I've been thinking of moving to Poland from the U.S. for a few months now. This sort of thing doesn't necessarily make me not want to go, but it does make me angry how the U.S. and other countries treat the majority of the world like our own, personal dump. And it makes me wonder how well Americans would be received by the locals once people start coming down with cancer and other horrible diseases that we essentially are the direct cause of.
The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
51–60 of 100 posts
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Terrifying. But like you said, basically kids during the war forced to do a lot of things most modern day guys could never even imagine.
>>> most modern day guys could never even imagine. Oh no need for that. Grab a local news paper, check the crime section. 'modern day guys' are not so smart and innocent, are they?
My gradma digged trenches and stacked bodies, at the age of 14 or 15. Modern day guies don't do that, or something similar. War time is dramatical different.
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#53Is there something missing from the article or am I going mad? I don't understand how people came to the rational conclusion that it would be ok to dump thousands of tons of this stuff into the sea. It seems to me that people collectively agreed to create a guaranteed disaster.
The problem was that they had thousands of tons of this stuff, all of it rather close to lots of people, all of it designed to kill lots of people, lots of it was unstable, and lots of people wanted to obtain & abuse it. The only apparent way to "make it go away" was to dump it in the sea ("out of sight, out of mind"). They knew it wasn't a good idea, but it was a whole lot better than any other solution they could come up with on short notice. Many decades later we're still postulating "what if" rather than dealing with actual consequences.
Most people similarly discard household toxins: they know throwing batteries/CFLs/paint/etc in the general-purpose dumpster is not "ok", but for them it's an easy & effective solution. Disastrous for someone/something somewhere sometime, but not for "me, now".
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#54Whose bright idea was it to dump chemical weapons in the Baltic sea?
Lets follow the logic here... Leftover chemical weapons from Germany ---> Destroy them, or store in a wearhouse of unknown location ---> No, lets drop them into the saltwater of Baltic sea in metal containers and worry about it in 2014.
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#55This may be a dumb question, but why were they tossed into the ocean? Was it because there was no alternative? Or they just wanted them away from potential users of them?
You've got a box full of agonizing death. It's unstable. Doing anything to neutralize it will be both hideously expensive and risky. Over there is, well, the ocean. Your move.
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#56I've been thinking of moving to Poland from the U.S. for a few months now. This sort of thing doesn't necessarily make me not want to go, but it does make me angry how the U.S. and other countries treat the majority of the world like our own, personal dump. And it makes me wonder how well Americans would be received by the locals once people start coming down with cancer and other horrible diseases that we essentiall…
"Under an agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped around 65,000 tonnes of Germany’s chemical weapons stockpile into the murky depths of the Baltic Sea in 1947-48."
What does America have to do with this?
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Mustard gas lasts longer, but is also much less potent Maybe much less potent in killing instantly (ie in combat use), but what about long-term low-dosage exposure? > possibly going up the food chain (does that happen?) Bio-accumulation in general is very real thing, and imho the most worrisome aspect of this situation.
The issue with chemical weapons is that they are very reactive. Mustard gas would react with the organics floating around in the ocean very quickly. As for the hydrolysis product of mustard gas, thiodiethanol, it's not very toxic. The MSDS claims acute toxicity in rates starts around 6.5g/kg. So a human would need to consume ~500g in order to see toxicity. Also, thiodiethanol is quite reactive itself. It would likely…
Yeah, given the existence of life at deep-sea sulfuric vents, I wouldn't be surprised if the newly evolved bioorganisms were colonizing the containers at their leakage points.
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#58I've been thinking of moving to Poland from the U.S. for a few months now. This sort of thing doesn't necessarily make me not want to go, but it does make me angry how the U.S. and other countries treat the majority of the world like our own, personal dump. And it makes me wonder how well Americans would be received by the locals once people start coming down with cancer and other horrible diseases that we essentiall…
>And it makes me wonder how well Americans would be received by the locals once people start coming down with cancer and other horrible diseases that we essentially are the direct cause of.
Except the United States has already poisoned their own people with all those nuclear weapons test in Nevada. As I've pointed out in another comment here. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620859)
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#59This may be a dumb question, but why were they tossed into the ocean? Was it because there was no alternative? Or they just wanted them away from potential users of them?
Basically the allied powers had just conquered Nazi Germany and no one was 100% sure that victory was forever. Now imagine a "Werewolf" movement re-capturing a chemical weapons arsenal.
Therefore better to just get rid of the stuff ASAP.
Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>> most modern day guys could never even imagine. Oh no need for that. Grab a local news paper, check the crime section. 'modern day guys' are not so smart and innocent, are they?
My gradma digged trenches and stacked bodies, at the age of 14 or 15. Modern day guies don't do that, or something similar. War time is dramatical different.
Eh, go look at footage out of Syria or parts of Africa--it's more a comment on the state of the civilizations going to war.