Antifreeze Shipping Lane

In geopolitics 101, you learn how the Russians continuously tried pushing south so to get unfettered year-round access to a non-frozen ocean. Pickup any world history book and you’ll see the unbelievable price that they were willing to pay for this over the centuries. Well, we’re now in the 21st century and it’s looking as bleak as ever for them. Had they thought of the following idea, perhaps all that would have been unnecessary.

Think of a huge “U” shaped trench, 100 feet wide, 100 feet deep and thousands of miles long. Now make the walls of this trench out of iron sheets, fill it with water, attach lots of buoys so it will float and set it in the Arctic Ocean. It would need to be big enough for a ship to sail though it, strong enough to withstand an iceberg impact and anchored well enough to resist the ocean currents flowing under it. Finally you would pour lots of non-toxic antifreeze (or Vodka) into it to prevent the water inside from freezing.

If there are any bored engineering students out there, I’m sure they could have fun designing clever ways for ships to pass one another and add collapsible cross beams for added strength (to counter the force of the ice water, which expands as it freezes). Long and slender freighters can be designed for it, so the trench cross section could be made smaller. Handling large icebergs may be tricky, but you can always strike them with a missile or two and blow them to smithereens.

I never said that this would be cheap, but the Russians have been known for their over-the-top construction projects (think of the trans Siberian railway, which was built 100 years ago <see link>). When it comes to national security, a few trillion dollars over a few decades is chip change. In fact it could even be something of a “new deal” for their sagging economy. Hey, they may even be able to get some help from the Finns.

Lastly, I should mention the related idea of the “trans-oceanic tunnel”<link>. I think a trench would be far less prohibitive to construct, given equal transportation requirements. But one thing is for sure, a tunnel is far easier to sabotage and destroy, so it would be far less appealing from a national security standpoint.