Damaged Cable Leaves Shetland Cut Off From Mainland

Communications to Shetland, the Scottish archipelago that lies across the sea from Norway and more than 100 miles north of mainland Britain, have been severely disrupted after a subsea cable was damaged. From a report: Police have declared a major incident after the south subsea cable between the islands and the mainland was cut. The force said some landlines and mobiles were not usable and that officers were patrolling to try to reassure residents. Repairs to another cable connecting Shetland and Faroe are ongoing after it was damaged last week. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was an emergency situation for the island. The Scottish government's resilience committee had met and was working with partner agencies to ensure support was provided, she added. She said the assumption was the damage was accidental, adding: "There is nothing to suggest otherwise, but work is continuing to assess exactly what the cause of the problem has been." MP for Orkney and Shetlands Alastair Carmichael told the BBC he had raised the issue with the UK government, but understood it could be days before communications were restored. He said the priority was fixing the issue but that resilience would also need to be looked at in future.

Cut off

[bugs2squash]

You mean that the Mainland was cut off from Shetland, heaven help the poor mainlanders

Figures, I guess...

[khb]

Douglas Henshall left the show, and took the cable with him.

What about the ponies?

[registrations_suck]

Are the ponies OK?

Re:

[q4Fry]

No. Pony health is dependent upon the bitrate to Glasgow. Expect to see pony graveyards in the news soon... if they can transmit the jpegs by carrier pigeon.

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[Tablizer]

Use the Pony Browser to check. [flickr.com]

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[sconeu]

OMG PONIES!!!!!

Did productivity soar?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean now there's nothing left to do but work, while petting your sheepdog.

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[awwshit]

Guess which job site I will never ever visit? Jobbio.

I really like seeing the 'Disable Ads' checkbox being checked right below a string of ads, thank you so much slashdot.

Re:ads

[WoodstockJeff]

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Except from jobbio.

Re:

[Guignol]

$('div.ntv-sponsored-disclaimer').parent().parent().remove();
put that in your violentmonkey script after some timeout and you're set :)

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[MachineShedFred]

The fact that these ads are breaking content on this site has led me to permanently blackhole that domain on my DNS server. I will never see anything from that company ever again.

Attribution of malice

[Anonymous Coward]

Never attribute to coincidence what could properly be explained by malicious actors who have publicly advocated for destroying your nation with a nuclear tsunami.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

I suspect it is a practice run against a poorly monitored undersea cable. Anyone who dismissed the possibility of attack on our communication infrastructure is an idiot.

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[sarren1901]

I mean *chuckles* would the average American notice if North America was cutoff from the rest of the world? Likely only because of Facebook and Tik Tok otherwise I sort of doubt it.

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[OrangeTide]

Hopefully the thousands of professionals paid to monitor expensive undersea cables would notice. Even if Americans don't even notice a mass shooting when it occurs one town over.

Accidental? Hmmm

[hdyoung]

Are they sure? Cause I bet that area’s accessible by Russian submarines and the Russians are currently very keen on making a point about the vulnerability of undersea infrastructure.

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[Tablizer]

Drunk Russians, I knew it! The Gilligan's Island stereotype is real!

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[Whateverthisis]

If you're doing something for show, you do something like blow up a major undersea pipeline [nytimes.com].

Cutting off Shetland's internet isn't a message with the same gravitas.

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[xwin]

Too bad that all the facts point to US blowing up the pipeline https://fair.org/home/us-media... [fair.org]
Especially the fact that the results of investigation by Sweden can't be made public because of "national security" https://www.usnews.com/news/wo... [usnews.com]

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[sarren1901]

We really are trying to save the planet! Don't you understand! By exploding the pipeline we can hopefully burn less of the fuel! /s

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[Narrowband]

So, the circumstances point to Greenpeace as the culprit for blowing up the pipeline?

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[Whateverthisis]

Oh please.

First, my comment was specifically regarding the gravitas of an action to make a point; I didn't specify whom. So stop bringing politics and anti-Americanism into this; it doesn't matter who sabotaged Nord-1 and Nord-2; it sent a message. Most people in the world have no idea where Shetland is and cutting off it's communication in no way impacts the economies of countries the way the Nord-1 and 2 do. So my point stands; it's ridiculous to consider Russian aggression as a culprit in loss of co

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[thegarbz]

LOL man you are in deep.

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[radaos]

Russian warships were on "exercises" off the coast of Ireland in February 2022, directly before the invasion of Ukraine and in an area that transatlantic cables pass through. Now the Shetland cable gets cut in two separate areas at the same time. Trial run?

Think of the ponies!

[Arethan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

How are they going to survive without their pony pron?

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[ceoyoyo]

They have the ponies. It's everyone else who's been cut off.

Starlink looks better and better

[nospam007]

If this goes on.