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You seem to have the mistaken impression that booby traps aren't horribly problematic. Would you advocate the border control should point guns at anyone who cr
by grayhatter 2y ago
You seem to have the mistaken impression that booby traps aren't horribly problematic.
Would you advocate the border control should point guns at anyone who crosses the border? Or is that a needless risk to the safety of humans?
I'd ask you to consider for a moment, exactly what is going to happen to that mine? I assume you thought it would damage or destroy any anchor dragged across the cable? Well it's really hard to predict how much damage it would cause but lets assume it works exactly as you hope and say it only destroys the anchor chain of the boat. What if there's a storm, and that ship can't anchor safely, but because it's run by incompetent, or evil people they don't care, and try to park near another ship crash into it. Both ships sink and a bunch of innocent people on the ship that just happened to park in the wrong place, die. That's assuming all the people on the "evil ship" were involved and weren't just hired to work delivering cargo.
You admitted it was a stupid question, but I'd like to suggest you should avoid defaulting to suggesting death and destruction. A better stupid question would be "why can't we armor the cables" instead of "why can't we hurt other people"
- anovikov 2y agoA mine can't harm the anchor, but to drag the anchor, the ship must cross the minefield first. What's going to happen? The ship will sink. In practice, that will either force Russians to sweep the mines thus attracting too much attention, or to give up on this idea of damaging cables. It doesn't matter if people are directly involved. When a bunch of crews will die... well nothing will happen because for shipowners they are entirely disposable. But loss of ships will prompt shipowners to be extra careful to where the take orders from.
- grayhatter 2y agoI wonder if there's a word for killing or harming people who are bystanders to try to change the behavior of some other person or some group.
- anovikov 2y agoWell, if the maps of the minefields are public, why would any ship with the crew in their sane mind, sail towards it?
- Tarq0n 2y agoDo you understand that by their very nature, underwater cables have to span the width of a body of water? What are you going to do, draw a line of mines from Denmark to Sweden?
- anovikov 2y agoMake passageways or even deactivate mines using signal from the same cable it is safeguarding. Ship needs to pass, captain sends an SMS from a sat and the mine is deactivated for half an hour. If ship is suspicious, a destroyer escorts at at gunpoint - cable signal lost, torpedo goes off automatically.
- ben_w 2y ago> and the mine is deactivated for half an hour Congratulations, the minefield is permanently switched off: https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/BALTIC-SEA-AIS/ship-traffic-tracker https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/BALTIC-SEA-AIS/ship-traf...
- 542354234235 2y agoGreat idea. I was thinking of something similar after 9/11. Install explosives on all commercial airliners and have them automatically detonate and destroy the plane if it gets too close to a building where it isn't supposed to be. It's foolproof!
- 542354234235 2y agoWhy would anyone in their right mind run their ship into a bridge, or run it aground navigating a canal? Mistakes, misjudgments, or just confusion happen and killing innocent people because some equipment might be damaged by a hostile actor seems closer to a war crime than a reasonable policy.
- anovikov 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y ago> directly shot dead right on the spot. Wtf? Obviously you can't post like this here. If you do it again, we will ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. We've had to ask you about this more than once before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41417042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41417042 (Sept 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37665245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37665245 (Sept 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29957648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29957648 (Jan 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687873 (Dec 2021)