Approximately 1.6 million tons of old ammunition are lying on the bottom of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, posing a considerable danger: their casings are slowly rusting and emitting toxic substances such as TNT compounds.

Most of the ammunition was deliberately sunk in the ocean after the war because the Allies were concerned that Germans would resume hostilities against them again at some point, and ordered that Germany destroy all ordnance. At the time the easiest way to do so seemed to be to simply dump everything into the sea.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    17 hours ago

    Eeehh? The Y2K problem is result because of decisions taken in the 70’s (for very good reasons) and nothing was done until the 90’s because it wasn’t an issue before. Y2K did not exist even as an idea in the 1950’s

    • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      The first person known to publicly address this issue was Bob Bemer, who had noticed it in 1958 as a result of work on genealogical software.

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