On the other hand, solar powered mining with just good enough radios to do C2 and send back any hashes found would be an exact match to this scale of equipment.
To me, top 25 seems major, but to someone else top 20 would be major. I don't think "major" in the context of metro areas is an official term.
The numbers are more like: 1) Salt Lake City: 200K people 2) Salt Lake City Metro Area (MSA): 1.25-1.3 million 3) Salt Lake-Ogden-Provo Combined Statistical Area (CSA): ~2.7 Million. FYI this region is also called the "Wasatch Front"
To understand these levels of breakdown the equivalent for Bay Area naming would be: 1) San Francisco itself (the 49 square miles): ~800K people 2) San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley MSA: ~4.6 million 3) San Jose-SF-Oakland CSA (think the whole "Bay Area"): ~9.5 Million
It's the Combined Statistical Area of SLC (the "Wasatch Front") which is now ~22nd-24th in the nation, not the MSA itself.
It's similar in size to Charlotte or Sacramento, and larger than the respective CSAs of eg Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Kansas City, Nashville, or Las Vegas
Which is why it isn’t surrounded by a great cellphone network, and thus why they are setting up a independent radio network.
Good enough where you wouldn’t need to set up your own system. Or be stupid enough to make them noticeable and have the Forest Service confiscate them. I mean, come on, a little black paint and a cryptic “Property of US Government” sticker would go a long way.
Or, if you want to be super sneaky just throw them up on a telephone pole because it’s well known that the companies only mess with their own equipment so you can hide stuff in plain sight.
And these seem to be right outside SLC proper.
Suggesting it’s useful in places that overlapped ignores the utility in areas where it would be the only option. I doubt drug dealers are meeting up in the desert outside of cellphone range with their suppliers, but it isn’t a crazy idea.
If anything Salt Lake seems about average size for a city, it’s just located in the middle of nowhere which makes it seem more important. This is also why they need this kind of backup communication system so close to the city.
This place is cursed with the worst pointless nerd sniping behavior.
Talking about metro size is actually relevant because if it was a major metro area like say LA they could actually use the cellphone network that would blanket the area. Instead it’s a modest city in basically the middle of nowhere thus the problem.
They want total control, not bribes.
One of the more medium size cartels, Jalisco New Generation, specializes in training assassins against their will. Let that just sink in. They do this by advertising jobs, kidnapping the people who show up to interview, and then torturing them in horrific ways until they get the total compliance of learned helplessness. Then they send them on suicide missions.
I don't want to go into the details of the torture because its bad stuff, involving cannibalism even. If you are morbidly curious there's a couple interviews with survivors you can find somewhere on youtube.
And this is far from the only instance of this sort of thing. Sinaloa has been known to kidnap entire buses and make folks fight to the death, winner gets the dubious honor of becoming a member.
These are people who assume every single person in their world is plotting to overthrow them in an instant, and leave nothing to chance vs that. They don't want to hope their bribe is enough to keep you loyal, they want to know you're loyal because you've seen them torture to death countless people. You don't get any agency in the matter.
[1] - https://es.insightcrime.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Mexic...
This sounds like:
1. Just a rehash of the original Hashashin tale.
2. A spooky story cartel members might tell.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxP-TMArlV0
This is far from the only source you can find that supports what I'm saying. Search for CJNG to find more about them. They're sort of the Phoenix that rose from the infamous Los Zetas.
I have friends that live in Mexico so we talk about it fairly often as well. One of my friends in particular is a wireless business owner with customers near Brownsville/Matamoros, where those telcom engineer kidnappings happened, so he's acutely aware of things.
Why would an engineer willfully take a cartel job, when there is a high risk of them killing you instead of paying you, and killing you by cutting off your face just because they were bored and disturbed? If a cartel even offered me a job, I'd fear for my life.
These people really are as bad as it gets. You don't want to be anywhere close to involved with them.