What would you do?

[Cantrell]

I'm bored. Play along.






Hostage situation.


Violent terrorists and military forces have had a long shootout between each other on school grounds for nearly an hour. After suffering heavy losses, the terrorists have retreated into a gym full of hostages. Most of the hostages are women, children, and the elderly.

Infiltration teams are ready to go in and shoot everyone down, but there's a catch. The gym is rigged with high explosives and the terrorists are threatening to detonate them if they are attacked. Already 3 hours have passed, and the terrorists are growing restless.

Every 30 minutes, they kill a hostage and continuously ask for their demands to be met. So far, 6 civilians lay dead.


Now, we bring you into play. You are part of a sniper team that is to search and exterminate the terrorists who are holding the detonators. You are armed with a low caliber rifle so that the report and collateral damage caused is reduced. Say, an AR-15 variant with subsonic FMJ ammunition and a scope. The distance from you and the target building is roughly 300 meters. An easy shot for any marksmen, especially when one is equipped with a scope.

While scanning the area, you see a young girl, possibly 7-8 years old, and she is walking slowly over to the gymnasium. She is one of the survivors of the confrontation that occurred on the school grounds earlier. She is about 50 meters away from the gym, and she is headed there because the rest of her family is in there.


Instantly, a flood of thoughts pour through your mind.


You move the cross-hairs over the girls knee and switch the rifle from "safe" to "semi". There are two possible choices you can make, and both will have devastating consequences.


Should you choose to shoot the girl in the knee, it will effectively stop her from making it back into the gym. There will only be minor damage in the long run, but it will shatter her kneecap so she will probably require a few years of therapy in order for her to walk normally. The terrorist would never know what happened if you took the shot because of the subsonic ammo. However, should the situation go FUBAR, the girl's family will most likely be all killed and she will be the only one left.

If you don't take the shot, the girl will crawl in through the window, and if the terrorists notice, they will without a doubt execute her and several other in order to prevent further "escapes". But at least the girl won't have permanent disabilities and won't be alone if they all die together.



Hurry up and decide.

40 meters and closing.




35. . .




30. . .


Time's a wastin'. Pull the trigger? Or decide to not intervene? Why?



25. . .




20. . .

[Namgil]

Theres a gamble here either way. Shoot the girl and the whole world will find out about it. They will realize that, after the girl describes how she was shot, that one of the "good guys" had to have done it, and despite the fact that you may have ultimately saved the girl's life, the world will hate you and prosecute you. Also, the likelihood of her bleeding to death before you are able to get to her to remove her from the area is quite large. She's not exactly going to get up and walk away herself, she's going to sit and scream and cry. Her voice will carry, even if she is 50 meters away, and has the potential to alert the terrorists, who might consider the assualt an attack and blow up the gym. If not, they will definitely know that something is going on, which will ultimately alert them. It will also alert the people you are with/are working for who will ultimately reprimand you and strip you of your gun.

On the other hand you don't 'know' for sure if the men will execute the child and several others to prevent possible escapes. Hell, the hostages inside are probably so terrified they don't intend to do anything, and the terrorists, from the description, are so loaded with ammunition and explosives that any escape attempt from the hostages would be futile, and there is really no necessity for the terrorists to simply kill everyone.

Your main priority is to shoot the terrorists. If you're as highly trained as you're supposed to be, you can shoot and down several of them before the girl even makes her way to the gym. Even if she does make it to the gym, terrorists tend to make a show of whoever they decide to kill, so you will probably be able to get a few shots in before they manage to kill the girl or other hostages.

So, I say let her go on her merry little way.

[Cantrell]

Unhuh. This situation was based on a real life event. Took place in Southern Russian near the Georgian border. School was taken hostage by Georgian rebels.






I'll tell how the thing played out sometime later.