Sounds Like a (bad) Movie Plot
I’ve just been watching a short video about the proposal (rejected as far as I know) for the building of a road and railway bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland. One of the problems to the project mentioned was Beaufort’s Dyke. So, naturally, I Googled it... This from Wiki:
Because of its depth and its proximity to the Cairnryan military port, Beaufort's Dyke became the United Kingdom's largest offshore dump site for surplus conventional and chemical munitions after the Second World War: it had been used for the purpose since the early 20th century. The Ministry of Defence has estimated that well over a million tons of munitions have been dumped there, including 14,500 tons of 5-inch (130-millimetre) artillery rockets filled with phosgene dumped in July 1945.
Munitions have since been deposited by the tide on nearby beaches. In 1995, phosphorus bombs washed up on Scottish coasts, coinciding with the laying of the Scotland-Northern Ireland pipeline (SNIP), a 24-inch (610-millimetre) gas interconnector constructed by British Gas. Over the previous five years, anti-tank grenades had washed up on the shores of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man.
An explosion was registered as a 2.5 Magnitude earthquake on 8 February 1986.
So.... Experimental/difficult civil engineering work (check), massive underwater explosion (check), wakes a long dormant prehistoric/mythical creature which then goes on a rampage (check). It almost writes itself!
4 comments:
Perhaps a paired system of catapults, one on either side...
So they just dumped stuff, didn’t contain it, didn’t disarm it, didn’t remove toxic substances?
I have the same question as VV... how are the residents doing with all this refuse in their backyard? :|
Here's an interesting article:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/beaufort-dyke-reveals-its-deadly-secrets-1.86927
Seems that locals have been asking about it for decades but the MoD documentation has either been 'lost' or is still classified. Essentially no one knows exactly what is down there, but it includes explosives and various types of gases including mustard gas and nerve gas. Some of it is obviously exploding down there - hence the earthquake reports - and apparently stuff *regularly* washes up on beaches! Amazing.
I doubt at the time if there was *any* attempt to disarm the munitions or neutalise the chemicals. It was probably deem far easier just to dump it over the side... Plus the regulations were MUCH weaker back then... and as it was military stuff there would have been a lot of secrecy around it.
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