What if the leak never stops?

I wanted to see some interesting answers to this question, I just thought about this. It would be quite scary.

I wish that i had just thought of that possibility. I've been thinking about it since the top kill failed and i realized that our last hope are the relief wells. There are no back up plans past that as far as i am aware of.

If it never stop would expect at minimum the gulf and the atlantic ocean being ruined for our lifetime. At worst i could see severe atmospheric changes that wipe all of us out.

Mother nature will only put up with so much before she just starts over.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by doublehelix]

Simple drill down to around 14,000 and light off a nuke which is WHAT i have been saying all along..........but Obama is a little baby and will not risk his popularity not that this is so great anymore! 54%++Americans are negative now.



and so you have that and other things......... to try...

I guess I'm not understanding the whole nuke the leak thing, I mean why would you nuke the middle of earth? Thats like putting a firecracker in an apple and saying that nothing bad will happen to the apple. I don't think its a smart idea at all. Besides has anything good ever come from having nukes? No! Death and Despair.

Originally posted by CoachSlamYou
I guess I'm not understanding the whole nuke the leak thing, I mean why would you nuke the middle of earth? Thats like putting a firecracker in an apple and saying that nothing bad will happen to the apple. I don't think its a smart idea at all. Besides has anything good ever come from having nukes? No! Death and Despair.

here is the theory...
www.youtube.com...

I'm not saying this is the right idea but a nuclear explosion need not be on the scale of hiroshima or a hydrogen bomb. It can be scaled down to the size that is needed.

reply to post by CoachSlamYou



sigh i'm not an engineer so we need those people from russia who accomplish this with the gas wells....what you are trying is a pinch off or collapse and seal the well! You need engineers on this though and lately i'm not even sure how some of these people down at the HIVE passed trigonometry.....If I was tony hayward the first call would be Russia and China.......

Originally posted by doublehelix

Originally posted by CoachSlamYou
I guess I'm not understanding the whole nuke the leak thing, I mean why would you nuke the middle of earth? Thats like putting a firecracker in an apple and saying that nothing bad will happen to the apple. I don't think its a smart idea at all. Besides has anything good ever come from having nukes? No! Death and Despair.

here is the theory...
www.youtube.com...

I'm not saying this is the right idea but a nuclear explosion need not be on the scale of hiroshima or a hydrogen bomb. It can be scaled down to the size that is needed.

it would be a davy crocket sized nuke and he was an american hero so many years later can save america again= this suffering was ridiculous and the nuke option is what I would have done.....well with a carefully calculated placement/payload.

Well, it seems to me that if the relief wells do not work, then the spills will just empty the oil to the oceans (or at least some of it). My apologies for referencing Fallout 3 again, but truthfully, we could see another Project Purity...
Project Purity Overview

The U.S. and Mexico will obviously not be as wastelandish as in Fallout, but if the oceans get black and tarry I bet they'll stay like that until someone comes up with a solution 20-100 years from now. However long it takes for us to develop the technology for that kind of containment and clean up.

Extreme worst case scenario might be something like Mustafar. Even at that, when I say extreme...I'm under-exaggerating but basically, the oil would spread to great distances away from "ground zero" and possibly be carried over land by storms and wind up in lakes in turn affecting (maybe) every body of water along the East Coast of North and South America. If oil is flammable, and things get coated with oil from rain...couldn't it kind of turn into a fiery land momentarily? Yeah, Mustafar was a bit of a stretch but I just think that sounds kind of plausible. Maybe it's just me though.

EDIT: Actually, no...the whole Project Purity thing might be over dramatic...but still. Clean water from the Gulf might be out of the question for a while now. Then if it continues out into the Atlantic...It might get bad but probably still not bad enough for a Project Purity situation.

[edit on 6/26/2010 by philosearcher]

I think they may already be entertaining the possibility of nukes. Probably the reason for two relief wells, as it would make sense to use a nuke on two sides to pinch off the well. I mean, what are the choices if the relief wells fail? How would you like to have the decision between setting off nukes or allowing oil to continually flood into the Gulf of Mexico endlessly sitting on your desk?

And I seriously doubt we will know about it till after the fact. Let's face it, the protests beforehand would be enormous, so they will want to avoid that. So yeah, this is very likely a TRUE situation where the discussion is ABOVE TOP SECRET. The reasoning will likely be that if it works, then they are heroes and the storm will blow over quickly. But if they fail, well, honestly, if the alternative is for the oil to keep flowing for perhaps DECADES, then what really do they (we?) have to lose?

Not that I want to be anywhere around when they do set off the nukes, though.

All the hysteria of this Deepwater Horizon situation is being perpetuated by widespread misperception of the true size of the leak.

Here's one way to put the "catastrophe" in perspective... Since the leak started in April, it's estimated that some 39 million to 111 million gallons of crude oil has escaped into the water column.

This is less oil than could be contained in the New Orleans Superdome.

That right. Less than a stadium-full of crude oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon leak. From low Earth orbit, you couldn't even see the New Orleans Superdome without a telescope.

Because this type of crude is very dense (about the same density as seawater), very little oil is actually reaching the surface — accordingly, the coastal contamination is minimal. The MSM is only offering you video and photographs of isolated little patches of oil on beaches BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THERE IS. The majority of the oil is being naturally emulsified in the seawater and will degrade naturally in a relatively short time.

In fact, we have more to worry about from the very toxic chemical dispersants that they're pumping into the leak. The crude oil itself isn't particularly toxic.

— Doc Velocity

What if the leak never stops? Consider this:

Est. barrels of oil in this reservoir: 1 billion, 42 B gallons of oil.

If we don't ever successfully stop this flow, consider the following:

1. 2.5 drops of oil will pollute a gallon of water to EPA "polluted" standards.
2. There are 90,840 drops in a gallon.
3. There are 342,543,511 cubic miles of seawater in the world's oceans.
4. One cubic mile contains 1,101,117,147,428 gallons.
5. One gallon of oil pollutes 36,336 gallons of water to EPA pollution levels.
6. 30.3 million gallons of oil are required to pollute one cubic mile of seawater.
7. 30.3 million gallons X 342,543,511 cubic miles yields: 10,379,052,000 gallons of oil needed to pollute ALL the world's seawater.

That reservoir thus has the capability of polluting ALL THE WATER OF THE WORLD'S OCEANS TO FOUR TIMES THE EPA POLLUTION STANDARDS.

(the above is not my figures, nor have I verified them)

Most likely it will be like the environmental damage that the bigger Nigerian oil spill has caused for the past 50 years or so. The damage will be unimaginably catastrophic to the local region.

In my opinion this is a possible outcome of the next 6 months:

* The oil will travel into the Atlantic and continue to destroy wildlife, industry and food supply.
* Chemicals from the leak and dispersant will be picked up in storms and fall inland possibly destroying agriculture and polluting water supplies.
* Large numbers of people will be displaced due to unemployment along the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Florida.
* The economic impact due to the loss of industries in the Gulf will be much more severe than anyone had considered.
* Big oil will (and their supporters) will argue that drilling in the Gulf is needed for economic recovery and the damage is already done.

Originally posted by Divinorumus
What if the leak never stops? Consider this:
That reservoir thus has the capability of polluting ALL THE WATER OF THE WORLD'S OCEANS TO FOUR TIMES THE EPA POLLUTION STANDARDS.

That's a little hysterical, don't you think? What makes you think the entire reservoir of oil would squirt out through that tiny leak in the ocean floor? What would fill the reservoir behind it? The type of oil leaking at Deepwater Horizon is approximately the same density as seawater — so we know water isn't rushing in to fill the void.

The leak will only continue until the pressure equalizes between the reservoir and the deep ocean. Then the leak stops naturally.

To date, as I mentioned earlier, the total amount of oil leaked wouldn't even fill the New Orleans Superdome. Plus, this type of oil emulsifies (blends) with seawater easily and degrades to a non-toxic form.

In fact, the crude oil leaking into the Gulf is much less toxic than the chemical dispersants we're using in the clean up.

— Doc Velocity




[edit on 6/26/2010 by Doc Velocity]

We adapt and instead of being 99% water we become 99% oil.
Or,…..we just die. I’m leaning more towards the dying as greasy hair is just not in style.

Originally posted by Unregistered
Most likely it will be like the environmental damage that the bigger Nigerian oil spill has caused for the past 50 years or so. The damage will be unimaginably catastrophic to the local region.

Nonsense.

It's the fear-mongers who want you to believe that nothing on this scale has ever happened before. Again, nonsense. We already dump THREE Deepwater Horizon disasters into the world's oceans every year

According to the National Research Council's 2003 report on Oceanic Pollution, humans dump 375 MILLION GALLONS of oil into the world's oceans EVERY YEAR, and we have done so for more than half a century.

So far, the Deepwater Horizon leak has pumped out a mere 111 million gallons in two months. That's only a third the amount that we spill into the oceans in a single year.

The ocean can HANDLE crude oil leaks, it knows how to decompose crude oil, causing it to rapidly degrade. The Earth is much more versatile than the enviro-stooges imagine.

— Doc Velocity

I'm trying to show the aspect of the situation here with this image.

Explanation: Oh come on everybody! Stop around the issue and bite the bullet and answer the question! :shk:

It's quite simple...we will all die! ... eventually, which was going to happen anyway so nothing has really changed OK!

Personal Disclosure: Why isn't the US throwing bucket loads of potatoes into the gulf and throwing a match to it? The resulting instantaneous production of billions of tons of fried fish and chips could feed humanity for years to come! It could save us from a NWO arranged world hunger crisis that is sure to be just around the next corner!

Edited emoticon fail. sigh

[edit on 26-6-2010 by OmegaLogos]

reply to post by OmegaLogos


I said it would kill us,
Oh and good post star upon ya, btw fish and chips....You Rock.

if the leak never stops then that would be fantastic for the USA.


1 million gallans a day only takes up 1 sq km of the seas surface each day and they could mop it up no trouble if they wanted to.

we are being played and they are looking for maximium damage so they can push through a carbon tax and the people are the near by coast are just pawns in this scanndel and clean up workers are ex censors workers than now only work 2 hours days.