Piracy makes a comeback

[Shaka_Khan]

If this gets out of hand, the price of various things could go up due to so many supplies being taken away by the pirates.

[Husar]

So basically the answer is to equip merchant ships with automatic cannons and missile launchers that will automatically target any small boat in a vicinity of 200 nautic miles? Or perhaps a MAD scenario where you put a nuke into every ship that the crew can detonate and send all those annoying pirates to hell? It's only a few deaths to make sure our prices will stay down but I suppose we crew the ships with the supporters of such great ideas so that they can make sure it all works out as it was supposed to.

By the way, at my work it is also so that when we get robbed we are supposed to give out all the money and call the police later. One of my colleagues who got robbed before said it's usually really fast and the robbers will even jump over the counter etc. How anyone could possbly think about getting a wepon when one is already aimed at their head is beyond me but go ahead, it's funny to read about the great and heroic battles of tankers vs. pirates.

[Shaka_Khan]

So basically the answer is to equip merchant ships with automatic cannons and missile launchers that will automatically target any small boat in a vicinity of 200 nautic miles? Or perhaps a MAD scenario where you put a nuke into every ship that the crew can detonate and send all those annoying pirates to hell? It's only a few deaths to make sure our prices will stay down but I suppose we crew the ships with the supporters of such great ideas so that they can make sure it all works out as it was supposed to....

I didn't say that we should equip the ships (whether that's good or not (and whether you were talking to me or not)). I'm just saying the effects of piracy.

[ICantSpellDawg]

There is principle and then there is reality. The reality is than seamen don't want to die and it isn't their stuff, so they won't fight.

RPGs are a big concern as it renders defending argument mute - unless they want a sinking ship. Lets look for bright sides. This isn't our stuff - it hurts our competitors and increases the cost of imports against our own products. - to a much lesser extent our exports. It probably will contribute to growth in defense products

Does anyone know what, besides the obvious, we (americans) transport over there back and forth?

[Tribesman]

Does anyone know what, besides the obvious, we (americans) transport over there back and forth?

Anything and everything , that fella with the shovel sure does get a lot of sightseers looking at his hole . The only things that don't go to the hole are those that are too big , but some bright spark wants them big sightseers too so is getting a shovel to make the hole 4ft. deeper .
I blame hollywood myself , that Ferdinand de Lesseps should have stuck to watching French films , once he had seen Field of dreams he got the strange notion that if he built it people would come .

[Husar]

I didn't say that we should equip the ships (whether that's good or not (and whether you were talking to me or not)). I'm just saying the effects of piracy.

I wasn't aiming it only at you but consider that putting a bunch of armed men who get paid a lot per hour on every ship (even those that won't actually get attacked as you do not know which ones will be) won't be cheap either. Then if a ship gets attacked those armed men will fire a lot of ammunition, the more effective, the more expensive, look up the costs of some modern guided missiles for example. Now putting men with guided missiles on a merchant ship sounds silly so maybe they'll just use guns but then the pirates will get anygry and shoot asome RPGs at the ship. If it sinks it will get really expensive, you have to search for it, clean up the oil or whatever etc. etc. If we consider that modern tankers actually have a douple hull I suspect they could survive quite a few hits from RPGs but even then the outer hull will have some holes in it and there will possibly be more internal damage etc and all that has to be repaired, which costs a lot of money especially if you cannot use the ship for as long as the repairs take etc. etc. So you really gotta wonder what is cheaper in the end.