AARRRGHH!

Are you as fascinated by this wave of well publicised piracy as I am?

I heard the number of ships hijacked was coming on seventy for the year.
We are talking about ships, great big floating city block sized ships.
Ships big enough to transport thirty heavy tanks.


They spirited away with an enormous super tanker the other day.

Pirates stole a super tanker on it's way out of the Suez Canal.
Ponder that, it was a big headline news story yesterday. Every paper I picked up had a story on it, yesterday.
Pirates.
Yesterday we had folks floating around outside an orbiting space station.
And we also had high seas piracy.







The convergence of pirates and space walks in the same days news is a bit dizzying.







Apparently there is not much to this whole piracy business.

It has me thinking about maybe changing my line of work.

There seems to be a standard pirate operation going on. I am thinking you could pull the whole deal off with two boats and maybe a dozen guys.
One boat, say a fishing boat, is the cover.
You hide five or six guys in some speedy little boat, behind the fishing boat.
When the giant ship is close, you send out the six guys to capture it.

I am kind of fuzzy on that whole capturing part, as it seems pretty silly that a half dozen guys with small arms are able to board a super tanker and commandeer it.



Do they use grappling hooks to get on?

Are their locks on the doors of ships?
Giant ships are built of steel and designed to repel the onslaught of heavy seas and vicious winds. It seems like they should be able to keep out a couple of guys with guns.
I guess not.


Then you just park the ship off the coast of some nasty country and demand a ransom.
Ransom is the modern addition to the process, since the actual booty is not being hauled on ships these days. No giant treasure chests of gold these days.
Ransom is where it is at.

Though I might be tempted to keep the tanks, if I absconded with a ship full of modern armor.
I could outfit a Waterworld style pirate navy, with the turrents of the tanks.

That would be cool.


Anyway, the start up capital to get a clan of pirates together seems pretty slim.
I am convinced I could round up a crew of scallywags and dirty bilge swilling rats.
One dumpy boat and one speedy boat, along with some ropes.
Then, it is just a matter of setting up camp in some terrible country at war with itself, who doesn't mind a few odd pirate types hanging around.

Some quick cost/benefit analysis makes it look pretty good. Solid ROI opportunity.


This whole world economic global melt down has slowed some cash I need finance my bid to take over the world. My backers; sovereign funds, loony billionaires and so forth are ginched up about the credit situations - so they keep giving me the old "I checked with accounting and the transfer should go through today" bit.
Like I don't know what that means...

I am thinking this whole pirate gig might be a good way to keep the ball rolling.
You know, large unmarked cash ransoms can finance the baboonbot work. I'll develop some solid PR for the transition to taking over the world.