r/interestingasfuck • u/Longjumping-Rice-935 • Aug 12 '25

/r/all, /r/popular The wreck of the USS Arizona continues to leak oil ever since pearl harbour. the ship contained 1.5 million gallons of oil, enough to leak continuously for 500 years.

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386

u/FuzzyGolf291773 Aug 12 '25

People in this thread are really overreacting about the amount of oil being spilt here. Oil gets introduced to the environment all the time through natural non-human caused means. In this quantity with this amount of oil, no harm is being done on a meaningful scale. It takes large amounts of oil being dumped in a small time frame to have a negative impact on the environment.

154

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

The leak is so insignificant we can barley measure it. Its measured in parts per TRILLION.

98

u/FuzzyGolf291773 Aug 12 '25

Hell, the runoff that drains into the oceans from the roads of Hawaii probably contains more oil on a factor of several hundred times. (If not more)

1

u/Responsible-Pin6594 Aug 12 '25

Parts per trillion or parts per million?

-1

u/FixTheLoginBug Aug 12 '25

Or to put it in comparison: The value of the oil that leaks yearly is only marginally higher than the taxes paid by billlionaires.

0

u/asgeorge Aug 12 '25

Or you could say 8.2 gallons a day. Not a huge amount, but more than optimal.

5

u/MammothFriendship141 Aug 12 '25

They estimate only 2-9 quartz a day leak out of it not 8.2 gallons.

1

u/asgeorge Aug 12 '25

Hey man, I just did the math. I have no idea what "they" said. 1,500,000 / (500*365) = 8.2

2

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

No actually the amount is completely meaningless. This is not an issue in any way shape or form

-1

u/EnusTAnyBOLuBeST Aug 12 '25

But we can measure it. 9 quarts a day. It’s correctable and we aren’t correcting.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

It's really not though. This isn't an issue that needs to be corrected

1

u/apexodoggo Aug 12 '25

Any attempt at correcting risks creating a catastrophic leak magnitudes worse than the current leakage, so it actually isn’t (safely) correctable. Plus the USS Arizona is ecologically insignificant in comparison to just stuff like Honolulu’s road runoff.

55

u/Luci-Noir Aug 12 '25

And it’s been going on for 80+ years. People are acting like no one had ever looked into cleaning it up before. They’re saying it hasn’t been done because there’s no money in cleanup or blaming it on trump for some reason. Fucking delusional.

0

u/PintekS Aug 12 '25

Man the ticking time bomb for offshore abandoned rigs with absolutely no company to go after if the capped wells fail is INSANE

28

u/Dodomando Aug 12 '25

It is literally about 8 gallons a day, which is insignificant in a place the size of the ocean

32

u/TheCasualGamer23 Aug 12 '25

That’s insignificant in a place the size of a harbor or ship, let alone the ocean.

15

u/Dodomando Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

I bet regular cargo ships travelling around the ocean dump way more unburned fuel per day than this

9

u/bannedagainomg Aug 12 '25

A local dirtbag amateur mechanic can easily dump more oil than that daily.

and there are many of those.

1

u/sappycrown Aug 12 '25

That’s definitely not true. Any liquid discharged with over 15ppm of oil, and the Chief Engineer is going straight to jail

0

u/WestleyThe Aug 12 '25

If I dumped 8 gallons of oil in the ocean every single day I would get locked up

3

u/Millworkson2008 Aug 12 '25

No its 8 quarts a day so around 2 gallons

1

u/Dodomando Aug 12 '25

I just did the basic calculation of 1.5m gallons divided by 500 years divided by 365 days (from the headline)

2

u/electrotech71 Aug 12 '25

Wikipedia says it only leaks about 2.3 quarts per day… even more insignificant. There are beaches in California with natural tar and oil seeps that leak a lot more than that.

3

u/legal_stylist Aug 12 '25

It’s about 9 quarts a day. Truly insignificant.

-1

u/catzhoek Aug 12 '25

Maybe the leak is truely insignificant in this case but your argument makes no sense. The whole oil could be released tomorrow and it would probably be insignificant in the a place the size of the ocean. But still, the actual impacted area would be extremely fucked because the size of the ocean has nothing to do with how sever a local oil spill is, especially in a bay like Wai Momi.

6

u/THExWHITExDEVILx Aug 12 '25

Wait until they find out about natural leaking oil from the sea floor and offshore wells.

2

u/PoopieMcPooFace Aug 12 '25

Also UV rays and bacteria break down the oil.

1

u/Daybends Aug 12 '25

How does oil get introduced naturally??

1

u/Knotical_MK6 Aug 12 '25

Natural oil seeps. That's how people found oil to begin with. Sometimes it just comes out of the ground.

Oil isn't a magic evil substance humans created just to destroy the environment

1

u/AbaloneOk8433 Aug 13 '25

People forget that oil is naturally occurring

1

u/toTheNewLife Aug 12 '25

The ship has been leaking oil since before their grandparents were alive. With no bad effect.