Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know Frendhouse Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Child's w Chuck Bryant looking chipper and bright eye
Speaker 1: and bushy tail. There's Jerry over there, she dressed like
Speaker 1: snow white. Some birds flying around the place. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: all this stuff you should know. It's like Disney all
Speaker 1: up in here. Which, by the way, we learned the
Speaker 1: hard way. Um, welcome a dam Gilbert, so I'll mess
Speaker 1: it up again. That's good. So, Chuck, have you ever
Speaker 1: been inside an underground mine? No? Do you do? You
Speaker 1: remember an episode where we talked about what happens to
Speaker 1: abandon mine? Yeah? Boy, did we do a show on
Speaker 1: that old timy crazy old It was a good one
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. Okay, yeah, and then we've also
Speaker 1: done one on mountaintop removal mining with Ben so Lee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good one too. Up, this one's totally different.
Speaker 1: Fracking too. Oh yeah, we did do fracking. What the
Speaker 1: frick is fracking did? That's what it was called. One
Speaker 1: of our better titles. Um, but this was totally different.
Speaker 1: This is underground mining. Yes, this is what people normally
Speaker 1: think of with mining rather than stripping the top off
Speaker 1: of a mountain or um fracking. This is this is mining. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you usually um don't think about mining much as
Speaker 1: a regular person walking around on a day to day basis,
Speaker 1: unless there's some sort of accident, and that will usually
Speaker 1: cause regular folk to say, oh yeah, right, people still
Speaker 1: go underground in mine and it can be very dangerous.
Speaker 1: They're like, how terrible? Back to life like in two
Speaker 1: and Chile? I remember that. I know that one was
Speaker 1: huge while they got those dudes they did, and there's
Speaker 1: I think a movie coming out or already out. Uh,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken Antonio Bandetas, Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: so too sexy. Yeah, that's a one sexy minor do
Speaker 1: you remember that? You don't remember the Antonio bandeis? How
Speaker 1: do you say? Yes, that's right, I remember that. Now?
Speaker 1: Did someone played him though, right? Or was he? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm sure he guessed it at least once. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was Chris Ktan. I think exactly right,
Speaker 1: the least sexy guy of all time. Actually, we're sorry,
Speaker 1: Mr Katan, but it's true. I think he would admit that. No,
Speaker 1: I think he likes himself. He doesn't care what we say.
Speaker 1: What was that crazy character he used to do the
Speaker 1: like Mango? Yeah, that was very funny. Oh no, Mango
Speaker 1: is different than the monkey boy. Mango was like the
Speaker 1: super sexy um like Flamenco dancer down in Miami or
Speaker 1: something that like every people would like like give up
Speaker 1: their lives for it just a year around. Mango wasn't
Speaker 1: the one who ate fruit all right, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: God rest his soul? Who Chris Catin. I'm just kidding, Well,
Speaker 1: you can still Does that have to mean you're dead?
Speaker 1: Or can God just rest your soul like he needs
Speaker 1: a break. I think there's a sense of finality to that.
Speaker 1: When God rests your soul, you can still rest in
Speaker 1: peace by taking a nice nap um so yes. In Chile, uh,
Speaker 1: it was a disaster in two thousand and ten that
Speaker 1: uh turned out with a great ending because like I said,
Speaker 1: they're all rescued and um, but they spent sixty eight
Speaker 1: days underground. Yeah in a little room, crazy man. It
Speaker 1: would probably smell a lot like p when they were
Speaker 1: finally taken out of there. Yeah, it's a long time,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's believable. I believe the room was
Speaker 1: designed as an escape room or something, so it worked
Speaker 1: like it it was supposed to. But they had to
Speaker 1: dig like an escape hatch. They had to dig down
Speaker 1: to these miners hundreds of feet under the ground. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: which in and of itself put their life in danger,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know. And that happened in two thousand ten.
Speaker 1: And Julia Layton, who wrote this article, points out that
Speaker 1: that was a as far as mining goes, that was
Speaker 1: a bad year. So there were those guys like thirty
Speaker 1: three were rescued, but a bunch of their compatriots were
Speaker 1: killed in that same disaster, I believe. Well, yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: I think she also makes a great point that, you know,
Speaker 1: the disaster gets all the headlines, but people die all
Speaker 1: the time, individually or in you know, several dudes at once.
Speaker 1: You know, that doesn't hit the headlines like a couple
Speaker 1: of guys die on the job in a day, and
Speaker 1: regionally you might hear about the news, but it's not
Speaker 1: gonna sweep the nation like a big disaster. And apparently, also, um,
Speaker 1: things like black Long are still around even though they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be. And I was reading you know that they
Speaker 1: these deaths although they're preventable. They are there the deaths
Speaker 1: of people who live in rural communities outside of the
Speaker 1: spotlight of the media, and so it still happens. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the point is mining, underground mining in particular is extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: I have a question for you, though. I was looking
Speaker 1: at pictures of modern mining operations, and guys are down there,
Speaker 1: you know, without even like a dust mask on, And
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking that seems to be the most preventable
Speaker 1: thing you can do. Is where the like, weren't they
Speaker 1: wearing the things that firefighters wear, but the tank in
Speaker 1: the full mask, face mask. The closest thing I can
Speaker 1: come to for an answer is that the mine. No,
Speaker 1: the mine owners are supposed to have that place so
Speaker 1: ventilated that you wouldn't even need that supposed to I
Speaker 1: don't know about that. That's that, But I mean, like
Speaker 1: in the nine Congress said there should not be black
Speaker 1: lung anymore. We want to eradicated from the mining industry.
Speaker 1: Since then, seventy six thousand miners have died from black
Speaker 1: long um. But it's apparently it's totally preventable. It's just
Speaker 1: mine owners being cheap and or lazy. And I guess
Speaker 1: I mean when was this done? When did they? Oh? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well you could have stats of people that theoretically started
Speaker 1: their career after that, and I'm sure you should not
Speaker 1: have black lungs, but they they're definitely people who weren't
Speaker 1: even born than that died of black long since man
Speaker 1: um all right, well we're talking about underground mining though,
Speaker 1: because as you pointed out to Jerry when she said
Speaker 1: mining and you underground mining difference. That sound like that.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of self reflection into um. But
Speaker 1: surface mining is different, and that is uh, a very
Speaker 1: viable way to get or if you only want to
Speaker 1: go down and that's a top down op, that's like
Speaker 1: mountaintop removal. Yeah, if you want to go down a
Speaker 1: couple hundred feet, it's a it's a good way to
Speaker 1: get some or below that the efficiencies, um, it becomes inefficient.
Speaker 1: So they say, well, why don't we get down there,
Speaker 1: go to the working our way up. That's what they do,
Speaker 1: or least, you know, maybe just go get that big
Speaker 1: chunk of orbits a thousand feet down? And did you
Speaker 1: did you see this thing about kind of the early
Speaker 1: history of mining? Yah? So should we do that? Yeah? Man,
Speaker 1: the when you talk about going like a thousand feet
Speaker 1: down or how how far does the uranium mind go
Speaker 1: down to ft? That's mind boggling lead deep. That's more
Speaker 1: than a mile, right, isn't a mile something like in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of five thousand feet? I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I think it is. It's something like that, right, So
Speaker 1: that's a very deep amount. But that's using like machines
Speaker 1: and mechanization, which we'll talk about. So if you go
Speaker 1: around the world and find some of these ancient minds
Speaker 1: like Roman minds or Egyptian minds, they were the first
Speaker 1: ones to really get into mining um, although there are
Speaker 1: prehistoric minds that date back to the Neolithic age. Them
Speaker 1: going down like a hundred feet or so, that's pretty impressive,
Speaker 1: and they're working in it's like something like three or
Speaker 1: four meters a month of an advance rate. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they're using pick axes. They were using picks and slave
Speaker 1: labor and prisoners and prisoners of war criminals basically, so
Speaker 1: that conditions, as you would imagine, were terrible because they
Speaker 1: didn't care ahead and I will just go conquer another
Speaker 1: land and make them exactly. But as that um source
Speaker 1: of employees dried up and they had fewer and fewer
Speaker 1: prisoners of war because they conquered everyone. They said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a real job and we should make
Speaker 1: it safer. Yeah, like paid some probably still like unskilled,
Speaker 1: like yokels, but at least they Yeah, but they weren't
Speaker 1: prisoners of war and slaves that they wanted to pay
Speaker 1: them a little more, a little money, not much, and
Speaker 1: make a little bit safer. No, And as a result,
Speaker 1: the occupation of mining became more respected and respectable because
Speaker 1: it's a pretty hardcore, a patient, um, and one that
Speaker 1: should be admired and respected, especially if you're talking about
Speaker 1: back in the day when they're using pickaxes and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your article that you sent was pre six and um.
Speaker 1: For hundreds and hundreds of years, it kind of stayed
Speaker 1: the same, and the Egyptians kind of set the standard
Speaker 1: and everyone followed suit. And you know, they would dig
Speaker 1: down with pickaxes and shovels made of you know, depends
Speaker 1: everything from bone to when they finally got metal from mining,
Speaker 1: they would use metal, right. It kind of was like
Speaker 1: a cycle. They also very cleverly and apparently this is
Speaker 1: a really old technique they would use. Um. I think
Speaker 1: it was called fired quenching. Yeah, that's says fire setting
Speaker 1: or fire quenching. Let's just say they would heat up
Speaker 1: rock with fire and then throw water on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you've ever done that, you can see your
Speaker 1: rockwell crack pretty quickly because of that change in temperature.
Speaker 1: That really rapid change of temperature. Not safe. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not, because that rock can go flying, especially in
Speaker 1: fifth century Rome. Yeah, and they were also using it
Speaker 1: not just to like hurry along. It was basically their
Speaker 1: their version of drilling and blasting before there was drills
Speaker 1: or blast equipment. Um. And they would also use it
Speaker 1: not just to to drill or blast or break up
Speaker 1: or they were doing it so they could free their
Speaker 1: acts as or picks that would get stuck in the rock.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that thing could come flying out and hit you.
Speaker 1: But again, you were most likely a prisoner of war,
Speaker 1: a slave, or a convicted criminal who was not only
Speaker 1: using a very cheap pick to break up rock. All day,
Speaker 1: there's a guy behind you lashing you with the whip
Speaker 1: to egg you on and keep you standing upright. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is weird. I just thought about the cycle
Speaker 1: like they they kind of I mean, they use the
Speaker 1: metal for other things, but they were kind of mining
Speaker 1: to just improve their own equipment for more mining and
Speaker 1: the discovery more metals. Like initially they wanted to think
Speaker 1: flint for tools and weapons, but they were using bone.
Speaker 1: And then eventually they were like, oh, well we found copper, right,
Speaker 1: so we'll use copper to dig, and like oh well,
Speaker 1: now we found bronze, and like wait, we found some iron.
Speaker 1: R Now let's use iron. Pretty neat, yeah, And each
Speaker 1: time it was like a snake eating its own tail.
Speaker 1: They just go do some more mining with the new stuff.
Speaker 1: That's right. Um. And so yeah, like you said that,
Speaker 1: that was pretty much the early history of mining, and
Speaker 1: it stayed virtually the same until the age of mechanization,
Speaker 1: that well, the industrial age. But even after the industrial agies,
Speaker 1: people were still using like ancient mining techniques T and
Speaker 1: T H. Well it's not that but blasting. And I
Speaker 1: think what they say in this article like five of
Speaker 1: mining today, is this that blast? Yeah technique, it's mostly mechanized, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: let's you want to take a break. Yeah, man, Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk about mechanized mining techniques right
Speaker 1: after this. All right, So, no, two minds are the same. Well,
Speaker 1: that's probably not true. I bet you there's two minds
Speaker 1: that are the same, exactly the same. But there are
Speaker 1: different kinds of minds and um, but most of them
Speaker 1: have a few common characteristics. Uh, you gotta have your
Speaker 1: ventilation shafts. You gotta have your access shafts for the employees,
Speaker 1: you gotta have exit shafts for the or. Um a lot.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of shafts, so many shafts, but so
Speaker 1: many shafts. There's uh, did you say vent shafts to
Speaker 1: bend away the stuff. Yeah, that's number one recovery shafts
Speaker 1: that the or goes up out of. Uh yeah, calm systems,
Speaker 1: break room, we have breakroom, escape rooms, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and the But I think the point of Laton here
Speaker 1: is that the ore deposit itself is going to tell
Speaker 1: you what kind of underground mining technique you want to use, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like the what the ore actually is? What it's shaped like?
Speaker 1: H Is it like a big flat slab? Is it
Speaker 1: a big huge blob? What kind of rock is around it?
Speaker 1: Are you mining petroleum? Jelly? Uh? Well you raised a question, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I could not find this to save my life. So
Speaker 1: there's two types of underground mines, right, there's hard rock
Speaker 1: mines and soft rock mines. Sound their sound Garden and
Speaker 1: Steely Dan. I had dock In and Brett, did you really?
Speaker 1: And oh is doc and metal? Yeah? But see the
Speaker 1: the thing hard rock or metal. That's a fine line something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think bread about sound Garden and bread look
Speaker 1: at us sound Garden working together. Um, So I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out if that is meant to describe the or
Speaker 1: the type of thing that's being mined or the rocks
Speaker 1: surrounding the ore. I saw both if you know what
Speaker 1: now for the hard or soft? Right? Oh, you see
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? Yeah, I never I think I assumed
Speaker 1: it was the ore, but you may be right. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's so. Layton says, for example, coal coal deposits live
Speaker 1: in relatively soft sedimentary rock, which would make you think
Speaker 1: that she's she's saying that it's the rock that's around
Speaker 1: the ore's soft, yeah, and that that would be a
Speaker 1: soft rock mine that is not dependent on the type
Speaker 1: of ore you're getting out. I saw elsewhere. I saw
Speaker 1: that what she was saying being supported and other places,
Speaker 1: But I also saw no, it has to do with
Speaker 1: it describes the ore that's being removed. So if there's
Speaker 1: any miners out there that can tell us the difference definitively,
Speaker 1: we want to know. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get a
Speaker 1: wonderful follow up emial. But the point is, depending on
Speaker 1: whether you've determined it's a hard rock mine or a
Speaker 1: soft rock mine, UM, that's going to also inform not
Speaker 1: just the the the where the ore is and the
Speaker 1: size of the in shape of the ore deposit, but um,
Speaker 1: whether it's hard rock or soft rock is going to
Speaker 1: determine what type of mining technique you want to use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's more hard rock minds than soft.
Speaker 1: They list gold, diamonds, copper, silver, zinc, and nickel. It's
Speaker 1: hard rock and the only mentioned of soft is coal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of coal mining going on, so
Speaker 1: maybe you know tons literally tons. Uh, So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about hard rock mining. Um. It really helps.
Speaker 1: I found to look at either cross actions, Like if
Speaker 1: you look up um room and pillar mining, there's always
Speaker 1: a great cross section diagram. The kind of brings it home,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at this stuff. I saw you watching
Speaker 1: a video that I saw too. It like brings out
Speaker 1: the Little Boy who Loved Honker Truck in again, like
Speaker 1: this stuff is really neat. Yeah, you're well, we'll get there.
Speaker 1: The continuous minor, Yeah, that's definitely probably, but also like
Speaker 1: trucks driving underground and like going beep. Yeah, just awesome,
Speaker 1: all right. So room and pillar is um for a
Speaker 1: flat or deposit that doesn't let's say like oh it
Speaker 1: starts at two feet and goes down a thousand more feet.
Speaker 1: It's more horizontal and flat. And this is where basically
Speaker 1: you use this machine called a continuous miner. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they say it drills, but maybe that's the terminology. But
Speaker 1: when I think of drill, I think of um, something
Speaker 1: long drilling a hole into something. This looks like a
Speaker 1: boxy tank with a huge metal dust pan at the
Speaker 1: bottom and a huge rolling pin with teeth on it
Speaker 1: at the top and a big appetite for coal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and when I say rolling pin, it's like kind
Speaker 1: of like a bulldozer. You can raise and lower it
Speaker 1: and you just drive that thing through earth. But you
Speaker 1: leave these pillars, so you basically clear out a huge
Speaker 1: room with these big pillars left to keep you from dying.
Speaker 1: I find the terms room and pillar They're kind of
Speaker 1: misleading because it makes you think that the room is
Speaker 1: going to be vast and then there's these little kind
Speaker 1: of supports that are left behind, and that's not the
Speaker 1: case at all. The pillars are huge, They're enormous. They're
Speaker 1: from what I saw, they're frequently bigger than the room itself,
Speaker 1: and they're left behind to keep the rock above from
Speaker 1: crumbling in. Right. Yeah, that's still gotta be scary. So
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I'm sure you know, like this is extremely
Speaker 1: dangerous work. Yeah. So, I mean you're allowing out inside
Speaker 1: the mountain. That's super dangerous. Well, I mean when I
Speaker 1: did my one caving experience a few years ago and
Speaker 1: I was in there was this one I think they
Speaker 1: called it a pancake crawl or something where for twenty
Speaker 1: feet you have to shimmy on your back with with
Speaker 1: the world's largest stone slab five inches above your face.
Speaker 1: And I just kept thinking, like, what if the earth
Speaker 1: moved a little, Yeah, this thing just smashed me flat,
Speaker 1: you'd be a pancake yourself. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: dangers is trimmers and things underground trimmers. Have you been
Speaker 1: to Rock City? Yeah, when I was a kid, so
Speaker 1: a while you know, there's like the enormous rock that's
Speaker 1: being held up very precariously by a small boulder. You're
Speaker 1: walking under that same same thing. I don't need to
Speaker 1: go caving. I can just go to Rock City. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you can go to Stuckies and buy a
Speaker 1: pecan log after love those Yes, crazy. No rock City
Speaker 1: as a Tennessee right, yeah, Chattanooga, Tennessee. It's very beautiful area.
Speaker 1: It's it's our version of Carl's Bad Caverns. You've got
Speaker 1: Rock City, well, it's super kitchy. There's like nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: glow in the dark gnomes everywhere. It's really interesting cool um.
Speaker 1: And then you've got Ruby Falls. You walk underground and
Speaker 1: come into a cavern and there's the water coming down. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's also like Lookout Mountain. It's beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely worth going to. Not too far from your beloved Dollywood, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not far. So. The point is with the room
Speaker 1: and pillar, right, you're basically your pac Man or your
Speaker 1: dig Doug going through a coal scene and then that
Speaker 1: space you just carved out is called the room. When
Speaker 1: you come back through, you leave a big space in
Speaker 1: between of coal and then come back through again and
Speaker 1: that's another room. So what's in between those two rooms
Speaker 1: now is the pillar. It's just the strip of coal
Speaker 1: that you left intac Yeah, and um that that they
Speaker 1: will come in at the very end and even take
Speaker 1: care of those pillars one by one, allowing everything to
Speaker 1: collapse as it leaves, which sounds probably like the most
Speaker 1: dangerous phase's knocking the pillars down there, like make Todd
Speaker 1: do it. Uh, he's in the break room having a nap.
Speaker 1: Wake him up. That's why they he always sleeps on
Speaker 1: the job. Did you see that picture of Richard Branson
Speaker 1: like squatting next to one of like a Virgin Airlines employee,
Speaker 1: like sleeping on a couch in the break room. He's
Speaker 1: like squatting next to him giving the thumbs up. What
Speaker 1: was this whole thing? Because he's like the boss of
Speaker 1: all bosses of this guy. No, he's saying like, I
Speaker 1: busted you sleeping on got you? It sounded staged. It
Speaker 1: was a real thing, supposedly. Yeah. Did he stick his
Speaker 1: hands in hot water, him and himself in Italia on
Speaker 1: the guy's face was sharp. He put toothpaste on his
Speaker 1: hand and tickled his nose. He's a fun loving boss.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's room and pillar. There's also the
Speaker 1: cut and film method, which I don't fully understand. It
Speaker 1: is for narrow deposits, and you basically drill a ramp
Speaker 1: adjacent to the deposit from the surface of the earth
Speaker 1: down to the bottom of it, and then you start
Speaker 1: at the bottom at the bottom and just start drilling sideways. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so imagine like the ore deposit is just like
Speaker 1: a big tall um like rectangle okay in the earth
Speaker 1: going upwards. It's a vertical or deposit. You just go
Speaker 1: down the bottom, you make a cut across where you're
Speaker 1: digging out the coal from one side all the way
Speaker 1: to the other, all the way to the other right,
Speaker 1: and then you backfill that with um rock rubble that
Speaker 1: say you you gathered when you made the initial shaft
Speaker 1: down to the bottom, and then you drive on that
Speaker 1: backfill to do the next thing. So you fill the
Speaker 1: entire room you just did with rubble, and then when
Speaker 1: you cut above that, you're using that rubble to drive
Speaker 1: on and then yep, just up. Well that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty pretty good one. And if you imagine a
Speaker 1: big yellow truck doing it, it can just send you
Speaker 1: barreling right back to age four or five. I didn't
Speaker 1: play a ton with Tonka trucks a little bit. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of model cars. Richard Scary was really
Speaker 1: good at drawing stuff like that. Those books were great,
Speaker 1: but I was big on I had the Evil Knevil
Speaker 1: stunt cycle. Oh yeah, that was just amazing. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that was my toy of choice for like probably three
Speaker 1: or four years. I can imagine. Yeah, I used to
Speaker 1: we my brother and I made don't try this at home, kids.
Speaker 1: This is the seventies. We were much more dangerous. We
Speaker 1: would make hoops out of coat hangers and dip them
Speaker 1: in gasoline. I was really really hoping that you were
Speaker 1: going to say a ring of fire. Yeah, when you
Speaker 1: could jump the evil can evil through it, it's really awesome. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: I really missed out on having a Scout on my own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good to have a scott arown. Yeah. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: gonna be at our New York shows by the way,
Speaker 1: Oh great, just randomly going to be in New York,
Speaker 1: same exact them. Actually, I don't know if he's going
Speaker 1: to come to the show. He was going to, but
Speaker 1: then I said, it's the same topic you've already seen,
Speaker 1: so he said, Yeah. Anyway back to um cut and fill. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can use it for wider deposits as well. You
Speaker 1: just have to have two adjacent rams. I guess you
Speaker 1: have one on each side. Yeah. I didn't really get that,
Speaker 1: aside from maybe it's it's a they're just criss crossing it.
Speaker 1: Think they're doing one above the other. That seems really dangerous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's all dangerous. All right. Let's talk more about Scott.
Speaker 1: Uh what about block caving? This one is um you
Speaker 1: don't see it a lot now. It's for hard rock
Speaker 1: excavations and basically it's not for like precious metal or anything.
Speaker 1: It's for low grade junks. So I saw that here.
Speaker 1: But then I also saw like videos of UM that
Speaker 1: that sounded a lot like this. That seemed a lot
Speaker 1: like this too, So I don't know if it's just
Speaker 1: for junk or whatever. Yeah, it's it's basically where you
Speaker 1: cut through and then you let the roof collapse behind you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you dig out a room and then blast it and
Speaker 1: let it just fall in on itself and then you
Speaker 1: caul that stuff out. Yeah. I guess you wouldn't care
Speaker 1: about the stuff you're recovering like that much. Obviously it's
Speaker 1: worth going into the earth and retrieving it. But I
Speaker 1: guess it's not high grade, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That's right. So um coal, like we said, is softer
Speaker 1: and that is usually room and pillar style. But now
Speaker 1: there's a thing called long wall mining that is all
Speaker 1: the rage in the break room of the minings. So
Speaker 1: it's really efficient they get out of available or with
Speaker 1: this method where room and pillar is only about fIF percent,
Speaker 1: which is a huge deaf right. So we said that
Speaker 1: we were talking about hard rock mining, right with the
Speaker 1: room and pillar works for hard rock mining and soft rock, yeah,
Speaker 1: it crosses over. But then the cut and fill that's
Speaker 1: just for hard rock, right correct, Okay, and then long
Speaker 1: wall that's just for soft rock basically, uh think so yes,
Speaker 1: so long while Yeah, that's the one where I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh man, this is so cool. Yeah. The machine, it's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. How much those machines cost. Boy, I don't know.
Speaker 1: A lot likes easy easy at least it's really neat. Um,
Speaker 1: you're not drilling into a single deposit. Through the deposit,
Speaker 1: you basically have a machine that just kind of it's
Speaker 1: sort of a cross cut and just shaves it off
Speaker 1: as you go onto a conveyor belt, just constantly moving
Speaker 1: the stuff out right. Rather than drilling through going forward
Speaker 1: or backward, You're you're going left to right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: what you would do is you drill a shaft down
Speaker 1: to the ore deposit, and then you drill a shaft
Speaker 1: that's parallel to the face of it, right, that goes
Speaker 1: from left to right, and then you go down and
Speaker 1: you bring in your long wall machine, which is apparently
Speaker 1: up the eight hundred feet long wide right, and each
Speaker 1: each part of this machine, which sounds like it's modular,
Speaker 1: like you can make it shorter or longer or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they just hook up to one another. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like a hydraulic jack that holds the roof of
Speaker 1: the mountain up above it, yes, and then its own support. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then on the front of it is where the
Speaker 1: coal eater is, the soul eater. Amazing. This thing in
Speaker 1: action is really cool looking. Yeah, it really is, because
Speaker 1: when you're watching videos of it, um, it looks you
Speaker 1: just see it from the side and it looks like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go straight, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the coal eater shoots off out of sight further back
Speaker 1: into the ore deposit. And as it does that, it
Speaker 1: drops that coal down to a conveyor belt in the
Speaker 1: front of the thing, and it shoots the coal off
Speaker 1: to the shaft that raises it up. Amazing. It is
Speaker 1: very amazing. And there's another method called short wall, and
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. It's just for shorter cuts when
Speaker 1: it's a narrow deposit. And then after the cut has made,
Speaker 1: the thing advances a little further and the roof behind
Speaker 1: it caves in. Amazing. I'm a big long wall fan.
Speaker 1: What about you? Mm hmm. I like the room and
Speaker 1: pillar really because it's the machine, a continuous miner. Well,
Speaker 1: then I think that's why I like the long wall
Speaker 1: is because of the mining machine. They should have named
Speaker 1: the continuous miner the John Henry just you know, perspect
Speaker 1: like a throwback. But he was a railroad guy. Who
Speaker 1: was the guy who had the casey at the bat. Now,
Speaker 1: wasn't it John Henry who had the contest against the
Speaker 1: steam machine? But I think they were what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a steel Oh right, he was
Speaker 1: driving spikes. What was the one that was digging into
Speaker 1: a rock? I know what you're talking about, though, and
Speaker 1: I feel like they were. They were trying to build
Speaker 1: a train tunnel too. I'm gonna look this up during
Speaker 1: the break and we'll come back with the answer. How
Speaker 1: about that, let's do It's called the Cliffhanger, all right,
Speaker 1: it is John Henry. Wow, he did it all. He
Speaker 1: did it all he was he was the steel driving man,
Speaker 1: like he said. But here was the deal. He hammered
Speaker 1: the steel drill into rock, uh, to make the railroad tunnel.
Speaker 1: So it was railroading mining or not mining? Those the
Speaker 1: best of both worlds. Well, do you call that mining
Speaker 1: mining or just tunneling tunnel? And that's a good question.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's mining. Mining is specifically getting
Speaker 1: or tunneling. It's just blasting a hole through something. Okay, Tonally,
Speaker 1: that was another good episode we did tunnels. Do we
Speaker 1: do that one too? Yeah? Jeez, man, starting to lose it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like our civil engineering episodes too. Is that a
Speaker 1: tranche we have? Sure, we've done bridges, tunnels, mining a
Speaker 1: couple of times, uh, some other stuff. Yeah. I guess
Speaker 1: landfills would probably qualify. Yeah. I could probably come up
Speaker 1: with more, but we should move on. Do you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the dangers of mining Chuck, Yeah, well
Speaker 1: they're rampant there. Well, first of all, it's it's can
Speaker 1: be very uh can be bad for mother Earth. It's
Speaker 1: just a tad, just a little bit we're talking. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're changing the physical makeup of the earth beneath our feet,
Speaker 1: So there's gotta be ramifications um. Air pollution, of course,
Speaker 1: is one how water flows on you know, the water
Speaker 1: table underneath the earth, where that goes, that's bound to
Speaker 1: change things well. And also a lot of times they
Speaker 1: are releasing other things in the earth that shouldn't really
Speaker 1: be in our drinking water, and that that stuff does
Speaker 1: get into drinking water. The soil pollutes the heck out
Speaker 1: of it. Sometimes there's a fire underground, fires that you
Speaker 1: can't even get to to put out, like in centrally
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania. Isn't that crazy? If fire fire burning deep
Speaker 1: within the earth, that that just sounds dangerous. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: a coal steam catches, you're in big trouble because that's
Speaker 1: that is not getting put out anytime soon, maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years, it will burn itself out, who knows, really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what Centralli has got going on still yeah, still
Speaker 1: on fire, like it will probably be on fire for
Speaker 1: a century. Man, I need to look into that. I
Speaker 1: haven't heard of that. It's neat. Yeah, they had abandoned
Speaker 1: the town. They had to. Yeah, there was a kid
Speaker 1: in like the eighties after the fire had caught. It
Speaker 1: was a landfill or a tire fire, something stupid, and
Speaker 1: it caught. It caught a coal seam on fire and
Speaker 1: an underground cole seine and um, like they knew it
Speaker 1: was burning, but they didn't evacuate the town until a
Speaker 1: kid in two was just playing in the street in
Speaker 1: the street opened up and almost swallowed him into a
Speaker 1: pit of fire, and they're like, we need to get
Speaker 1: out of here. Holy cow. So that area is just
Speaker 1: like a I mean, is it fenced up and it's
Speaker 1: a death zone. Yes, but apparently there's still a couple
Speaker 1: of people that lived there. Like I'm not moving, man,
Speaker 1: never heard of that. There's also have you heard of
Speaker 1: wildcat mining? I don't think so. It's basically I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about mining. It's basically I asked the same question,
Speaker 1: why do you know everything about mine? That's a good
Speaker 1: question too, Um. Wildcat mining I know about because I
Speaker 1: couldn't find the name of the article, but there was
Speaker 1: a great article I think I read in Harper's a
Speaker 1: year or two back, and it's about wildcat mining and Guiana,
Speaker 1: and basically it's just illegal mining. But they are the
Speaker 1: most polluting um mining operations you can imagine, Like they
Speaker 1: use mercury quicksilver to bind to gold, and they're handling
Speaker 1: the quicksilver. It's getting everywhere, they're leaving it behind, it's
Speaker 1: going in the soil, it's going in the water. Um
Speaker 1: and that's just like one problem with it. They do
Speaker 1: nothing to remediate, like they're the diesel exhaust or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's just a really big problem. Is this
Speaker 1: Guiana completely unregulated or operation? By definition, it's it's a
Speaker 1: rogue operation. It's just unlicensed mining operation. And it's not
Speaker 1: just Guiana that has that problem. It's around the world
Speaker 1: there's wildcat mining, but they have a particularly bad problem
Speaker 1: with it. Man, And I bet they make a dollar
Speaker 1: a day. Oh yeah, you know, very sad um. Well,
Speaker 1: we might as well talk about the human toll since
Speaker 1: that's where we are. Like I said before, major accidents
Speaker 1: of the one you're gonna hear about. But as example, uh,
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten, um about Chinese miners died, but
Speaker 1: none of them were big, big accidents. So you didn't
Speaker 1: really hear about a lot of that. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you didn't hear about in China. I know I didn't
Speaker 1: hear about it. But yeah, in China they were like
Speaker 1: that's a big death. Hol though miner's family received windfall,
Speaker 1: why they got paid out? Yeah? Um, and you talked
Speaker 1: about was it in two thousand ten Chilean and West Virginia?
Speaker 1: That same year there was twenty nine people killed, thirty
Speaker 1: one people at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia,
Speaker 1: Matthew Energy Mine, New Zealand and other twenty nine people
Speaker 1: died that same year, Yeah, twenty nine thirty one. Again
Speaker 1: of the people present, twenty nine thirty one died at
Speaker 1: Pike River Mine. Things are getting better though, like a
Speaker 1: lot of these accidents. Um, well, like you said, sometimes
Speaker 1: just uh tremmors. Like we said earlier, sometimes there are explosions. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, these gases can ignite, there's underground gases. It's
Speaker 1: just it's really just volatile down there, and and in
Speaker 1: developed countries though there's not supposed to be explosions, Like
Speaker 1: the mining operations are supposed to be sophisticated enough these
Speaker 1: days that there should not be explosives. I remember Massive
Speaker 1: Energy gotten big trouble because they just were totally lax
Speaker 1: about safety precautions that kind of stuff, and some miners
Speaker 1: blew up because of it. Man. Uh. And then of
Speaker 1: course the health risks that are long term. We mentioned
Speaker 1: black long, but uh, you know it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be just black long. Uh. There are all sorts of
Speaker 1: things you can breathe in, welding fumes, radon, mercury, all
Speaker 1: kinds of respiratory disease that can arise from being down
Speaker 1: there without even like a hanky over your out. In
Speaker 1: some of these photos, it's just doesn't make sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would wear at least a dust mask. You would
Speaker 1: be down there anyway I could mind. I'd be like
Speaker 1: Derek zu Leander's family. He'd be break room. Josh, go
Speaker 1: wake up, just make him do it. But you did
Speaker 1: mention remediation a second ago, and um, you know it's
Speaker 1: all gotten better, safer and more strict environmentally speaking. But
Speaker 1: there are different depending on where you are, they're different
Speaker 1: remediation laws and rules from take care of it right now,
Speaker 1: like you were never there, which, let's be honest, it's
Speaker 1: got to be impossible, right, um too, you know, come
Speaker 1: back every year and check on it if you want.
Speaker 1: I remember in the Abandoned Minds episode, it's like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really dangerous spots, especially out west, that
Speaker 1: are just abandoned minds, that people just walked away from.
Speaker 1: And if a company liquidates and you don't really know
Speaker 1: who the owners were, then there's not a lot you
Speaker 1: can do. Should we talk about the canary? I think
Speaker 1: we should. Man, you've heard the phrase canary in a
Speaker 1: coal mine, um, which I never really understood, not where
Speaker 1: it came from. But I didn't even know what they were,
Speaker 1: what people meant by that until more recently. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the indicator that things are about to go south. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it now, but I would just hear it
Speaker 1: and go like, I don't know what that means. Well,
Speaker 1: there's actual like legitimacy to it, right. Yeah. There was
Speaker 1: a guy named John Holdain who was quite the self
Speaker 1: experiment or he would he would try and kill himself,
Speaker 1: or that it's not true. He would try and bring
Speaker 1: himself near death. By sitting in rooms full of gases
Speaker 1: so he could record results. Amazing. Yeah, my hat is
Speaker 1: always off to scientists who getting picked themselves. YEA love
Speaker 1: of those guys. Really. He was also very sharp right
Speaker 1: from his studies. He found out that carbon monoxide poisoning
Speaker 1: stained tissues red with hemoglobin, right, and so, uh, he's
Speaker 1: working in the nineties here he noticed that miners um
Speaker 1: would come up with, you know, bright flushed faces. It's
Speaker 1: mysteriously dead. And he figured out probably carbon monoxide poisoning.
Speaker 1: So he said, you know what you guys should do.
Speaker 1: You should start carrying canaries down there with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: think of something really mean you could do to an animal, right,
Speaker 1: and carry it down there in a cage. And if
Speaker 1: the canary dies, then that means you have troubles. You
Speaker 1: turn and run. Yeah, because apparently birds, uh, the way
Speaker 1: they breathe there there, they're getting twice as much oxygen
Speaker 1: or just intake as a human both. Okay, I guess
Speaker 1: that they're breathing in twice as much because of the
Speaker 1: way they're a little for a feathery little system works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is pretty I didn't know. This is from a
Speaker 1: think is motor article. Maybe from esther inglis arkel Um,
Speaker 1: and she points out that a bird's respiratory system when
Speaker 1: they suck in air, some of it goes to basically
Speaker 1: like their lungs and perfuses their blood with oxygen, right um.
Speaker 1: But some of it also goes to these secondary sacks
Speaker 1: that just kind of hold it there. And then when
Speaker 1: the bird exhales that that air that never went to
Speaker 1: the lungs goes through the lungs, so they're getting oxygen
Speaker 1: on the way in and the way out. But that
Speaker 1: also means that whatever they're sucking in when they take
Speaker 1: in that breath, they also get on the way in
Speaker 1: and the way out, which makes them very susceptible to
Speaker 1: dying from poisoned air. But great if they're not in
Speaker 1: a mine and they want to fly around because they're
Speaker 1: super oxygen eated. But if you can get your hands
Speaker 1: on them and shove them in a cave and take
Speaker 1: them down no mind with you, you can use them
Speaker 1: as an indicator. Yeah, And then she pointed out even
Speaker 1: if they didn't breathe this way, just the fact that
Speaker 1: they're birds, theoretically you could probably take any animal, small
Speaker 1: animal down there. Then if it died before human. Then
Speaker 1: that's probably bad. But birds were small to put them
Speaker 1: in a cage easy. And then they had the whole
Speaker 1: double doubling down on breathing that What was that was?
Speaker 1: Wasn't that a KFC sandwich? The double down? It's probably
Speaker 1: I think it was. You got anything else? Nope? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about underground mining, you
Speaker 1: can type those words in the search part how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And since I said search parts, time
Speaker 1: for listening there. I'm gonna call this um because girls
Speaker 1: trying to sue us. Okay, it's actually not true. Hey guys, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm new to the podcast thing but discovered yours and
Speaker 1: it is awesome all caps. I was born and raised
Speaker 1: in Seattle and UH an intentional community, not religious or culty,
Speaker 1: just lots of hippies. Um. In late my housemates and
Speaker 1: I set out to free the Seattle Airway via Pirate radio.
Speaker 1: Long story short. We got up in reigning running with
Speaker 1: the show called eight Shall Not Kill a great title. Um.
Speaker 1: It was a mix of music, life, commentary, and How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I actually read from one of the coolest
Speaker 1: books I had, which was How Stuff Works. Remember we
Speaker 1: had those books years ago by Marshall brain. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she would read these things like she kind of had
Speaker 1: the first version of our podcast, and she said, even
Speaker 1: though you guys have an amazingly sweet and popular podcast. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I had a pirate radio show just reaching Capitol
Speaker 1: Hill in Seattle in the late nineties. I feel akin
Speaker 1: to you guys. Fortunately for me, Unfortunately, after a few months,
Speaker 1: two guys wearing suits knocked on the door they thought
Speaker 1: was our studio. We had a secret door and ladder
Speaker 1: and club knocks, I guess like secret knocks, and obviously
Speaker 1: we had been found out, which is crazy because we
Speaker 1: barely had a mile radius of coverage. But the government
Speaker 1: is a government and we weren't paying them, so they
Speaker 1: got upset, actually sent two dudes after her. I'm not terrible.
Speaker 1: We ended up getting shut down. And though I am
Speaker 1: very thankful for podcasts, I still feel like the people
Speaker 1: should own their air waves and I encourage everyone to
Speaker 1: start a pirate radio station of their own. Thanks for everything.
Speaker 1: You can't wait to hear about the feat washing Ashore
Speaker 1: in my state? Oh yeah, great show, The Mysterious Feat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that British Columbia. Uh And I will write
Speaker 1: you again so that is from Aaron. Thanks a lot, Aaron,
Speaker 1: Power to the people. Yeah. I thought for a minute
Speaker 1: when I was reading that she was gonna say, um
Speaker 1: is my idea, so get the checkbook out. Yeah. Uh.
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