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British Town Worried About WWII Ammo Ship Wreck
Radical Rad writes "For 60 years, 1.4 kilotons of unstable world war II bombs have lain in the rusting wreck of a US cargo ship half-submerged on a sandbank in the river Thames. If it explodes it will be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever with predictions of a 3 kilometre high wall of mud, water, and metal fragments causing devastation to the nearby town of Sheerness in Kent." The BBC has more.
Glad I still had time to change the vacation plans!
Your Friend, O bin Laden.
Let's go set them off and see! Waiting is no fun!
My other car is first.
Lets nuke it and sell the video on PPV.
i cant think of too many things designed these days that would survive 60+ years of being exposed to the elements, especially buried in a sand bank underwater... and then would still work close to specifications...
yep, they just dont build things the way they used to
Exploding things are cool. Every geek knows that.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
neither do I, not that badly...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Did anybody else think of that episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan accidentally brings in a WWII mine while fishing, or was that just my own television warped mind?
"So. Let's see. It'll require super modern technology like "SCUBA" gear and big "Cranes", maybe even "Vehicles". Wow. I'm so excited I think I wet my pants."
nice reply, but
'SCUBA' wont be used for much of anything
go ahead and use 'Cranes' to lift 1.4 kilotons worth of TNT buried in a rusted out cargo ship in a sandbank underwater in a large river.
What kind of 'Vehicles' are you thinking of? 'Vehicles' is a pretty wide ranging group. Do you plan to use boats, or airplanes, or segways, or what?
As far as you being excited and wetting your pants, I will agree with you there. That is certainly not news for nerds. or stuff that matters.
Be a little more specific as far as to why you dont think this wont take a little engineering or some other nerdly skills.
Oh, this is one of those lovely times when one city planner looks at the other and saysi x(destroyer);
"Well, do you want to take charge of cleaning up the destroyer and risking great loss of life and a good bit of London?"
"I thought you were going to do it!"
"Well, if you're not doing it, and I'm not doing it, and it's not like it's going to happen tommorow, what say we let it go for a bit?"
"Jolly good."
The sad thing is this conversation probably occured in
for(year=1945;year=CurrentYear;year++)
dontf
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I suspect that the reason those articles do not cite a plan of action for defusing these explosives stems from the British governments indecision over whether they would rather protect millions upon millions in property or see a really really cool explosion.
Were they actually testing anything, or was this a thinly-veiled excuse to blow shit up?
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Too bad it's on the Thames. British people just don't have the same deep appreciation for blowing stuff up that Americans do. I suppose that's one of the reasons we revolted though...
The largest non-nuclear explosion in the free world was the 4,800 tons of ANFO
And the largest non-nuclear explosion in the non-free world was when 1.2 Billion Chinese all jumped simultaneously.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Grandparents set up us the bomb!
You know what you doing!
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
500 people died after burning for 6 days
Ouch. That had to hurt.
Personally, I probably would put the flaming people out after a day or two.
Three days.. tops.
The
where do I sign up?
Who fucking cares?
If you don't want to get asploded, don't live in England or wherever the fuck it is British people come from. Simple as that. Don't come bitching to us when a wall of mud and metal and I suppose various sea creatures and junk crashes down on your stupid little town. You chose to live there, deal with it.
Why are the English always asking us to solve their problems? One is reminded of when the Great Plague hit England in 1576. If I recall, and I always do, it was none other than the United States who sent over Mr. T and the T-Force to wipe the plague out and make England safe for future American visitors. A few years later it's "Oh no! The Canadians are dropping bombs on our cities or something!" and we're over there again saving their asses. What do we get in return? A snarky attitude about the large amount of explosives we happen to have left behind when we were done kicking Canadian ass.
I can see that place from out my window, and that's the first I've heard of this.
Typical.
If you bothered to read the entire first sentence of his post, you might notice that he wasn't tieing the 4,800 tons of ANFO with the Oklahoma City bombing, but with the "Minor Scale Event" (link stolen from the post you're berating I thought I'd let you know, since you obviously never got that far reading it). The Oklahoma City reference was just to give the non-explosives experts an idea of what else ANFO explosives have been used for. Not really necessary, especially since it completely confuses people like you who apparently can't understand anything more complex than a Dr. Seuss book.
Tell them that the ship is a haven for file-swappers.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
But WAIT!!!!you're telling me that a large abandoned ship full of explosives existed exposed to the outside world for sixty some years and it WASN'T looted by hordes of pyro teenagers? There must be something fundamentally wrong with the teenagers across that ocean. Methinks not enough good ol american made rednek would fix it right up.
GITTERDUN!!!!!!!!
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
> has there ever been a wave that high? are you people retarded?
First is a probable yes.. second a definite yes.
And they tend to have cool nicknames, too.
Like Stumpy, Peg-leg, Ol' one-eye...
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
Nice to see the mods getting it right: the suggestion that anyone would go to Sheerness for their holiday definitely deserves +5 Funny.
you could ask any question involving the US and 'responsible' and the answer will always be the same:
NOOOOOOOO
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
well damn, that's just not worth it then. okay, guys, plan's off.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
As far as defusing bombs goes, you can't beat MacGyver. In fact, he's been so bored of late that he's resorted to building bombs on aeroplanes (See: http://bbspot.com/News/2004/06/macgyver.html.) So I think he'd jump at the opportunity to defuse a few...
- Kill remaining bad guys from losing regime.
- Redraw map, divide spoils.
- Put out things actually currently on fire.
- Feed starving masses.
- Rattle sabres about map/spoils.
- Rebuild railroads, road systems, power, and plumbing.
- If some major internal industry is of economic interest to the victors, rebuild that, too.
The short and direct answer to your question is because we couldn't tow it to Bikini.(Which step we are on in Iraq is left as an exercise for the reader)
yeah, I think most of Kent would second that idea!
Too bad you couldn't spell "Iraq" properly.
News has just reached the Slashdot studios that Sheerness has officially declared to be part of Iraq. In an interview, President Bush announced:
"Thank gawd! There's y'er nuclear weapons, y'all".
Trust me, the world would be a nicer place without the Isle of Sheppy! It's aweful! It doesn't have beachs or sea it has mud! Aethiests could work on the water there! It's a nasty horrible, unpleasant place, with no charming features at all, a website called http://www.sheppyscum.com summed it up brialliantly! (pity thse site is gone now) And sadly my father is from their and my gransparents and family are STILL there .. which means I have to visit! I even ran away to New Zealand to get as far away as possible!
Now I feel unclean after thinking about Sheppy and Sheerness-on-Sea(mud), need to go get drunk now to forget it. ;-)
so all we need is, oh say a round thousand, of Arizona State Mine Inspectors. Train them as divers, and problem solved!