'Murder on an unimaginable scale'

'The deputy commissioner at Scotland Yard, Paul Stephenson, went even further, saying that the plans amounted to "mass murder on an unimaginable scale."'

Murder on an unimaginable scale? Let's assume for a moment that there was in fact a dastardly terror plot here (I know, I know - that's Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas talk) and not another grand production from Number 10's Acme Distract-O-Matic , is the number of deaths really so unimaginable?

The average number of passengers on an aircraft leaving Stansted is 124; the average number of passengers on an aircraft leaving Gatwick is 129; the average number of passengers on an aircraft leaving Heathrow is around 150. The average of these three averages is 134 (.333333333...., etc., but there's no such thing as a third of a person - other than under rubble in Qana - ha! Ba-dum-cha!). 134 x 9 - the number of planes supposed to be explodeded - and we get 1206 (please excuse the ropey math here, but you get the point) .

As of an hour ago, the body count in (the) Lebanon was 1002. Okay, so it's a smidge under 1206, but it's still on a perfectly imaginable scale. In fact it's so imaginable it's actually real. Really real live dead people! Can you imagine that?!

You know, I imagine we'll get to a number pretty close to 1206 in a day or three, and I imagine it'll probably go above that too.

What an imagination I have.