Laying a mine field across the whole length of major waterways probably isn't a very good idea. Plus, maintaining a mine field and preventing innocent deaths would probably cost more than the inconvenience and monetary damages of repairing the broken cables.

You seem to have the mistaken impression that booby traps aren't horribly problematic.

Would you advocate the border control should point guns at anyone who crosses the border? Or is that a needless risk to the safety of humans?

I'd ask you to consider for a moment, exactly what is going to happen to that mine? I assume you thought it would damage or destroy any anchor dragged across the cable? Well it's really hard to predict how much damage it would cause but lets assume it works exactly as you hope and say it only destroys the anchor chain of the boat. What if there's a storm, and that ship can't anchor safely, but because it's run by incompetent, or evil people they don't care, and try to park near another ship crash into it. Both ships sink and a bunch of innocent people on the ship that just happened to park in the wrong place, die. That's assuming all the people on the "evil ship" were involved and weren't just hired to work delivering cargo.

You admitted it was a stupid question, but I'd like to suggest you should avoid defaulting to suggesting death and destruction. A better stupid question would be "why can't we armor the cables" instead of "why can't we hurt other people"

A mine can't harm the anchor, but to drag the anchor, the ship must cross the minefield first.

What's going to happen? The ship will sink. In practice, that will either force Russians to sweep the mines thus attracting too much attention, or to give up on this idea of damaging cables.

It doesn't matter if people are directly involved. When a bunch of crews will die... well nothing will happen because for shipowners they are entirely disposable. But loss of ships will prompt shipowners to be extra careful to where the take orders from.

I wonder if there's a word for killing or harming people who are bystanders to try to change the behavior of some other person or some group.

Well, if the maps of the minefields are public, why would any ship with the crew in their sane mind, sail towards it?

Do you understand that by their very nature, underwater cables have to span the width of a body of water? What are you going to do, draw a line of mines from Denmark to Sweden?

Make passageways or even deactivate mines using signal from the same cable it is safeguarding. Ship needs to pass, captain sends an SMS from a sat and the mine is deactivated for half an hour. If ship is suspicious, a destroyer escorts at at gunpoint - cable signal lost, torpedo goes off automatically.

> and the mine is deactivated for half an hour

Congratulations, the minefield is permanently switched off: https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/BALTIC-SEA-AIS/ship-traf...

Great idea. I was thinking of something similar after 9/11. Install explosives on all commercial airliners and have them automatically detonate and destroy the plane if it gets too close to a building where it isn't supposed to be. It's foolproof!

Why would anyone in their right mind run their ship into a bridge, or run it aground navigating a canal? Mistakes, misjudgments, or just confusion happen and killing innocent people because some equipment might be damaged by a hostile actor seems closer to a war crime than a reasonable policy.

And yes, back to the question of border control: i believe that anyone who's trying to cross the border (in either direction) outside of the designated port of entry, in a clear view of the border warning signs and over the separator, must not just have "gun pointed at", but directly shot dead right on the spot. That's what the border exists for: to control who can enter and who exits, in the cheapest ways possible. Are people blind and can't see the signs? I can't see any controversy here or doubt: just shoot them. Only situation in which it could be to any degree controversial is that if there are some people on the other side who it could endanger putting them on a line of fire.

> directly shot dead right on the spot.

Wtf? Obviously you can't post like this here. If you do it again, we will ban you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. We've had to ask you about this more than once before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41417042 (Sept 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37665245 (Sept 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29957648 (Jan 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687873 (Dec 2021)

Congratulations, you have herein achieved the pinnacle of the "HN: why don't we just X" format.

For all the length of the cable? Anyway, ships must let have routes to pass over those cables or we would partition the seas into small patches. Any ship passing over a cable between two mines can cut it.

Edit: or do you mean mines anchored to the cable on the sea floor? That would make it easier to kaboom the cable instead of cutting it.

Seems like a massive hazard if a natural thing severs a cable and requires maintenance. Plus the removal at some point, presumably. Would suck for true accidents to have human lives on top of the damage.

I imagine there must be some other deterrent measure but drawing a blank. My brother was the navy man...

The Baltic sea is full of civilian traffic!