NOte that the wikipedia list of ships sunk by collisions with icebergs has only 27 ships on it, dating back nearly 200 years. It says it’s a non-exhaustive list, but that suggests collisions with icebergs is not a major risk to ships.
So what you’re saying is that we’d be much better off fitting all ocean-going ships with anti-submarine weapons, since far more ships have been sunk by submarines?
Doctor Strange on a Train?
Why don’t airliners have ejection seats?
I’m more of a Hank Pym/Quantum Realm guy myself.
If they did, I’d use it every time a baby starts crying or the guy next to me starts sawing logs, and definitely next time I have to sit on the tarmac for 45 minutes because they can’t find an open gate. Seriously, WTF? There are five open gates over there. Just pull up to one. They’re not going to shoot your tires out.
Stranger
… you know, why *aren’t *all cars tanks ?! Never get stuck in traffic again.
Except when all cars are tanks, all the other cars are tanks. Maybe your tank can crush cars but can it crush other tanks?
Back to icebreakers: icebreakers are not resistant to icebergs. So there you go.
That’s what the big gun on top is for.
Then you WILL be stuck in traffic since none of the other destroyed tanks husks can ever move out of your way.
Driving around Panama City, I often wish I had a technical.
Presumably that’s what the other tank drivers would consider their big gun on top to be good for also.
This is going to get interesting.
“But, you know, the suit can take the weight, right? So I take the tank, drop it right off at the general’s palace, drop it at his feet. I’m, like, ‘Boom. Are you looking for this?’…‘Boom. Are you looking for…’ Why do I even talk to you guys? Everyone else, that story kills.”
Stranger
Oh, that’s not what I was thinking. But a tank can say “you know what ? Fuck roads” and get away with it right through the highway concrete barrier :). Also take shortcuts through people’s houses.
You gotta be careful on the angle you hit those barriers. Might get stuck like this guy.
It’s essentially zero. It has been greatly diminished since the International Ice Patrol was instituted in the immediate wake of the Titanic disaster. US Coast Guard cutters, and later a/c, locate and broadcast the position of bergs which drift into North Atlantic sea lanes. The degree of safety increased further with radar and electronic positioning devices since WWII. Iceberg danger to ships in normal sea lanes is a solved problem.
Icebergs can be a threat to floating or fixed oil drilling vessels/structures in arctic waters which can’t move out of the way. It’s addressed by some combination of building barriers on the bottom in shallow water, or using oil field tug/supply vessels to push on the bergs and alter their courses to not hit the drilling vessels/platforms.
It costs 3-4 times as much to build a container ship in the US as South Korea where the Maersk ships were built. The USCG icebreaker would be built in the US, though the multiple of cost for a one-off like that might not be quite as high.
Anyway as has been mentioned, icebreakers cannot safely run into icebergs at high speed. The solution to ships and icebergs is to avoid hitting them, as has been virtually 100% successfully done since the Titanic disaster and especially in recent decades.
Any responsible home owner will have decorative Czech Hedgehogs and AT guns on their lawns to fend off exactly your sort of person.
Why don’t all cars have roll-cages and all drivers and passengers use fire-retardant suits? Most cars don’t roll and catch fire, but some do. Think of it as insurance.
Cost-benefit analyses can’t be handwaved the way you did here.
Wikipedia lists 5 ships sunk by icebergs in the hundred or so years since the Titanic.
2007 Explorer
1991 Finnpolaris
1977 William Carson
1959 Hans Hedtoft
1923 Le Raymound
Consulting The Google, it seems that there are somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 ships on the ocean, depending on whose numbers you use. Whatever numbers you use, the percentage isn’t quite zero, but it’s awfully damn close to it.
The 1959 sinking of the Hans Hedtoft was the last sinking that resulted in any casualties.
The 2007 sinking of the Explorer is regarded as suspicious by some experts. The ship was designed for arctic and antarctic cruises, and was designed to handle ice (it routinely crunched through ice and therefore probably fits the OP’s definition of an ice breaker). The ship had multiple compartments that could be sealed, and could handle one compartment flooding completely. It’s not clear if the seals between compartments failed or if the damage affected more than one compartment.
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
Explorer was designed, like most ships, with compartments which could be sealed off by watertight doors; the ship would not sink if holed and one compartment flooded, but was not safe if more compartments were flooded, either by a gash spanning compartments or imperfect sealing between compartments. GAP reported that there was a crack in addition to the hole, but it is not clear if it spanned compartments.[31]
In an article published on 8 December 2007, experts consider that Explorer was “perfect for ice navigation”, and consider that the explanation of the sinking “doesn’t add up” and that “essential pieces of the story are missing”.[32]
[/QUOTE]
So, even designing a ship as an icebreaker per the OP isn’t always enough to prevent a sinking.