WI: Deepwater Horizon was an eco-terrorist attack

Shortly the explosion in the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, an eco-terrorist group (let's call them the Green Brigade) comes forward and reveals that they had planted a bomb in the rig, resulting in the subsequent explosion.

They gleefully announce that they have struck a massive blow against the oil industry, and threaten to blow up more oil rigs (and possibly oil tankers) in the future.

With this sudden turn of events, what happens now? Does this mark the beginning of a radicalized environmental movement?
 
It would certainly make the backlash against the eco movement much more effective.

A alternate is it was a violent blow in a corporate war. The managers can't figure out how to compete with legit business methods, so they resort to sabotaging each others facilities. This was a ongoing theme in many of Robert Heinlens novels & dig deep enough you might find actual examples in the 19th Century US.
 
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Why would radical environmentalists want to damage the environment even further?

Stupidity.

Charismatic, fanatical, but less than competent leaders often make bone headed counter productive decisions. There was a obscure incident a decade or two ago where a local ecologist in the Pacific NW tried to kill a rare 'white pine' that was sacred to one of the local Native American tribes. His logic was this would galvanize the "sheep like masses" into taking action and embracing his ideas of changing their lifestyles. Eco sabatouers attempting to burn out new urban development is another example. Those fools were attempting to stop the construction of upscale residential development with a bit of selective arson.
 
Shortly the explosion in the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, an eco-terrorist group (let's call them the Green Brigade) comes forward and reveals that they had planted a bomb in the rig, resulting in the subsequent explosion.

They gleefully announce that they have struck a massive blow against the oil industry, and threaten to blow up more oil rigs (and possibly oil tankers) in the future.

With this sudden turn of events, what happens now? Does this mark the beginning of a radicalized environmental movement?

Nope. Leads to a huge federal crackdown on ecoterrorists and anyone suspected of being one. Other radical environmentalist types condemn them and accuse it of being a false flag attack on the part of the government and/or oil companies to discredit them and the environmentalist movement as a whole. Which is a pretty logical conclusion to make given the question of what sort of environmentalist would deliberately create a massive oil spill, but then again, it can't be much different than how Islamist terrorists commonly kill other Muslims for the crime of being less radical than them.
 
Stupidity.

Charismatic, fanatical, but less than competent leaders often make bone headed counter productive decisions. There was a obscure incident a decade or two ago where a local ecologist in the Pacific NW tried to kill a rare 'white pine' that was sacred to one of the local Native American tribes. His logic was this would galvanize the "sheep like masses" into taking action and embracing his ideas of changing their lifestyles. Eco sabatouers attempting to burn out new urban development is another example. Those fools were attempting to stop the construction of upscale residential development with a bit of selective arson.

Attacking an urban development would at least make sense from an eco-terrorist point of view but cutting down a tree isn’t comparable to causing a disastrous oil spill, both in scale and in organisation. Whilst I realise that stupidity doesn’t necessarily rule out competence it would take far too much planning for someone not to go “Why are we actually doing this?”
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
It would be rather counter-productive to their aims. There's stupidity and there is just f-ing idiocy.
It would be like using a nuclear bomb to launch a domestic coup.
 
The eco-terrorists would be cursed and vilified by the environmentalists for causing an oil spill. Instantly discrediting them, making their attack pointless.
 
A better scenario would be destroying some land-based project that doesn't lead to heavy damage to the surrounding environment(as an oil spill does due to the liquid nature of water), but has an extreme body count.
 
Just occured to me, will the use of a bomb make the oil spill worse or will it oddly reduce the amount of crude contaminating the gulf?
 
It would be rather counter-productive to their aims. There's stupidity and there is just f-ing idiocy.
It would be like using a nuclear bomb to launch a domestic coup.

True, but every now & then the Tim McVey crowd gets lucky.

Just occured to me, will the use of a bomb make the oil spill worse or will it oddly reduce the amount of crude contaminating the gulf?

Don't know. What will be the effects if this McVey doppleganger uses a boat load of explosives instead of a Rent a Truck? Can it get close enough to the drill shaft to cause severe damage?
 
Just occured to me, will the use of a bomb make the oil spill worse or will it oddly reduce the amount of crude contaminating the gulf?

I'm not super knowledgeable about the blowout, but wasn't part of the issue the breach being around 18,000 ft below sea-level that harmed the structural integrity of the entire structure? If you plant a bomb at the structure, it's going to have to be a heck of a bomb to rupture the drill itself as opposed to above sea facilities and super-structure. So, maybe you'd still have an oil spill, but one that wasn't gushing for 84 days.

Here's a UC Berkeley report that goes into a bit of detail on the OTL blowout.

Also, you'd butterfly away a lot of the BP fines and cleanup costs that they covered.
 
18,000 or 1,800 ?

I was about ready to confess to a typo, after realizing how deep 18K is, but man, that was a deep drill.

The DHSG analyses of the currently available evidence indicates the Macondo well blowout most probably was initiated with a breach in the well structure at its bottom—some 18,000 ft below the sea surface and approximately 13,000 ft below the seafloor. The Deepwater Horizon drill crew was in the final hours of preparing the well for later production and for temporary abandonment.

Cite
 

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