Thar she blows: Strava heat map shows folk on shipwreck packed with 1,500 tonnes of bombs

Hopefully a few of them have somehow floated towards westminster, that place needs a makeover

'wrecked

Walking: 20 minutes

Rowing: 20 minutes

Flying: 1 minute

Dying: 2 seconds

Congratulations you exceeded your fitness objectives for the day!

Either you're an optimist

or the last two entries are in the wrong order.

Seen this all over the papers but...

... why are they blaming the app. Its not the apps fault its those users not turning the feature off.

App users exonerated

in strap-on big bang threat.

(Just a quick map I made that shows that Strava users aren't, in fact, going into the exclusion zone.)

Aircraft Carrier

You can spot the outline of an aircraft carrier if you look in Portsmouth harbour. Although to be honest I don't think it's a secret its there.

I'll go with the experts here.

There is only a modest chance that any of the explosives are intact and viable. There is a only a slim chance that any of the detonators are viable.

Seawater immersion is a tough environment. It's difficult to intentionally design something that will last a few years in the environment. And this is wartime ordinance delivered on Liberty ships, which is built with the standard "if it even gets there, it will sit around for a few days before being used ...once". External drop tanks for fighters were made of paper and couldn't be filled with fuel more than a few minutes before departure because they would fall apart before they were emptied. Many types of shells had switched from bass casings to raw steel, with only a grease, oil or cosmoline spray. Aerial bombs and their fuses were built with similar standards.

Here in the East of Dundee we live within both walking and running distance of Barry Budden firing ranges. When the flags are not flying and the watch boxes aren't manned you are perfectly free to wander about.

There's a cycle path now between the rail line and the base (there are golf courses on the other side of the line so obviously the path couldn't got there. I have run along it whilst the sound of quite furious automatic fire came from the ranges to my right. I was not concerned as having wandered around and seen the high earth berms behind each range and none of the ranges face inland.

The people in the train passing at the time and the golfers on the range were not in danger either. When the wind is from the East we can hear them firing from here. Whilst coming back along the top road on long Sunday morning runs the soft crump of mortars is a common accompanying sound effect. We've got quite good at picking different sorts of arms.

We joke that if an army ever invaded Dundee from the East nobody would notice.

How is this evidence people are messing with the wreck?

Couldn't they be rowers who rowed over it? The area may be posted for ship traffic, but unless it is physically roped off how would someone in a little human powered or wind powered craft know or care they are over that old wreck?

How accurate are these things?

I just had a look at my local area and noticed two things:

1. I can find the entrance and exits to the track so I know where the owners live.

2. Either they generate a lot of spurious location data or some smart arse has strapped one to his cat - I see a track that runs across the roof of two houses, through the gardens of another three to the reserve bordering the main road...

Did I see a comment somewhere that the RAF base on the Falklands is on the heat maps, from runners there? Described as a "secret" base. On the Falklands? Sure every sheep there must know about it.

I remember this

When I was a lad in the 1960's in Gillingham, my dad told me about this shipwreck with thousands of tons of un-exploded bombs off Sheerness. The worry at the time was that it blew up it might take the oil refinery at the Isle of Grain with it.

"If the Montgomery went up, it might destroy the Isle of Sheppey, and inundate Southend with a tsunami!"

"OK, but are there any potential problems?"

Thanks for that map, NOT!

I now know more about my neighbour than I wanted know. I guess the advantage of cities is increased anonymity as it takes more than a glance at such information to identify someone.

Accuracy

A few years ago, my employer was considering issuing smartphones (iPhones anyway) to people who actually do stuff. You know, they wear overalls and carry toolkits, spades, paintbrushes etc. I tried out one such device. I walked about half a mile through a building and then another half mile outdoors.

The tracking device Felt that, in my leisurely 10 minutes, I had been from southern England to the middle of the Bay of Biscay, back to the "Midlands", then to 0°N 0°E (somewhere south of Nigeria) and back to where I genuinely finished. They are not very accurate indoors! Do these secret bases not have a bit of shielding. If I was in the US military in Afghanistan, or the Russian one in Syria, I would be very keen that my facilities were proof against incoming mortars and snipers in the hills and trees outside.

If you are running round the perimeter track though, then you will draw a very neat line right round your base.

Wet TNT is as as dangerous as your little sister.....NEXT@!

The munitions are believed to be largely artillery shells.

Quite a bit was offloaded before the ship 'sank' (went from merely grounded to broken, probably splitting in half as Liberty ships tended to do), but the records aren't good enough to be certain how much. Presumably all of the easily reached cargo was salvaged.

The shells probably have (had) wartime thin steel casings, rather than brass. The projectile/shell has thicker steel/iron construction, but they aren't generally shipped with the fuse installed. It's really likely that seawater has degraded the propellant and explosives to the point where it's not viable.

But not completely certain. So I'm not volunteering to dredge the site. Let's just leave the bouys out and wait another few decades until it's Someone Else's Problem.

Fisherman, Not Treasure Hunters ! Long line fisherman always fish near known shipwrecks because it's where fish congregate. On an otherwise barren and desolate sea floor, shipwrecks provide a hiding place for fish, therefore they attract larger fish species.. on and on... up the food chain.