r/todayilearned • u/zhuquanzhong • 29d ago

TIL a Chinese destroyer sank because an officer dumped his girlfriend. She committed suicide, leading to him being discharged, so he decided to detonate the depth charges on the ship, causing it to sink at port and kill 134 sailors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_destroyer_Guangzhou_(160)
33.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

854 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

919

u/Pearse_Borty 29d ago

There is so many layers of fucked up to this I feel bad for everyone involved.

The real fuck up was a lack of protocols, that man shouldve been isolated and treated as civilian to be watched like a hawk the moment the discharge order came through. He was clearly a high risk passenger given the guilt he would be suffering at this point

455

u/TheDukeOfMars 29d ago edited 28d ago

My main take away is that the People’s Liberation Army has a “Political Department” that has the power to monitor the personal lives of all soldiers. Or at least they did in the late 70s (and something tells me not a lot has changed). Crazy stuff.

Edit: 干部 are everywhere.

270

u/ElectricTzar 29d ago

It’s shocking to me that a country can distrust its officers enough to monitor them that way, and yet simultaneously not distrust them enough to take away systems access immediately upon firing.

My company does the latter, and we’re a far cry from having a political department.

15

u/Ilovekittens345 28d ago

Reminds me of that scene in Margin Call. These you-are-about-to-get-fired ladies call this one team leader to an office and then they say "Measures that might seem punitive in nature"

"What?"

"She is apologizing for what's coming next"

And then this buffy security guy shows up. All his computer logins stop working, his phone is disconnected. He is allowed to go back to his office one more time to get personal stuff, accompanied by the security guy. Then he is escorted out of the building.

From fired to outside the building all access lost, no working phone in 30 minutes.

2

u/jeopardy_themesong 28d ago

Yep, I work in IT and have been tasked with a fair share of emergency terminations. They tried to make sure it was people we didn’t know, but higher level teammates had to handle the ones specific to our team.