Welcome to Bikini Atoll. This is a sonar map of the lagoon where the first submarine nuclear explosion took place in 1946:
The sticks mark the final resting places of the ships used as test targets. These ships were thought be capable of surviving the blast, so, according to this BBC report:
These vessels – old units from the US, Japanese and German navies – were not prepared with the expectation that they would become artificial reefs. If that was the intention, they would have been stripped down.
Instead, the war-game scenario demanded that they should be left in position as if operational. That meant they were fuelled and even had munitions aboard.
“As we were mapping, I could know without looking up when we were near the [US aircraft carrier] Saratoga, because we could smell the bunker fuel; it was so heavy and is still streaking out.
Long time readers may recall that I find the practice of leaving shipwrecks lying around nettlesome, especially those which are a danger not only to the environment, but to local humans who may be caught in a catastrophe when the fuel oil or munitions reach critical. The radioactivity of these ships simply makes it even more difficult to visualize how to raise and properly dispose of these ships.
And the population of Bikini Atoll was mistreated dreadfully.
