With the Royal Navy's nuclear submarine fleet on their doorstep, it's fair to say the inhabitants of the towns and villages around the Firth of Clyde have been all too aware of the ever-present threat it has posed over the years.
But while HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane may present a worry to the local population today, previous generations have also fretted over volatile substances being stored within close proximity of their homes.
Just 20 miles southwest of the nuclear sub base is a little settlement called Millhouse, near the shoreside village of Kames on the Kyles of Bute, that for more than 80 years was famous far and wide as a manufacturer of high grade black gunpowder. The Kames Mill, as it was known, was not without its major mishaps.
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Established in 1839, The Kames Gunpowder Company exported gunpowder to the farthest reaches of the British Empire, using steamships - including the aptly named SS Guy Fawkes - to ferry its goods.
However, while the gunpowder mill boosted the local Argyllshire economy, employing more than 150 workers at its height, deadly accidents on the site were alarmingly common. Untold numbers of workers were badly maimed in explosions and other accidents at the mill over the decades, and some very sadly lost their lives.
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Nine workers died in two separate incidents in the 1840s, while in May 1858, an explosion claimed the lives of five men and a young boy who had been working in the vicinity of the mill's dusting house. The blast was thought to have been sparked by the wood embers from a stove.
The Glasgow Herald reported: "One of the survivors, whose duty it was to see everything in order, had visited the house and found all right, not more than a few minutes before the explosion took place.
"The names of those persons who have thus been unfortunately deprived of life are John Baxter, John Morrison, Peter McBride, Henry Warb, Neil Turner and Philip Tyllie. The four first-named were married men, and have left widows and families. A horse was also killed by the explosion."
In December 1863, another major explosion occurred when a lightning strike hit the mill Corning House, which stored the actual grains or 'corns' of gunpowder. On this occasion seven were killed and the SS Guy Fawkes was deployed to bring medics in from Rothesay.
Kames Mill once again hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons in 1870, when four workers - one of them a young boy - perished. 'Awful explosion at a powder mill. Four men and a boy blown to atoms,' read one newspaper headline.
The gunpowder plant continued to operate until 1921 - but, sadly, it had not yet claimed its last life. In 1923, worker John McGilp, who had been employed to dismantle the mill machinery, died having sustained serious powder burns. Several other men were injured in the incident.
As for the SS Guy Fawkes, it too suffered an unhappy fate. In December 1864, the steamship collided with another vessel, the Earl of Carlisle, and sank off the coast of Gourock. Four of the six people on board drowned as a result.
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