The topic of my Talk is Suicide Bombing. And what we can do about it
The presentation is rated R
So if there's anybody over here who is not over 18, you can close your eyes now
Okay so I was working on my PhD somewhere in 2007
And I wanted to create some application for Facebook or LinkedIn
But when I see the news, I thought
This is what I see on news everyday
It does not matter I do,
Whatever application I make for facebook or other social networks
How is it going to save Pakistan?
How is it going to benefit Pakistan?
I started thinking what I can do as a computer scientist to stop this craziness of suicide bombing
My advisor used to say to me that "Zeeshan, Get good education, and move to a bad neighborhood"
And I always wondered
What kind of education can I get and then move back to Pakistan to improve it?
How can I make this "Bad Neighborhood" a "Good Neighborhood"?
So I started to work on the suicide problem
To get started, we started working on a shockwave tube
And we made this shockwave tube
Then for the proof of concept, we had 44 tomatoes
Actually, hundreds of these tomoatoes
And then we moved to rats
So after doing experiments on the rats we realized that Number 1 :
Rats are not humans
So we cannot really extrapolate the injuries of rats directly to the humans
And the rats are in prison under the glass
While in real life humans are not in prison
They are walking and there are all types of humans
There are males, females, children, old and pregnant..
And there are all sort of things in the real life
There are the trees, the rickshaw wallah, the tonga wallah..
So we have to encounter all of these effects in our simulation
So, as an alternative we started with local commercial software used by the military
And those softwares use the military data
Later we realized we can not use the military data either
Because in the battlefield, soldiers are between the ages 20 and 45
They are physically very fit, they are wearing protective gears
And they are mostly males
Again, in the real life we have males and females who do not wear protective gears
so we cannot exactly measure the data of whats going on in real life
so the accuracy we got from that data was not very good
And then we looked for the doctor's research
the doctors have done very good research.
They exactly know how much Psi a person would endure before sustaining serious injury in lungs or ears
So we found out there are two sides of the research
Number 1 is the Military domain that can tell how much Psi a person will get based on the distance from the bomber
Number 2 is the Doctors that tell what type of damage you will get based on how much Psi you faced
And then we decided, lets merge these two
So we started collecting all kinds of data, all the crazy types of data from all over Pakistan
sketches, video, footage, eyewitness accounts..
X-Rays, ECG's, patients medical report, post-mortem reports
And then we combine and we put all of this data together on our web portal called pakistanbodycount.org
so other researchers can use this data as well
This is the sketch of Pakistan Ordinance Factory blast in Wah Cantt
By the way, this is how we store medical data in the 21st century
So data collection again, medical reports, post-mortem reports and a couple of X-Rays
where you can see these nails and bolts
I am sorry to show you this but this is the deadly science we are reverse engineering
CT Scans, few more X-rays, X-rays, few more X-rays
And then the actual shrapnel that the doctors recovered from the patients bodies
So we made this Usmani-Kirk model based on the injuries and how far you are standing
and we got some shocking insights for example
This is the percentage of injuries in a non-suicidal attack
If it is a suicidal attack this is the kind of injuries
As you can clearly see there are more injuries to the torso in a suicide attack
And we group it based on who claimed the attack
so this is the picture for the injury attacks of the Balochistan Liberation Army
and this is Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
so if you only provide me the medical reports of the patients I can probably tell you who did the attack
because of their mechanism and how they form the bombs
so now I am going to move towards the live demo
here I will show you the live demo of the actual software
software, yeah
Okay, so we have a beautiful canvas here
then you can plot people here. A person here, a person there and several persons there
let me draw the TEDx auditorium here. So we are somehow sitting like this
then you can click on a person
you can rotate a person, define if its a male or female, what is the height, age and weight
let me pick up the bomber. where do you want the bomber to be?
lets put it in the center
let me define the bomber as carrying
(let's say 12 otherwise everyone will be dead) 12 kilograms of TNT
let me show you a couple of options here
this guy is 8.7 meters away from the bomber
this green light over here means that this guy will protect him from all of the shrapnels
so mainly the guy in the white area will be safe, the one in pink will be injured and the one in the red will be dead
but then again it also depends on the person
so a two month old infant might die in the white area and a six feet tall muscular man might survive in the red area
then you can introduce gender in the crowd. As somebody was talking about the gender
I will give equal opportunity to all of them
Okay then I made the mathematical models of every single explosive available in the world
so you can define your own bomb. what you want to make
TNTs, C-4s, RDX, Peton, you name it
Fragments: how many fragments you want to put inside the bomb? 30, 3000, 4000?
What kinds of fragments? Nails, bowl rings*, screws, or a mixture?
What is the shape of the bomb? Is it a suicide jacket? a briefcase?, a cylinder? or a car?
Or the environment. Do you want to run a 2D environment, cardition grid
or 3D like this, while I am on the stage and you are on the ground?
what is the temperature of the city? what is the altitude?
Injury models? So we implement all of the injury models
Catherine Deasy injury model used by the US Army. Sidiblonk by the Russians and the ones by Britishers
the Institute of Chemical Engineering model and then our own Usmani Kirk Model
Let me do the blast here
So what its saying is that when this blast happened 27 people will be killed and 43 will be injured
If you move the cursor here it will tell you how much Psi a person will get. This person will get 1997 Psi and four fragments
You can even visualize it
so after the bombing this guy sitting on the front might look like this guy
okay, there are other options as well
you can have the model for a car, a model for a tree, a hesco block
you can even have a model for this TEDx Auditorium
or any building you want
Just as an example!
Okay so you can have any building, tree over a tree, a person over a person, a car over a car and then you can do your blast
there is another advantage of this software. you can do a forensic analysis
so you are sitting in a hospital and you dont know anything. The only thing you know is that there is a blast somewhere in Lahore.
What to expect? How many people will die? How many will be injured? What kinds of injury?
Lung rupture, eardrum rupture, you know nothing. You can find it here for forensic analysis
So if there is a blast, 3 people got killed and 12 got injured
This software can regenerate the whole scene for you
that this is one of the possible ways the bomber was there, the kind of explosives he was using, the kind of shrapnel he had
what was the orientation of the people which we can use with the forensics analysis
now let me go back to my presentation
So there are three main uses of the software
Number 1 is the pre emptive measures
For example one of the things we found was that if we put the crowd in row wise formation
as we sit in the Mosque or in the classrooms or as we are sitting right now
instead of the circular pattern, you will have one third of the casualties
so you can even save 33% of the lives just by putting people in a particular formation
Second is the type of patients
so you are a doctor and there is a high official speaker giving a speech
and you suspect something like this might happen. Then what to expect, how many people will die or get injured
you can have the complete list, how many doctors, paramedics, and blood supplies you need
what kind of medicines you need
Third is the forensic analysis. When you know nothing, the software can still build
who did the attack based on the previous attacks and what type of explosive was used e.t.c
Okay so we got this software, then what?
For me terrorism is an emerging phenomenon where 2+2 = 5
so this is the formula of suicide bombing
you have a few bucks, a volunteer, a brain washing expert, a bomb technician and a pick and drop service
and then boom! you get an attack
not knowing all of these individual segments you cannot predict where the next bomb is going to get off
okay so far we have been discussing suicide bombings for the past 8 years
do you know what is our approach to solve it? It's this.
All is well!
Sorry, all is not well. Clearly, all is not well.
so you put these barbed wires? these barbed wires cannot stop the explosion
when the explosion occurs, it will all break up and kill everybody in the surrounding area
those hesco blocks, those concrete crosses the military steel crosses you see
those cannot stop the explosion
it will propel off. It will hit the building collapsing it
that steel wall of 14 feet? yes it can stop the shrapnels but also amplify the blast wave by 20 times!
it can generate the reflection waves
so what I know is that some one just needs to bring 1 kilogram of TNT
because you are already amplifying it 20 times and already providing the shrapnels
so all the things we are doing are totally un-scientific, most of the time
okay so what we should do
we usually try to solve this issue individually
again, collective genius is the answer
we have to sit together
police, civil service, FIA, ISI, researchers, media and academicians
they have to all sit together and find out the patterns, what is going on and then we can predict the solution
This is a nice quote by Helen Keller, "It is a terrible thing to see but have no vision."
so far we have no vision to fight against terrorism
this is the problem we face in our generation
and I am not going to forward it to my following generations
we got this in our generation and we are going to solve it!
I was talking to one government official. We have to trust our local capabilities and he goes like this
He said "Zeeshan, my heart breaks for the people of my country. I really want to do something really big for the people of Pakistan"
"And I invite you to join me as a volunteer to serve this cause of Allah"
And I said "How can you ask for volunteerism, when it is something you can opt for? It cannot be imposed"
"Otherwise its slavery, not volunteerism"
And then he said "Zeeshan, if you want to make money, go back where ever the hell you came from"
"Go back to America, we dont need you. Pakistan does not need you"
"It was created in the name of Allah, and Allah will take care of it"
And I said "You know what, this is my country and I am not going to leave"
"Because you are too old. So you are going to retire in a few years"
"And then you will die in another few years."
"I will wait for that day"
I said I will wait for that day to opt for that position
and bring the change my country deserves
and in the meanwhile I will create the generation who will resist
That was my last day of consulting
Okay we have the largest database of suicide bombing attack in Pakistan
we witness a suicide bombing attack in Pakistan every 6th day
we can even provide consulting to the US Army
to Iraq, to Afganistan and to Israel
We say that 180 million people who can produce a few suicide bombers
can also produce a few officials who can hunt them down
okay here is a warning to all of you. This is my favourite verse
"If your heart is apathetic, then what use are the emotions?"
"if the land is sterile, then what good is a rain?"
"Implementation is a must for your aspirations to come true"
"For what good is a use of only ambitious thoughts?"
so if we dont act and if we dont act now, all of these wonderful TED Talks becomes a colorful dream and thats it
This is the takeaway for today
In the end this is our country, it deserves to be better
we can make it better and it will be better. Amen
Thankyou very much