Cutting a live transmission line is incredibly foolish, for many reasons, but I'm guessing the station has a modern(ish) solid state transmitter, which has great foldback protection.
I've seen (and personally tested) AM transmitters dead shorting, and within less than a second (probably less than 100ms, but I haven't measured precisely) it will fold back on a dead short to like 1% of its operating power, lower if it still detects a short.
This is to protect the (even more expensive) transmitter from lightning strikes or other weird eventualities (like the line leaking pressurized nitrogen, used to prevent shorts from moisture mainly).
But replacing that 3" transmission line is not cheap or fast. Usually the runs are planned and designed, and every elbow / connection has losses that are accounted for.
Working backwards from clues in the article, thief maybe stole 200-400 ft of wire.
Assuming between 3-1/8″ - 6-1/8″ diameter.
Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value. $70k-$100k to repair...
Absurd.
That's the usual car stereo theft economics: cause $1,000 of damage to sell a $100 radio for $10.
probably $10 of meth to harm a body so that it eventually needs $50k of medical work, or $100k of dental work
10 dollars? Who's your meth guy?
GP is talking out of his ass - he’s probably not up to speed on meth economics like you and me.
Methenomics say that you can step on product however much you need to reach the demanded price point.
HN constantly undervalues meth and this has been called out since at least 2009. Horrible.
Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.
The person needs to have a stake in the infrastructure OR there needs to be a high chance of them getting caught and losing something. People with little stake in a community will strip infrastructure bare. Inequality is a significant root cause here.
Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher.
If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare.
The financial damage done by the thief is presumably irrelevant to the thief, beyond the fact that sentencing is probably stricter for bigger thefts.
I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.
We can conclude that the thief was borderline retarded. Cutting the line was instantly noticed by dozens or hundreds of radio listeners. The operator of the radio station could not have possibly remained uninformed longer than a half hour. It would have been investigated within the next 2 hours. How was he going to dispose of the evidence? He had no getaway vehicle or plan, and in fact lived within shouting distance of the site of the crime. Was attempting to cut it up in the open air, visible from anyone who would have followed the dragging marks back to his home.
This was the work of someone truly mentally defective. Deterrence is impossible for such people.
>and no real rehabilitation
I'm not a big believer that rehabilitation is even possible. But if it were possible for some, how could it be possible for this imbecile? How do you recondition someone who can't figure out that this crime was doomed to failure that he shouldn't have attempted it just on pure principle?
We should instead consider euthanasia.
There's another theory which says that if people have health care, food, shelter, education, and liberty, they won't commit crimes like this. Just a thought.
It's not a theory. It's socialism and it works fine in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and a bunch of other places.
> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem.
They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage.
> better off by just paying the theif double.
You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief.
> that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.
We shouldn't motivate people to extremes. We should probably just punish drug dealers far more harshly in this country.
Or pay a guard a fair wage and comp them the $0.20 or whatever for each bullet..
EDIT: to be clear I'm not saying it should be that way, but there was a time not long ago when this was the normal way to handle the situation. I'd argue the present arrangement is more civilized.
Other than those who commit grave offenses of bodily harm, I reserve my greatest disgust for the type of dirtbag who imposes these orders-of-magnitude greater costs on other innocent people for such a relatively low "reward." They'd burn the Mona Lisa for fuel, melt down the Statue of Liberty for scrap, anything if you let them.
I agree with another commenter here, the overlap of this mindset with tweakers is large.
This could be made a serious felony. If the thief doesn't plan for or attempt to get say, 25% of fair market value or replacement cost (whichever is higher), multiply the penalty by 5 years, no chance of parole.
Though I don't know if there are enough prisons for all those stealing catalytic converters.
In general I agree with you, but it also makes me wonder how these people got to this point. I think most people would burn the Mona Lisa if it meant surviving through a cold night.
Our society has failed these people in many ways.
I don’t see how to blame our society for copper thieves.
Lack of healthcare, limited job opportunities, growing income inequality, are just a few reasons off the top of my head.
Local copper thieves that were busted stealing telco lines... they were just looking to make a quick buck regardless of legality or care for the impact it had on other people. They're more like tech company CEOs, really.
And these thieves were already well cared for in a healthy society with all sorts of opportunities available to them regardless of social status, skin color, and mental heath?
Crime goes down when the gap between the rich and the poor goes down.
Drugs. It's usually drugs.
Right, why didn't everyone just get good education, dental care, and healthcare, get a car when they're 16, have their parents help them go to college and work for a VC and get rich. Just can't understand it. Truly, an enigma.
Realistically, if these are the minimum conditions to reduce this kind of low-gain amplified damage, then I suspect that most people will rapidly conclude that the cost-benefit leans in the direction of immediately severing these people from the rest of society. Since the cost to deliver a sequence of events like you describe to everyone is extraordinary (and realistically unavailable even to the richest nations today) a more feasible solution is incarceration of people for a first offense for a sufficiently long time that they are simply not present to commit the crime again.
This is what nobody wants to admit, whether it's nature or nurture doesn't matter because you're not in control of either of them. You were born into so and so of a family, and they brought you up with such and such care and values.
The idea that you've been "force of willing" it through your whole life since infancy and are therefore solely accountable for your outcome is absurd. We know that at some level and yet still can't help taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others for their failings.
This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts.
As someone who grew up on food stamps, I'd fully believe the mean and median income on hackernews are six figure numbers.
At least. And also living in a metropolis, in a burrough where SaaS is the only way of life and all of the benefits of society come from NPCs.
> This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts.
A lot of people on this site have no concept of what it is like to grow up unprivileged (they think they do, but to them that means growing up merely upper middle class as opposed to ridiculously wealthy) but as bad as it can be sometimes it has actually gotten a bit better in recent years.
There used to be an even higher concentration of ultra-libertarian "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" posters who clearly never had to do that themselves to anywhere near the extent they believed they had.
> We know that at some level and yet still can't help taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others for their failings.
Is that blameworthy?
My general rule for posting sarcasm is to phrase it seriously first and see if it's something I still want to post.
How did it go for this one?
A topic I'm interested in that is upstream of what you're saying is the propagation of meaning. If somebody has no idea what the Mona Lisa or the Statue of Liberty are, then we can't really bemoan that they would not ascribe any value to it beyond its raw material.
I could understand looking at the Mona Lisa and not being impressed that it's something considered of great value. On the other hand, the sheer size of the Statue of Liberty makes that impossible to misconstrue.
They didn't ask to be born and have never been given an opportunity to approve the society they're born into. The price of non-conformance is deprivation, punishment and incarceration. We should rethink this.
I’d suggest considering empathy once you get past the anger, their former selves would be equally repulsed by their behavior, and for many I expect their current selves feel similarly despite their lack of control. The villains here aren’t the broken people.
The villains are the people who let these people continue to commit crimes and make life worse for others in the name of empathy instead of quickly and forcefully moving them into compassionate care where they have any chance of recovering and joining the vast majority as contributors to society.
Compassionate care does not exist for people like this.
The villains are those of us who tolerate this kind of behavior in the name of compassion.
You shouldn't tolerate the behavior, but announcing disgust for people who are struggling is just not helpful.
Lots of people who are struggling don't become thieves.
Right, like I said don't tolerate the behavior, but that doesn't mean every thief is an irredeemable piece of shit who doesn't deserve help or empathy.
There should be something in the middle, I hope we can agree on that. We're talking about addiction and property damage here, not a homicidal psychopath.
>Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value
If it's a "normal" wire specification that someone else can use it was likely sold for ~50% of retail.
It was gas-filled presumably ultra low loss RF cable, but the thief cut it into small sections so that they could take it away. You might be right about the 50% number of they had somehow managed to steal it as a single intact spool. As-is, the station even said that they wouldn’t be able to use it even now that it’s been recovered because of fears of gas leaks.
I doubt they would attempt to sell it as is. They'd break out the copper portion and trade on that alone
Thieves typically burn off the insulation so it's not likely to be easily reused.
An example shown when I worked around a 7000A rail was also two men. One formed a circuit and the other tried to pry him off.
How is this person alive? That’s a terrifying amount of relatively high frequency energy. And pressurized gasses of some sort.
My first thought also .. possibly pulled a breaker rendering cable inert, or perhaps rigged a remote cutting tool - drop saw poised to cut on a long extension cord ready to be turn on ... (problematic).
I'm leaning toward killed the current first somehow, but very location detail dependant.
You can buy high voltage gear online cheap. Just this one job would pay for the complete setup if you're buying cheap brands.
The transmitter will have a VSWR trip for just this sort of eventuality. It would likely be damaged severely if allowed to operate into an open circuit for more than a brief moment.
Meth induced superhero powers?
I'm looking for a Kalshi bet that the perp is a tweaker.
They say it could cost $70,000 - $100,000 to repair, but I also wonder if they'll have to refund ad buys while they are running at 10 watts and such reduced coverage. Makes me also wonder what kind of insurance broadcasters might have for such incidents when they can't broadcast.
This feels like force majeur from a contract perspective…
Oof, that's a bad day. I've had cable stolen from a tower site like that, but it was cable we had spooled out for installation the day before, not in active use.
The photo shows a cable ( with insulation ) that looks at least 4 inches thick ... (from a distance )
The alleged perpetrator — Paul Crisp
Nominative determinism in action.
Or subverted in this case, I suppose. Can't have been very crisped if he could flee from the police.
any paulcrisp on HN want to discuss?
Darwin awards should give this guy an honorable mention.
Reads like a super-villain origin story. Welp, I guess he doesn't have to worry about getting the electric chair.
That’s wild. Radio transmission power is no joke.
I replaced the 100W FM transmitter on our college radio tower and got in front of the emitter beam for like 10 seconds and my head rung for a week. The amps and power aren’t to be messed with.
I can’t even imagine messing with 100K line that’s a solid block of copper
I'm surprised.
Consulting an exposure limit calculator (https://www.arrl.org/rf-exposure-calculator) suggests a safe distance (FCC controlled exposure limit) for continuous (30 min) exposure from a 100w FM transmitter antenna at 100 MHz with, say, 5 dB gain is around 5 ft. For a brief exposure it's much less.
Amateur radio operators need to know this, since 100w is quite a typical power level, and they have bands (50 MHz and 144 MHz) not far from commercial FM.
How far away from the antenna were you? The antenna is usually far away from the transmitter that you were replacing.
Very lucky not to have been killed by the high voltages or intense RF energy and or suffer severe burns / blindness ....
Come to think of it it wasn’t even 10 seconds, more like 2 or 3 before my ears and eyes were burning
You think exposure to 100 watts at ~100 MHz is going to cause your head to ring?
Are you saying it won't? What sort of RF power density in the FM range can the human body tolerate without noticeable effect?
The trash thief will never be able to replace that. I guess insurance will help but that’s just another excuse for them to raise rates.
That thief should be indentured until he pays it back in full.
Is it too soon to talk about regulating the $#@* out of scrap-metal dealers?
They already are. You need to show ID to sell scrap metal. The thieves use a fence.
Furthermore, going after scrap metal sites makes an important business harder and fails to be inquisitive enough about the reasons why the thefts happen at all. Maybe we should try to understand why people are stealing copper. (Presumably poverty, drug addiction, lack of opportunity)
If you believe we can just fix poverty and drug addiction with some government program, I have a bridge to sell you. So far, no one has, anywhere in the world.
Many people (and once they get themselves addicted to something bad, that rises to "most") are just terrible and care only about their own short-term gain. They'd do any amount of destruction to others for some small temporary profit or fix.
If you think most people "are just terrible", I think you've let cynicism corrupt your thinking, and I don't think we're going to get very far by talking.
I believe the opposite -- people fundamentally want to help each other, and we've structurally set up our society to force people out of that mode and into a competitive mode. Read "A Paradise Built in Hell", when push comes to shove, communities care for each other.
If we covered everyone's basic food, housing, education, and medical needs, I guarantee you'd see crime and addiction plummet.
The USA opioid epidemic was caused by gross government negligence and corruption. Is it really a stretch to think that a policy solution could have prevented the majority of the harm? And do you really think there wouldn't be enough food and shelter to go around, if the government decided to get serious about poverty relief?
Where does the fence sell the scrap? Somebody is buying it.
Same as stolen TVs, catalytic converters, and anything else.
There’s always someone who likes the money/discount more than morals/the law at the next step in the chain. Somewhere.
>There’s always someone who likes the money/discount more than morals/the law at the next step in the chain. Somewhere.
That's every scrap yard and most small businesses. Nothing makes you hate the law and it's enforcers, peddlers and proponents like being on the business end of regulations and a scrap yard probably has at least half a dozen agencies they are subject to.
Heck, I bet half of these guys would aerosolize radioactive waste out of spite if they thought the wind would blow it into a "good school district".
Didn't know fences contained copper ;)
Wonder if they steal the fence too!