“Never let a good disaster go to waste” is the guiding principle of the conspiracy theorist. It’s been only 12 hours since the cargo ship Dali slammed into the Baltimore Bridge, and already Alex Jones, Andrew Tate and all their fellow clowns in the extreme right media sphere have declared the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland to be a false flag, a black swan or a result of wokeness.
Let’s start with the household name in false flag narratives, Alex Jones, who retweeted notorious brother in shitheadness Andrew Tate Tuesday morning:
Oh Alex, everything looks deliberate to you, buddy. Seeing patterns in the chaos can be very comforting. But let me ask you this; what does a cyber attack look like in a dark, blurry low-res video at nearly 2 a.m? Could it also look like a ship in distress? A ship that, according to the New York Times, has had problems with its propulsion systems in the recent past?
An inspection of the Dali last year at a port in Chile reported that the vessel had a deficiency related to “propulsion and auxiliary machinery.” The inspection, conducted on June 27 at the port of San Antonio, specified that the deficiency concerned gauges and thermometers.
The Dali has had 27 inspections since 2015, according to a database maintained by Equasis. The only other deficiency, a damaged hull “impairing seaworthiness,” was found in 2016, at the port of Antwerp. The vessel hit a berth at the port that year. A spokesman for the Dali’s owner, Grace Ocean Investment, declined to comment on the deficiency reported last year.
Sure, Jones didn’t know about those reports this morning, but that’s just the thing; he didn’t know anything more than anyone else, and he jumped to WWIII.
To round out this brain trust, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and perpetually online twitter personality Cat Turd also weighed in.
Of course, Posobiec wasn’t alone in blaming President Joe Biden. Move in a tiny bit towards the center from Jones and his ilk, and you find a much calmer take on what happened in Baltimore Tuesday morning: ’twas wokeness that slew the bridge! Primarily “open boarders” according to Fox News…
…and over on Fox News competitor Newsmax, presenters were confused how the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed last year didn’t stop this privately operated commercial vessel from running into a bridge.
And then there were the ever-charming individuals who all became structural engineers overnight taking to X to declare that a cargo ship couldn’t possibly take down a structure like the Francis Scott Key Bridge in such a fashion, which is also not true, from CBS News:
The bridge passed inspection in May 2022, but there was concern with one of its columns. The reinforced concrete column – like the one hit by the ship – was downgraded from a health index, or condition rating, of 77.8 to 65.9.
Ben Schafer, professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University, told CBS News that most bridges in the U.S. fall in this “fair” range, which is “not what we would want or suspect” as a society. But, he said, the massive ship – not the condition of the Key Bridge – is likely to blame for its collapse.
“Like others, I’ve watched the video a bunch of times and have gone frame by frame and worked up a few different hypothesis in my mind, but I see little evidence for anything other than: the boat strike took a bridge with two supports and took away one of them and then it fell in the water,” Schafer told CBS News. “I mean, doesn’t seem to be super more complicated than that.”
Many bridges – whether a suspension bridge or an arched bridge – require two supports under the portion of bridge that goes over water, Schafer said. “This is the minimum number to cross over,” he said.
“The container ship was as wide as it was as tall,” Schafer said, adding that it was of similar scale to the bridge. “So the mass that’s associated with that container ship creates an amount of energy that a small concrete pier isn’t going to sustain. That’s an accident that we can’t allow to happen and expect the bridges to stay up.”
In reality, a 948-foot long cargo vessel loaded with freight experiencing sudden power loss (for reasons that are not yet clear) is a lot like real life; a chaotic situation in constant danger of crashing.
And all this conspiracy mumbo jumbo is missing a crucial point: The disaster would have resulted in a much larger tragedy but for the quick actions of both the crew of the Dali and officials on the ground. While rescue work is ongoing at the site, and we still do not know the breadth of this tragedy, a mayday call from the Dali gave officials sufficient time to close the bridge, actually limiting traffic on the span before the catastrophic event.
These don’t quite seem to be the actions of people looking to manufacture a high fatality event. And for what purpose? To… I don’t know, cripple commutes in the Baltimore region? Are we going to go to war over the actions of a private vessel?
