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Comment by booleandilemma | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if any countries are trying to weaponize this?

I suspect we'd notice if North Korea started drilling wells in California. It's not exactly a suitcase nuke level of concealability.

But you could be just across the border and digging in.

So the epicenter ends up in the attacking country’s border (or at least within a few miles)? Doesn’t sound like a particularly useful weapon when you’ve got to attack your own country with it too.

Lots of borders that are asymmetrically populated. (Feels weird to be thinking this way)

The entirety of Himalayas is earthquake Zone-4|5 and with many such borders.

https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Burns_Slant_Drilling_Co.

South Korea accidentally discovered a bunch of tunnels that the North had been prepping. They'd gone unnoticed until performing some sort of water investigation iirc. You used to be able to go into them (near the DMZ) on tours. The walls are black and the guide I had noted that upon discovery, the fleeing workers painted the wall with coal to "make it seem like it was a mining operation all along".

So, the "drink your milkshake" level access isn't crazy.

Using tunnels offensively and using earthquakes offensively are enormously different things, though.

A tunnel is useful; you can get past the landmines and other defenses. Causing an earthquake a few miles across the DMZ is far less useful.

No body/tank is getting through the ironically named Demilitarized Zone dividing South and North Korea, without getting lit up with fast moving pieces of metal hitting with high kinetic energy.

Hence the tunnels.

North Korean government's long standing, highest priority goal is conquest of South Korea through any means, including military invasion.

I'm not disputing any of that.

I'm disputing "earthquakes as offensive weapon" being useful. Not tunnels.

No no, the comment was merely to show that North Korea did in fact go unnoticed in their building of vast tunnels (wide enough for tanks).

that was a plot in one of the paperbacks in 198x - back then there was a spike in detection of USSR submarines violating Sweden waters, and in the story the submarines were performing under water drilling and injecting some stuff to be able to trigger earthquakes on demand when the time comes.

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