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Comment by superuser2 | Hacker News Reader

If there's no crew on board then there's no risk to human life or ransom to pay, so the consequences of a pirate attack are lessened.

I doubt unarmed or lightly armed crews are much of a deterrent to piracy anyway.

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> If there's no crew on board then there's no risk to human life or ransom to pay, so the consequences of a pirate attack are lessened.

I don't think this is really true. Each container is worth $20k - $1M,

https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/table_...

so the whole ship of ~10k containers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship

would be worth $200M - $1B or more. With 20 or less crew on board, and lives being valued even in the (expensive) US at only ~$10M, it's very likely that the value of the cargo is much higher than the crew. Not to mention the cost of the boat itself, which can exceed $100M.

Those numbers seem to be confirmed by this talk

http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1340097/17625392/13341...

This is more along the lines of what I was thinking. As "we all know", security isn't security, it's merely a case of "how long do we have?". Pirates do go after the contents of ships, that's a fact. I have nothing to cite for the following, but I can't imagine that the pirates actually want people on board. To a business - unfortunately - people are replaceable for much less than what their cargo costs.

360 degree long-range turrets and sticking to international water seem like the best strategy they have here. :^)

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