Unexploded Bombs off the British Coast: the SS Richard Montgomery

[@drpibisback7680]

Fun fact about the Richard Montgomery potentially going off: Part of the reason why the government hasn't moved it is because the last time an operation was undertaken to remove a similar wrecked munitions ship (the Polish SS Kielce, which was deeper down, farther from land, and carrying fewer explosives), the salvage company accidentally detonated it while trying to break up the hull with explosives. The resulting blast broke windows and de-shingled roofs in the nearby town of Folkestone and registered as a 4.5 on the Richter scale. The explosion of the Kielce didn't kill or injure anyone, but no chances were going to be taken on the Richard Montgomery after that.

[@ufopilotFPV]

Thats why the navy are doing this one

[@drpibisback7680]

@@ufopilotFPV We can only hope they have enough common sense to not try blowing up the wreck like the Kielce crew.

[@FTfilm]

So...they tried to get inside the ship which was carrying the explosives by using explosives? To remove the explosives inside? Who was the genius who decided to do it this way? oh my...

[@drpibisback7680]

@@FTfilm The salvage operation was almost 20 years after it sank, presumably they didn't think that the munitions would still be live after that long underwater.

[@captainidiot4301]

Shouldn't they just detonate it?

[@dannykrinkle4726]

Is he gonna eat his cotton candy or just hold it all day?

[@samgreen3818]

"Candy floss" as he's in the UK

[@Alucard-gt1zf]

Sam Green no it's cotton candy in the UK....

[@tomkenning5482]

Shadow M8 it's candy floss

[@Alucard-gt1zf]

Tom Kenning me my friends and everyone I've met says cotton candy...

[@TheKLM98]

Shadow It is 100% candy floss in the UK.

[@WilliamBoothClibborn]

my father used to collect unexploded bombs off the coast of Dorset and kept an armed land mine on the mantle piece above his fire... in central London. After a few years of keeping this landmine here, slowly drying out the explosive, after a county safty official screamed "bomb" and ran out of the house theyy decided to hand it into the police where they then evacuated all of the police station and 4 surrounding houses to wait for an armoured truck to come around and take it to a safe detonation site.

[@RickJohnyALL-PROProcue]

Hahahahahaha. Dear lord thats amazing!

[@peter_smyth]

+william Booth-Clibborn Your father is the kind of person I'd like to know.

[@matt09ward]

hahaha legend

[@adop1562]

could you imagine sittin down stairs and you see it start to fall off tho

[@kcfreeman3021]

Is you dad Hunter s Thomson?

[@thesizzlingicetray6312]

5 years later: And this crater? Used to be a beach with a town. *And that, is something you might not have known.*

[@fullyverified7491]

hahaha

[@FreeGamesMAX]

in 4 years and 8 months i will revisit this comment.

[@billyjoe3309]

GGahahaaa

[@uvbe]

In 3 years and 8 months i will revisit this comment.

[@bretthoover6851]

In 3 years and 5 months, I will revisit this comment.

[@NickCybert]

If I do nothing it will probably be fine. Story of my life

[@drivesthecar3247]

Yep, Welcome to My Life also!

[@3bydacreekside]

The phrase that is the cause to and solution to all of life's problems

[@PaulMalone-pm8qk]

I'm a mine sweeper and I also collect live bombs to and manage to sleep with them in my bed room but my mum told me that I was a nutter for keeping live bombs but I used my egnigitive and with a bit of nolige a calm it will not explode but I did blow my hand off trying to pick up one so I don't collect them anymore

[@Zebra_M]

They are doing nothing!? How incredibly stupid. Obviously the right thing to do is set up cameras just in case. It will look sweet!

[@bartz0rt928]

+HumbleZebra That's the clearly correct answer.

[@RisinT96]

I like the way you think

[@ArminGrewe]

+HumbleZebra and then it will go off on the day with the densest fog ever seen....

[@connor4435]

HumbleZebra they did do that so that if something big happens they can always monitor it and see what caused checking whether they need to remove the explosives or whether someone just needs to be arrested for invading military space and almost causing an enormous explosion

[@safe-keeper1042]

The Norwegians would make it into a slow TV project and broadcast it 24/7 :3

[@GuidesH101]

schrodinger's boat

[@donpacificbobcat9er615]

Noice.

[@safe-keeper1042]

Oh my god.

[@davidcook4823]

This doesn't make sense. How is it unobserved or even in two states at once?

[@-Gumbo]

@@davidcook4823 It is both dangerous and harmless. It has to be dived to find out which.

[@ericheine2414]

MEOW

[@mithrandirearendur1282]

"Hey, I heard you got a ship full of bombs off your coast! What are you going to do about it?" "nothing" "nothing???!!!" "yeah its probably fine" "probably?" "yeah, it might go off... probably not though." The most british reaction to a ship full of bombs.

[@themadhammer3305]

Sammie1053 alternatively, Scotland: is it full of whiskey? no, just leave it then. (based of the wreck of SS Politician)

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

You forgot Australia.

[@weiyin8046]

australia- move it to the desert no one lives there

[@TheGetawayGamer]

Sammie1053 What about New Zealand?

[@junkersintutus4282]

TheGetawayGamer No offense but he did say *MAJOR* English Speaking Countries. That nmbeing said I do look forward to someone taking a crack at the Kiwi response.

[@RJ-Isaac-TSOML]

The entire time I was watching this I was expecting it to blow up. I knew logically that it wouldn't sense this is pre-recorded and nothing has shown up in the news but I kept having that feeling that it's going to blow none the less.

[@samwhaleIV]

And the people that live there feel that way all the time xD

[@a3k4700]

@Darcie 7 years ago now 🤣

[@DrivenAgony]

@@samwhaleIV we are still alive!

[@daconor91]

Hey I'm the guy who emailed you about this! You probably won't see this comment but thanks for responding to my email, even though you said you already had plans to go here.

[@IsaBella-ir4rf]

@@x_x5009 because not a lot of peolpe replied to it I guess. Let's change that

[@Ajc-ni3xn]

@@IsaBella-ir4rf so we didn’t change it.

[@sk8rdman]

I was waiting for him to say, "it'll probably be fine" and then it explodes.

[@DanThePropMan]

WHY WOULD YOU BUILD LIQUID GAS STORAGE ANYWHERE NEAR THAT THING?!

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

Michael Bay would be proud.

[@AustrianAnarchy]

It's England. Everything is close to everything else.

[@samgreen3818]

AustrianAnarchy yeah, I mean my morning runs consist of running from London to Edinburgh and back...

[@4TheRecord]

Top Place at the Darwin Awards Institute.

[@ericjamieson]

When I was in the boy scouts I used to wonder why Sir Baden-Powell was such a fanatic about "being prepared." Then I spent time in the UK and realized that British people are never prepared for anything. It must have driven him nuts.

[@MasterHigure]

This reminds me of the German submarine U 864 (also from WW2), which lies along the west coast of Norway containing, among other things, 65 tons of mercury. It wouldn't be nuclear bomb bad if that were to leak out onto the sea floor, but maybe the consequences would be just as great in the long run. There are two main solutions proposed to solve this. 1) Wrap it up, try to contain it in an effort to stop the exposure of mercury to the environment should a major leak occur, or 2) raise the wreck. It is, as in this video, the local residents who are most in favour of raising the submarine, hoping that it can be done without ruining everything. In contrast to the SS Richard Montgomery, doing nothing is considered an unacceptable choice (mercury on bottles isn't something that goes inert like TNT without fuses), but because of the disagreement about what to do, it is the option we've gone with so far.

[@richardbourne6743]

TNT does not revert to a inert state over time.

[@fredericksaxton3991]

I have seen TV footage of the 'undulating seabed' around that Uboat wreck, it has already leaked the mercury. I wonder whether it can be sucked/vacuumed up for salvage and environmental safety, regardless of it being a war-grave.

[@ErikB605]

@@richardbourne6743 It does. It gets mineralized through microbes. (half-life in seawater ca.1900 days; half-life sand sediment

[@gamezoid1234]

So it's a.... known unknown?

[@rdouthwaite]

+Jacob Collier "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld

[@Epicmylikes]

+Jacob Collier Atleast its not an unknown unknown

[@youtert]

Are you a lizard?

[@4TheRecord]

No! It's an unknown unknown that is known.

[@almostcertainlynotapotato6528]

Its a schrodinger's boat

[@99nasha]

You should do a video on the RAF Fauld explosion that happened in WW2. 4000 tonnes of explosives detonated. The massive crater is still there today

[@gwenynorisu6883]

...I wonder if this comment is what actually led to that video, or whether he had it queued on the List Of Places To Visit already?

[@WiiWarrior933]

mspenrice hmmmmmmm

[@PicalilyProductions]

My Grandparents live on the isle of sheppy, you can see the ship from the attic window. It was probably a bad idea for my mum to explain it to me and my brother when we were kids, it led to many sleepless nights as we lay in bed worried about being blown up. Now when I go and stay it doesn't really bother me at all, it's kinda incredible how a risk like this has become just normal in the local community. The general consensus seems to be, 'oh it could explode at any time and destroy most of the island? well I'll be dead pretty much instantly soooo what's the use in thinking about it' It would be a pretty cool way to go

[@theodour8617]

Are they dead by now?

[@PicalilyProductions]

@@theodour8617 Only one of them !

[@DavidRamirez-lq2co]

Not going to lie, the only thing holding me to not want it to blow up is people living near, the explosion would be awesome

[@Noah-le7yo]

​@@DavidRamirez-lq2coIf you'd like to see what it would look like, look up the SS John Burke explosion. It was a Liberty munitions ship just like this one, and was struck by a kamikaze strike in the Pacific theatre, resulting in all of its cargo detonating.

[@Cogfist]

What will happen to this boat? I guess, we're not shore.

[@orangegreenn]

I think we'll have to wait and sea...

[@nerdpower247]

+Cogfist Might as well wave goodbye if anything does.

[@alyanmeraj]

Don't dive into these puns

[@macskasbogre133]

+Jack Septic Fish Don't worry, we won't get too tide up with them.

[@aztecrobowalk]

i hear that boat is packed to the gills with explosives. Enough to equal the power of a small fishion bomb, apierently.

[@joshuashanewatts]

"ehh it's... probably gonna be fine" is probably the most british way of dealing with problems

[@Yunghamz]

Narrator: It was not fine.

[@zakford6606]

It’s called minding our own business

[@danielfisher6501]

Stick the kettle on

[@tsm688]

and what would you suggest doing to it. the last time they tried to salvage one of these it blew up

[@TheMightyPunion]

Should name the towns around it megaton

[@Sammie1053]

New business idea: open a seaside pub in that town called The Brass Lantern

[@bensreenacting3161]

FEEL THE GLOW OF ATOM!!!

[@ultramarroonvortex681]

Ha, nice Fallout 3 reference.

[@motormickter]

Southend, you can get boat rides out to it so you can see the masts that stick up out of the water

[@leocurious9919]

Its 0.0015 megatonnes, so maybe not the best name.

[@froggouk2]

I am rather concerned to only discover this now when my turn is literally on top of this. even less happy that when Tom said a small nuclear explosion there was a shot of my towns seafront and Sea Life Centre. Pretty fucking scary.

[@michaelstevens3479]

Bloody hell wish that I had seen this sooner I was magnet fishing there yesterday.

[@Tea-oc3gh]

The more you know, you could of caught a whole ship...and a couple thousand explosives.

[@nacoran]

Does the gas storage predate the wreck? I imagine there are some interesting politics involved. You buy land at a discounted rate because there is a bomb nearby and then want the public to pay to remove the bomb (which, if they decide there is a significant risk they should do regardless of any land speculation going on). Or does it just become part of the local lore- a risk everyone takes but have become so inured to that they ignore it, like smog from a coal power plant?

[@herseem]

It could be something like, "We can't refuse planning permission on account of it being too close to the wreck because that would mean we think the risk of the wreck exploding is significant, and then people will demand we do something about it. So we'll just let them build the massive, above-ground gas storage containers within range of the wreck so that if the wreck does explode it will make an even bigger explosion, but at least no-one will demand that we do anything about it beforehand"

[@dunebasher1971]

The current liquid gas storage facility dates from 2002, but there has been a fuel depot on the site since 1928, and BP began building a refinery in 1948. When that closed in 1982, British Gas took over a small section of the site for liquid natural gas storage.

[@VitorMadeira]

2016: "We don't know if this is safe or not"... 2020: Beirut.

[@ScienceChap]

Different conditions. Beirut was low grade low yield explosive material stored dry in one mass. The Montgomery cargo is high grade explosives stored in cold water in separate packets.

[@d.k8257]

@@ScienceChap The Montgomery would be much more devestating

[@owo1744]

@@d.k8257 No it would not. It is underwater. You really really underestimate how much the water will dampen the blast.

[@ybra]

I was gonna say "why not just blow it up?", but then you said it would take out the town :P

[@jaredgarbo3679]

+ybra And improve the area?

[@TheHaighus]

MIGHT take out the town ;) Seems like it would be worth it for the footage though right...?

[@bencurren7190]

I think you missed the more obvious comparison, the Halifax Explosion. When one of these ships actually exploded in a collision

[@chronicmonkey]

Million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

[@ellingeng]

+Katt Hasklaws The trouble is in getting an exactly million to one chance.

[@chronicmonkey]

+Leslie Colton That was a line from a Terry Pratchett book. ;)

[@ellingeng]

Yeah, I was referencing Guard, Guards ;-)

[@johnlanddigging1987]

So, do we call captain Carrott and exspode the wonder dog or let death deal with it all and go back to ank morepork?

[@sockmon1]

@@chronicmonkey I think Pratchett borrowed it from Douglas Adams, two of my favourite authors for littering their literature with lines like these

[@matthewmiller7293]

There's a similar thing in Lake Erie, and since the lake's so shallow there (25-30 feet) it's cordoned off with buoys, and the Coast Guard gets very vocal if you go anywhere near it. Scarier still is it's proximity to two nuclear power plants, which draw cooling water from the lake. Davis-Bessy, near Sandusky, Ohio is around ten miles from it, and Fermi II, in Monroe, Michigan (Just South of Detroit) can't be more than 25 or 30 miles as the crow flies.

[@pfeilspitze]

Given the containment vessel design of Western nuclear plants, I doubt there's any serious risk there. Is be way more worried about the built-as-cheaply-as-possible LNG storage tanks.

[@collinbrown1273]

Finally a mic to block the wind, Thanks Tom!

[@jmitzenmacher5]

What if it blew up right in this video...

[@AustrianAnarchy]

They should have shot it as a live stream, like with Google Hangouts, that automagically archives to KZbin.

[@Petr75661]

He's British, so I would expect something like "oh my good man, what a jolly big explosion, wasn't it"

[@knobwobble]

I swear to God I kept thinking about how morbidly hilarious that would be

[@TheMoonRover]

Then realise there's a giant wave heading towards him and calmly run away as fast as possible.

[@jmitzenmacher5]

as he says to outro

[@TheRealFlenuan]

Whoever has been making the Esperanto subtitles, dankegon.

[@spelcheak]

Jes, Dankegon. (ĝin ne estas mi.)

[@felikso]

+Dekimate *ĝi - estas doesn't take the accusative case as no action is actually happening. Sed mojosas trovi aliajn esperantostojn ĉi tie! Mi ne atendis, ke ĉi tio okazus. :)

[@nytheris2848]

+The Real Flenuan Wow, thanks for pointing that out, I didn't even realise they were there!

[@KRIGBERT]

+thewoowooster Esparanto has cases? I'm no longer excited about Esparanto.

[@meratrix9967]

+KRIGBERT it only has accusative, relax

[@77gravity]

Update August 2020: The explosion in Beirut was 2750 tons.

[@rogerszmodis]

77gravity about the same power as the explosive in the boat. 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate is about 1.2kt of TNT. If 30x the Russian bomb is correct that ship has about 1.3kt on board assuming all TNT equivalent.

[@gregoryclark8217]

After further analysis, the Beirut explosion was worked out to be more like around 500 tonnes of TNT.

[@theblackwidower]

I just had a thought. If you're looking for video ideas, Tom, and you ever find yourself in Canada again, swing by Halifax, because there's a video you could do in a similar vein to this. World War I, and like the Montgomery, a munitions ship had an accident. However, in this case, the bombs went off. I think you could do a really interesting video on that.

[@Kj_Gamer2614]

"so what is this large sea crater?" "oh thats just where England used to be"

[@still_guns]

If it goes up, we'll have another Halifax 1917

[@Braedley]

+BMWM3GTRLOVER I'm wondering about that myself. The Halifax Explosion was the largest man made explosion at the time, and still ranks among the largest conventional explosions. Hopefully the comparison will never need to be made.

[@huntabadday2663]

Haha, Jokes on you England, but the bombs are on your side, not mine

[@robertwilloughby8050]

Sheerness-Southend 2022?

[@QALibrary]

Today (29/12/2012) it is being reported that the shipwreck is now too unstable and thus in June 2022 the Royal Navy will start unloading the ship and dispose of the munitions and ship

[@POtterAAngERagon]

I came here because of the book “Mudlarking, lost and found on the river Thames” by Lara Maiklem. What a magnificent coincidence that the book and this video are talking about the same thing Thanks for such a wonderful video Tom

[@ivanvrkljan1056]

This story reminds me of the Halifax explosion during ww1 and how disorganized everything was just because there we’re German u-boats just out side the harbour, except this ship didn’t explode.

[@weeevilswine]

I've been binging your videos for a few days now and I'm blown away at how interesting they are

[@akrinornoname2769]

This one hits different now

[@grooverchan1600]

Halfway through the video you see a huge flash and Tom goes flying off to the moon

[@SmugLookingBarrel]

Man, that whole time I thought you were holding a piece of cotton candy in your hand.

[@123Purple]

This kept reminding me of The Halifax Explotion which happened when a boat carrying similar amounts of explosives collided with another ship and exploded in the harbor right by the downtown core

[@Quasihamster]

Kinda like a time bomb then, but one of which you can't tell what the countdown is at, neither if it actually counts down.

[@CookietheCalico]

I just went to email you to suggest making a video about the Richard Montgomery. Searched KZbin to see if someone anyone had done a good one... and you already did

[@SyntheticFuture]

On the plus side : there won't be nuclear fallout if it explodes. So there's that I guess...

[@Rmiltom]

+ThaTyger Plot twist: terrorists set it off with a low yield neutron bomb and it sprays radioactive waste everywhere.

[@jr52990]

You wouldn't catch me living near that thing with a 10km pole.

[@cameronmarcum4673]

where can u find a 10km pole?

[@jr52990]

Bryzum FuckGoogle It's difficult, but I hear you can find on in most politicians bottoms.

[@NiCk-zn3xj]

+Joshua Walters Why not. Its been there over 70years. No one in Sheerness cares. I live less than 80metres from Sheerness beach, "The Wreck" bothers no one. What we do get every 3 months is an excited reporter doing a story on it.

[@xlmtap1192]

The Parthenon was used as storage for explosives during the Ottoman Empire. When there was a war between the Franks and the Ottomans, the Franks used the stored explosives to their advantage. They blew it up and destroyed everything that was around it. That also killed a lot of people.

[@chipsthedog1]

I live on the Isle of sheppey which is closest land to this wreck, on the sea wall they have wrote a poem and my favorite line is "whisper it quietly but you can see the end of the world from here

[@luminance69]

A bomb twice this size just went off in the middle of a city today...

[@rogerszmodis]

About the same size. Ammonium nitrate isn’t as powerful as TNT.

[@gregoryclark8217]

The Beirut explosion has been worked out to be around 500 tonnes of TNT

[@PrideDefiler]

I think Beirut one was much smaller. This is 1350 tonnes of TNT

[@mulan2hddvd]

I love the mic making it feel like golf coverage

[@Bruce-1956]

For merchant ships there is a speed limit when passing the wreck. Been past it a few times on large tankers.

[@mifphilip]

doing nothing got the harbour of Lebanon blown up! perhaps the British government should re-think their actions

[@akillersandwich8360]

Out of curiosity, how would this much tnt compare to 2300 tons of picric acid? Wondering if the potential explosion could be anything like the Halifax Explosion.

[@NicholasAnderson2]

Lots of amazing underwater stuff off the coast of Britain, Treasure Quest is amazing!

[@SuperEpicJake]

The equivalent of a small nuke right next to London? That's a disturbing thought...

[@davidmoore1253]

+SuperEpicJake It's not right next to London, the thames estuary is big. Sheerness is about 50km from east London. London would probably be safe even from the water wave if the thames barrier was raised promptly. Nevertheless, over 10,000 people live in Sheerness. The worst case would be appalling.

[@SuperEpicJake]

***** I know it's not exactly next door but I was thinking about the flooding more than anything, forgot about the Thames barrier.

[@NukelearFallout]

Adeen Dragon What do you mean no fallout? :(

[@princecharon]

A bit late for a correction, but in 1944 it would have been the US Army Air Forces, as the US Air Force was founded after the war, in 1947.

[@Frasenius9]

Estuary, I live in a houseboat on an estuary…

[@thisisartman]

I almost expected it to go off.

[@Drakotar]

Can't you just blow it up? 2:35 .... Oh ok nevermind

[@larry365]

I'm relieved and disappointed this didn't end with a classic, perfectly timed, Tom Scott outro.

[@KrisFirebolt]

Oh my gosh your microphone grew a beard.

[@plaidzebra5526]

3 months later and I still miss this guy. hope your doing well Sir Tom Scott

[@TheRealCDS]

Why has KZbin recommend this to me after the Beirut explosion

[@OutputzBeatz]

I could just imagine the bombs going off whilst he was reporting! That would be an amazing edit project

[@RaynP]

It’ll be fine if it explodes, after all, i get no damage when tnt explodes in water in Minecraft

[@foty8679]

But it yeets you out of the water

[@Tea-oc3gh]

Just make your house of out of obsidian, then it will be fine trust me bro.

[@HappyGingerWolf]

For anyone watching this in 2021 onwards, this explosion would be several times larger than beirut

[@caitthenerd7470]

This is one of those times when I am quite glad to live in Wales.

[@JohnTaylorMusicClips53]

I like how boom mics have fur on them. Could be a nice thing to have next to you when trying to sleep.

[@peregarauburguera]

And that, is something, you might now have known! I will not stop commenting this until Tom realises that his "Things you might not know" videos are way better if he actually says this at the end.

[@tayanney]

+Pere Garau Burguera I do miss that old catchphrase!

[@gravy1219]

I miss Tom with his big fury mic, as an anarchist i just wanna swim to it and poke it a bit, i promise to give feedback in one way or another.

[@Captain_Yorkie1]

This would be the next 2020 event

[@Nathanm1234]

Dont say that, you will give 2020 ideas 😂😂

[@jbZahl]

I've heard of white phosphorus on the north sea coast of Germany mistaken for amber and thus maiming careless amateur collecters, as soon as it dries in their pockets. And ocaisonally there are some unexploded bombs found during construction over here. But this war remain has by far the most destructive potential. Stay safe over there and thanks for sharing.

[@jinn2722]

This didn’t age well with beruit 2020

[@dunebasher1971]

Well, that was set off by a fire. Not much chance of that with the Montgomery.

[@missisbeautyfly]

Tom, once again a brilliantly good video, that explains this weird stuff in an understandable way. But after watching your Park Bench video, I do have one question: Since the camera is so far away, how do you manage to still look me "in the eyes"? Your communication to the camera is really good!

[@MouseFloof]

I would pay a million pounds to blow that up and film it all with high speed cameras

[@Poldovico]

+RICKROLLBLENDER A million pounds probably wouldn't cover a tenth of the property damage.

[@SarSaraneth]

+Khorps Helicopters filming it wouldn't stay in the air.

[@SarSaraneth]

Khorps You're not quite getting the scale involved here.

[@jacobmortimore]

+SarSaraneth o,sure XD

[@ToonandBBfan]

If you did that - The people in the surrounding area would have a whip round and pay 10 Million pounds to shove a Creosote covered carrot up your bum.....

[@georgesam363]

I think you meant to say the Tsar Bomba was 44 MEGATONS; not 44 tons.

[@IMPStudio]

I'm hoping the park bench part was chosen specifically as a homage to Frank Kelly.... If it was just coincidence then I am gunna take it as an Homage anyway :) RIP Father Jack

[@iracingrookie3301]

WELL WE KNOW NOW WHAT 2000 TONS WILL DO

[@lineikatabs]

quick, somebody call the Mythbusters!

[@Vibinator]

+Ivo Temelkov Mythbusters went down hill ALOT in the last few season..

[@SoaringMoon]

+Ivo Temelkov Mythbuster's was cancelled last year. The show is over.

[@Vibinator]

YuLabs nope, they are half way through they final season.

[@sebastianmonk1584]

Did anyone else keep feeling like it was gonna explode behind him mid-sentence?

[@amojak]

Large store of explosive material in a boat : fine Beirut : hold that thought...

[@gyrodoodle]

somewhere in an alternate universe that goes off in the middle of this recording and we get a sweet explosion on camera. RIP alternate reality tom.

[@VuizTV]

There has been multiple detonations on the Lougher Estuary (Bristol Channel) in the past few days. The RAF used the estuary for target practice during WW2. There's normally only 1 detonation every few months. Shakes the windows when they go off.

[@peter_smyth]

+Vuiz How close do you live?

[@garysantana7906]

I read (years ago) that another issues is that they did a ground survey and discovered is sat at one end of a giant rock , where at the other end on shore sits a town, they were are concerned that if the ship explodes forcing pressure downwards then the shock wave will carry through the rock creating an earthquake on all the towns thats on it. or something like that

[@Icyblade01]

i live literally 5 minutes away

[@LukasThiersch]

I will visit you ;)

[@scythal]

rest in peace

[@gwishart]

Still preferable to living metaphorically 5 minutes away.

[@foty8679]

@@scythal pieces*

[@charliewake2169]

I live in sherrness

[@talongreenlee7704]

I would think that the big question is not “is it safe?” but rather “does it get less safe over time?”

[@troodon1096]

I guess we'll find that out eventually...

[@L_U-K_E]

Oh lord

[@sharpepeter]

cool videos mate, informative, well presented and ticks all the boxes with me in terms of interests. well done

[@Comrade_Cheese]

What about the Halifax explosion that 2.9 kilotons of TnT which is just about double the SS Richard Montgomery.

[@foty8679]

Largest accident: 18 June 1946 10:15, Hänsigen, Germany : Ammunation storage (Heeresmunitionsanstalt Hänsigen) exploded in 600m depth. The explosion was 11.000t of TNT (around 11kt, just 4 kt lower then Hiroshima) Largest planned (and largest non nuclear) 29 December 1992, Zhuhai China: 12.000t of dynamite were placed in the mountain Paotai by the Chinese to make more room for the local airport.

[@nigeljohnson9820]

I understand there is a similar problem in the Irish Sea, where the Royal Navy dumped tons of poison gas. As far as I recall, these were WWII captured nerve agents and mustard gas.

[@RJSRdg]

I don't know about poisoned gas, but munitions were dumped in the Irish Sea - one of the reasons that a tunnel or bridge can't be constructed to connect Scotland and Northern Ireland.

[@AJ-kj1go]

I'm heading over to tenpenny towers....

[@barrystedman]

There is also the issue of the wave that would head up the Thames Estuary. If the conditions were right (or wrong depending on your veiwpoint) it would go over the Thames flood barrier as well as hitting Canvey on the way.

[@ariebrons7976]

question: what moron decided that the best place to build a gas storage is near several tonnes of high explosives probably the same jackass who decided to not pernamently evaquate the area

[@cowsareawesomex]

maybe you should take English lessons

[@ainselyharriot517]

+arie brons They probably built the gas storage taking that as well as a lot of other factors into account.

[@volundrfrey896]

+arie brons If you would evacuate every place where you'll find something which is potentially dangerous according to people who doesn't really know what they're talking about then there wouldn't be much space to live on.

[@ariebrons7976]

makes sense

[@Melthornal]

+arie brons You would never have to permanently evacuate. Worst case scenario you take everyone out, blow up the explosives, clean up the rubble, rebuild, and move people back. Maybe people wouldn't want to go back to a place where their house just asploded, but there would be no actual danger any longer.

[@Chocwish]

Interesting story as always. I'm sure the possibilty of terrifying sudden hot destruction puts a spring in the step of anyone living or visiting. =)

[@bobthecannibal1]

Solution: Start dumping 20" crushed stones 3 meters inside of the exclusion zone. I mean, a quick stab at the perimeter of the exclusion zone leads me to believe it's under 2km in total. 20" crushed stone has an angle of repose close enough as makes no difference to 40 degrees. If you do the math, that's ~25,200 m^3 of rock (estimated because I don't know exact details of the perimeter length other than some lat-long pairs without a datum that I'm too lazy to covert to MGRS) that'd run about 1.64 million GBP And I'd bet uk.gov can negotiate a better bulk rate for that than I found at $97 per m^3 for crushed stone. You might *want* some concrete for your impromptu breakwater, but that's not really *required* because the next step is to send ROVs down there (now that the current is gone) and start pulling munitions to be exploded further down (or up, whichever they prefer) the Thames. Once enough has been pulled and blown and they feel comfortable, they can just blow the remainder in place. The fuzzy-headed ecologist types are obviously going to dislike it (Feh: BANANAs. "Build absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone".) and do their damnedest to make the cost too high: The solution there is a simple: "Go piss up a rope" in reply to any complaints. Seriously, do I have to think of everything?

[@Alucard-gt1zf]

The current isn't the problem, is the fact that any movement at all could set them off, so lifting them is the who dangerous part

[@Halosty45]

"Yeah, it's probably gonna be fine."

[@DrN0rd]

I'm pretty sure the US lost a nuclear bomb somewhere, I'm not quite sure where. But they did it.

[@Cowcow211]

Spain

[@DrN0rd]

Taaketa Dinloka Huh, Alright thanks for telling me. But the last time I heard it, they said they dropped it off the east coast of the U.S. But, that was in the olden days when the History channel was getting into the pawn stars thing rather teaching history.

[@MermaidTyrone]

There is also one (EDIT) secondary of one of the bombs underground in Carolina. A bomber crashed there.

[@aritakalo8011]

+DrN0rd They did both. They have had a bit of a habit of losing them now and then. I think in total there is something like ten Broken Arrows by US military.

[@TheAmazingchickens]

+Ari Takalo It's not called a broken arrow.

[@efnissien]

There's a few arms ships that went down in shallow waters - there's the "Castillian" that sunk off the Skerries rocks (about 11.5 Km from the port of Holyhead, North Wales. For years divers were taking shells from her, scooping out the explosives and leaving it on nearby beaches while they sold the (now 'inert') shells to military enthusiasts. There was a large clearance attempt some years back, but there is still a lot of ordinance onboard and there's a 500m exclusion for scuba divers.

[@legoeth1739]

"The only way to know is to wait and see" Ship blows up behind him. 🙂

[@philt4346]

Tom's sporting my precise look from 1984.