Newest Drug Lord Tech: Submarines.

[Deck Knight]

Seriously, how the hell did they manage to build transoceanic submarines.

I'm almost speechless. Almost.

Let me get this straight: We have an entirely ineffective War on Drugs that is taxing the hell out of local and state police departments, and these guys somehow get the parts and technical wherewithal to make legit submarines. I know the money is not an issue in the drug trade, but damn, why aren't these guys in charge of public works or something?

Gotta give these guys credit where credit is due.

I don't think gun control is gonna cut it against these guys...

But I don't know how you can stop them, since they tend to traffic cocaine and heroine, not weed. You might get weed legalized, but cocaine? Highly unlikely.

 

[Iamslow]

That's pretty impressive, but I guess it was only a matter of time, really.

 

[Atlas]

"He said U.S. nautical engineers would be taking the submarine apart in the next few days to determine its dynamics."

aka, only usa can have drug submarines.

but in all seriousness, im sure with its screw design it will be an effective device to dive down and bore into the gulf's floor, thereby blocking the oil spill. kinda like a huge junk shot, only a hella lot more expensive.

 

[J-man]

sooo... Apparently we need the Navy guarding our borders now...

I totally *not* feel confident with the Obama Administration handling this, considering he wants to deal with that Nasty *non* racist Arizona immigrant bill that he has totally *not* read, and that has more than a majority support by the American citizens...

But to be on topic...

Wow... Just wow... Drugs being transported via sub... Good grief... These drug lords just got more dangerous...

 

[Alan]

I'm pretty impressed with their determination to be honest.

 

[Broth3r]

I alredy knew there were narco subs, but I never heard of transoceanic ones, and with that lenght.
Very impressive indeed,

 

[cantab]

Well, I guess they are going to advance.

To be honest, it seems like the "war on drugs" is just escalating. And the logical next step is a scary one - armed narco subs. Submarines are hard enough to fight when they're being ordered by a nation, as Germany proved in both world wars. Attack submarines under the control of drugs gangs is a terrifying prospect. They could have the capability to sink US Coastguard and even US Navy vessels. And if the narco subs do get to that point, it's only a matter of time before one accidentally sinks a cruise ship.

 

[Scoopapa]

What happened to the shitload of underwater sensors that got set up during the Cold War. We were extremely paranoid about missile subs getting even remotely close then... I wonder how they're getting past all of that stuff. Maybe they're just too small / quiet for them? Maybe they have computers screening sounds for nuclear propulsion and the diesel doesn't trip them? Just speculation...

 

[cantab]

Sensors in the wrong place maybe? I'd have thought they'd be in the Atlantic and Pacific, not necessarily the Gulf of Mexico given that for anything to get into the Gulf of Mexico from Russia it would first have to cross the Atlantic, and I don't think Cuba stationed any subs.

 

[cim]

I'm pretty impressed with their determination to be honest.

To be fair, it's not the most impossible engineering in the world. Grab a handful of talented aero/mech engineers, some computers, and a lot of time and designing a submarine is far from unreasonable. It's not like drug lords only hire people in the woods with bamboo and twine for parts; they're pretty much free to hire anyone.

 

[cookie]

symbolic of the shortcomings of the war against drugs: you can't find these people with guns because they'll just bring bigger guns next time; decriminalise drugs and take their profits, then they can't get the money to build goddamn lol transoceanic submarines

 

[tape]

This is just so fucking awesome and unbelievable haha. The war on drugs is going crazier and crazier time passes by!

These guys really deserve at least some sort of awards for the genuineness because this is really how you think out of the box.

What's next, sending drugs through space or atmospheric reentry or something?

 

[BIG loven]

Das rite smuggle that cocaine. Impressive how smuggling has evolved, only gonna get better :)

 

[razer178]

If the government were clever, instead of hounding these guys down, they should tax the shit out of cocaine. They are making full on submarines to transport their goods, they make billions of dollars a year. Think about how much quicker the deficit would disappear if we could tax drugs.

 

[vonFiedler]

There's alot of really insightful things to be said here about the war on drugs and everything else, but I'm kind of stuck on;

A 100-foot (33-meter), twin-screw diesel submarine seized at a jungle in Ecuador marks a quantum, if anticipated, leap in drug-smuggling evasion technology, the top U.S. counter-drug official for the region said Sunday.

It's in the title too. He keeps using that word. I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

 

[cantab]

He's using the phrase "quantum leap". That a fairly common phrase to mean a sudden large advancement. It's not too far removed from physics - while in a physics usage the scale would normally be tiny, the sense of it being sudden is there - a particle going from one point to another without passing through the intervening locations.

In the text he splits the phrase, which is odd, but even there it's not exactly wrong - "quantum" refers primarily to something being in discrete steps or units rather than a continuum.

 

[vonFiedler]

No, Quantum Leap was a TV show. And if you know the show's mythology, the use is correct. To refer to anything large as quantum is ironic, another word that's largely misused.

 

[cantab]

I strongly suspect the colloquial usage of the phrase predates the TV show, the latter starting in 1989. (If I was still at uni I could check the OED website, but I'm not so I can't)

 

[vonFiedler]

TBH, I've never heard the colloquial usage. Maybe it's used more in England.

 

[Mastadi]

It's definitely not the first time the drug lords have attempted to acquire a submarine.

However, it is still shocking how they were able to actually build a submarine from pretty much scratch...

 

[Aeres]

To refer to anything large as quantum is ironic, another word that's largely misused.

Education time!

Irony: The reverse of the expected outcome; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result.

 

[Magic Toaster]

Well, I think we all know who's winning this war on drugs.

 

[Trax]

War on drugs is an attempted cure rather than an actual prevention. These things don't work.

 

[vonFiedler]

Education time!

Irony: The reverse of the expected outcome; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result.

Yeah, as in referring to something large as quantum. Were you even paying attention?

 

[MrIndigo]

I always thought the colloquial use of 'quantum leap' was referring to the massive change in paradigm when people went from Classical physics to Quantum.