Sunken Dangers

it is Better Days day. But um, but as I recall that, the plot is basically, um, everyone gets excited because there's like a World War two vessel uh shipwreck all right down there on the sea floor, and it's just loaded with morphine. So people are like, hey, let's go down and get that morphine and then sell it and we'll be rich. Or maybe they're just really into morphine. I don't know. But but then the thing is underneath that shipwreck, there's a second shipwreck. It's like an old

like Spanish galleon filled with gold. And then but then there's more under that. There's a third shipwreck, and that is an old has tech vessel and it's filled with silver and uh and like and like other treasures. And then underneath that there's a fourth wreck and this one's actually an alien spaceship that Nick Nolty is able to dive down to and bear he discovers his long lost father, who is Culo. Right, So spoilers abound there and then shows up and then the cracking shows up, but the

Nautilus comes to the rescue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is not always the way. Yeah yeah, I mean, if you guys haven't figured out we're talking about today, we are talking about the ocean and all the tritus that lives in there. Yeah, because we don't. We hear a fair amount about sunken treasure ships every now and then. It's like it's great, uh, you know, boys, life, pirate adventure, fair. But the reality is there is we have dropped a lot of stuff onto the ocean floor, and and it's

not all just like you know that. You also see stuff about like oh a ship, a ship sinks and it becomes a natural environment for fish, it becomes a new coral reef for something. And you see situations where people take these stripped vessels out and sink them so that the various forms of sea lift can make it home.

But in reality, you have a whole lot of ships that have gone down with oil aboard with unexploded ordinance aboard, well with with human lives aboard as well, not that that's as much of an environmental factor at all, right, but some some areas are essentially in underwater graveyards, right, Yeah, So in this podcast, we're going to talk about these

sunken dangers and what they what they mean for the environment. Yeah, and not only that, um, you know, how they how they affect the oceans, which we have like even like the most minutest understanding about right now, and we'll talk about more about that later. But this really is something that's very important to our existence. So let's talk about those tankers. Yeah, so stinking tankers. A lot of this

originates from the Second World War. In first and foremost, it's it's easy for those of us who grew up for years and years decades after the Second War War to forget that this was a truly global scenario. This was a major deal. Like like nations around the world became immersed in total warfare. And I think my battleship is just not the cry of a board game, right right. It was. WARAR two was the single largest saw the single largest loss of shipping in a relatively short period

of time that the world has ever witnessed to. To put some numbers on that, I have some stats here that come from Sea Australia, which is an organization that has concerned itself with the fate of these various vessels

and their potential impact in the environment. They said, seventy eight hundred sunken World War two vessels worldwide, including eight hundred and sixty oil tankers, and they've been setting there in many cases, you know, in the bottom of the sea floor for sixty years or more seventy I guess now we're looking at um just corroding Asia Pacific Regional Loan thirteen million tons of sunken vessels in the Pacific, including three hundred and thirty tankers and oilers, and then Atlantic,

Mediterranean and Indian Ocean somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand, nine hundred and fifty vessels over a thousand tons of ship and nine of those are thought to be oil tankers. Because you have you have ships sinking each other, of submarines, you have you have stuff just going down due to weather or other factors, and the state that these vessels go down there, it varies, you know, because in some cases they're sustaining damage before they go down. Stuff is

blowing up before they go down. H So they're they're not exactly tightly wrapped containers. In some cases, the oil is burning off in the explosion, or most of it is. In other cases, a vessel is hit in such a way that most of the oil may be intact and it just goes down there and and it's just sitting until that container that it's in, that that metal container finally deteriorates enough for it to leak out into the

surrounding environment. Well. Of note recently is the s S Montebello, which was sunk by Japanese submarine seventy years ago off the coast of central California. Three million gallons of oil loaded onto the vessel before it departed on December one, and it now sits nine hundred feet below in frigid

ocean water. It looks like, based on what has been released from the survey, and it looks like there's there's no oil down there, so really okay, yeah, yeah, it looks like there was some concern because this was definitely one of those cases where they they thought that like the portion of the ship that was hit was was not the portion with the oil, so they thought that the oil could be intact. But it looks like the oil is gone now, so thank you, Robert Lamb. Yeah,

but but that's just one case out of many. And you have to have another factor to remember here is that we don't have a countdown for how long any of these vessels have because because on top of their conditions varying depending on the model of the ship and the conditions that it's sank under, you have environmental concerns as well. Yeah, And I mean the thing is too is that this is uh as you As you noted, there are eight hundred and sixty second oil tankers and

so this is not new news to anybody. And in fact, there's another ship that's ink in nineteen fifty three near San Francisco called the s S. Jacob Lukembach, and it slowly leaked some of the four seventy five thousand gallons of oil that freighter was carrying um and it fouled that coast for decades. So you know, this is again not new news, but I think that it's one of those things that people are starting to back up and realize to the extent to which it could be damaging.

After all these eventually, any shipwreck, I mean, it's going to deteriorate to the to the to the state where stuff is gonna leak out, right, if there's something in

there to leak. Uh. And and and then also you have cases where if something sinks in a into deep enough water, you're gonna have pressure that's going to crunch the hole down even more so, so a number of people are keeping trying to keep tabs on on on some of these tankers and uh, and try and evaluate what kind of a threat they pose, and in some cases something

can be done about it. In two thousand three, the U. S. Navy successfully extracted fuel from a sunken World War two tanker off the coast of Micronesia, and they were actually able to recoup some of the costs by reselling the salvage. Doi. Okay, so yeah, there are some cases where we can do something about it. But what do you do about the

radioactive waste dumping? Right? Yes, radioactive shipwrecks were in many cases submarine rex There have been several of these of note, cases where a nuclear submarine or a submarine with you know, with nuclear capabilities, has sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Nineteen sixty three USS Thrasher off the coast of New England, UM n U S S Scorpion lost in the mid Atlantic.

And then you've seen several different Soviet subs nineteen seventy November Class sub off the coast of Spain, eighty six off the coast of Ramuda, eighty nine off the coast of Norway, and then in two thousand of the Kursk again off the coast of Norway. Yeah. Yeah, And then you have the problem of Russia dumping radioactive waste into the Arctic Sea. UM while there have been some contested x because of course you've got um, you know, Russia

saying no, this is not the case. And then you have other independent groups that have uh actually confirmed some of the data. What we do know for sure is that in the nineteen fifties the effluent from the nuclear weapons factory in there Chadovinsk was dumped into the river

Ticha and it ended up in the Arctic Ocean. And then between nineteen sixty four and nineteen eighty six, some seven thousand tons of solid radioactive waste in sixteen hundred cubic meters of liquid waste was pitched into the car and Barren Sea from the base in Murmansk, which served

the Soviet fleet um of nuclear powered naval and merchant ships. So, and you have also nuclear reactors from at least eighteen nuclear uh excuse me that eighteen nuclear reactor submarines and ice breakers which were dumped into the barren Sea in an entire nuclear sub which was sunk deliberately after an

accident in May nineteen sixty eight. So just this is a very sort of scary area to be in, obviously, and a lot of its neighbors are not very happy that in Norway fishing industry obviously, I was like, hey, I think, could we get a little bit more information, but this is what we know now, But some of this has been leaking out. Yeah, no pun intended, right.

But another thing that's interesting about both the radioactive and the the oil based threats here or that they kind of feel like they're like the ghosts of a previous age that have come back to haunt us. In the case of the World War two vessels, they're like the remnants of a time when so many of the nations of the Earth were immersed in in global warfare, and certainly we we haven't gotten to the point where we have completely put aside the idea of of nuclear weapons.

But it's worth noting that the scorpion, again this was and it's sunk under ten thousand feet of water about four hundred miles southwest of Azarez, and uh, it had to mark forty five anti submarine torpedoes. Those are nuclear torpedoes. They were designed by the United States to use against high speed, deep diving enemy submarines, which I mean, for those of you who keep up with the history of of nuclear armaments, that may make more sense to you,

but for me, I somehow did not realize that. I mean, I knew that, you know, submarines have traditionally been given the role of of of becoming a mobile platform from which the launch intercontinental ballistic missiles and and deliver a nuclear payload from anywhere around the world virtually. But the idea that you could have one submarine using a nuclear weapon against another submarine in the same ocean as itself

just completely blows my mind. Uh. I mean, it's just that that we were, that we've been that stupid and in in in recent memory. You know, well, I think too. I mean some of this is that, um, you know, at the time that this was being enacted, that we were not really uh thinking about the future. Right, We're thinking seventy years from now, what's going to happen to this? Um?

And I don't think that we have the understanding that we do now of the oceans are at least the tiny understanding of of what how important ocean life is to us, right and with the with the with the tankers and all the various vessels that were lost in the Second re War. I mean a lot of that was the war is going on. We gotta get stuff from point A to point B, defeat some troops. Gets get oil from point A to point B to uh

to fuel these these aircraft these right, right. And not only is the uh you know, the oceans, the seas are and not only are these uh you know, seemingly limitless resources great dumping grounds. To write. Another case it's worth mentioning, is the Tybee Island mid air collision. Oh yeah, this, and of course Tybee Island is off the coast of our you know, real pretty out there coastal region near Brunswick, Georgia, which I always remember because a newspaper editor I used

to work with came from there and journalism jobs. They would always have a listing for Brunswick, like they were constantly needing new editorial staff, and they always had a real fancy right up where they were like, come work by the beach, and it made it sound really awesome. But of course they were always looking for somebody, so you're like, oh, man, I bet it really sucks there. Well maybe that or they just really needed a lot

of coverage for the Brunswick chili cookoffs. That's true, right, But but Tybee Island though, the fifty eight Air Force B forty seven strato jet was on a simulated combat mission when it collided with an F eight six Saber near Savannah, Georgia, and uh, the B forty seven was carrying one Mark fifteen hydrogen bomb without its core at the time of the accident. So this nuclear payload is lost and has never been found. Like at one point

they thought they were. They they sort of had an idea of where it was based on some radioactive signatures, but then they just found that found out that the radioactive signature wasn't anything substantial, And they're like, well, that's not it. We don't know where it is, so it could be along at the bottom of the sea or not, that's what I'm hearing. Well someone's garage. Well yeah, well, I mean if you put it like that, it's maybe not.

I mean it's down there somewhere, but yeah, but still, you know, I mean it's not it could be in someone's garage. Yeah. Yeah. It's like if someone someone were to say, I know I have a musket around the house here, but I really don't remember where I put it, or you know, it's like where did I put that

hand grenade? Well, yeah, I mean it's like any sort of plot on TV or you know in the movies where you've got the gun, the smoking gun, you know, I mean that's essentially with that is so uh really giant, huge gun. Let's talk about this ocean and why it is such a mystery to us and why it's so important to us. Well, I mean for starters, it's most of the planet, yes, and uh, only that it is

estimated has is unmapped is pretty important. There is actually more known about the Moon's surface than the ocean depths, so said aquatic filmmaker Fabian costUS. Of course, grandson of ocean diving pioneer Jacqusto and Um named his son Fabian. What you could say Fabian and prefer Fabian. I don't know if you if there's a Fabian out there, let us know how you prefer your name to be pronounced um.

But it's thought that there are some points and where the ocean is more than thirty thousand feet deep, Okay, And you know they use this analogy that twelve men have stepped foot on the Moon, but only two people have been to the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest

part of the ocean at roughly seven miles deep. And if you were to take like ship based sonar and other measurements, and you were to map such a small percentage of the ocean floor, it would take a single ship two hundred years or ten ships twenty years to measure all the ocean floor depths. And this is according to the U. S. Navy. So I bring that up only because, um, you know, we really don't understand what

is beneath the surface of the water. Yeah. And in fact, I mean there are things like undersea waterfalls that we've recently discovered um lakes tools lebrine pools are particularly interesting where it basically it looks this thick layer of of of salty water just setting down there on the bottom and uh, and it looks like a set like it really throws your perception off because it looks like a lake on the on the on the floor of the ocean like that. There's a slight you know, color and

gleaming difference. Right, so people, I don't understand how deep is that? What is that? What's underneath that? Um So there's and then of course extremophiles, which we've learned about hydrothermal fence. There are all sorts of really incredible things that we have found. And there's this great marine biologist named Sylvia Earle, who is, you know, one of the two people to have dived down to the depth of

fifty feet more than fifty years ago. And she says that it's absolutely scandalous that we've yet to dive past the depths of the ocean skin because that's what she's calling in this cyr analogy. And she says that there's in fact one little blue green bacterium that's responsible for the oxygen in one of every five breaths you take

the oxygen, which is amazing. And she's saying, this is the kind of information that we just didn't know, you know, five years, ten years, twenty years ago, how important the ocean's ecosystem is to our existence, or sixty or seventy years ago when we were sinking ship after ship and exactly exact. Yeah, And she was on the panel at the World Science Festival in twos and ten, and uh there they talked about coral to being the longest living organism at four thousand years old and also one of

the slowest growing organisms, which I think we all know. Um, but they're basically saying that the trawlers are scraping the bottom of the ocean and clear cutting the coral, which we know now is a cornerstone of the ocean's ecosystem. So uh, now consider that that statistic about how into our action is derived from the ocean, and consider you know, how important coral is to see life and how we

are clear cutting it. And it's very interesting, And they make the point in the panel, um, if you were to do the same thing to our sky, the same sort of trawling through the air. You know, can you imagine the sort of wreckage that you would incur. I mean, you would scoop up in your nets, you know, some birds, trees, people, cars, You would be clear cutting a lot of of life

in that way. So when you when they put it in that perspective, you can really kind of see how important it is that we we think differently about the ocean and the way we approach it. All right, So there you go, sunken dangerous. Yeah, I think about that next time you're you're surfing. We're out in the ocean, just enjoying the beautiful weather and the scenery. Yeah. Uh, well, hey robot, why don't you bring us some listener mail

and we'll get to that portion of the episode. See what we have here, all right, we heard from a listener by the name of Corey. Corey writes in and Corey's email was was rather lengthy, so we're kind of skipping around in it. Yeah, very interesting, but a bit too long for reading all of it. And this comes off we did the episode about martyrs in which we were talking about um about pain, relationship with pain, and uh,

we didn't really go much into the idea. I think we just briefly mentioned, Oh yeah, there are people that are straight edge. I wonder how that factors. But into it, straight edge individuals, of course, they don't take drugs or alcohol, and they kind of have a make it part of their their lifestop choice, and they're going to avoid these temptations, right, even if you know, obviously something that that stopped short of death. Right, they're going to try to avoid any

sort of medications. And so I was curious. I figured, hey, we probably have some straight edge listeners out there. I mean, just based on our demographic and our number of listeners, that stood reason that they were there listening. And they were because Corey writes in says, Hello, Robert and Julie. First off, love you guys. Keep doing what it is

you do so well. Now, in regard to your question about a correlation between being straight edge and pain tolerance, I can't speak to any case studies or anything, but my my personal experience being straight edge might imply a greater pain tolerance. Um. They and they. Corey points out that the they say, for the majority of my life, I was very strictly a straight edge. Uh. When I was three, I suffered a serious concussion that fractured my skull and left me unconscious for the better part of

two days. In the aftermath of this injury, I suffered headaches for close to a decade and have more than my fair share of them today. I have had several broken bones, frostbite real Minnesota frostbite where your flesh turns black and dyes, fractures, uh, wildly painful cysts, and migrains, to name a few of my great epics in pain tolerance. It seems to me people go to a great deal of effort to avoid pain, but in reality, pain has little to no consequence. It is not like emotional trauma

that can haunt you for decades and decades. Pain hit, it hurts, and it's forgotten almost as fast as it comes. In fact, it's really hard to relive a physical pain, So why do people try to try so hard to avoid it or even fear it so much? Also, I have a close friend whom is who is straight edge. UH. This guy has a pain tolerance. We go rock climbing together and and I'm frequently amazed at how long he

can hold very very painful holks. I have seen him support his entire weight on a finger jam which is essentially jamming your fingers into a crack in the rock and getting into stick. Some finger jams are not that big a deal, but this particular finger jam was in a place where the rocks were very sharp and not well suited to finger jamming. It's the sort of finger jam that rips the skin and uh leaves a little

indented cuts where the rock digs in. And this guy practically did a one hand pull up with just the support of that fingerjam. He is crazy tough, trust me. In conclusion, I wonder if having a low paint tolerance may actually be a contributing factor in the body chemistry that leads to addiction or vice versa. Maybe the body chemistry that supports high paint tolerance has an effect which reduces to the draw to substances that alter physiological states.

Because I just prefer sober Corey to alter Corey for no other fact than I can't imagine a me that's better than I already am. What do you guys think, Well, that's a very positive way to look at it. Yeah, yeah, I like that actually moved me than I already Yeah, I had never thought about that. In terms of alcohol or drug use, or anything like that. They're altering yourselves even with say caffeine. Right. Um, So I don't know.

He makes an interesting point. I was just thinking about. Uh. I mean, I had a drug free, epidural free birth, and I'm not going to say that it was you know, a cake walk or anything, but it's not something that it's not a pain that haunts me. Um. Of course I have you know, positive emotions about it because it was worth my daughter, so I haven't attached it to sort of negative consequences, but you know, it's not something I try to relive or uh. And it was momentarian

and gone. So it's it's interesting. I've been fortunate to not have too many pain based encounter but I find that like the few things that I have suffered, like you know, like you know, cutting myself, stopping vegetables and that, well paper cuts too much, lesser extent, but but they the thing that makes me WinCE when I think about them is thinking about, like WHOA, I was kind of careless when it was cutting up a potata. That's why

I cut myself. Imagine had I could have the cut been deeper, Imagine if I hit you know, my wrist or something instead of my palm, So it tends to be that kind of thing for me. Well, also, chronic pain is really debilitating for people to and that that enters into a different territory where you have to sort of feedback loop with your body, which would probably be

really interesting territory for us to get into it. At the point of the podcast, we did do one a minute, we did, but what we haven't really talked about the feedback loop and um, it's sort of just you know, when we have long term pain, um, and how you can actually some doctors say you can reroute at can you can stop that feedback loop? Okay, well yeah, I know, I know we touched on it before, but yeah, maybe we should do a more in depth look at it.

In any case, Thank you, cor Yeah, yeah, you know, that's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for, just you know, to see what people that have this particular view on life and pain, or or specifically on on drugs and alcohol, what their take on pain is. So so thanks for writing it. And if you would like to share something with us, how can you go about it? Well, uh, there's this thing called Facebook, and we are on Facebook and stuff to blow your mind.

You can do a little search there for us on that particular website, which I hear is really taken hold of some people. Um. And then there's this other thing called Twitter, and we are blow the mind on that thing will never work. Well, we'll see Twitter. I'm gonna keep updating in just in case. And hey, you can always send us uh some of your thoughts via email. For instance, you could send us the weirdest thing that you've ever heard of that was sunking at the bottom

of a lake or anation. Be kind of interesting to find out, um, any weirdness that you've come upon. And you can do this by emailing us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.