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The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

economist.com

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Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#81

Post by BrandonMarc »

tomelders wrote: post #15

Is 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.

Given their understanding that the stuff likely wouldn't leak for a long time, they agreed to (maybe) create a huge disaster (far into the future). Yep, that sounds pretty normal to me. Especially considering this solution was probably less expensive than the alternatives.

Hell, sounds like most kick-the-can-down-the-road politicians we have today, regarding a whole slew of issues. It's nice to see how far we've come in 70 years. 8-P

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#82

Post by character0 »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #80

The similar US operation was cheerfully named CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink 'Em): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHASE

I came here to make this comment. Interestingly enough, VX poison gas (think The Rock, but less face-melting) was disposed in this way before they tried incineration and chemical means.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#84

Post by dbs »

sekasi wrote: post #41
grumblepeet wrote: post #20

My father, who was in the Royal Engineers at the end of WWII and for a few years after, was always worried about the "tons" of mustard gas and explosives that he and his colleagues were ordered to dump into the Irish Sea. He told me that some of the explosives were so unstable that they "sweated" nitroglycerine, and they used to run their finger down the sides of the explosives and flick it at each other to make smal…

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.

I'm pretty sure some modern guys are already planning to do it again in the Mediterranean

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/0...

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#85

Post by MarkTee »

1ris wrote: post #52
gedrap wrote: post #50

Earlier 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.

Maybe in the Western World.

Right now there are thousands of child soldiers around the world doing things much worse than digging trenches. There are also a number of armed conflicts that are currently ongoing (although they aren't anywhere near the scale of something like WWII).

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#86

Post by declan »

cafard wrote: post #43
Luc wrote: post #8

Not just in the Baltic Sea. There's a dump of WWI poison gas grenades 2km off the Belgian coast, buried in the sand. You can see the marker buoys from the beach. Here's a little map of the area: http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/gasoorlog/paardenmarkt.html EDIT: Then there's the stuff on land. In Belgium they still recuperate between 100 and 200 tons of ammunition per year. Farmers post them by the side of the road for…

Some very pricy real estate in Washington, DC, the Spring Valley neighborhood, was once part of a chemical warfare station. When WW I ended, the staff followed the approved disposal method--dig a hole, roll in the shells, cover the hole. A lot of nasty stuff, mostly as I recall mustard gas shells, has been dug out and disposed of more properly over the last 30 years or so. But one reads now and then of concern about…

Same with some of the choicest real estate in the SF bay area, which came under sustained barrage back when Stanford University was a munitions range.

That was during WWI, when the U.S. Army was targeting Portola Valley, which is now one of the wealthiest zip codes in the nation:

http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/pdf/campfremont.pdf "Camp Fremont troops engage in mobile artillery practice, near what is now Dish Hill. The guns—almost certainly 75mm field guns of British or American manufacture—are aimed toward Foothills Park and Portola Valley, where 75mm shells were unearthed as recently as November 2010... five million rounds of World War I-era ammunition fired in a four-month span on the foothills where the camp conducted its war games..."

That document doesn't say anything about Woodside (where Steve Jobs famously battled with the town) just a tad to the north. But Woodside was settled earlier. Mountain Home Ranch was settled in 1839 and and a local church opened in 1893 -- all of which likely convinced the Army to shift its artillery range to the south...

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#87

Post by caf »

dbs wrote: post #84
sekasi wrote: post #41

Earlier 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.

I'm pretty sure some modern guys are already planning to do it again in the Mediterranean http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/0...

Well, no. They're not just dumping anything over the side - they're using a mobile chemical reactor called the Field-Deployable Hydrolysis System to break the chemical weapons agents down into far less nasty, but still quite toxic, waste. Which isn't being dumped over the side, either.

See here for some technical comment on the FDHS: http://guests.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4158/cw-destructio...

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#88

Post by notastartup »

danohuiginn wrote: post #13

The shelf life of most chemical weapons is fairly short -- and tends to be shorter the nastier they are. We're mainly talking mustard gas. Germany did use nerve gases tabun, sarin, and soman [1]. But nerve gases degrade after a period of a few weeks to a few years. I'm not sure what they degrade into, admittedly, and I doubt it's nice. Mustard gas lasts longer, but is also much less potent. Military use is about 1 to…

What is concerning is the marine life that ends up on people's dinner plates containing such chemicals or some weird disease because of the exposure to it.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#89

Post by jmzbond »

This is an interesting article, and the comments are even more interesting, highlighting other similar scenarios that have happened around the world.

I'm more curious if we think we'll learn from these and in the future try to make better decisions (which hopefully means we'll avoid production in the first place, which means... well, I live in a Disney world sometimes OK?). Sometimes it's depressing how short term the collective memory of humanity seems to be, what with bubbles and crises repeating themselves every couple of generations.

Re: The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

#90

Post by lostlogin »

declan wrote: post #86
cafard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some very pricy real estate in Washington, DC, the Spring Valley neighborhood, was once part of a chemical warfare station. When WW I ended, the staff followed the approved disposal method--dig a hole, roll in the shells, cover the hole. A lot of nasty stuff, mostly as I recall mustard gas shells, has been dug out and disposed of more properly over the last 30 years or so. But one reads now and then of concern about…

Same with some of the choicest real estate in the SF bay area, which came under sustained barrage back when Stanford University was a munitions range. That was during WWI, when the U.S. Army was targeting Portola Valley, which is now one of the wealthiest zip codes in the nation: http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/pdf/campfremont.pdf "Camp Fremont troops engage in mobile artillery practice, near what is now Dish Hill.…

The Ghost Fleet in San Francisco Bay had me interested after going past it via train. Not sure what the plan is for it, but leaving stuff like that to rot won't be doing the sea any good. The well maintained shipyard that isn't too far from me has one hell of a high heavy metal count and I can't imaging The Ghost Fleet is doing any better. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suisun_Bay
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