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Comment by grues-dinner | Hacker News Reader

If this were a threat, how would the Russians coerce a ship full of sailors to not surrender or abandon the ship rather than choose between vaporisation or arrest or death by navy when trying to escape the aftermath (assuming they even have boats that can get away from the blast)?

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> (...) how would the Russians coerce a ship full of sailors to not surrender or abandon the ship rather than choose between vaporisation or arrest or death by (...)

Have you paid any attention to Russia's meatwave tactics in Ukraine that so far already piled up half a million of Russian casualties?

If you did, you wouldn't be considering this scenario implausible, because we see videos of said Russians needlessly marching towards their deaths on a daily basis.

Are the sailors actually Russian military? Or are there suicidal commissars on board along with them to put a gun in their backs 1000km from home?

I'm not saying it not possible, but the fact that there isn't a rather more concerted response involving, say, the SBS or an encounter with an Astute within the last several weeks while it's been tooling around the North Sea implies that the intelligence services don't consider it as much of an actual active threat as the media circus wants it to be.

Certainly if there was even a breath of Russian military on the ship, I don't think "hey sure, just drop anchor outside Margate and chill next to these other ships and right by the Thames and Channel shipping lanes" would be the call they'd make.

> Are the sailors actually Russian military?

The people Russia is sending to their deaths in their meat wave tactics aren't exactly Russian military either. They are at best civilians under contract and moved to front lines weeks if not days after being hired.

Then there are the civilians pressed into service such as unsuspecting immigrants and Ukrainians who found themselves in occupied territories.

The key factor is complete disrespect for those under your control, and willingness to sacrifice themselves for the smallest reason.

Kind of seems like climbing onto or sending a message to the anchor hoy currently alongside and requesting asylum from the murderous Russians would be the obvious way out of that one.

Margate may not be luxurious, but it's not a Ukrainian front line.

The only evidence that it's anything other than a damaged ship in a shit situation (even shitter than your average Syrian/UAE cargo ship, which is probably saying something) with a very low chance of a very big explosion, trying to find somewhere to put in, is that the word "megabomb" makes good headlines and people want to have exciting things happen, even if "it" is blowing up a town, no matter how dreary, from 12 miles away with what would presumably be the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history.

“The [Ukrainian] commanders estimated that 50 to 70 per cent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation.“

https://www.ft.com/content/b9396112-585a-4f7e-9628-13d500c99...

http://archive.today/WKqxz

The same way Russia coerces soldiers to go into the meat grinder against Ukraine - money, assurances their families will be cared after (well it might be with a sack of potatoes, but the poor fools can't know that).

Do not underestimate the importance of drugs cocktails in the meat wave tactics employed by Russia. Also the running Buryat and other ethnic-minorities from the east of the empire aren't told that IR scopes can see through smoke-grenade clouds, and seem not to be told that the trenches in front are not full of friendlies.

Maybe they don't know they are used.

What if Russia cut the normal radio with a crew of dispensable third-worlders dummies like you suffer from a DEFICIT OF IMAGINATION

How would they have been turned away from ports, or even hope to get into a port, without a working radio (but still a working AIS)?

There's a difference between a lack of imagination and a lack of credulity for any breathless headline.

If the plan was to deliberately detonate the ship rather than just be an annoyance that can't be ignored, then it seems like a very obvious option to rig it with a timer and have the crew escape during the night. Risk of arrest for sure but they'd have a chance, and the west has shown no shortage of willingness in the past to exchange assassins for hostages. People take on worse missions all the time.

I'd far rather be crew on this ship than on HMS Campbeltown.

And if that were remotely on the cards, even within a shadow if a doubt, there'd be an exclusion zone around the ship. And there isn't. There are ships going right past it, right now.

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