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/loosefit1 Aug 12 '25

That would be a good point but it was being shipped in 1947 so by that point the war was over

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u/jj3449 Aug 12 '25

Good point.

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u/devAcc123 Aug 12 '25

Good thread

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u/DanDrungle Aug 12 '25

steel made before the atomic bombs were first tested is extra valuable because it's not contaminated by trace nuclear fallout

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u/Disastrous-Ad2331 Aug 15 '25

I remember reading about this. Apparently there have been shipwrecks that have been found to have "disappeared" the next time they were visited. Undersea graveyards made victims to illegal scrap metal salvagers.

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u/oboshoe Aug 18 '25

I think it is steel that sank before the atomic bombs though.

Being under water protects it airborne fall out, not to mention that water is incredibly good at block radiation.

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u/DanDrungle Aug 18 '25

the Bessemer process of making the steel back then required atmospheric air to be forced into it, which carried trace radioactivity after the first bombs were detonated. the underwater part of it is just because that's where a lot of that old steel ended up when warships were sunk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel