12 ms·
Not to mention the value of teaching a lesson about single points of failure
by dkdbejwi383 6y ago
Not to mention the value of teaching a lesson about single points of failure
- Dylan16807 6y agoWhat lesson is that? Would it have been cheaper to build and maintain two canals? And it's not the end of the world if ships have to go the long way.
- Apocryphon 6y agoInterestingly, there's at least a possibility for a Nicaragua Canal as a redundancy for the Panama Canal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal Doubt there's any alternate paths for a Suez Canal.
- riffraff 6y agoyou could cut across the egypt/israel border from the gulf of aqaba. It would be something like ten times the length of Suez, and I think there are mountains in the middle, but it would be pretty cool! :)
- theshrike79 6y agoThe Norwegians are already planning a tunnel for boats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stad_Ship_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stad_Ship_Tunnel "In March 2021, the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications gave approval for preparations to begin, with the Norwegian Coastal Administration expecting construction to begin in 2022."
- usrusr 6y agoNorway, where else! They seem to have an entirely different relation to tunneling than the rest of humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drammen_Spiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drammen_Spiral
- matkoniecz 6y agoAnd there are canal tunnels already - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_tunnel
- danarmak 6y agoIt's been proposed before! https://www.jpost.com/opinion/an-israeli-suez-canal-393225 https://www.jpost.com/opinion/an-israeli-suez-canal-393225 It would be less than 3x the length, not 10x. The mountains are a problem; it could go around but would still need to dig a lot. And it doesn't seem feasible politically right now, but it could be a really cool project. (If it was built, then a side-canal to irrigate the Dead Sea would be a relatively cheap value-add.)
- blueblisters 6y agoWow, in a list of astoundingly bad ideas, cutting a path for large container ships through a pristine freshwater lake will probably rank at the top.
- mrfusion 6y agoI love pristine lakes too but we should look at the cost/benefit before deciding. A pristine lake doesn’t have infinite value, right?
- mekkkkkk 6y agoSo, what's the going rate for pristine lakes nowadays?
- mrfusion 6y agoIt’s actually really high since you’d be ruining the enjoyment of the lake for all future generations plus the fact that you can’t predict how much enjoyment they would get from it. But if there were enough benefits it could still be worth it. Brining 50k people out of poverty for example? Reducing trucking pollution by a large amount.
- mckirk 6y agoBest I can do is about tree fiddy.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoIt depends on who's point of view we're evaluating it from. I haven't looked, but suppose there is an endangered species which call the lake home, perhaps that is the only place they inhabit. Putting them one oil spill away from existence.
- fileeditview 6y agoMaybe more like having a stockpile of essential parts may be beneficial if something like this or Corona happens.
- Dylan16807 6y agoIf you're relying on intercontinental cargo ships then you probably already know you need to have a buffer, whether you actually have one or not.
- asdfaoeu 6y agoAlso, for some businesses it may just not make sense as the cost of stockpiling is more than the occasional loss of productivity.
- nebolo 6y agoName one thing that you, as a consumer, have not been able to get a consequence of the Seuz being blocked?
- hutzlibu 6y agoWith the delay, it might still come to us.
- simonh 6y agoWhy are you restricting this to consumers? There are plenty of businesses getting hurt by this.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoGas at $2.79/gal
- jacquesm 6y agoJust to give you one example, there is a months worth of raw material for FFP2 masks on there somewhere.
- jojobas 6y agoA large portion of the channel has been upgraded into two lanes in the last few years.
- gambiting 6y agoWell maybe....make the Suez Canal wider? Like, double the width, so if this happens again ships can pass? Or would it just lead to ships being made that can accomodate the entire width of the super-wide canal? :P
- Piskvorrr 6y agoLook at Panama Canal: its dimensions have defined container ships since...well...since it was built (see "Panamax"). When a new and improved set of locks was built, New Panamax ships (i.e. "juust large enough to fit the new maxima") were launched.
- gambiting 6y agoWell I suppose that has a very simple solution - make the canal wider so that even if a ship runs into a side others can pass, but leave the entry points on both ends the same width.
- ReptileMan 6y agoUmm.. There was never single point of failure. Just single point of delay. It's not as if there are perishable goods on those ships.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoLots of goods shipped are effectively perishable, in that you may as well write them off and dump them somewhere if the shipment misses a particular sales season.
- capableweb 6y agoIf that was true for the Evergreen ship, wouldn't they have dismantled the ship by now then? Not saying you're wrong overall, maybe it just doesn't apply to this particular shipment. As far as I know, we don't know exactly what is on the Ever Given.
- bkor 6y ago> If that was true for the Evergreen ship, wouldn't they have dismantled the ship by now then? The vessel is completely filled with containers. To discharge a container you need a crane. Further, some perishable things, that's why shippers have insurance. Not sure what you mean with 'dismantle' though. It's rather obvious you never seen such a vessel up close. It's nor like a pc. If you want a specific container, it can often be a complete hassle to get to it. This as loads of other containers are stacked on top.
- mkl 6y agoEven if it was empty and in a suitable dock, dismantling a ship that size would take weeks at minimum.
- emteycz 6y agoExcept the sheep
- Scarblac 6y agoThere are lots of livestock on ships in the queue, something on the order of 100,000 animals will literally perish.
- m463 6y agoI don't think it's a single point of failure, more like a bottleneck with delays. But over the last few decades we have been much more efficient with globalization, but the just-in-time aspect is like a traffic jam, where one slow spot makes everyone everywhere back up and wait in traffic affecting everything.
- psychiatrist24 6y agoActually ships already have the option to take the long way around Africa.
- f6v 6y agoI guarantee everyone will forget about it soon. Same as with pandemic, in 10 years, if the new virus strikes, governments around the world we clueless.
- KMag 6y ago> Same as with pandemic, in 10 years, if the new virus strikes, governments around the world we clueless. SARS in 2004 primed Hong Kong for a robust virus response in 2020. As much as the HK government gets wrong, they've done a really good job so far with SARS-CoV2. We have 7.5 million people, and about 120 deaths so far from SARS-CoV2. Though, a lot of this boils down to the fatality rate of the original SARS being something like 10%, so it was more terrifying but ultimately less dangerous on a population level due to lower transmissibility.
- dhosek 6y agoEast Asia in general has done really well with Covid. In the US, I fear that nobody will learn anything from Covid. Those who treated it as nothing more than the flu will come out of this feeling that they were right all along and treat the next pandemic exactly the same way. There was one guy interviewed at the Trump rally in Tulsa who had a friend die from Covid and still went to a rally without a mask saying he didn't know what to think about the pandemic.
- dhosek 6y agoOn the flip side, it is a technological miracle that 1 year and a day after I was last in the office, I was able to get my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine (or, for that matter, that a vaccine even existed).
- f6v 6y agoAnd we have a global mindset in Europe, right? So we could have learned from others. But somehow nobody invested in contact tracing infrastructure, PPE production, etc. Why? Because you can't justify more spending for something that "could happen". There's an enormous tax burden already in the EU, and governments will be struggling even more with healthcare costs in the next decades. I doubt someone will stockpile millions of KN95 masks "just in case" after the pandemic is over. Because that costs money.
- michelb 6y agoIt's a nice refresher about (anti)fragility.
- nvoid 6y agofuggedaboutit
- mywacaday 6y agoMore of a very large DOS attack, but in all seriousness what would happen if some rogue state decided to launch a missile into the side of one of these in the missile of the canal, how long would clean up operation take.
- guywhocodes 6y agoHow about a well placed 50-500kg? shaped charge to take out the rudder
- mekkkkkk 6y agoUnless it happens to end up diagonally like this one, it would probably just be tugged off, no?
- eloff 6y agoMost of the Suez Canal is twinned, this ship got stuck in the southern single lane area. I think Egypt will more seriously consider twinning the southern part after this event.