Some political figures would describe the deserted town of Times Beach in the state of Missouri as a logistical nightmare. Everyone else would just call it a gigantic shambles. Times Beach was like any other small town in America in the 1970s, although it did have one small problem due to its unpaired roads: dust. To solve this situation, the residents turned to Russell Bliss, a man with one of the most ironic names in the history of mankind. To combat the dust, Bliss sprayed the roads with waste oil for around four years, all but eliminating the dust problem. What Bliss didnt tell the people of Times Beach was that hed sub-contracted the job out to the Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemicals Company and was spraying the roads with a waste oil that contained a level of dioxins that was 2000 times higher than Agent Orange. You know, the stuff they used to level forests in the Vietnam War whilst blaring out Bad Company. People started to get suspicious when plant life was stunted and horses began dying for seemingly no reason. Following an inspection, soil samples were taken that I can only guess got a somewhat surprising reaction from the environmental scientists from the EPA and if all that wasnt enough, in the 1980s, Times Beach was the subject of major flooding and the entire town was forced to be evacuated. One building from the town still exists and the land has now become part of the Route 66 State Park, where passing motorists presumably wonder What the chuff happened here?
