In a recent poll surveying public feeling towards national security
it was discovered that over 58% of Americans felt they were under no
danger whatsoever and that should any terrorist actions threaten their
country again that they would be saved just in time. Whilst the
results were initially a little bit puzzling, the following
investigation revealed why this was the case:

37% of Americans stated that they trusted the abilities of CTU agent
Jack Bauer to step in and intervene before the terrorists were able to
carry out their actions. 14% of those surveyed stated they believed
that whilst the terrorists would be successful, the Enterprise would
then come back in time to prevent it from happening. Most
surprisingly, however, were the remaining 7% who said they thought all
the terrorist attacks in the last 5 years were just a new cable show
on Fox.

Government spokespeople reported that they were shocked at how safe
Americans felt:

“It kinda shocked us,” Chuck Hankman reported, “I mean, we were busy
looking into scrapping the Green and Blue terror alert levels. We’re
never going to use them as its never going to get that safe.”

When commenting on the results of the poll, Hankman stated there were
many holes in the public’s logic. He explained, first of all, that the
Star Trek fans who had faith in Captain Kirk were misguided.

“Even forgetting about the Temporal Prime Directive, it just couldn’t
happen. If the Enterprise stopped a terrorist attack that happened in
their time line it would create a paradox as they would return to
timeline where it didn’t happen. Whilst you may quote episodes where
they did change the past, those sorts of circumstances require the
skills of huge writing teams to pull off, and that isn’t evident in
this suggestion.”

As for the suggestion that Jack Bauer would save the day, Chuck was
even less patient:

“This is even more ridiculous… Jack Bauer is a fictional character
from the TV series 24. He won’t come barging in to save the day…
where was he on September 11th? On vacation? No, that’s your fictional
TV series… not the terrorist attacks going on around the world.

“Besides, evidence has shown that 97% of terrorist attacks take at
least 3 days to unfold, that leaves Jack Bauer 48 hours short.”