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EDIT: I mathed wrong, see comments below.
I also saw that comment, all they cited was "napkin math" for that number, which is really all I've done here, so both of our answers should be taken with a big grain of salt.
They might know a lot more than I do and started with better numbers and used a better methodology, or they might be talking totally out of their ass and just picked a number that sounded about right to them, I can't say. If they want to look over my math, they're more than welcome to, that's why I wrote it out, so that people can fact-check me, I very well might be wrong. And if they they explain their napkin math, I'll look that over as well.
And to just do my math another way to back up the idea of it being more than a half ounce, let's go by weight. A gallon weighs about 8lbs, x 55 × 8 = 3520lbs of water, or 1596.645kg. 1596.645 × .001 = 1.596645kg of heroin by weight. And let's go ahead and assume I'm being overly optimistic about those weights, the purity of heroin, and all of the other science involved, and go ahead and use that cut that by 75% again like I did the first time, which gets us to about .4kg of heroin, not too far off from the .5kg I estimated the first time, and in either case significantly more than a half ounce.
EDIT: also, I just watched the video included in the article. A lot of the screenshots and such there seem to be talking about fentanyl while the article says heroin, so there seems to be some crossed wires here. Fentanyl is of course much more potent, so if the substance in the barrels was in fact fentanyl that would also be worth considering, ½oz of fentanyl would still plenty for a few dozen lethal doses, still a far cry from "millions" but it's something else that may be worth taking into consideration.
That's 0.1%, not 0.001%
0.001% of 440 gallons is 0.5632 fl oz (or just over 16ml out of 1,666 liters)
See, that's why I post my math so someone can double check me, I'm just some assholes one the internet doing math while I'm standing around staring at my washer waiting for it to finish
I'd really just calculated it the way decryptor did but the article also said only 7 of the barrels actually tested positive.
I figured most things have a density not all that far from water. This isn't lead or tungsten or helium we're talking about. Also the their .001% value is probably also just ballpark.
You know, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that same rule of thumb, and it hasn't steered me wrong yet. It feels like it shouldn't work, when it comes up people are always skeptical of it, but the results are hard to argue with.