The Cost of Terror in San Bernardino: Just $4.5K

It cost Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik less than $5,000 to build the arsenal used for the Dec. 2 terror attack in which they killed 14 people and injured 22 others in San Bernardino, Calif., according to an analysis by NBC News. Materials to make more than 20 pipe bombs cost about $950. Firearms and ammunition used in the attack cost less than $3,000. Finally, renting an SUV like the one the couple used—and ultimately died in during a gun battle with police—would come to about $440.

NBC reports that collecting the bomb materials only took about two hours and required stops at just three stores near the attack, though to purchase the guns, there would have been at least a 10-day waiting period. The cost of the November terror attacks in Paris, which claimed the lives of 130 people, was in the neighborhood of $10,000, NBC reported last month, while the Sept. 11, 2001, US attacks cost some $500,000. (More terrorist attack stories.)