undersea cable cuts
Dave Howe
DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk
Sun Feb 10 04:40:02 PST 2008
H. Lally Singh wrote:
> So what kind of tools would they use to locate & take out the fiber?
> Would a snorkel & sharpened boat anchor do the trick?
If you are still on the continental shelf, I guess scuba kit and a
suitable cutting tool (or shaped charge)
As has been noted previously (perhaps elsewhere; nanog is discussing
this too) there was a case where concrete "holdoffs" where placed above
a cable to protect it from a natural gas pipe laid atop it; with the
weight of the pipe and time, the holdoffs sank into the sea bed and
severed the cable in several places.
That was poor design; however, similar emplacements would presumably
be fairly economic to produce, and would have the added feature of
making it hard for the repair vessels to trawl up the cable for repairs
if there were still existing blocks pinning it down in the area they are
attempting to lift cable. making the downward facing edge deliberately a
curved blade is an obvious "improvement" to the design, and could
actually be helped by attempts to repair the cable - tug up the cable
against the block, and have it severed *again* at the point you are
attempting to trawl up (at which juncture, the severed end will slip out
of your hook and back to the ocean floor). Given even half hearted
timing, you could place the blocks weeks or even months before, meaning
nobody could easily trace back your presence in the area to the time of
the "event".
Still don't see any terrorist benefit to doing so though.
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