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Comment by lnsru

3 days ago

I have license for boat and use nautical maps. They show me a cable, but not the hierarchy of the infrastructure. I see a cable, but can’t evaluate if half of town stays without electricity or only an island with dozen houses if I damage it.

However the available maps do not stop russian ships regularly dropping anchors on European infrastructure in Baltic see. Obviously charting them does not help. Maybe they should stay secret at the end.

6 comments

lnsru

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snickerer  3 days ago

You can hide the position of the cables from fishermen and the public. But if someone knows where they are, it is the KGB, I mean, FSB.

We should make information about infrastructure public. There was a power outtage in Berlin, due to to an attack aginst a 'secret' cable bridge. If the map of cables would have been public, then the public may have had a chance to realize that having no backup cable is a bad idea for critical infrastructure.

  • holowoodman  2 days ago

    There were backup cables. The bridge carried 5 cables, redundancy configuration would have been 3+2 afaik. But only for purposes of maintenance, not to protect against hostile action. For that, one should have taken care to not have all redundancies on the same bridge ;)

    And in most environments, you cannot hide the location of those cables. Either they are visible directly, like all overhead power lines. No use in hiding those. And for the underground ones, you could try to hide them. But every backhoe operator will rightfully want a map of those anyways, so the information will come out in some way.

    The only environment where hiding this kind of infrastructure would be possible is some state-does-everything soviet-like police state. Where comrade backhoe-operator wouldn't get a map, but he would get accompanied by a secret police supervisor who would tell him where to dig and where not to.

gehsty  2 days ago

Would you feel comfortable making a decision on putting an anchor down on a cable if you knew it would only take out a few hundred houses worth of power.

I would imagine that any body that issues you a license should inform you to not anchor in proximity to cables, regardless of size / spec etc. if you put an anchor down on a charted cable, and the cable is where it should be, I think you’d be responsible for the cost of damage.

  • lnsru  2 days ago

    I anchor very carefully on the rocks or sandy seabed. I don’t anchor in seaweed areas and on pipes or cables. Additional attention from local newspaper is not desired.