Chile Forum

...The south and east basins, while promising, are at greater depths and the tendered areas closest to the islands are located a little less than 150 kilometers away (as opposed to about 25 km in the case of the North Basin).
Why so far away? Is it just due to a geological issue? As confirmed to this author by the islands' director of mineral resources, Phyll Rendell, in 2004, a sort of exclusion zone has been created south of the islands, where any drilling is forbidden. The reason is simple: in that area lie British shipwrecks that are believed to contain nuclear war material.

The original article "Tras un manto de sospechas y especulaciones" was published by Página/12 on 18 February 2010.

"along with the neighboring islands controlled by the U.K., the Falklands are the de facto gateway to the Antarctic, which explains London's tenacity in maintaining sovereignty over them and the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, as well as territorial claims regarding the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands under the Antarctic Treaty.".......

A Chinese analysis of over two years earlier described what Britain in part went to war for in 1982 and why it may do so again: Control of broad tracts of Antarctica.......

The feature from which the preceding excerpts originated ended with a warning: “[T]he South Pole [Antarctic] Treaty points out that the South Pole can only be exploited and developed for the sake of peace; and can not be a battle ground. Otherwise, the ice-cold South Pole could prove a fiercely hot battlefield.”........

Britain submitted a claim to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf for one million square kilometers in the South Atlantic reaching into the Antarctic Ocean. .........

... the new scramble for Antarctica initiated by Britain and Australia, the second being granted 2.5 million additional square kilometers in the Antarctic Ocean in April of 2008........

... London's "eagerness to expand its Falkland Islands' continental shelf from 200 to 350 nautical miles, which would enable Britain to develop new oil fields in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands,".......

“Not since the Golden Age of the Empire has Britain staked its claim to such a vast area of land on the world stage. And while the British Empire may be long gone, the Antarctic has emerged as the latest battleground for rival powers competing on several fronts to secure valuable oil-rich territory...

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote::lol:

Now my warped mind is going back to those stories of nazi bases in Antartica and possibly Patagonia and the exotic technologies that said nazis developed

Distant colonies are a post-imperial anachronism. Britain will have to negotiate with Argentina because the world, either at the UN or at The Hague, will insist on it. The government and media can bury their heads in the sand, but that will not make the Falklands dispute go away or atone for the dead of the silliest of wars a quarter century ago.

Ah yes, the Hague, what a prestigious name