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Right now the goal is to unblock the canal; if the entire cargo were lost in the process, that would be expensive, but I'm not confident it'd be more expensive than blocking shipping through for an extra fortnight.

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@nerfhammer: Great idea, littering the canal with sharp debris pieces so the next ships will be torn to shreds :)

Dredging is the easy part. Not sure how much swimming happens in the canal. We only have to worry about cutting through steel, not skin.

Ships traveling at 7 knots over a minefield of sunken containers will happily shred their steel skin.

It sounded like they were intended to drop them on land, where one would hope no ships would be hitting them. 'Lost' would be referring to the likely chance that once put on the desert they wouldn't be retrieved.

it follows then that we should consider blowing up the ship

I suspect that might very well be on the table.

Hell, a big enough explosion might prevent ships from ever getting stuck at that spot again.

And you could recoup the costs by selling tickets to watch the explosion.

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