo employed torture when questioning active resisters and others who were strongly motivated not to divulge the information in their possession. The torture of Jews and other detainees for non-interrogatory purposes, though common, is of course a separate matter. I do not know and the article I cited does not specify weather their were any last minute discoveries of violent plots. The Gestapo in Kiev does however prove, that torture can be crucially effective in the suppression of underground resistance. The hated German rule could not have maintained itself without this success. At least not in the major cities. This success, hateful in every sense as it was, points in my opinion to the far greater successes that an even remotely well-intentioned occupation regime, aided by a marginally unbiased security police, can accomplish in suppressing irregular resistance if they employ a regulated form of interrogation under torture, when confronted with irregular resistance. Soz101 (talk) 00:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Does the foiling of the plot to assassinate Golda Meir in Rome count as a ticking time bomb scenario? Adondai (talk) 09:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

better solution? up for debate
Why not allow torture, but only if the torturer(s) are perfectly documented. And if the torture fails in providing information, then the torturer(s) should be charged with murder (if fatal), or other suitable crimes. This way, no one would torture unless they were absolutely certain the suspect was a criminal, because they would jeopardize their own careers and lives by doing so... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Equus1 (talk • contribs) 01:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This is not a forum for discussion of the topic.58.84.237.200 (talk) 12:59, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

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Very simplified scenario(?)
I've came to this page after reading some story, where writer in narrative blames someone for thinking in "Ticking time bomb scenario" and thinks, that he did a crime. Nowadays for some reason there exists idea, that human rights, including human rights of noncitizens should be regarded higher than citizens laws, which has lead to degradation of citizen rights.

From the view point of a citizen, terrorist is someone who is hostile towards other citizens, regardless of their citizenship - from this point of view, terrorist is in a war and not always openly declared and to him can't be applied same laws as civilian, so this has to be clarified - is terrorist a civilian suspect or identified terrorist. Agreements, including nontorture agreements are bilateral - if one side does not act according to these agreements, it is unfair to blame only one side who practiced torture and not blame other side. There are no terrorist rights - even human rights passed to them are only partly. Let's see anything with cold emotions, because war is crime by itself and one thing is action towards captured enemies and other is towards civilians, who might have the same information as terrorist(though, hiding information is a crime, too). This scenario seems to be not very well defined(it is not made by someone who would have knowledge of basic math logic operations, that would have helped) and is modified during experiment, which goes against scientific definition of experiment, but can be regarded as mind manipulation, because suddenly it appears that ticking bomb scenario can be extended to torture relatives and friends of terrorist, maybe even possibility to terrorize larger groups by threatening to bomb out city, unless they prevent attack of terrorists...

Someone in comments mentioned Nazis, who actually were excellent interrogators - the whole basis of successful interrogation was to make imprisoned want to became friends of interrogator. Torture, that Nazis did, wasn't really used to extract information, but to terrify population into subjugation. Fear is one of the most basic emotions - because of fear people reported others, even killed to save their lives. So, from this point of view, physical torture is not really effective, unless it is some plan of interrogator to make prisoner to want to make friends with someone. NKVD in secret did a lot more tortures than Nazis did and had a lot of sadists, where most of them ended up in the same cells - circle of life... So, this is another problem of torture that it comes with sadistic side, where it is impossible to torture someone without emotions. This can be circumvented with development of sophisticated variant of guillotine for torture. Even US uses electric chairs and injections to deliver humanly death as possible... so, it is possible to humanly torture, too :P

Then - there is the problem of definition of torture. What is it actually meant by that? Because torture can also be psychological - it does not necessarily needs to be physical. And then there are advances of technology, that will be possible withing decade or more to gain access and extract information during interrogation directly from brain output, because even if people can lie and decide not to answer, then brains can't. And even if people decide to block some input, then there would be means to circumvent that as well by communicating directly to brain and - with current definition that also can be regarded as a torture.195.147.206.144 (talk) 18:33, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is WP:NOTAFORUM for discussion - the purpose of talk pages is to discuss possible improvements to the article.-Ich (talk) 23:09, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Ethical arguments regarding torture which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 14:16, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

arguments for vs against seem WP:UNDUEly dissimilar
First: disclaimer I found this page on the politics userboxes page. I didn't find this page out of legitimate interest. I generally hate politics and was looking for a box to reflect that.

The size of the for argument vs the against argument is noticeably different to anyone. Including more detail in the for argument wouldn't be playing devils advocate, its helping to create an encyclopedia. I don't know enough about this subject to know what is true, due or reliable and what isn't so I'd rather not make the changes myself as I will likely lean towards pruning the against, and would prefer to see the for expanded.

I like seeing more information than less but do we really need two main sections for arguments? Couldn't this be rewritten to a single section to sound less like a voter guide and more informative? DarmaniLink (talk) 04:07, 11 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Please read what you linked to: "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects." The view of justifying torture is a minority view, and is given less weight in this article. The proponent of it is an American lawyer who is not a subject matter expert. Meanwhile, the majority consensus view, that torture is always wrong, held by major human rights organizations, the UNDHR, and expert moral philosophers who have analyzed the problem. So the amount of weight given to each side seems quite appropriate. JasonMacker (talk) 16:54, 24 February 2023 (UTC)