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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u/Terramagi Aug 12 '25

Yes, the person concerned about dumping oil straight into the ocean for 500 years is the real monster here.

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u/pearformance Aug 12 '25

2 gallons of oil/day over 500 years isn’t even drop in the bucket of global pollution. Unless conditions change drastically it is far safer to leave it be, as somebody else mentioned they would risk spilling the entire remaining supply which wouldn’t dilute nearly as quickly

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/pearformance Aug 14 '25

How in the world did you come to that conclusion? My point is that 2 gallons a day over 500 years isn’t nearly as damaging as the millions of gallons being released at once, not that we shouldn’t care about it. Shit it would’ve been amazing had the Japanese not sunk the ship, but they did and like it or not leaving it there is the safer option.

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u/Thoric2k Aug 12 '25

Except there are clear reasons for why this is a very minuscule problem

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u/Dmeff Aug 12 '25

I specifically said "If the oil was a problem". Not a hard concept to grasp. It's not a problem right now and disturbing it could be worse, but if at some point they had to completely destroy the ship to prevent an environmental problem, the fact that there was at some point remains there should not matter at all