Terrorist attack on the Panama Canal
- Thread starter Alex1guy
- Start date
Incredibly pissed off is the most likely answer, closely followed by the rest of the world. The nost obvious answer is that it increases shipping costs and times by a large bit until they get them repaired, look to trans-continental railway and interstate trucking to try and pick up the slack for delivering to the east coast of the US. Depending on how long that takes you might also see low cost countries nearer the destination countries trying to replace the far east as suppliers whilst the shipping costs increases make them competitive. The stock market is going to not be fun when it reacts to this although I think after a little while it should calm down. One good things to come out of this is that as well as repairing the damaged canal it would also most likely greatly increase the backing for the expansion plan that would see a third set of larger gates being built to take larger ships, and in this case provide some extra redundency if I'm reading things right. Well that's all off the top of my head and I'm kinda drunk so someone else can post other things that I've missed or mistakes I've made. 
Taking out the Canal is a LOT harder than you might think, although it could be done. The "best" way would be with a cargo ship rigged to detonate while in the lochs.
The global economic impact would be incredible. Over 14,000 vessels, most of them cargo ships of one stripe or another, use the Canal every year. Every one of those ships would wind up with at least two extra weeks, most with more than three, sailing time, one way on the Asia-Europe and around two weeks on the Asia-New York transit. It would be like sinking 12% of the world's merchant fleet at a stroke.
Delta Force
Banned
It wouldn't be that hard to do. The designers of Panama Canal were worried about the possibility of an out of control ship ramming the gate on the top Pacific side lock on the way down. They designed a few systems to try to mitigate the danger such as arresting gear chains and a series of pylons that could be slammed into specially designed slots, but all those systems have since been removed and were never used when in service. The only system still in place are the double doors for the locks, the designers thought it unlikely a ship could ram through both doors at once. If the top gate were to fail there would be no way to stop Lake Gatun from rushing out and with it the water vital to the operation of the canal. The locks themselves aren't the weak point, it's the lake.
Nice quote from wikipedia.
Although I agree that a few of the safetymeasures have been deleted, it's still going to be very hard to get 4 sets of doors to go bust, as you'd need not only to bust the 2 doors on one side of a lock, but on both sides in order to be able to attempt to drain the lake.
So I agree with the previous poster that it'd be quite hard to damage the Canal for more then a few weeks.
AFAIK even if the lake is drained completely, I'd refill in approx one year.
Furthermore, AFAIK there's an enormous overcapacity in shipping at the moment due to the economic situation worldwide. There are shitloads of ships just anchored outside major harbours such as Singapore, Rotterdam and such. Probably a lot more then the 12% (why not 13% or 11%
) a previous poster mentioned... If anything transport is too cheap compared to the resources it costs and has been so for decades, this would remedy that.Oh don't get me wrong, I figured it would be really hard. Even as I was writing this I was trying to think of a way that a terrorist group could conceive an attack. Like you said, the best bit would be a rigged ship and that is pushing it.
That might not be the case...
...A modern equivalent of the Dambusters' bomb could be considered to rupture the dam and cause a catastrophic emptying of Gatun Lake. Unless the dam has something like a 'Gatekeeper' gun or missile system to protect it, a rogue attack could do immense damage.
Watching the locks and neglecting the dam would be a recipe for trouble.
A short-term disruption could be caused by triggering some kind of landslide in the Culebra Cut.
I think I'd better stop before I start mining the approaches to each entry...
...A modern equivalent of the Dambusters' bomb could be considered to rupture the dam and cause a catastrophic emptying of Gatun Lake. Unless the dam has something like a 'Gatekeeper' gun or missile system to protect it, a rogue attack could do immense damage.
Watching the locks and neglecting the dam would be a recipe for trouble.
A short-term disruption could be caused by triggering some kind of landslide in the Culebra Cut.
I think I'd better stop before I start mining the approaches to each entry...
Nice quote from wikipedia.
Although I agree that a few of the safetymeasures have been deleted, it's still going to be very hard to get 4 sets of doors to go bust, as you'd need not only to bust the 2 doors on one side of a lock, but on both sides in order to be able to attempt to drain the lake.
So I agree with the previous poster that it'd be quite hard to damage the Canal for more then a few weeks.
AFAIK even if the lake is drained completely, I'd refill in approx one year.
Furthermore, AFAIK there's an enormous overcapacity in shipping at the moment due to the economic situation worldwide. There are shitloads of ships just anchored outside major harbours such as Singapore, Rotterdam and such. Probably a lot more then the 12% (why not 13% or 11%
Why 12%? Based on a quick guess it looked like about a 25% increase in transit times, and I then halved that to account for the option of using the idled hulls and/or Suez.
Al lot does, but many trips still uses the Panama route. Suez is for heavier-weight shipping, but it is often easier to go through Panama if you can. Suez is faster if you are already in the IO, otherwise you have to go through the Singapore Roads and one of the passages in the Indonesian Archipelago, both of which add time and cost to the transit. You also avoid the whole Somali pirate business if you go via Panama (there is also a far less well publicized piracy issue in the Malacca Strait region, although it is much reduced from its heyday at the turn of the century (1998-2003). Suez had more traffic with around 18K transits each year compared to the 14K for Panama, although the plans to add an additional set of larger locks will make Panama more competitive for the larger container and RO/RO hulls than it is today (neither Suez or Panama can handle the VLCC traffic, it all has to go the long way).
James G
Gone Fishin'
In response to the OP :
That's not what terrorism is all about. Terrorism is a staged drama for a civilian audience.
The bad guys on 9/11 didn't crash those jets into a military target - a docked carrier at Norfolk naval base for example.
Blowing up or blocking the Panama Canal is something that no terrorist group would ever do IMHO.
That's not what terrorism is all about. Terrorism is a staged drama for a civilian audience.
The bad guys on 9/11 didn't crash those jets into a military target - a docked carrier at Norfolk naval base for example.
Blowing up or blocking the Panama Canal is something that no terrorist group would ever do IMHO.
BlondieBC
Banned
That looks about right. It will be a big problem that is slowly moderated. For a historical example, you could look at the SMS Emden shutting down ports in the Indian Ocean for a few weeks. Roughly get same type of pattern.
The key is modern times is JIT inventory. We keep very low levels of most goods on hands. Few days in stores. Maybe few days in a distribution/distributor warehouse. Rest of inventory in "stored" in "in transit". It only few days of interruption to cause issues. I have heard stories of massive problems the year there was 4 hurricanes at the same time in the ocean that never hit anything. Just from ships going around them. So lets look at impacts.
Day 1 - Sheer panic in logistic managers around the world. A lot will try to pull extra inventory from the factory directly to the states. By end of day, you will not be able to find any open air freight for months out. The hurricanes mentioned above did the same for South America and Africa. Ships will begin to pile up outside the canal waiting for orders. It sound simple to say, sail around the horn or tip of South America. Organizations move slow. Takes time to make decisions. You also begin to get issues with fuel and parts. We have these things setup for where ships go. Off the top of one heads, I bet a lot of shipping companies going from Asia to USA east coast can't tell you the status of parts and diesel fuel in Chile. Takes time. O, BTW. The no air freight means it will be hard to get the stuff to the new logistical locations. It is really much like a war where the enemy attacks in a totally unexpected way, and you have to adjust you axis of defense by 90 degrees and in some unexpected location. Doable, but hard.
Day 3: You will start to see factory shut down. It will be little things. Your 100 million USD set of robots will have a major control panel fail (10,000 USD part). You normally fly in from Taiwan, but no air freight unless you have major pull with airlines or White House. You will start to find out that some of your suppliers who maintain raw material inventory for you in states are not. They lie to save $$$. The first to fail will be things that had issue anyway where they would have air freight in some to fix. I can't overstate how world changes when Tokyo to Atlanta is not 24ish hours but 24ish days. Breaks so, so many things.
Day 14: Probably lots of shut factories. If you go to a department store, you will start to notice some shortages.
Day 30: We separate out the companies with good logistics from bad. By now you are beginning to divert ships, find new local suppliers, other solutions, if you are good. The weaker companies are out of product.
Calbear is about right we lose 12% of products. I think until repaired in the long run is closer to 6% because we will find ways to fix that don't relate to shipping, such as US factory running 2 shifts goes to 3. But for a few bad weeks, it could be well above 50% reduction in capacity (things you can buy) in various product categories.
An attack on the Panama Canal would achieve both, though. It's an important enough place that the effect would be quite spectacular, and as pointed out in the thread, would cause repercussions to be felt everywhere.