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Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Today's Creativity Challenge

Watching the Kerch Bridge Attack (or perhaps Russian explosives storage techniques), if you wanted to shut down use of a bridge or highway without high explosives how would you do it?  Let me start with my first thoughts.

1. Smash semis together.  Park the first few across the road.  Then have crews jump as bricks on the accelerator produce some truly impressive collision art.  Yes big boy tow trucks and cutting torches could clear the mess in a few hours.  Make sure the trucks have lots of gasoline on board in breakable containers.   Putting out big fires is the first laborious effort.

2. Large gasoline containers at the highest point of the road with timers to release gasoline in a steady stream with remote control ignitors to light them up.  I think few truck drivers would want to drive through a curtain of flame. I am not sure about tanks.

2 comments:

  1. Steal a tanker truck full of gasoline. Have a partner drive in front of you in a car. Park the tank sideways across the bridge blocking all lanes of traffic. Open the valve on the tank a *little*, and use a road flare to light the tank up. Drive away quickly.

    At a minimum the heat will melt the asphalt surface. More likely it will weaken the steel of the bridge.

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  2. I'd work on memory of accidents or weather events that have been newsworthy for taking out roads or bridges and requiring months to correct. With nearly every US bridge collapse there's a plethora of local news about "Our local bridge is of similar design". Are there large storage tanks where quick-enough release of content would wash out a roadbed? Could one surreptitiously remove protective rip-rap from bridge supports before a heavy seasonal downpour?
    If I recall my reading of the Thomas-Perry novel "Metzger's dog" correctly, several minor choke points were blocked simultaneously with disabled gravel-trucks etc. in order to create at the required time an impenetrably gridlocked traffic jam at the major choke-point.

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