Spanish police have announced the seizure of a homemade narco-submarine able to carry as much as two tonnes of cargo.
Police discovered the nine-metre (30ft) vessel last month while it was being built in the southern city of Málaga, during a broader international drug operation involving five other countries and the EU crime agency, Europol.
Is it illegal to own/build a submarine for recreational purposes?
On what grounds was it seized?
Since it was still being built, one can hardly claim it had been used for drug smuggling.
All a bit…Minority Report was it? We predict you will commit a crime, therefore you’re nicked!
Nah. Be the locals. They got captured, didn’t they?
The art of private submarine building must be advancing by leaps and bounds.
Wasn’t there an episode of Last of the Summer Wine where they built one out of old barrels?
I also remember seeing a homemade sub in the Checkpoint Charlie museum, the guy who made it sailed to Demark to escape the iron block.
That thing is huge!
I thought the idea of these things was that you made them about the size of a dolphin, so they’d slip past detection and no-one would even care if you saw someone with one on a beach.
There’s got to be a lot of drugs being moved this way. This just makes sense. Move the drugs underwater and then land them on an empty beach at night. The odds of customs catching you has to be pretty remote compared to suitcases through Heathrow. Probably cheaper per kilo, too.
Huge? Nah… About the size of the small flatbottoms that are a dime a dozen over here in Clogland. Boats look hella big when they’re out of the water..
And 2 tonnes of pure coke.. That’s 0.11m³, say 0.15m³ to allow for impurities. Don’t need that much room to stash that..
But by all boat-building gods… That thing looks like a fancy early grave…
“And 2 tonnes of pure coke.. That’s 0.11m³, say 0.15m³ to allow for impurities. Don’t need that much room to stash that..”
Uh? Is that the lead salt of coca you’re tooting? Cocaine’s slightly denser than water (Quickie test for pura is to sprinkle a smidgen of finely powdered onto the top of a glass of domestic bleach. Watch the particles spiral down, leaving a slight trail behind them. Drop strait to the bottom or float on the surface & you’re looking at cut rubbish. I’m reliably informed. Things you can learn on this blog, eh?) So including packaging, 2 tonnes has to be more than 2 m3.
Ah I went by molecular weight and added 40% to allow for impurities… So pure coke not pure, check.
Desmond Bagley: The Spoilers. 1970 summat. Only take the warhead out first.
Umm, if it’s denser then it’s less than volume weight. 2 tonnes will be slightly less than 2 m3
Depends on how hard it’s packed, Tim. Unlike the films, the good stuff comes like soft chalk blocks wrapped in poly. So a certain amount of air. Plus the individual packs leave space between. Having handled similar sorts of dry bulk I’d guess two tonnes would be around 2.5 m3 stacked.
As for impurities, why would anyone go to all the trouble & risk of shipping bulker across the Atlantic? You can mix that in, this side. It’ll be as pure as they can get it.
And what an enormous amount of effort, money spent & grief caused over something so innocuous. The stuff’s pretty well ubiquitous, these days. Hard to avoid it. The amount of trouble the actual using of the drug causes is trivial. Certainly much less than alcohol. All the problems come from the supply side.
Why do people use it? The effects are similar to the amphetamines they were handing out like sweets to the military in WW2. Makes you awake & alert. Increases confidence. Can’t say it interests me, personally. I do awake, alert & confident as a natural function.
Yeah, overdoing the stuff has downsides. But as much as spending every evening on the sofa, in front of the TV, stuffing Pringles down your neck? Doubtful looking at some of the Brits turn up here, vacation time.
I incline to agree with you BIS. It’d probably make better sense for the government to legalise it and impose a sin tax.
Less than the cost of importing it illegally of course. I understand this was the approach adopted by the Chinese after the opium wars.
Quite possibly so. I was only commenting on the “if denser than water” part, the “if”
” It’d probably make better sense for the government to legalise it and impose a sin tax.”
And what would that achieve? Look at the expense & effort being made to interdict smuggled booze & tobacco into the UK. A lot of it just arbitraging the difference between Brit & Continental tax rates. And the lucrative business of doing the smuggling. For the last 20 years I lived in London I suppose I bought around half a dozen legitimate packs of fags. There’s even smuggling into here where they’re under £4 for 20.
Perhaps it’s time to revisit governments deciding whether what people choose to do with no harm to others is “sinful”. Especially as they’re determined to force the female impersonators on us.