We don't know whether or not Galt committed sabotage. We do know that Ragnar was a pirate to hasten the end of the looters' era. We also know that D'Anconia exploded his own mines. Whether Galt did any sabotage is left to the imagination of the reader. AR was quite clever with regard to this.

I must admit that I have always read AS from Dagny's perspective, perhaps because I have long struggled with what I will call "Dagny savior complex". This may have biased me somewhat with regard to viewing Galt more as a destroyer, rather than a creator.

I just heard that as well. I was just getting ready to post it. Wow! In that stretch of track, 106 mph is suicidal. It must have been like when I tried to push the speed of my model train set as a kid.

One of the more interesting questions is how easy or difficult it would be to discriminate sabotage from failures due to excessive use without maintenance. In my field, this is called "root cause analysis". Accident investigations with full CSI coverage would be on the news for weeks now.

The biggest supporter of Amtrak in DC is Vice President Biden, who at least used to use it multiple times per week. Amtrak is not getting cut any time soon.

The government demanded money for infrastructure. They got it. Every penny. No scrimping. $800 billion plus another $200 and some billion. A trillion dollars. Now, with this calamity, there is no doubt they will ask for more. But, before a single cent is allocated, congress must demand to see what was done with the trillion already allocated. What they will find is that most of it was given to the Teacher's Union and various other unions. If more money is allocated that's where it will continue to go so that it can be spent on re-electing the faux royalty of Washington. Taxing for infrastructure can be likened to sweeping shit under the carpet. You can't see it, but it really stinks.

He can get a lot past me because I can't stand to kook at him or hear him talk. I depend on someone else to give me intel and we missed that one.

You didn't know about President Zero saying that just before his first election as president?! Most other people didn't either.

That is the scariest f***ing I have ever heard! I got a junk e-mail today touting a chance to win a Colt AR-15 and I thought, why would I need such a thing? They are only $1300, I think I will rush out and pick one up.

Obama has already anticipated that the US military would be unwilling to shoot. This is why he promised this in the 2008 campaign:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2yGzHf...

I have been harboring a different thought which gives me some hope. When the right event causes a significant amount of unrest, the US military will be unwilling to shoot. By electing to have an all volunteer army and offering college money as a reward for service, we have formed the brightest, most competent military force in the world and they will not follow orders blindly. When the producers are ready to shrug, their path might not be nearly as messy as feared.

The knucklehead looters sabotaging themselves was certainly true for the most part. Ms. Rand was clever enough to let us speculate just how much of the "destroyer" myth was true and how much was myth. She always put such failures into the third person, such as "A copper wire broke." She didn't say whether the failure was due to corrosion or was intentional. If Galt had waited for enough of the world to fail without helping it along like Ragnar did, he quite well would have died of old age before seeing the collapse of the looters' empire.

As I recall, the knucklehead looters sabotaged themselves with their ineptitude, it wasn't Galt.

"On October 15, a copper wire broke." And before then, other copper wires had just broken. Three of them, to be exact.

Actually we don't know whether John Galt committed direct sabotage or not. The book didn't say. It will take a lot to convince me that Galt didn't cause the interlocker debacle that prompted switching via lanterns.

I did think of the Taggart Tunnel Disaster. John Galt, remember, did not commit direct sabotage. He felt no need. It was enough to identify anyone with talent on the line and induce him to quit.

How many people have quit, so that we have this wreck? Of course, we don't know--yet--the immediate cause of the wreck.

You bring up a good point about war. It will be messy and ugly. Robbie suggested about a year ago that today's technology would make it impossible for the producers to triumph over the looters and moochers today. Not only is information more readily available and hiding that much more difficult, but the number of people in the bureaucracy is so many that it would be like to trying to slay a hydra.

I think that President Zero has figured out how to annoy to no end 200 million people. He has executed Saul Alinsky's plan quite well.

that was my first thought. but what about war? He controlled how the lights would go oput in AS, and I'd always like to think it would go that way-but it will not. It will be messy, ugly, and very hard. I used to say to my children in the morning to wake them up-"uppy, uppy, little puppy" it annoyed them to no end, how do we annoy to no end 200 million people?

John Galt would not sabotage the train tracks, but he might cut a copper wire or two. I have always thought that he was responsible for the interlocker failure on p. 949 of AS, after which switching was done manually with lanterns. ;)

This article was the most ridiculous account of a tragic event. Seriously. There are no good journos left. It would be an interesting post - when would John Galt sabotage train tracks?