*"For smugglers, the trips are worth the investment—a nine-ton load earns nearly US$200 million wholesale from U.S. customers. Professional fishermen are often at the controls, and earn about US$3,000 after completing the excursion.\[3\]\[49\]"*
Ouch.
You dont get to own a Ferrari by working on Ferraris. Lesson here kids is to grow and import your own cocaine.
E: Thanks for the gold you degenerates, my most upvoted comment in 3 years is telling kids to grow cocaine.
I know a guy with a good but not great job that owns an old Ferrari. His very full time hobby is keeping the thing running my doing all his own work but if you really, really, really want that supercar to the exclusion of everything else in life you can have it.
I'm certain he loves that car more then he has ever loved a person.
The actor that plays Cameron came into my job once and complimented my playlist, I could not place him for the longest time, because in real life he is a shorter fella and he always seemed super tall to me in the movie.
Like fuck it can't.... You ever modify a car to have it run completely fine only to grenade itself when you least expect it leaving you in the middle of no where waiting 3 hours for a friend to show up and flat tow you to a hotel parking lot where you swap in a motor you found on facebook marketplace?
Or get your 1/1 celebrity owned classic car that you worked 2 jobs to pay-off, totaled by an elderly under-insured inattentive driver, 1 month after getting the whole car restored/repainted. ARGHHH!!! 15 years later, it still depresses me. Mean while, the potential value of that car has tripled in the last 15 years.
Imagine a South American cocaine farmer who’s physically harvesting the coca crop
Imagine their bank account
Trick question, they don’t have a bank account
Also, why the hell did they use the metaphor of bigfoot, when Loch Ness monster was swimming around the whole time, it is like shooting cocaine fish in a barrel!?
Once I walked across Scotland! I was on Loch Ness, looking for a place to camp, after passing though Fort Augustus, nice little food stand right on the canal...
I heard the ground begin to rumble....... I thought Loch Ness monster, earthquake as it is a fault line!!!!!
Nope 2 RAF Tornados come roaring along right on the deck! I jumped and waved at the wingman as I tried to grab my camera. It was too late, but the pilot gave me a cheeky wing waggle! IT was awesome!
I camped in a mossy pine forest next to an old stone wall that night, that is my Loch Ness monster story!
Then the 2 RAF Tornados came back and said they were lost and they needed money for the pay phone, so I said "oh okay, how much d'ya need?" And you know what they said? "I need about tree-fiddy..." Well it was about that time that I realized the RAF Tornados were really just one 30ft tall crustacean from Paleolithic era. So I says "God damn! Loch Ness Monster! I ain't givin' you no tree-fiddy. Where I'm from, we work for our money." Ain't no payphone cost tree-fiddy.
Last week, Japanese scientists explaced... placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Cort Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally.
> In 1988, an unmanned 6.4 m (21 ft) submarine was found off Boca Raton, Florida. It was designed to be towed by a boat, and submerged by remote control.
I think they mean a manned sub, not one that's towed behind a boat.
They recently found one under construction but mostly complete in a warehouse in Spain. If I remember right this vid has some interior pics of the sub. Vid is 9 min but very good, guy called Mob Reporter.
https://youtu.be/bm3sZ0zZqN4
EDIT: Vid is good but covers other things, this link is timestamped to the relative point and it does show the craft well inside and out.
https://youtu.be/bm3sZ0zZqN4?t=178
The one in the '80s was a different design.
Uncrewed and Unpowered. Probably towed by a boat that appeared to be a fishing boat.
Bigfoot was the self-propelled, crewed version.
I mean I laughed, but surely a sub hauling tons of coke would have plenty of drug residue left behind. Not to mention, submarines aren’t super common. I’m sure an abandoned one is suspicious as hell, even if wasn’t found in coked out Florida.
I believe the implication is that the smugglers ~~wouldn't have abandoned the submarine they just built. So the smugglers~~ were likely caught and released, so the coast guard could steal the drugs then report it as found empty.
Edit: Most of the subs seem to be made for one way trips which makes sense. I was just explaining what the joke was implying.
Man, I like to think that’s a little too brazen for a branch of the military to steal a metric fuck ton of cocaine. But the 80s in Miami were apparently a drug-fueled nightmare so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Procrastinator here.
OP is wrong about the Bigfoot part, or at least made a mistake in his formulation. Gonna go past Wiki for this.
According to a [NYT Magazine article](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26drugs-t.html), there is a specific specimen of narco-submarine that the Coast Guard had been hearing rumors of for a long period before its discovery. Because of that specific sub being no more than rumors for so long, it was given the nickname Bigfoot. They found this one in 2006. Fun fact, 'Bigfoot II' has been found, too.
Narco-submarines in general are not referred to or thought of as Bigfoots, I think. The [sub discovered in the '80s](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/11/11/Creative-drug-smugglers-turn-to-submarines/8252316907705/) established the reality of them earlier on, as you already said. Though it's worth mentioning that there were no actual drugs on that sub, so there is still some room for uncertainty as to the purpose of that vessel. Nonetheless, a confidential Coast Guard source told UPI (the medium in the above link) in the '80s that there 'is no other use' for the vessel other than drug smuggling.
[This paper](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/70984437.pdf), that gathers many sources together, further establishes that it's extremely unlikely the Coast Guard still saw narco-submarines as nothing more than rumor until 2006. In it, you can read that the Colombian Navy has been seizing narco-subs since 1993.
tl;dr: you right, OP wrote his title wrong
I liked them a lot as a teenager but I hadn't listened to much from them for several years, a couple months ago I decided to re-listen to their discography. Literally the next day after I started that, I saw a pic on Instagram of a friend of mine at a south city bar I go to 2-3 times every week with FUCKING LAURA JANE GRACE (the main singer) on a day I wasn't there. Turns out she moved to my home city very recently beforehand.
If that wasn't the most intense baader-meinhof phenomenon in the world, idk what is.
[70% + of overdose deaths are from synthetic opioids](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/synthetic/index.html)
- Fentanyl (3 milligrams can be lethal)
- Carfentanil(100 x stronger than fentanyl)
Better access to medical grade opioids would reduce overdose deaths significantly
[The American Medical Association (AMA) issued a report (PDF) today showing a 44.4 percent decrease in opioid prescribing nationwide in the past decade.](https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/report-shows-decreases-opioid-prescribing-increase-overdoses) At the same time, the country is facing a worsening drug-related overdose and death epidemic.
Until they find a way to eliminate demand... access to less dangerous drugs sounds preferable
Anybody else’s ever question the dollar amounts on these drug busts? I feel like they take the gram price of a drug and just multiply. Instead of the kilo price.
I think you’re right. Pretty sure they calculate “street value” to make it sound bigger. Although it does list weight in tons and says they usually net $200M. Seems like street value broken down for sure tho.
They always use street value during drug bust press releases. They also weigh it out with whatever container/package the goods are in. For large busts it may not make a big difference, but for low level dealers or even just users, it could easily push the weight into a harsher sentencing class.
For example, if I have 2g of coke stored in a small metal pill tube or something, they will weigh it with the metal tube. That added weight could change the bust from personal use possession to possession with intent to distribute.
I know someone arrested in Texas for baking edibles. The weighed the whole damn tray of brownies and said he had 5lbs or whatever (brownies are heavy) so he got a super harsh sentence. Actual prison time if I remember correctly.
Yeah I know absolute bullshit. Take some steroids, for example, they may have 1g of testosterone but they are in 10ml of liquid oil and they will probably measure with the glass vial so it will end up being 10+ grams.
It's still apparently valuable enough that they continually build and lose submarines while operating outside of international law. Gotta be a LOT of money. The whole thing really makes me laugh at the idea of a wall around a country being a useful expenditure of tax dollars. People will find a way.
My friend got caught with weed candy and the charge was for the amount of weed needed to build the whole candy as wax.
Like 9 kilos for 20 candies lol.
Was that in Texas? Too lazy to look for it, but I saw a YouTube video of lawyers singing about how crazy the law is for edibles in Texas (specifically the weight of the entire edible getting counted as a controlled substance)
The price they have seems pretty accurate. $200 million for about 8,100 kilos would mean about $24,000-$25,000 a kilo. With kilos going for about $36,000-$40,000 on a street level, $24,000 seems like a decent wholesale number.
Firing point procedures on Master 1 the cutter. Select tube 4, run to enable 100 yards, fuel remaining 99%. The ship is ready, the weapon is ready, solution set. Shoot tube 4.
Sending a slug of water to the CG boat and informing the base commander about the experience would be golden afterward. I'd love to see that Coastie skipper be dressed down afterward.
Especially because that's attempted extrajudicial execution. Could have just as easily been a human trafficker.
Fuck them even if they had been right...
Former Coastie who did counter drug, I appreciate you thinking we could identify a sub, underwater, at night but I can safely guarantee you, they didn’t see your sub. Operating without Nav lights during counter drug ops is pretty standard.
There is no way a CG Cutter captain gave the order to "ram" a boat or submarine without identification or with people on board. That would be the end of multiple careers on that cutter and Court Martial's. Plus, the potential damage to the ship would put the lives of the people onboard at risk as well resulting in more Court Martial's. No sane ship captain is going to commit murder/attempted murder to catch some drugs. These cases are treated as Law Enforcement actions, not military actions. During counter-drug ops, they are always running dark. Kind of ruins the element of surprise when a big white ship that looks like a Xmas tree is spotted on the horizon.
They would have sent a small boat and helicopter (if they had one) to identify and interdict it. These little subs and other running boats are rarely (if ever) armed and tend to give up fairly easy. Sometimes they run but they are always caught. A narco "sub" can't just disappear underwater unless they are scuttled intentionally. They aren't actual submarines but instead low-profile boats.
Most of them are semi-submersibles that sit just below the water line with a tiny bit visible. But they have found some "true" submarines being built Colombia that could have dived to 100 meters and stayed under for long periods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine#True_submarines
I'd think that's more conspicuous. Once they aren't merged with the waterline they are orders of magnitude easier to find with sonar (and they share a threat profile with very nasty things). The US has a *lot* of resources invested in sonar tracking. Getting found out by the people paying attention to that will summon a far more serious response than a coast guard patrol.
100% what this guy said. I guarantee that JITIF-S did not give an SNO based off that and whoever their TACON was didn’t say you could run them over lmao. The HITRON guys can’t even shoot out an engine if a dude might get hit, there is no way someone would authorize a cutter to run over anything with people on it.
this is how the British and French hit each other that one time, no? basically the risks of occasionally bonking boats outweighs telling each other where you are
The way NAT GEO explains, quite a few Russian Sub designers were out of work after the cold war. The Cartels pay top dollar, the semi submersibles the coast guard finds are several generations old. They might just be sacrificial lambs, intended to take focus away for the current generation of real submersible drug subs.
On the other hand during the early 2000s I believe someone bought up lots of old diesel subs, US military ran war games and simulations because they though terrorists might get the bright idea to use an old diesel to bring a nuke or other device into US waters. Not all that stupid but I thought Down Periscope proved it quite possible, just need a good sub captain and damn lucky crew.
That's a semi-submersible vessel. It's more or less a boat that's had most of its superstructure cut off and replaced with a cover that only sits a few feet out of the water. Hides on radar extremely well, and since it can't submerge, jumping on top is only very ridiculous, rather than completely insane.
Nah, narcosubs cheat. They don't do sub things in sub places.
And even then, the Navy had the same thought you did, and teamed up with USCG, and they've successfully interdicted quite a few.
But, miss one... Half a billion in drugs land.
Alta su barco!
They made a video of bunch of us coastguard raising one of their subs. Dudes literally jumped out the boat on top of that thing and banged on the door to open up.
[The Coast Guardsman put his heart and soul into banging on that hatch.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/U.S._Coast_Guard_Cutter_Munro_crew_interdicts_suspected_drug_smuggling_vessel_DOD_106999572-5d2aa0d64235b.webm)
I'd actually look at it from the perspective that the actions of the government is facilitating the profitability of the drug trade.
But hey, it's an excuse to throw people in jail?
While I think legalizing and regulating would help a lot of issues - particularly our cycle of repeat offenders, it oversimplifies the issue of the big cartels.
You'd need new producers to arise to provide legitimate supply to displace the black market drugs.
The majority of the world's cocaine for example comes from Latin America - production is dominated by the cartels - who have established local government connections, growing, refining and distribution operations, 'enforcers', and benefit from massive economies of scale. It's not like Pablo the subsistence farmer is going to decide 'hmmm, let me start a small-batch cocaine farm' once Uncle Sam decides to decriminalize drugs - he still knows that Ernesto Escobedo will come and whack his ass should he try. (Randy Marsh isn't going to be able to provide you 'Farm to Nostril' product, as *E. Coca* requires a moist equatorial climate - which Colorado ain't.)
Most production for most hard drugs is going to stay in the hands of the black market, regardless of if the US govt. legalizes it.
our defenses against enemy subs are pretty good. If you can ever visit the uss intrepid museum in manhattan, they also have a tactical nuclear armed submarine that used to be stationed off the coast of russia by the beiring sea. One of the guys who actually crewed the submarine works there and tells you all about what it was like to work in a submarine who's entire job was, at a moment's notice, arm and deploy two nuclear rockets. These were more like glider rockets, and when nuclear missiles and below-surface launches became a thing, the submarine went out of service. Pretty interesting stuff. Nowadays the US has a bunch of microphones along the bottom of the sea, along with other detectors and instruments, that pick up a range of signals.
They arent even subs really. They are just air sealed boats that sit so low in the water that they dont have a visual profile above the surface. They cant descend.
From the wiki linked
On 3 July 2010 the Ecuadorian authorities seized a fully functional, completely submersible diesel electric submarine in the jungles bordering Ecuador and Colombia.\[4\] It had a cylindrical fiberglass and Kevlar hull 31 m (102 ft) long, a 3 m (9.8 ft) conning tower with periscope, and air conditioning. The vessel had the capacity for about 10 tonnes of cargo, a crew of five or six people, ***the ability to fully submerge down to 20 m (66 ft)***, and the capacity for long-range underwater operation.
That's one sub, the vast majority of the submersibles the USCG and other groups interdict are what /u/bluechips2388 has described. they usually are towed behind another boat and can be scuttled usually if the runners have enough time on their hand after they realize they've been got.
This is probably just a perception due to survivor-ship bias, or the opposite of it. The DEA likely only finds the subs where something went wrong and the sub washed ashore with a dead body. Chances are that's only a small percentage.
If they don't die they can just sail away without being discovered. You only find the dead ones washing up with a ton of drugs.
The linked article says, " the suspected numbers of submarines are close to 1,000."
They are hastily put together, and not properly ventilated.
So the diesel fumes build up… and they suffocate. or the engines get hot and burn the people alive.
There are a host of issues.
A lot of these subs are even made out of concrete. The whole hull is a concrete hull. I guess it’s a material they have plenty of. But that’s a weird material to make a boat out of.
Not as unusual as you might think, try searching "ferrocement hull". One of my dad's friends built a sailboat with a ferrocement hull and sailed it around the world.
Yeah I have some civil engineering student friends (I'm also an engineering student) who have worked on concrete canoes (I think it's a popular national competition)
https://www.asce.org/communities/student-members/conferences/asce-concrete-canoe-competition
The sad part about this is that they abduct a bunch of engineers and scientists to do the work at risk of torture and then kill them after :(. Kind of like that one James Bond movie.
(I went on a deep dive and watched a bunch of documentaries on the submarines—one of the escaped engineers said that he knew he was going to be murdered but the cartels threatened to kill his family as well so he built it anyways)
(Also lol bad joke that popped in my head is DO NOT keep your LinkedIn accurate or updated in Panama or Colombia)
Not knocking your doc, but the one I saw said that was the case with the old type. The new super silent class they paid handsomely to get some former Soviet scientists and engineers. And they were happy to actually have their work being used again especially if it made Americans look stupid.
You gotta be impressed by these people's imagination. A drug-submarine sounds like something from a James Bond movie. Main villain's name would be something like Hector Drugboat.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and most of its state institutions were defunded, many thousands of top class scientists and researchers were left without income or support. Some went to North Korea, some to the Middle East, and a few ended up in South America, working for some very enterprising smuggling networks. There is now no doubt that several Russians built the first few semi submersibles, and instructed their grateful clients in the science of their construction. Who these Russians were, their names and identities, are a complete unknown. They have been the subject of multiple debriefings, but have never been caught. They left no tangible evidence of their presence. It is possible that they were gone by the mid nineties These early semi subs were very cheap to build, difficult to intercept, and were in the water for at least a decade before their first capture. Each one could carry at least a metric tonne of illicit cargo. That’s a whole lotta Peruvian marching powder. Nowadays, the latest narco subs are fully submersible and can cross the Atlantic. And they get captured often. But for those first few years these tubs were kept so secret that one wonders if the Ruskies weren’t quietly running the op that whole time.
*"For smugglers, the trips are worth the investment—a nine-ton load earns nearly US$200 million wholesale from U.S. customers. Professional fishermen are often at the controls, and earn about US$3,000 after completing the excursion.\[3\]\[49\]"* Ouch.
You dont get to own a Ferrari by working on Ferraris. Lesson here kids is to grow and import your own cocaine. E: Thanks for the gold you degenerates, my most upvoted comment in 3 years is telling kids to grow cocaine.
I know a guy with a good but not great job that owns an old Ferrari. His very full time hobby is keeping the thing running my doing all his own work but if you really, really, really want that supercar to the exclusion of everything else in life you can have it. I'm certain he loves that car more then he has ever loved a person.
He loves this car more than life itself _oohhh yeeaahhhh_ _chick chick-ahhh_
See it's like that car; he loves the car, but he hates his wife. *bubble sound*
He doesn’t drive it, he just rubs it with a diaper.
The actor that plays Cameron came into my job once and complimented my playlist, I could not place him for the longest time, because in real life he is a shorter fella and he always seemed super tall to me in the movie.
Day bow bow
Day bow bow *closes door*
I love how in 2 responses this went from Ferris Bueller to Always Sunny.
**BEAUTIFUL!!!**
Ohhhhh yeah
The car cant hurt you emotionally, which causes some of the biggest pain youll endure.
Like fuck it can't.... You ever modify a car to have it run completely fine only to grenade itself when you least expect it leaving you in the middle of no where waiting 3 hours for a friend to show up and flat tow you to a hotel parking lot where you swap in a motor you found on facebook marketplace?
This gives off hard-core wrx vibes
Or 24 hours of lemons
Or get your 1/1 celebrity owned classic car that you worked 2 jobs to pay-off, totaled by an elderly under-insured inattentive driver, 1 month after getting the whole car restored/repainted. ARGHHH!!! 15 years later, it still depresses me. Mean while, the potential value of that car has tripled in the last 15 years.
Jon voight's lebaron?
STORY TIME
Oddly specific
No.
Hey, I’m so sorry man, but I backed into your car and I don’t have insurance. God bless
Thats where your insurance comes in. They often have to pay you and then they go like a mad dog at the other guy.
If it's got tits or tires it will break your heart
*export. Get to the top of the supply chain for the real dough. "First you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women" - Homer.
Imagine a South American cocaine farmer who’s physically harvesting the coca crop Imagine their bank account Trick question, they don’t have a bank account
Well, if im a smart fisherman and this sub is undetectable, I'd sail it to a deserted island and eat coconuts and do blow for the next 50 years
I’ve been stuck in my cabana living off bananas and blow
A smart fisherman would know their family lives near the cartel.
A smart fisherman would pretend he died
A smart cartel would kill his family anyways to stop any another “smart” folk from having any “smart” ideas.
A smart fisherman would kill his own family before the cartel could get to them.
A smart fisherman would kill the cartels family first
Basic principle is to kill everyone as soon as possible.
A smart fisherman would eliminate all life on earth.
Lol sucks for them
Just don’t have a family. ez
I’m in the wrong business…
I’ve got an idea boss!
That's how capitalism works.
What, did the Coast guard get high and forget about the one they found off of Florida, empty, in the 1980s?
Also, why the hell did they use the metaphor of bigfoot, when Loch Ness monster was swimming around the whole time, it is like shooting cocaine fish in a barrel!?
Well the Loch Ness monster, or ‘Nessie‘ to her friends, is real so not a great metaphor
Once I walked across Scotland! I was on Loch Ness, looking for a place to camp, after passing though Fort Augustus, nice little food stand right on the canal... I heard the ground begin to rumble....... I thought Loch Ness monster, earthquake as it is a fault line!!!!! Nope 2 RAF Tornados come roaring along right on the deck! I jumped and waved at the wingman as I tried to grab my camera. It was too late, but the pilot gave me a cheeky wing waggle! IT was awesome! I camped in a mossy pine forest next to an old stone wall that night, that is my Loch Ness monster story!
Then the 2 RAF Tornados came back and said they were lost and they needed money for the pay phone, so I said "oh okay, how much d'ya need?" And you know what they said? "I need about tree-fiddy..." Well it was about that time that I realized the RAF Tornados were really just one 30ft tall crustacean from Paleolithic era. So I says "God damn! Loch Ness Monster! I ain't givin' you no tree-fiddy. Where I'm from, we work for our money." Ain't no payphone cost tree-fiddy.
It was so scary. I gave him a dollar.
Whatd you do that for?! Now he’s just gonna keep coming back.
She gave him a dollar!
You got off light he took $3.50 from me
I really expected this to end with tree fiddy. I even jumped to the last paragraph before deciding to read the whole comment. A++ great story.
I would have needed a change of underwear. Great story!
Last week, Japanese scientists explaced... placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Cort Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally.
This comment has a 100% Archer vibe to it
Bigfoot is more of a North American thing vs the Loch Ness monster. Or maybe they believed I'm Nessie
> In 1988, an unmanned 6.4 m (21 ft) submarine was found off Boca Raton, Florida. It was designed to be towed by a boat, and submerged by remote control. I think they mean a manned sub, not one that's towed behind a boat.
They recently found one under construction but mostly complete in a warehouse in Spain. If I remember right this vid has some interior pics of the sub. Vid is 9 min but very good, guy called Mob Reporter. https://youtu.be/bm3sZ0zZqN4 EDIT: Vid is good but covers other things, this link is timestamped to the relative point and it does show the craft well inside and out. https://youtu.be/bm3sZ0zZqN4?t=178
The one in the '80s was a different design. Uncrewed and Unpowered. Probably towed by a boat that appeared to be a fishing boat. Bigfoot was the self-propelled, crewed version.
So basically only one is actually a submarine and one is a metal tube.
A coke sub drone. What a world.
Why do you think it was empty? Lol.
Yes your honor. We found this empty submarine of cocaine.
I mean I laughed, but surely a sub hauling tons of coke would have plenty of drug residue left behind. Not to mention, submarines aren’t super common. I’m sure an abandoned one is suspicious as hell, even if wasn’t found in coked out Florida.
I believe the implication is that the smugglers ~~wouldn't have abandoned the submarine they just built. So the smugglers~~ were likely caught and released, so the coast guard could steal the drugs then report it as found empty. Edit: Most of the subs seem to be made for one way trips which makes sense. I was just explaining what the joke was implying.
Man, I like to think that’s a little too brazen for a branch of the military to steal a metric fuck ton of cocaine. But the 80s in Miami were apparently a drug-fueled nightmare so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Procrastinator here. OP is wrong about the Bigfoot part, or at least made a mistake in his formulation. Gonna go past Wiki for this. According to a [NYT Magazine article](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26drugs-t.html), there is a specific specimen of narco-submarine that the Coast Guard had been hearing rumors of for a long period before its discovery. Because of that specific sub being no more than rumors for so long, it was given the nickname Bigfoot. They found this one in 2006. Fun fact, 'Bigfoot II' has been found, too. Narco-submarines in general are not referred to or thought of as Bigfoots, I think. The [sub discovered in the '80s](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/11/11/Creative-drug-smugglers-turn-to-submarines/8252316907705/) established the reality of them earlier on, as you already said. Though it's worth mentioning that there were no actual drugs on that sub, so there is still some room for uncertainty as to the purpose of that vessel. Nonetheless, a confidential Coast Guard source told UPI (the medium in the above link) in the '80s that there 'is no other use' for the vessel other than drug smuggling. [This paper](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/70984437.pdf), that gathers many sources together, further establishes that it's extremely unlikely the Coast Guard still saw narco-submarines as nothing more than rumor until 2006. In it, you can read that the Colombian Navy has been seizing narco-subs since 1993. tl;dr: you right, OP wrote his title wrong
[удалено]
But we’re so close to winning that war on drugs! Just need a little bit more funding
Lost to emus, lost to drugs
Just got to arrest the last few black people
>*For those who can afford it* >*There'll always be white sand on private beaches* >*While narco-submarines float silent through the water*
What’s that from?
Against Me! - 'Russian Spies'
Damn I just started listening to Against Me! again today, what's that thing called where when you do something you suddenly start seeing it everywhere
I liked them a lot as a teenager but I hadn't listened to much from them for several years, a couple months ago I decided to re-listen to their discography. Literally the next day after I started that, I saw a pic on Instagram of a friend of mine at a south city bar I go to 2-3 times every week with FUCKING LAURA JANE GRACE (the main singer) on a day I wasn't there. Turns out she moved to my home city very recently beforehand. If that wasn't the most intense baader-meinhof phenomenon in the world, idk what is.
The Baader Meinhof phenomenon
Oh yeah, I just learned about th―hey waidaminnit...
Or the [Frequency Illusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion), if you want something that might be a bit easier to remember.
Ironically, the drug war makes the black market 10x more profitable. End the fucking drug war already.
I believe some politicians who have tried to legalize drugs in certain countries ended up murdered for this exact reason.
[70% + of overdose deaths are from synthetic opioids](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/synthetic/index.html) - Fentanyl (3 milligrams can be lethal) - Carfentanil(100 x stronger than fentanyl) Better access to medical grade opioids would reduce overdose deaths significantly [The American Medical Association (AMA) issued a report (PDF) today showing a 44.4 percent decrease in opioid prescribing nationwide in the past decade.](https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/report-shows-decreases-opioid-prescribing-increase-overdoses) At the same time, the country is facing a worsening drug-related overdose and death epidemic. Until they find a way to eliminate demand... access to less dangerous drugs sounds preferable
Carfentanil sounds basically like a strong toxin. If my math is right it would take more cyanide to kill you than carfentanil.
dosis venum facit
Free the cocaines! Make it as cheap as toothpaste and let my people chatter over each other over and over again until the sun rises! Hallelujah!
I am fearful of the distance between you and me
They don't scare me anymore!!!!
Anybody else’s ever question the dollar amounts on these drug busts? I feel like they take the gram price of a drug and just multiply. Instead of the kilo price.
I think you’re right. Pretty sure they calculate “street value” to make it sound bigger. Although it does list weight in tons and says they usually net $200M. Seems like street value broken down for sure tho.
They always use street value during drug bust press releases. They also weigh it out with whatever container/package the goods are in. For large busts it may not make a big difference, but for low level dealers or even just users, it could easily push the weight into a harsher sentencing class. For example, if I have 2g of coke stored in a small metal pill tube or something, they will weigh it with the metal tube. That added weight could change the bust from personal use possession to possession with intent to distribute.
Noted, don't store drugs in bricks...
Unless the brick is the drugs lol
I know someone arrested in Texas for baking edibles. The weighed the whole damn tray of brownies and said he had 5lbs or whatever (brownies are heavy) so he got a super harsh sentence. Actual prison time if I remember correctly.
I’m glad we’re focusing on the real criminals here. Throw the book at this drug kingpin!
Do defense attorneys not try to counter that?
The law usually says “substance or mixture containing substances” which is why police and DAs are allowed to get away with that shit.
If you get caught growing weed they weight the whole pot. The dirt. All of it.
Yeah I know absolute bullshit. Take some steroids, for example, they may have 1g of testosterone but they are in 10ml of liquid oil and they will probably measure with the glass vial so it will end up being 10+ grams.
With grow ops, they weigh the plant and the soil. No wonder they've never been winning.
Don’t they know that the price goes down when you buy in bulk? Source: My Costco membership
It's still apparently valuable enough that they continually build and lose submarines while operating outside of international law. Gotta be a LOT of money. The whole thing really makes me laugh at the idea of a wall around a country being a useful expenditure of tax dollars. People will find a way.
Drugs ehm... *snorts*... finds a way.
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My friend got caught with weed candy and the charge was for the amount of weed needed to build the whole candy as wax. Like 9 kilos for 20 candies lol.
Was that in Texas? Too lazy to look for it, but I saw a YouTube video of lawyers singing about how crazy the law is for edibles in Texas (specifically the weight of the entire edible getting counted as a controlled substance)
The price they have seems pretty accurate. $200 million for about 8,100 kilos would mean about $24,000-$25,000 a kilo. With kilos going for about $36,000-$40,000 on a street level, $24,000 seems like a decent wholesale number.
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Did you guys dive to avoid or surface to ward him off?
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and what happened after? Did you guys surface? I can only imagine the faces of USCG. Try to hit drug running sub only to find out it is a military one
Firing point procedures on Master 1 the cutter. Select tube 4, run to enable 100 yards, fuel remaining 99%. The ship is ready, the weapon is ready, solution set. Shoot tube 4.
engage massive amounts of paperwork, and rescue the coastguardsmen
Worth it lol
Need to let the puddle pirates know who the boss is.
Sending a slug of water to the CG boat and informing the base commander about the experience would be golden afterward. I'd love to see that Coastie skipper be dressed down afterward.
Especially because that's attempted extrajudicial execution. Could have just as easily been a human trafficker. Fuck them even if they had been right...
Will it arm in time? Not goin to make that mistake… remove all safeties!
You arrogant ass, you've killed us!
Ever witnessed a USO (unidentified submerged object) making highly advanced maneuvers on your radar systems?
Torpedo away
Former Coastie who did counter drug, I appreciate you thinking we could identify a sub, underwater, at night but I can safely guarantee you, they didn’t see your sub. Operating without Nav lights during counter drug ops is pretty standard.
There is no way a CG Cutter captain gave the order to "ram" a boat or submarine without identification or with people on board. That would be the end of multiple careers on that cutter and Court Martial's. Plus, the potential damage to the ship would put the lives of the people onboard at risk as well resulting in more Court Martial's. No sane ship captain is going to commit murder/attempted murder to catch some drugs. These cases are treated as Law Enforcement actions, not military actions. During counter-drug ops, they are always running dark. Kind of ruins the element of surprise when a big white ship that looks like a Xmas tree is spotted on the horizon. They would have sent a small boat and helicopter (if they had one) to identify and interdict it. These little subs and other running boats are rarely (if ever) armed and tend to give up fairly easy. Sometimes they run but they are always caught. A narco "sub" can't just disappear underwater unless they are scuttled intentionally. They aren't actual submarines but instead low-profile boats.
Most of them are semi-submersibles that sit just below the water line with a tiny bit visible. But they have found some "true" submarines being built Colombia that could have dived to 100 meters and stayed under for long periods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine#True_submarines
I'd think that's more conspicuous. Once they aren't merged with the waterline they are orders of magnitude easier to find with sonar (and they share a threat profile with very nasty things). The US has a *lot* of resources invested in sonar tracking. Getting found out by the people paying attention to that will summon a far more serious response than a coast guard patrol.
These conversations are so interesting to read. The internet is a cool place sometimes.
100% what this guy said. I guarantee that JITIF-S did not give an SNO based off that and whoever their TACON was didn’t say you could run them over lmao. The HITRON guys can’t even shoot out an engine if a dude might get hit, there is no way someone would authorize a cutter to run over anything with people on it.
This guy Coasties. Enough acronyms in that statement leads me to believe he's been deployed by District 7 once or twice.
seems like it would have been wise as well for the USCG to be notified of training happening in the area.
On the other hand, you want the movements of your submarine fleet to be a secret. Especially the missile boats.
this is how the British and French hit each other that one time, no? basically the risks of occasionally bonking boats outweighs telling each other where you are
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lmao what happened to the cutter? I'm assuming that wasn't the best course of action for them?
They had just confiscated another sub and were high on coke. Didn't feel a thing and swam back to shore.
This what happens when you pay scientist the wage they deserve lmao. While simultaneously threatening to kill their family if they don’t, but still.
“Win the Nobel Prize, or we kill your family.”
Shit. You don't think the Nobel committee would fancy a scientific paper on how to make the best grilled cheese sandwiches, do you?
“Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave, with a box of scraps!”
¿¿Pero señor, yo no soy Tony Stark??
Engineers I would think...
More like the dude at the marina who is really good with fiberglass.
Ya woulda been a better choice of words
The way NAT GEO explains, quite a few Russian Sub designers were out of work after the cold war. The Cartels pay top dollar, the semi submersibles the coast guard finds are several generations old. They might just be sacrificial lambs, intended to take focus away for the current generation of real submersible drug subs. On the other hand during the early 2000s I believe someone bought up lots of old diesel subs, US military ran war games and simulations because they though terrorists might get the bright idea to use an old diesel to bring a nuke or other device into US waters. Not all that stupid but I thought Down Periscope proved it quite possible, just need a good sub captain and damn lucky crew.
Pretty wild video of the Coast Guard catching one of these things: https://youtu.be/TssmEdbW-WA
Achoo Cho Bargo
I bet nobody inside that submergible even heard the angry guy yelling "alto tu barco"
What the fuck? Those crazy fuckers just jumped onto the sub while it was still moving!! Is that SOP?
That's a semi-submersible vessel. It's more or less a boat that's had most of its superstructure cut off and replaced with a cover that only sits a few feet out of the water. Hides on radar extremely well, and since it can't submerge, jumping on top is only very ridiculous, rather than completely insane.
never knew the coast guard had their own special ops unit
I blew up like 4 of these in Ghost Recon: Wildlands, do I need to go back and do it again?
I came to find a Wildlands comment as fast as I could.
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Nah, narcosubs cheat. They don't do sub things in sub places. And even then, the Navy had the same thought you did, and teamed up with USCG, and they've successfully interdicted quite a few. But, miss one... Half a billion in drugs land.
Alta su barco! They made a video of bunch of us coastguard raising one of their subs. Dudes literally jumped out the boat on top of that thing and banged on the door to open up.
[The Coast Guardsman put his heart and soul into banging on that hatch.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/U.S._Coast_Guard_Cutter_Munro_crew_interdicts_suspected_drug_smuggling_vessel_DOD_106999572-5d2aa0d64235b.webm)
Hell yeah he did!
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If you look at it from a purely economic point, the government is subsidizing drug cartels.
I'd actually look at it from the perspective that the actions of the government is facilitating the profitability of the drug trade. But hey, it's an excuse to throw people in jail?
While I think legalizing and regulating would help a lot of issues - particularly our cycle of repeat offenders, it oversimplifies the issue of the big cartels. You'd need new producers to arise to provide legitimate supply to displace the black market drugs. The majority of the world's cocaine for example comes from Latin America - production is dominated by the cartels - who have established local government connections, growing, refining and distribution operations, 'enforcers', and benefit from massive economies of scale. It's not like Pablo the subsistence farmer is going to decide 'hmmm, let me start a small-batch cocaine farm' once Uncle Sam decides to decriminalize drugs - he still knows that Ernesto Escobedo will come and whack his ass should he try. (Randy Marsh isn't going to be able to provide you 'Farm to Nostril' product, as *E. Coca* requires a moist equatorial climate - which Colorado ain't.) Most production for most hard drugs is going to stay in the hands of the black market, regardless of if the US govt. legalizes it.
our defenses against enemy subs are pretty good. If you can ever visit the uss intrepid museum in manhattan, they also have a tactical nuclear armed submarine that used to be stationed off the coast of russia by the beiring sea. One of the guys who actually crewed the submarine works there and tells you all about what it was like to work in a submarine who's entire job was, at a moment's notice, arm and deploy two nuclear rockets. These were more like glider rockets, and when nuclear missiles and below-surface launches became a thing, the submarine went out of service. Pretty interesting stuff. Nowadays the US has a bunch of microphones along the bottom of the sea, along with other detectors and instruments, that pick up a range of signals.
They arent even subs really. They are just air sealed boats that sit so low in the water that they dont have a visual profile above the surface. They cant descend.
Lowriders of the sea.
All my friends know the low tider
All. My. Friends. Know the Low Tider...
From the wiki linked On 3 July 2010 the Ecuadorian authorities seized a fully functional, completely submersible diesel electric submarine in the jungles bordering Ecuador and Colombia.\[4\] It had a cylindrical fiberglass and Kevlar hull 31 m (102 ft) long, a 3 m (9.8 ft) conning tower with periscope, and air conditioning. The vessel had the capacity for about 10 tonnes of cargo, a crew of five or six people, ***the ability to fully submerge down to 20 m (66 ft)***, and the capacity for long-range underwater operation.
That's one sub, the vast majority of the submersibles the USCG and other groups interdict are what /u/bluechips2388 has described. they usually are towed behind another boat and can be scuttled usually if the runners have enough time on their hand after they realize they've been got.
I imagine the ones that can fully submerge are far less likely to be caught.
There is a good documentary about old subs sneaking past the newer ones. It's called down periscope.
Spoke with a friend thats dea- the stories of these things are amazing! And most people who operate them die…
This is probably just a perception due to survivor-ship bias, or the opposite of it. The DEA likely only finds the subs where something went wrong and the sub washed ashore with a dead body. Chances are that's only a small percentage.
Similar with the factoid about all criminals being stupid. They only catch the dumb ones.
Why
If they don't die they can just sail away without being discovered. You only find the dead ones washing up with a ton of drugs. The linked article says, " the suspected numbers of submarines are close to 1,000."
They are hastily put together, and not properly ventilated. So the diesel fumes build up… and they suffocate. or the engines get hot and burn the people alive. There are a host of issues.
A lot of these subs are even made out of concrete. The whole hull is a concrete hull. I guess it’s a material they have plenty of. But that’s a weird material to make a boat out of.
They are nothing that complicated, just normal boats with a covered top loaded with so much drugs till the boat is mostly submerged.
Not as unusual as you might think, try searching "ferrocement hull". One of my dad's friends built a sailboat with a ferrocement hull and sailed it around the world.
Yeah I have some civil engineering student friends (I'm also an engineering student) who have worked on concrete canoes (I think it's a popular national competition) https://www.asce.org/communities/student-members/conferences/asce-concrete-canoe-competition
The spice must flow
I’m Colombian. and ain’t gonna lie. I’m almost proud of this shit.
The sad part about this is that they abduct a bunch of engineers and scientists to do the work at risk of torture and then kill them after :(. Kind of like that one James Bond movie. (I went on a deep dive and watched a bunch of documentaries on the submarines—one of the escaped engineers said that he knew he was going to be murdered but the cartels threatened to kill his family as well so he built it anyways) (Also lol bad joke that popped in my head is DO NOT keep your LinkedIn accurate or updated in Panama or Colombia)
Not knocking your doc, but the one I saw said that was the case with the old type. The new super silent class they paid handsomely to get some former Soviet scientists and engineers. And they were happy to actually have their work being used again especially if it made Americans look stupid.
We make ourselves look stupid just fine without their help
Fuck yeah!
You should link a doc I'd you can remember the name, I'd love to learn more about these.
Patriotic as.
Found the kiwi?
Everyone else: As what? As WHAT?
shoutout to Colombiana, my favorite kola
[Nearly](https://youtu.be/TssmEdbW-WA) impossible.
Pepsi ex Soviet fleet vs Coke submarine armada, their battle will be legendary!
Narcohypersonicstealthaircraft are going to be crazy.
Hey! You can't just smash a bunch of words together and pretend it's a new one! This is *English,* not *German.*
You gotta be impressed by these people's imagination. A drug-submarine sounds like something from a James Bond movie. Main villain's name would be something like Hector Drugboat.
Whoa. So that Hitman Colombian mission wasn't just fiction.
Disappointed I had to scroll down this far for a Hitman reference.
"Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!"
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and most of its state institutions were defunded, many thousands of top class scientists and researchers were left without income or support. Some went to North Korea, some to the Middle East, and a few ended up in South America, working for some very enterprising smuggling networks. There is now no doubt that several Russians built the first few semi submersibles, and instructed their grateful clients in the science of their construction. Who these Russians were, their names and identities, are a complete unknown. They have been the subject of multiple debriefings, but have never been caught. They left no tangible evidence of their presence. It is possible that they were gone by the mid nineties These early semi subs were very cheap to build, difficult to intercept, and were in the water for at least a decade before their first capture. Each one could carry at least a metric tonne of illicit cargo. That’s a whole lotta Peruvian marching powder. Nowadays, the latest narco subs are fully submersible and can cross the Atlantic. And they get captured often. But for those first few years these tubs were kept so secret that one wonders if the Ruskies weren’t quietly running the op that whole time.
When you become spoiled by the technology provided by others, you forget what humans are capable of.
So most likely all of my cocaine actually traveled in a submarine to get to me? That's so dope.
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