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Radioactive Hulk of Carrier USS Independence Found Off San Francisco (2015)
- justinator 7y agoHumans are pretty stupid. So, we exploded a nuclear bomb, just to see what would happen to a bunch of ships (I guess since, it was quite the mystery), then towed one the ships back to a major metropolitan city, sandblasted it to try to decontaminate it (which didn't work), stored the now contaminated sand onto the ship, then towed the ship back out to see, just to use it as target practice until it sank, thus sinking a radioactive ship and it's contaminated sand. Living a few miles from Rocky Flats, where are sorts of crazy stuff almost happened, it's no wonder we survived the 20th century.
- jorblumesea 7y agoIt's easy in hindsight to judge them, but you benefit from the knowledge they gained from experimentation. Radiation and the effects of background radiation was poorly understood. While no one contested the destructive impact of the bomb themselves, it was unclear what long term impacts, if any, might result. Also around this time, soldiers were exposed to direct nuclear explosions, handling nuclear material with incorrect safety procedures, and all sorts of behavior we would consider to be insane. To make a modern day comparison, future generations will surely judge us for our inaction on climate change or heavy use of PFAS and types of plastics.
- ericd 7y agoAlso, human life probably seemed relatively cheap, after a war where 10s of millions had just died and civilian targets had been firebombed. They probably just didn't get as worked up over threats that might kill someone in a few decades, when they had become used to the prospect of being killed at any moment.
- falsedan 7y agoYou don't need hindsight, they were tickling the dragon's tail in Los Alamos right before Crossroads and physicist were dying. The experiments were less motivated by scientific enquiry and more rushed macho posturing to show the USSR they mean business
- shortandsweet 7y agoI disagree. Humans are inquisitive. Long term goal and planning orientated. Nuclear technology was new at that time and nobody knew much about it. Just the other day I was wondering how to decontaminate Chernobyl and Fukushima. If we could do that, that would remove all doubts for the nuclear technology. I'm glad I saw this article because it demonstrates a problem that nobody has figured out yet. Huge opportunity to whoever does. I'm thinking nanobot technology might be a solution. We aren't there yet.
- toyg 7y agoCircuitry and radioactivity don’t mix. Bots might be the solution, nanos probably not.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoNanos would face the same issue living things face - ionizing radiation taking out vital components in one shot.
- pm90 7y agoWhat if they were made of lead? Or do you need a thick layer of lead to shield from ionizing radiation?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoNanobots by definition have important/active parts with sizes on the scale of molecules. Doesn't matter what the molecules are exactly - if a radiation particle hits an atom and ionizes it, it's likely to break the molecule it's in and thus the mechanism. By break, I don't mean break apart - but a molecule that suddenly gains or loses charge in its structure starts interacting differently with other molecules. (Except it's how ionizing radiation damages DNA; cells implement error detection, error correction and self-destruction mechanisms to limit the spread of DNA damage. Unless we go the biotech route and make our first nanotech by repurposing viruses and bacteria, our nanobots are unlikely to be as resilient.)
- a012 7y agoAdd up to the "human is stupid" part, where humans heat up the earth so bad, the Arctic melted and uncovers its surface where countries now target it for its "valuable" metals.
- eloff 7y agoThe Arctic is an ocean. Maybe you mean the Antarctic? Even so we're very far from uncovering its surface and there are international treaties prohibiting resource exploration there.
- danaliv 7y agoNo, they meant the Arctic. The sea ice covering the Arctic has a natural cycle of growth and retreat with the seasons, but the overall trend in the last decade is one of unprecedented decline. This has led countries like Russia, Canada, and the US to start arguing about who gets access to the hydrocarbons, rare earth, and other resources that will be accessible as the thawing continues. From a greenhouse perspective this is an incredibly dangerous situation because Arctic ice reflects a great deal of sunlight. Without that ice, the atmosphere will absorb more heat from the sun.
- itry2develop 7y agoIt's been in decline since the last ice age, which was only 10,000 yrs ago.
- eloff 7y agoYou could interpret surface as ocean surface, but then the parent talks of mining metals. So I don't think they really do mean the Arctic. But I agree with you about how silly it is that global warming is going to enable hydrocarbon extraction in the Arctic and thus more global warming. Us humans are really bad at long term collective good type of planning.
- danaliv 7y agoThe Arctic includes parts of Alaska, Russia, Greenland, and Scandinavia. It’s not just ocean. Greenland’s ice cap is melting too, and China (for one) is very interested in mining there. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/science/earth/arctic-resources-exposed-by-warming-set-off-competition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/science/earth/arctic-reso...
- crazygringo 7y agoNope, humans were trying to figure out how to manage the consequences of nuclear weapons, which were judged to be a necessary strategy to end World War II to attempt to defeat fascism and save democracy. Not "just to see what would happen" but to know how vulnerable our Navy would be to the very real threat of atomic attack from the Russians, and thus to responsibly inform strategy and tactics should that nightmare ever come to pass. Testing decontamination also necessary to inform e.g. necessary fleet sizes in case of nuclear war -- could ships ever be reused or not? An existing shipyard is the logical place to do that, and unfortunately widespread environmental consciousness just didn't happen until the landmark publication of Silent Spring in 1962, more than a decade later. Storing the contaminated sand on the ship and sinking it was a pretty reasonable thing to do at the time, not "just to use it as target practice" but to kill two birds with one stone. Nobody's perfect, but you seem to really be judging people from several generations ago according to current societal standards, and completely misportraying their motives.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoThere has also been an awful lot of humans doing stuff "just to see what would happen" across history. From ice-picks for faster lobotomies, through widely available quack remedies to project A119 - "I wonder what would happen if we nuked the moon". Let's not presume high moral motives in everything our forefathers did, nor to all of our current generation either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
- paulddraper 7y agoIt's how we got a lot of our good inventions too. Also half the stuff that shows up on HN.
- jacquesm 7y agoIncredible that revealing that would be considered a violation of national security, conceiving it should have been considered a violation of national security. The dumbasses that came up with this idea were fortunately overruled by people with a bit more sense of what the public response to such vandalism would be.
- NikkiA 7y agoCompared to the time[0] that they dusted SF with a live bioweapon for 20 years, just to see what would happen, this is pretty minor league. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...
- hammock 7y agoYou might be aware but it's not clear to me from your comment, there is plenty of radioactive contamination around Rocky Flats.
- Theodores 7y agoWe know of Nagasaki and Hiroshima but we don't acknowledge what a mess the U.S. West was made from nuclear experimentation. Hundreds more nuclear bombs were exploded in Nevada and then the Bay Area is surrounded by nuclear facilities leaching radioactive waste into the river. I can understand why the U.S. government would like to litter Iraq with depleted uranium as they have a vested interest in making large parts of the world 'infertile' but the things the U.S. government does on the domestic population do not have such 'benefits'. But, if you lived in Washington D.C., got paid with the usual pork-barrel politics and had to connection to California, would you care?
- Dylan16807 7y ago> So, we exploded a nuclear bomb, just to see what would happen to a bunch of ships (I guess since, it was quite the mystery) Why the skepticism? Nuclear physics is enormously complicated, and without testing bombs we would have ridiculously imprecise and flat out wrong guesses about the effects.
- falsedan 7y agoThey tested a bunch of bombs before this; there was significant information about the blast effects and radiation available. The truly dumb thing is attempting experimental decontamination in the middle of a major waterway in a metropolitan area.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoDid you expect them to just use their time machine to figure out which things the future will frown upon and not do those things? Hindsight is 20/20.
- animal531 7y agoRadiation decreases sharply in water (although differently for the different types). You can for example take a swim in the cisterns which cool nuclear reactor rods, it only becomes a problem up close.
- idlewords 7y agoThe Night King is coming!
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI used to live on Treasure Island. Many years prior, some of these radioactive ships had been docked there. Recently I googled my old Treasure Island address & discovered the living room of the house in which I had been living had been flagged for higher than normal levels of radiation. I'm still waiting for my superpowers to manifest.
- dvtrn 7y agoVolunteering to be your "guy in a chair behind several computer screens"...if you need/want one.
- booleandilemma 7y agoIt’s fun to be that guy until he gets killed in the sequel. But at least his death motivates the hero to keep fighting.
- labgrown 7y agoRadioactive Hulk smash ?
- slg 7y agoAccording to Wikipedia the wreck was found in 2009 and this article was about when it was first imaged. Although it isn't clear to me why exactly the Independence needed to be found in the first place since it was intentionally scuttled. Was the location of the ship classified? Or was the record keeping from the 1940s so bad they the Navy didn't record the location of a scuttled ship or listed it as something vague like "off the Farallon Islands"?
- sitharus 7y agoShips don’t sink in a straight line, knowing where it sank does not give an accurate position for where it rests.
- nothingburger 7y agoAgain: Who fucking cares? It was sunk under controlled circumstances. The location of sinking was planned as a disposal effort. It was put down in a place, such that it would come to rest in a zone suitable to render its radioactive payload distant and unreachable. Knowing where it was destroyed on the surface gives a high reliability cone of descent. It goes down from the surface with a degree of drift that will not exceed certain parameters. It would surprise me if they found it on the moon. It would not surprise me if they found it 100 miles from the point it sank.
- ge0 7y agoSo at least we have a good idea where Godzilla will likely rise from the ocean and decimate San Francisco!
- skybrian 7y agoHmm. As a way of disposing of nuclear waste, how bad is sinking a ship at sea?
- sitharus 7y agoNuclear waste is like asbestos, it’s fine if you leave it alone. If the depth is sufficient that the water is fairly anoxic and the area is geologically stable it’s pretty safe. However if the area is unstable or the ship can rust you can easily end up with a huge distributor of radioactive contamination. The effects depend on the substance and type of radiation. Dumping of radioactive waste in the ocean has been banned since 1993. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactiv...
- TeMPOraL 7y agoRadioactive material + lots of water = good. You eventually end up with homeopathic densities of radioactive material, plus water itself is good at attenuating radiation. Radioactive material + lots of water + lots of life in that water = bad. Small life eats the material, larger life eats small life, and after a while you end up eating cesium for dinner.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Animats 7y agoRemember Blueseed, the "seasteading startup"? Their planned location was west of Half Moon Bay, roughly where this is.
- Dylan16807 7y agoCool, a piece of history lurking under your workplace. Far enough down that there's no problem with floating above that particular spot.