Ragnar Danneskjöld Played by Eric Allan Kramer: Why the modern pirate never gets caught
Posted by overmanwarrior 10 years ago to Entertainment
I am very happy with the clip of Ragnar Danneskjold in the upcoming Atlas III movie. He is my favorite character for so many reasons.
The article in Conservapedia, being the biographical sketch of Ragnar Danneskjöld and a discussion of just how he could have come to hijack the USS Enterprise and outfit it for modern-day privateering, was mine. That's right: mine. And if you click through to it, you will find links, at the bottom, to plenty more articles: about John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia, Dagny Taggart, Henry Rearden, James Taggart, Wesley Mouch, Kip Chalmers, Dr. Floyd Ferris, Dr. Robert Stadler, the Taggart Bridge, the Taggart Tunnel, Directive 10-289, Project X...you name it, or him, or her, and I have written about it, or him, or her.
I invite you all to review my essay and tell me where I might have gotten anything wrong. I was just figuring out the most plausible back story from what Rand actually wrote aboud him, and had him say about himself. And also what I would do in his place. Of course I would try to hijack the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). She's the longest flattop ever built, and was in a class by herself. Replace her nuclear engines with John Galt's electrostatic dynamos, and you've got yourself a ship that can sail forever.
That aside, if you read further on, you'll find how I handled his meeting and marrying Kay Ludlow, and the likely role he might be called upon to play after the collapse that follows the strike.
http://conservapedia.com/Ragnar_Danneskj...
IMNSHO, a much better choice for RD's pirate ship would be a ship following the traditions of the Q-ships of WW2. These were merchant ships remodeled as war ships and used to lure German U-boats to their doom. I believe that the Germans had a similar version used to raid commercial shipping (which is exactly what RD is doing). Basically a secret warship disguised as a merchant vessel and capable of being modified to have slightly differing profiles. The older and more decrepit it looks on the surface, the better. It could carry a secret arsenal of hidden naval guns, AA guns and missiles, cruise missiles and surface to surface missiles, and torpedoes. It could also have engines capable of speeds that a regular merchant ship could not do. Furthermore, it would have the right profile to get near a "real" merchant ship and allow for boarding as well as the ability to carry a helicopter for boarding and sea-to-land operations (hidden when not in use of course). By changing the false funnel(s), the paint job, and flagging, it could use several different disguises.
The other advantage such a ship would have is that it would not need a large crew. Even the "fast sealift ships" owned by the US have complements of 40-60. Large container ships have even fewer people I believe.
One ship in modern literature that fits the bill is the Oregon. In Clive Cussler's series of novels called the Oregon Files.
But it wouldn't actually be difficult. Smaller ships launched airplanes from catapult. Besides, that's a strange criteria to insist upon without also considering other criteria that rule out an aircraft carrier - like the long range guns capable of bombarding a factory. It's 2016 - take a helicopter instead of an airplane. Presumably one powered by Galt's engine and not needing to refuel. Or a VTOL aircraft like the Osprey. Or launch a seaplane by catapult and when it returns to the ship - pick it up by crane. They've been doing that for about 100 years.
the blogger Overmanwarrior, in reviewing the casting of Eric Allen Kramer to portray Ragnar Danneskjöld in the upcoming release Atlas Shrugged, Part 3, offers a different reason. Conventional military and security forces, staffed as they are with largely incompetent drones, suffer institutional paralysis. Thus they cannot cope effectively with a Ragnar Danneskjöld, any more than the People's States of Mexico, Chile, and Argentina could stop Francisco d'Anconia from humiliating them.
“ Over this last weekend a young man asked me why I wasn’t worried about assassination attempts, and political harassment for the things I get involved with. As I tried to explain why I did not worry about such things to him I could only think of Ragnar Danneskjöld. Readers here know that I have been involved in friendships with hit men, I have known members of crime syndications well, I have been a property repossesor, a body guard, a bouncer, and have been in many conflicts. I have known prominent judges representing the highest order of the law who looked like nice family guys who were deeply in bed with crime families doing really bad things so I have some very good experience and the bottom line is this; the NSA, the big banking families, the FBI, CIA, Muslim radicals, communists, socialist, labor unions, crazed lunatics and fanatical collectivists of the world taken together cannot for the life of them find their way out of a paper bag without proper leadership to help them. They are, taken at their collective intelligence, incompetent. As individuals, there are very competent people in those organizations—but as long as they function as a collective unit they are only as strong as the weakest links and are paralyzed with inaction. They can literally do nothing. The experience of Ragnar Danneskjöld in the novel Atlas Shrugged is reality. He was too competent to be captured by collective fools—which is a contrary message shown on cop dramas on television. In real life bullets don’t often fly as straight as people think, nor do they do as much damage upon impact. This is similar to when you punch someone in the face—they do not immediately go down like they do in the movies. If a person is bold, competent, and more intelligent than his rivals—he will win no matter what the odds and no matter what the number and this is something only a handful of people in the entire world understand. [3] ”
In other words: the authorities cannot catch Ragnar Danneskjöld because he, being smarter than any one man looking for him, can easily elude all such men. Good intelligence, operational and otherwise, requires weighing heads, not just counting them. The effectiveness of any team is the same as the effectiveness of the leader of that team. The better leader will win a game of hide-and-seek every time.
Leadership is not a team activity.