How an online video game gave a blogger an Aha! moment with respect to terror tactics. Money quote:
Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I’m only making it easier for them to shoot me — and thus I’m marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.
But at the last second, before I die, I’ll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I’ve run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I’ll die — but he’ll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone "from beyond the grave.")
It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.
It’s not just that I’m willing to sacrifice my life to kill someone else. It’s that I’m exploiting the psychology of asymmetrical warfare.
The Dish 