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Well, they did it before, and without the help of the massive diggers we have currently, so it can’t be that hard, relatively speaking.

Besides, my newspaper said that the economic losses of the stuckness amount to like 400M per hour. That is a looot of money you can throw at a problem.



The Suez Canal took 10 years to build, with > 30,000 people working on it at any given time and over 1.5M total laborers, thousands of whom died.

I don't think we want to be waiting for 10 years. Cheaper to blow up the ship and its cargo than to re-build a whole new canal.


Blowing it up isn't really a solution either, that still leaves the canal blocked, as it was for 8 years after the 6 day war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet


I was being semi-facetious, but now I see that a bunch of people seem to be suggesting that in all seriousness. Poe's Law strikes again.


Actually with a well placed nuclear warhead placed directly under the ship, it could be thrown out of the canal and into the nearby desert clearing the canal route /s


Think outside the box some more. With enough nuclear warheads, trade between Asia and Europe can be made completely irrelevant!


Fun fact: the ship is larger than the fireball of a peacekeeper warhead would be (~320 meters)


Those were what, 300kiloton’s ish? So if we go to 1+ megaton we’d be good. Seems reasonable if we go up to 3-4 megatons, maybe we’d even end up with a big enough crater one of these ships could pull a three point turn next time?


A better way would be to explode one medium sized nuke under the ship, wait a few seconds then explode another and then start exploding nukes behind it until it's going fast enough.

Project Orion did contemplate a 400m diameter ship weighing 8 million tons....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...


I like the way you think! Saving the global economy through nuclear propulsion of kiloton scale commercial shipping. It could finally get us to Mars?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

>Proposed uses for nuclear explosives under Project Plowshare included widening the Panama Canal, constructing a new sea-level waterway through Nicaragua nicknamed the Pan-Atomic Canal, cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and connecting inland river systems.


Okay, something like the Tsar Bomba then? /s


May want to use two of those bad boys then


I suspect any nuke smaller than the Tsar Bomb would leave top large pieces in the way.




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