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Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

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Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#201

Post by BurningPenguin »

klabb3 wrote: post #63
BurningPenguin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RussiaZ for victory Yeah, that seems like a real trustworthy channel... Btw. they were talking about heavy sanctions back in the time.

Diplomacy, sanctions, sabotage, military interventions.. They're all just a spectrum. Of course it shouldn't be understood as proof the US did it but to ignore that they had a strong geopolitical interest in having NS gone is naive. Would the white house approve it, given that it's partly allied civilian infrastructure, if the risk of getting caught is deemed low? I don't think that's impossible. They spied on those…

Spying is a whole other level compared to physically attacking infrastructure. I'm not aware of any "special operations" from the US on EU soil in the last decades. The only country that is known to do "special operations" and hunting down political opponents on EU soil, is currently rampaging in Ukraine. But for the moment, even the scenario with Russia doing some false flag shit is just a wild guess without any proof. So we'll have to wait for the investigation anyway.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#202

Post by tchvil »

rendall wrote: post #67

Everyone seems to know it was Russia and is just casting out ideas to find a plausible motivation. I find that completely baffling. For opportunity, consider that while setting up the pipeline needs a weird high-pressure residence and special training, blowing it up takes a fishing boat, scuba gear and underwater explosives. The equipment and training is cheap and available. So, those with opportunity is almost anyon…

Since we are all speculating, here's another one. How about Ukraine doing it ? It annoys the Russians. And Europeans will have a harder time to easily buy some Russian gas if this winter is too cold. Increasing our Russian anger cursor to not soften on sanctions.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#203

Post by mrep »

_kbh_ wrote: post #69
rendall wrote: post #67

Everyone seems to know it was Russia and is just casting out ideas to find a plausible motivation. I find that completely baffling. For opportunity, consider that while setting up the pipeline needs a weird high-pressure residence and special training, blowing it up takes a fishing boat, scuba gear and underwater explosives. The equipment and training is cheap and available. So, those with opportunity is almost anyon…

Why did these groups miss a pipe on Nord Stream 2 that remains undamaged, and can be used by Russia to try and force certification of NS2 if things get bad?.

Amateur hour? I'd bet money there is an undetonated bomb on the final one that failed to go off and if I were Germany or whoever, I'd be sending underwater drones along the last one to try and find one. It could give you a ton of insights on who actually did it if you found an intact undetonated one.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#204

Post by Paradigma11 »

rendall wrote: post #142
AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nord Stream is 51% Russian (Gazprom). Not sure if it is NATO territory or international waters. It still becomes a little bit more "muddy" on who could have made it and who benefits from it. Attacking Norway-Poland line at this point would be a very obvious and very direct attack on NATO.

This is all motivated thinking with "It's Russia!" as the end goal. Some of the NS attacks were on NATO territory. Denmark could invoke Article 5 were it found to be Russia. If "NATO" were in the equation, the saboteurs would have stayed in Swedish and Finnish waters, and even then it's iffy.

Russia has already used radioactive poisons and nerve agents on NATO territory, so that little explosion is nothing.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#205

Post by bombcar »

cloutchaser wrote: post #176
ktfelt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that the Western press is quiet, too. Normally they'd scream "terrorist attack" on every front page. Now they only cite Ukraine claiming a Russian terror attack or say nothing. If a Canadian pipe was blown up, the headlines would be different.

I wouldn't be suprised if this turns into the next "lab leak theory" in terms of censorship. There's going to be one acceptable party line, parrotted in the media and anything else will be censored on social media as well. There's too much at stake and the infrastructure is already there to create full on censorship for one side and non stop propaganda for the other.

Everyone is quiet because nobody knows what the party line is supposed to be. On any side.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#206

Post by Paradigma11 »

rendall wrote: post #185
rendall wrote: post #67

Everyone seems to know it was Russia and is just casting out ideas to find a plausible motivation. I find that completely baffling. For opportunity, consider that while setting up the pipeline needs a weird high-pressure residence and special training, blowing it up takes a fishing boat, scuba gear and underwater explosives. The equipment and training is cheap and available. So, those with opportunity is almost anyon…

One must build elaborate, implausible motivations for everyone in order to maintain the "It's definitely Russia" theory when there are more plausible, direct motivations to hand in the "Anyone but Russia" theory. Who stands to benefit from permanently ending European dependence on Russian fuel? Norway? To conclude Norway (it's not Norway, but for example), one can simply point at the loss of a competitor. No weird 4D…

Two points:

1) Priors. Russia loves their clandestine operations to kill somebody or blow stuff up in europe. Be it weapons depots in Czechia or bulgaria, poisoning opponents with radioactive materials or nerve agents your various russian intelligence agencies are there for you. This happened recently, not some cold war stuff.

2.) You are forgetting to include the possible downsides for getting caught in your analysis.

* Russia: Basically none. They blew up their own pipelines. Strange, but they have done stranger things. They will deny it anyway and nothing would come of it.

* USA: Massive. The whole alliance against Russia would crumble over winter and Russia would have a much easier time evading sanctions. Anti US sentiment in europe would go through the roof.

Yes, it could have been Poland or the Baltics but 2:1 my money would be on Russia to sow discord, fear and distrust. Just think how fast that Biden statement was presented as proof for US involvement. Russia right now needs to try and reduce financial and arms aid to Ukraine, any economic considerations are probably secondary. Not saying that would be a good strategy, but that hasnt prevented Russia in the past.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#207

Post by bombcar »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #195
KennyBlanken wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with diving experience I laughed at parent comment's "anyone with scuba gear" assertion too - a classic example of "I'm an expert at everything because I'm a smart programmer who makes $200k a year" arrogance that is endemic here - but you're right next to them. - The timing of the explosions doesn't require "multiple coordinated teams." It requires timers. Or, as is common with naval mines, an acoustic ar…

> In fact, you're assuming explosives were planted, and someone didn't use a smart torpedo of some sort. I think planted explosives makes more sense; it would leave less/no identifiable debris behind.

If it WAS Russia or Germany, inserting the explosives in a pig INTO the pipeline from their end and letting it cruise down to the depths would be easier (maybe).

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#208

Post by vasco »

beebmam wrote: post #37
vasco wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those 150k tons are for heating people's homes. Whereas the spend on the boat fuel is simply for construction of the pipeline so if you can optimize that, that's under your control, as the company laying pipe right now. Though maybe you prefer everyone die of cold until we have a solution to transition out of natural gas without returning to coal or wait 10 years to build more nuclear.

>Those 150k tons are for heating people's homes. This is a misrepresentation: natural gas is used for a variety of purposes, with industry and home use approximately tied, varying by EU country. Germany for example, uses more natural gas for industrial purposes than heating homes. >Though maybe you prefer everyone die of cold until we have a solution to transition out of natural gas without returning to coal or wait…

What personal vitriol? What do you think will happen during winter if we don't rollout natural gas pipelines due to environmental impact? Maybe I said it too bluntly but it is the effect.

In my country (portugal) since I was young every winter many people die of cold because it's too expensive to heat their homes. This is in a developed EU country and before any pressures post supply chain disruptions. I think middle class people have a romantic view of the world where nobody is dying like this nowadays, but a simple 10% increase in home heating prices will cause extra deaths during winter. I know there's other things that could be done but my argument is that these pipes need to be built today, and it's not dumb to try and build them in a way that is environmentally friendly instead of just throwing our hands up because it's gas so it has to be purely bad.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#209

Post by bombcar »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #188
DangerousPie wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sabotaging their allies' key infrastructure would be an absolutely crazy amount of risk for the US. Even if they think there is a 99% chance they'd not get caught, that is a 1% chance of completely destroying relations their with Germany, Scandinavia, the EU, and probably the entire world. And all of that risk for the very marginal benefit of disabling some pipelines that weren't going to be used anytime soon any way…

> And all of that risk for the very marginal benefit of disabling some pipelines that weren't going to be used anytime soon any way? To ensure they weren't going to be used anytime soon. > Even if they think there is a 99% chance they'd not get caught, that is a 1% chance of completely destroying relations their with Germany, Scandinavia, the EU, and probably the entire world. 1. The US has a history of taking insane…

Exactly. The US is in a position of power and everyone knows it.

We could fire missiles into many countries and they’d just take it for quite awhile at this time.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#210

Post by bombcar »

rendall wrote: post #179
exDM69 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capture of the individuals behind it? Perhaps not. Identifying the vessel(s) supporting the sabotage operation? Much more likely.

Possibly. I agree that it's possible, but not inevitable. That's assuming even that stopping, diving, attaching explosives was the method. Someone upstream suggested dragging explosives along behind the boat like an anchor, detonating when detecting the steel and concrete of the pipe. Wouldn't need scuba gear, nor even to stop.

It doesn’t take much more sophistication to place these weeks ago with a timer. And a bit more tooling and you can place them and remotely detonate when needed.
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