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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!
After all this time that something is going to happen? Would some of the explosives now be inert?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Your Friend, O bin Laden.
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.
hmmm "The government has been advised that doing nothing isn't really a sensible option any more."
... with something having a continuous risk, no matter how small, the chance of it exploding approaches one over time... it seems like something should have been done immediately... certainly not 60 years later. The only excuse I can think of is the hope that the technology would improve enough to find a safer way to safeguard the town, but surely no one thought this would happen quick enough to be worth the risk... this sounds like a bunch of people not willing to take a risk and just waiting for the next person to take on the responsibility... pah.
She said the last examination, in 2003, showed the site to be no more dangerous than in the past.
Alright, according to the article the bombs could detonate at any point spontaneously, but the risk hasn't changed from the past,
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Who allowed this to happen? I mean, okay, the ship sank there, but why wasn't it cleaned up along with the millions of tons of other war junk from WWII that was disposed of?
This is a perfect example of the insurance dictum that 'claims do not go away'. You need to settle them (ie, fix the problem).
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Well they have a clusterfuck of a problem and are looking for solutions. Sounds like nerd business to me.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
According to the linked BBC piece, the wave caused by a potential explosion would not be 3km high, it would be 16ft high. The New Scientist makes mention of a 3000m column of debris: that is material would reach a maximum height of 3km. This is entirely different from a tsunami-like wave baselessly alluded to by the Slashdot blurb.
As a participent/observer, I can attest that (ignoring some misc. issues), it blow'ed up real good! ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Sorry but "London Bridge" has been moved to the suburbs of Phoenix Arizona.
Because it's "News for Nerds," not "News For Nerds Who Only Care About Things That Run On Silicon." It's the obsessives who think that computers are the be-all and end-all of everything that matters who give nerds in general a bad name, IMNSGDHO.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
In 1917 250 tons of explosive gun powder, benzol, and gun cotton loaded on the French ship Mont-Blanc exploded and devastated the town of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The ship was carrying supplies to help the war effort over seas. A fire resulting from a collision with a Norwegian ship as the Mont-Blanc was leaving the harbor to join up with a convoy was triggered the blast 28 minutes after the minor collision.
The death toll rose to about 1,600 in a city with a population near 50,000. An explosion 5 times as powerful in a town 5 times smaller could conceivably wipe it off the face of the earth. 12,000 homes were damaged or destroyed not only by the blast, but also the fires that followed.
Wikipedia has some more information on the Halifax explosion.
From the article, they worried about more on building/windows getting damaged, not injury. Could they take some time and figure out how to control an explosion to help get rid of the danger?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
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?
If it's a U.S. cargo ship, are we responsible for cleaning up our mess?
Alternate solution #1 - make the guy who sunk it clean it up.
Alternate solution #2 -Make the guy who started the war clean it up.
There are UXO's from WWI and WWII all over Europe. From all sides. The get cleaned up as they are found, by whomever finds them. Hopefully cleaned up under control.
#text#
In 1970, government tests on the site showed a
blast would hurl a 1,000ft wide column of water,
mud, metal and munitions almost 10,000ft into
the air.
The shock of the blast would shatter almost
every window in Sheerness and damage buildings.
The explosion would also generate a 16ft high
wave that could sink a small craft.
#/text#
where did poster get the "with predictions of a 3 kilometre high wall of mud"????
"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.
By coincidence, I had just read the New Scientist's article about this, which is the source of the BBC article, but in much more depth and with many more details,
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.
Shameless lifted from Some random page about the Port of Chicago explosion.
On the evening of 17 July 1944, the empty merchant ship SS Quinault Victory was prepared for loading on her maiden voyage. The SS E.A. Bryan, another merchant ship, had just returned from her first voyage and was loading across the platform from Quinault Victory. The holds were packed with high explosive and incendiary bombs, depth charges, and ammunition - 4,606 tons of ammunition in all. There were sixteen rail cars on the pier with another 429 tons. Working in the area were 320 cargo handlers, crewmen and sailors.
At 10:18 p.m., a hollow ring and the sound of splintering wood erupted from the pier, followed by an explosion that ripped apart the night sky. Witnesses said that a brilliant white flash shot into the air, accompanied by a loud, sharp report. A column of smoke billowed from the pier, and fire glowed orange and yellow. Flashing like fireworks, smaller explosions went off in the cloud as it rose. Within six seconds, a deeper explosion erupted as the contents of the E.A. Bryan detonated in one massive explosion. The seismic shock wave was felt as far away as Boulder City, Nevada. The E.A. Bryan and the structures around the pier were completely disintegrated. A pillar of fire and smoke stretched over two miles into the sky above Port Chicago. The largest remaining pieces of the 7,200-ton ship were the size of a suitcase. A plane flying at 9,000 feet reported seeing chunks of white hot metal "as big as a house" flying past. The shattered Quinault Victory was spun into the air. Witnesses reported seeing a 200-foot column on which rode the bow of the ship, its mast still attached. Its remains crashed back into the bay 500 feet away.
All 320 men on duty that night were killed instantly. The blast smashed buildings and rail cars near the pier and damaged every building in Port Chicago. People on the base and in town were sent flying or were sprayed with splinters of glass and other debris. The air filled with the sharp cracks and dull thuds of smouldering metal and unexploded shells as they showered back to earth as far as two miles away. The blast caused damage 48 miles across the Bay in San Francisco.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Go here. For more specifics about the offshore explosion hazard click here.
(Note: site doesn't appear to work well in Firefox)
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
However, in France, the incidence of UXO is sufficiently high that local farmers plow up "items" on a regular basis. If they are small enough to be moved by an individual, they are taken out by hand and put in drop boxes by the road for ordnance techs to deal with. That's how common they are- farmers turned ordnance technicians.
While working on a test program with some British ordnance people, a story was related to me regarding buried UXO from WWII. Pipes were filled with nitroglycerin (NG), and buried perpendicular to landing strips in the UK. The idea was that they could be detonated in the event of invasion, rendering the landing strips useless. They were forgotten after WWII, and during construction some decades later, were re-discovered when a pipe containing NG was struck with a backhoe; I believe it killed the operator.
Making things worse during the remediation effort was that apartments had been built over part of the old runway. The Brits paid to bus the residents to the beach each day, and then bring them back in the afternoon after work for the day had halted. Evidently, they became quite cross when the work was finished a day early and everyone lined up for the buses, and the buses didn't come that day.
Anyway- the only thing worse than UXO is unexploded, toxic ordnance. Chemical warfare just hasn't been the same since the Chinese invented burning pepper upwind of the enemy, I'll tell ya.
where do I sign up?
Remember that one of their biggest parties is for when somebody failed to blow something up in a big way: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. I don't think this guy would get a holiday of his own here in the States.
(Ha! Take that all you Brits who think all us Yanks are uncultured swine! A topical British cultural reference from an American! On behalf of my countrymen, Neener neener neener!)
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.
It's not a holiday for Guy Fawkes. It's a holiday that celebrates his failure and execution; he is (or rather was, I don't know many places that still do this) burned in effigy every year.
In the US in 197x (no, I don't remember exactly) a munitions train loaded with bombs destined for Vietnam exploded in the railyard (in Roseville, CA). Bombs went off for hours, devastating the surrounding areas. I was a young kid in the area at the time. All I remember was, "Mommy, is that thunder?" Followed by "Get in the house!"
:).
Anyway. That's not the best part. A few years ago they were doing some construction in the area when a backhoe hit something... something metal.
Oops.
Well, they called out the bomb squad, who said 'fsck it!' and called the military, who decided to blow the thing in place. Many windows in the area gave their lives.
After that they used ground penetrating radar in the area and declared the area "cleared".
End of story? Nope.
A week later "tink"... a backhoe hit something... something metal. It seems that, and this is just priceless, when they did the ground penetrating radar passes, they only went for POSITIVE matches, i.e.: it had to look like a bomb on radar. Well, come on, the area is littered with shrapnel and train debris even 30 years later.
After much flogging, they did more radar and found not 1... not 2... but EIGHT 250-lbs bombs in the immediate area.
Anyway, I hear houses in the area can be had cheap
Actually it might be a blessing if it did happen.
If you want to know more about the dubious joys of living on the isle of Sheppey (on which Sheerness is located) then you can find out at the most excellent Isle of Sheppey tourists guide.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Nice to see the mods getting it right: the suggestion that anyone would go to Sheerness for their holiday definitely deserves +5 Funny.
> ... which we don't have to deal with here in the US
... it's easier to make the stuff if you don't have to deal with the consequences on your own soil.
Perhaps that's part of why the US _isn't_ one of the 152 countries that have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (effectively a landmine ban)
Yes. It would have been cool to see it.
Also the Trinity test was massivly cool to watch.
Same goes to the explosion of of mt.St. Helens.
I would give a part of my life to witness the santorini explosion or the Tsungaska event.
Or how the Gibraltar Barrier broke and the Mediterrean filled again...
Yes. People died on some of the events. But that doesnt make it any less impressive.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Perhaps that's part of why the US _isn't_ one of the 152 countries that have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty...
No. The reason is that the US uses landmines to defend the border between North Korea and South Korea. Its easy for those 152 countries to claim that landmines are unecessary when they don't have 30,000 men and women standing in the way of 1,000,000 mental communists.
And make sure they know it'll be dark and they have to bring lots of candles. And matches. And oil lamps.
And just to be safe, have a plane fly overhead and drop a flare.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
(Sorry to post as AC - I didn't register yet.)
Cluster bombs based on a spring-loaded collection of small bomblets were used for delivering both HE and incendiary charges in WW2.
I live in a dutch town (Nijmegen) that was destroyed by US bombers, partially using cluster-bombs, in August 1944. Over 800 Dutch were killed and zero Germans. The attack was an accident when several aircraft could not find their primary target in the industrialised area of Germany. The resulting fires attracted other 'geographically-embarassed' aircraft....
I'm certainly glad I don't live in Sheerness though !
From my following of the coronial inquiry into the blast:
The contractor found that the structural columns were not as described on the blueprints, but in fact contained a lot more steel. The cuting charges required for this type of steel were not available in the country and would need to be specially imported (you can't just stick HE on a ship or airplane). Since the contractor was working to a contract that included fairly strong late penalties, he improvised something that was quite a bit faster than the proper cutting charges. Unfortunately the sandbags that were placed around the charges did not prevent large chunks of shrapnel from being launched. A young girl (12 or so) was struck by a piece and killed.
I went to watch the blast, but from a much longer distance than most other folk (and I made sure there was a large hill between me and the base of the hospital). I was surprised at how close people were, and I was also surprised that more people were not injured.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The Baker Shot which was 20 kilotons only produced a "wall" of water about 60 meters high at ground zero.
This is a really stupid, and over exaggerated article.
TNT 226,797 kg
... 544 Tons
e .p hp?p9
t ml
Wet picric acid 1,602,519 kg
Dry picric acid 544,311 kg
Guncotton[?] 56,301 kg
Benzol 223,188 kg
Since 1000 KG is about 1 ton
TNT 226 Tons
Wet Picric Acid 1602 Tons
Dry
Guncotton (nitrate of cellulose) 56 Tons
Benzol 223 Tons
Or 2651 Tons of explosives, very approx.
Of course TNT is not as powerful then the others listed but it was one hell of a blast. They did a survey of the harbour that proved that the long standing story that a crater existed in the harbour was not true.
http://gsca.nrcan.gc.ca/pubprod/of3154/showimg_
Other Links
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mma/AtoZ/halexpl.h
Weather this is done by engineers/sappers, artillery fire, or pointing a machine gun into the backs of prisoners and telling them to run en masse over certain areas, or vehicles with the appropriate mechanism to detonate mines safely (ie chains and extremely thick tractor treads).
You're talking about using up lots of prisoners, and vehicles aren't practical except for clearning road-sized passages.
The whole point of a minefield is to really slow down the enemy. If you send 1000 prisoners into a field, one will trip a mine, which will probably kill at least a few dozen of them (many launch grenades high into the air), and the mine 10 feet away will still be active. How do you get all those prisoners to the border in the first place.
What a minefield does is make your enemy either put millions of people on the border simply so that they can absorb HUGE losses, or use mineclearing techniques, which funnel their troops through narrow corridors which can be more easily defended.
You can't park millions of troops on a border for years at a time - it costs a fortune and they aren't occupied in useful work. So, if the N Koreans started moving that many troops to the border, the US would quickly reinforce its lines.
Also, if you send prisoners across the minefields, they won't set off anti-tank mines - just anti-personnel mines. So at best the enemy can get lots of poorly-armed and unsupported troops over the border. That isn't much use in a war - you need a well-reinforced army with armored support to be effective.
Minefields are very effective. They're basically like $10 smart-bombs - every detonation is a perfect hit. They force the enemy to slow down, buying you time to reinforce.
And the mines that the US uses are well mapped, and are designed to disable themselves after some amount of time. I'm sure this isn't perfect, but there are no perfect solutions when you have a country ruled by a dictator on your border. The normal rules of diplomacy don't really apply - the behavior of a single person is not that easy to control...