Speaker 1: Also media. All right, it is a podcast that you're
Speaker 1: listening to right now. Behind the Bastards, that's the one.
Speaker 1: We're here, We're on the air and in the sky
Speaker 1: and around you. Jason Pargin is our guest today. Jason,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I feel like I need to make this up to
Speaker 2: your listeners for the last time I was on, because
Speaker 2: last time we did in k Ultra, a subject that
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a part of because I thought
Speaker 2: it would be fun because it's conspiracy stuff and mind
Speaker 2: control and mature and candidates. And then it turned out
Speaker 2: once we got into the actual details to be a
Speaker 2: real bummer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's just abuse on a massive scale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of abuse, a lot of the government
Speaker 2: money wasted, a lot of stupid people acting in foolish ways,
Speaker 2: and basically nobody was made to pay. So I suggested
Speaker 2: the subject of this episode because I wanted something that
Speaker 2: was more lighthearted that would make up for for that
Speaker 2: where even if some bad things happen, it's okay because
Speaker 2: you know that at the end the bad guys will
Speaker 2: get what they deserve.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then we decided to do an episode about a
Speaker 1: horrible industrial disaster. Instead, No, this is this is the
Speaker 1: episode that you pitched, Jason, and uh, it's boy a
Speaker 1: lot bleaker than I even thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be when I when I went in on this, and
Speaker 1: I think it's one that most people have not heard about, Like,
Speaker 1: had you heard about this because it was a there
Speaker 1: was a TikTok you came across that was kind of
Speaker 1: like summarizing this.
Speaker 2: Right, okay, Robert, Yes, I am an award winning New
Speaker 2: York Times bestselling author. We cannot go on a microphone
Speaker 2: and say, oh, you heard about this industrial accid TikTok.
Speaker 2: We say that I read a book about it now
Speaker 2: and that I just don't remember the title.
Speaker 1: Jason. First off, I did read a couple of books
Speaker 1: about it. But what I will say is, because you're
Speaker 1: a TikTok star now, there's nothing that will increase your
Speaker 1: credit with the gen Z kids more than getting news
Speaker 1: from TikTok.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are going to record a multi part podcast
Speaker 2: episode just on that three minute TikTok to break it
Speaker 2: down now. Forty seconds in, he says this, No, so anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I heard about this on TikTok and then looked it
Speaker 2: up and then found out that its Wikipedia page is
Speaker 2: like nine hundred words long. It's almost a stub and
Speaker 2: it is the worst industrial disaster maybe in American history.
Speaker 2: I say maybe because we know almost nothing about it.
Speaker 2: Like there are famous disasters, Like in school, I heard
Speaker 2: about the Triangle shirt waist factory fire that is a
Speaker 2: famous example of a gross negligence at a workplace and
Speaker 2: that killed like one hundred and fifty people. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: was much much worse. The Triangle shirtwais like that Wikipedia
Speaker 2: page goes on and on, it's like four thousand words long.
Speaker 2: That's something we know about. It has been documented, There's been
Speaker 2: books written about it. This thing got swept under the
Speaker 2: rug so efficiently, and there is met with such indifference
Speaker 2: that it is stunning. That to me, is the most
Speaker 2: shocking part of this is how much people don't know
Speaker 2: or care about it.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that you're going
Speaker 1: to be interested in as we get into this is
Speaker 1: that there was a period of time in which this
Speaker 1: was extremely famous and the degree to which it was
Speaker 1: buried after that is a really interesting part of like
Speaker 1: what's happened here? The disaster we're talking about because we
Speaker 1: haven't said the name of it yet, if people are curious,
Speaker 1: is the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, which I also had
Speaker 1: not heard of at all until you sent me that TikTok, Jason.
Speaker 2: And like a lot of people, when you hear the
Speaker 2: term Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, you're picturing people being attacked
Speaker 2: by a giant swarm of hawks. Yeah, yeah, that's not
Speaker 2: what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a bunch of cavers like find their way
Speaker 1: into a tunnel and it winds up being like filled
Speaker 1: with with some sort of like eyeless, featherless like underground
Speaker 1: nighthawk that that only hunts. I'm imagining basically the creatures
Speaker 1: from the first Riddick movie if you if you remember
Speaker 1: that listeners, no one, no one on TikTok has watched
Speaker 1: that film.
Speaker 2: And if that hadn't happened, it would have been a
Speaker 2: much more famous incident. Like I think that we would
Speaker 2: have a statue of that of that songhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And and I do think we should have
Speaker 1: a statue dedicated to the first Riddick movie. But that's
Speaker 1: that's a separate matter. So we're gonna get into this story,
Speaker 1: and it is fucking wild, but But first off, Jason
Speaker 1: up at the top here. Uh, I think you you
Speaker 1: have a book to plug I believe as usual.
Speaker 2: Yes, the new one is called Zoe is Too Drunk
Speaker 2: for This Dystopia. It's the latest in the Zoe ash series.
Speaker 2: It is out October thirty first. And every possible format
Speaker 2: including print and audio, and I guess just those two.
Speaker 2: But yeah, all of the possible formats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you say every possible format, are you getting
Speaker 1: down on the metaverse yet, Jason? Because one day, theoretically
Speaker 1: your book can be beamed directly into the brain of
Speaker 1: a neuralink patient. You know, they instantly know everything that
Speaker 1: you've written. We can really save a lot of time,
Speaker 1: you know, with the just kind of cutting out the
Speaker 1: joy of experiencing a story and just have it be
Speaker 1: a memory immediately.
Speaker 2: If you are listening to this podcast far enough in
Speaker 2: the future, I am confident it will be available because
Speaker 2: there is no way that my works will be lost
Speaker 2: to time. It's simply not possible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of loss to time, let's get into the
Speaker 1: Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster. So most people listen. Everyone listening
Speaker 1: to this knows about Chernobyl easily the most famous industrial
Speaker 1: disaster or accident in history, and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of perfect for you know, a mini series on
Speaker 1: HBO or whatever it's. You've got the disintegrating Soviet state,
Speaker 1: you get a nuclear reactor. This like worry that it
Speaker 1: could have been much worse and like killed millions of people.
Speaker 1: But when you actually drill into how bad Chernobyl was,
Speaker 1: what's amazing is how bad it wasn't because about thirty
Speaker 1: people die immediately, and obviously that's that's fucked up, but
Speaker 1: only about sixty or so are confirmed to have died
Speaker 1: of radiation induced cancer from Chernobyl. Ever since, now, those
Speaker 1: numbers don't tell the whole story. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: minimize this. Some estimates suggest as many as four thousand
Speaker 1: people will eventually die as at least a partial result
Speaker 1: of the radiation exposure they received from Chernobyl. That's not
Speaker 1: an insignificant toll, but it's also like kind of a
Speaker 1: fraction of It's a fraction for one thing, the worst
Speaker 1: industrial disaster in history, which was the Bopaul chemical plant explosion.
Speaker 1: We've covered that on the show before. That killed about
Speaker 1: four thousand people immediately and injured more than two hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: At least fifteen to twenty thousand additional people are known
Speaker 1: to have died as a result of like lingering consequences
Speaker 1: from Beopol. More than half a million people currently suffer
Speaker 1: from respiratory distress or other health issues like blindness as
Speaker 1: a result of it. It's worse than Chernobyl on a
Speaker 1: pretty grand scale, and in the middle of those two,
Speaker 1: significantly worse than Chernobyl, not as disastrous as Bopol is
Speaker 1: the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that ties it to Bopol is that the Bopol chemical
Speaker 1: factory that exploded, this pesticide factory was owned by a
Speaker 1: little corporation you might have heard of called Union Carbide.
Speaker 1: And Union Carbide is you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: corporations we like to call evil out there, because you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they have a negative impact on small businesses, or
Speaker 1: pump a bunch of propaganda into our eyes or whatever.
Speaker 1: Union Carbide is evil in that most dictators of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century had a lower death count than this company
Speaker 1: in terms of like direct deaths, dude, and negligence. And
Speaker 1: so today we're gathering to talk about another Union Carbide
Speaker 1: disaster because the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster is all on
Speaker 1: Union Carbide. They are the guys behind this, and it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting, you know, as you noted, you brought up
Speaker 1: the Triangle Shirtwaist fire at the start of this, Jason.
Speaker 1: If you combine the death tolls of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,
Speaker 1: the Sunshine Mind Disaster, and the Farmington Mind disaster, which
Speaker 1: are three of the most famous twentieth century industrial disasters
Speaker 1: in the US, they do not equal the death toll
Speaker 1: of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, which by the way,
Speaker 1: exceeds Chernobyle.
Speaker 2: And to be fair to Union Carbide, both of these
Speaker 2: disasters happened during just a period when they were I'm
Speaker 2: sure going through some rough stretch because these are only
Speaker 2: like sixty years apart, so you know, there's just a period,
Speaker 2: a dark period in their company's history when I'm sure
Speaker 2: other than that it's been fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, No, there's a there's no questions about any
Speaker 1: of the other products that they've put out the consequences
Speaker 1: those might have had on the population writ large. This
Speaker 1: is interesting in part because it's an industrial disaster with
Speaker 1: a horrible human toll that was not tied to you know,
Speaker 1: Chernobyl was a bad nuclear plant, right, it was like
Speaker 1: badly constructed. The Bopol Chemical Factory was a bad chemical factory.
Speaker 1: The Hawk's Nest Tunnel is one of the most successful
Speaker 1: construction projects in like the history of industrial It's basically
Speaker 1: it's part of a hydro electric system that's still functioning today.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's compelling to me is
Speaker 1: that like this was not the result of like a
Speaker 1: shoddy project. This was the result of a concentrated financial
Speaker 1: choice to make a project deadlier in order to maximize profits.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. But before we get into that, we
Speaker 1: have to start with a little bit of history on
Speaker 1: have you ever heard prior to this Jason of silicosis.
Speaker 2: No, but I feel like hearing it that I could
Speaker 2: put together what it is that silica dust, Like, I
Speaker 2: think silica granules under a microscope are very sharp and
Speaker 2: nasty looking. The idea of breathing too many of them,
Speaker 2: I just imagine them shrubbing the tissue in your lungs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a good way to view it, right,
Speaker 1: because silica particles are basically just like little bits of glass.
Speaker 1: But it's actually slightly worse than that. So what happens
Speaker 1: with silicosis, you get it right. It's when you breathe
Speaker 1: in too much silica dust. But these tiny particles of
Speaker 1: silica actually get absorbed by cells in the lung and
Speaker 1: this injures the cells and it causes them to start
Speaker 1: I think the name of the process is autolysis, which
Speaker 1: is when cells digest themselves. This causes masses of scar
Speaker 1: tissue in your lungs and it reduces your ability to breathe. Eventually,
Speaker 1: this will seriously compromise a person's ability to take in
Speaker 1: oxygen at all. It's one of those things where silicas
Speaker 1: is often not specifically what kills you, but it makes
Speaker 1: you a lot more vulnerable to tuberculosis or pneumonia. You
Speaker 1: think about like COVID nineteen right, how people who are
Speaker 1: immuno compromised, who have some sort of issue with their
Speaker 1: lungs were much more vulnerable to it because they just
Speaker 1: had less lung to rely on at the start of things.
Speaker 1: It's a lot like that and silicosis. Yeah, basically, your
Speaker 1: lungs are basically eating themselves. That's kind of how it
Speaker 1: kills you.
Speaker 2: Now. Right at the top, I fear some people are
Speaker 2: going to hear this and they're going to anticipate. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is probably a situation where they had these people
Speaker 2: working on a project and then years and years later
Speaker 2: they started getting sick, and then the complaint is going
Speaker 2: to be that, well they should have known. That is
Speaker 2: not the situation. Guys, we're going to get into it.
Speaker 2: They knew right away. Yeah, this is not a thing
Speaker 2: like asbestos, where it was something that was widely used
Speaker 2: and then a long long time later you started to
Speaker 2: get realize, oh, we shouldn't have been using it like that. No,
Speaker 2: they knew. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The timeframe on this is crez and the time frame
Speaker 1: when silicosis can vary. Right, this is a thing that
Speaker 1: you can get a lot of people who got silicosis
Speaker 1: in the ancient world were like, you look at all
Speaker 1: those very pretty marble structures in like Greece today, right
Speaker 1: on the Parthenon. Well, to do that, you have to
Speaker 1: chop up a bunch of bigger rocks, right, you have
Speaker 1: to like carve them, and that creates dust that has
Speaker 1: silica in it. So over time, the artisans who worked
Speaker 1: on this kind of stuff would gradually their lungs would die.
Speaker 1: They would get Basically it is like, this is one
Speaker 1: of the things that gets called miner's lung or the
Speaker 1: black lung. Right, So, craftsmen in the ancient world would
Speaker 1: get this, but usually after a period of decades, right,
Speaker 1: because they're not breathing in that much dust. The dust
Speaker 1: doesn't have a huge quantity of silica in it, so
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of time. It's also a thing
Speaker 1: miners in the ancient world would get this right for
Speaker 1: the same reason that miners in the modern world get it.
Speaker 1: Coal mining is a lot worse for this, and so
Speaker 1: black lung was a higher thing for them than like
Speaker 1: a gold miner, because there's a lot of silica in
Speaker 1: anthracite coal. Now, I said at the top, this is
Speaker 1: the oldest known industrial ailment, and I meant it. It
Speaker 1: is described I think the first time it's described as
Speaker 1: by Herodotus. Right, Herodotus two thousand years in change ago
Speaker 1: is writing about mine workers and craftsmen suffering from this
Speaker 1: like lung destroying disease caused by breathing in dust. Like
Speaker 1: we had a diagnosis for this thing about as far
Speaker 1: back as we've had a concept of medicine. It's like
Speaker 1: literally one of the first things we knew about.
Speaker 2: Because it did not require a vast ocean of scientific
Speaker 2: knowledge to understand I'm breathing the stuff that makes me
Speaker 2: coughed and burns my nose. Yeah, and then eventually my
Speaker 2: lungs feel like they're on fire, and then I can't
Speaker 2: breathe anymore. Like it's just kind of connecting a to
Speaker 2: be there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not as complicated as like inventing an mRNA vaccine. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is kind of a basic observation that you can make.
Speaker 1: And that's relevant because the company you carbide, when this
Speaker 1: all rolls out, as going to claim like, well, we
Speaker 1: didn't even know silicosis was a thing, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you had two and a half thousand years or so
Speaker 1: to get up to speed on this one, guys. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. It's not just we're not
Speaker 1: just talking about like the kind of Greco Roman ancient
Speaker 1: world here. Tissue samples on mummified bodies of miners from
Speaker 1: Peru have also shown evidence of silicosis. Spanish writers in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century documented that indigenous people who were like
Speaker 1: enslaved and forced into mines in South America had a
Speaker 1: life expectancy of just six to eighteen months because of this.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those things when you read
Speaker 1: about how you know, conquistadors started taking these large chunks
Speaker 1: of South and Central America and then eighty percent, ninety percent,
Speaker 1: whatever of the of the local indigenous population were dead
Speaker 1: within a fairly short period of time. This is how
Speaker 1: a lot of them died. Right, They're forced into mines,
Speaker 1: they're inhaling silica dust and their lungs digest themselves. That
Speaker 1: is like, what's actually going down.
Speaker 2: As we're going to get into this, as they're working,
Speaker 2: it's going to be it's going to become clear like
Speaker 2: they had people who could not continue on the job,
Speaker 2: many of them, and they were kind of just dragged
Speaker 2: off and replaced. It's not everything that they're going to
Speaker 2: say to defend themselves that it's like, well, this is
Speaker 2: really the silent killer. You couldn't have known. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: your inspectors were wearing protection when they came to look
Speaker 2: at it, knowing that the workers were not. But we
Speaker 2: all get into all of that. But yeah, the point
Speaker 2: is this is important to establish because they they had
Speaker 2: no reason to even from one moment, think that this
Speaker 2: was not a danger there.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and we see you know, there's significant increasing
Speaker 1: references and an understanding of silicosis in Western sources from
Speaker 1: about the sixteenth century on. This just becomes because a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the modern world is built
Speaker 1: on silicosis, right, Like, the sheer number of people who
Speaker 1: had to get this thing in order to create a
Speaker 1: lot of the foundations of the society we live in
Speaker 1: is in the millions. So again, no real reason anyone
Speaker 1: involved in digging tunnels or mining would not know this.
Speaker 1: But in order to kind of set that out, I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote from a book on the Hawk's Nest
Speaker 1: Disaster by an epidemiologist named Martin Cherniac. In the eighteen hundred,
Speaker 1: silicosis reached epidemic proportions among British potters. Vernacular terms for
Speaker 1: the disease grinder's rot, potter's rot, and miner's pathisis became
Speaker 1: common in that century, reflecting as well the concomitants of
Speaker 1: silicosis and tuberculosis. The direct association between exposure to silicaceous
Speaker 1: dusts and morbid fibrosis of the lungs was established in
Speaker 1: the early eighteen sixties by British physicians, Although silicosis was
Speaker 1: not yet categorized as a diagnostic entity, its connection with clays,
Speaker 1: quartz and sandstone had been clearly identified. The practice of
Speaker 1: wet drilling to reduce exposure to dust was introduced in
Speaker 1: England as early as eighteen ninety seven. By nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: dry drilling had been explicitly forbidden by South African mining.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple things that are interesting there. For one,
Speaker 1: when we talk about this building the modern world, it's
Speaker 1: not just like the people who had to mind the
Speaker 1: stone to make our capitol buildings, or the people who
Speaker 1: like mind gold or coal. It's like potters. It's people
Speaker 1: making very basic like there's so many ways you can
Speaker 1: encounter this stuff, and obviously that changes the time frame
Speaker 1: at which it hits you. But the other thing that's
Speaker 1: important is that because this was such a problem, people
Speaker 1: as early as the eighteen nineties had figured out how
Speaker 1: to mitigate it. And the best thing to mitigate it
Speaker 1: is wet drilling. Right, So, when you have a dry
Speaker 1: drill going into a piece of coal or rock or
Speaker 1: whatever that's got a high silica content, it's going to
Speaker 1: kick up a shitload of dust. If you're pumping water
Speaker 1: in there. At the same time, the dust gets wet
Speaker 1: and it just kind of gets madded down, so there's
Speaker 1: not nearly as much of it in the air to
Speaker 1: breathe in very basic, very low tech and like again,
Speaker 1: South Africa in nineteen eleven, not the country that's probably
Speaker 1: most concerned with the safety of their laborers, but they're
Speaker 1: well ahead of the United States in this regard. Right,
Speaker 1: they are have like ban this because it's inhumane dry drilling.
Speaker 1: So the US is not just behind in this regard.
Speaker 1: We are one of the last Western countries to really
Speaker 1: build any kind of capacity for both the study of
Speaker 1: occupational illnesses and the implementation of restrictions that might reduce
Speaker 1: profitability but would reduce the death toll among the labor force.
Speaker 1: And part of the reasons why we're so lax on
Speaker 1: this is that when we first start putting together regulatory
Speaker 1: entities that are looking at minds that are dealing with
Speaker 1: the laborers who are encountering silicosis. These regulators exist and
Speaker 1: they have like fancy names like the Bureau of Mining,
Speaker 1: I think it's the Department of Mining, but they don't
Speaker 1: actually have the ability to enforce laws, right, they get
Speaker 1: to make recommendations. They can say, hey, you should probably
Speaker 1: wet drill, but they can't say you're dry drilling and
Speaker 1: killing your laborers, so now you know you're going to
Speaker 1: get fined or whatever. Like, they don't actually have any
Speaker 1: kind of power early on in the twentieth century to
Speaker 1: do much of anything here.
Speaker 2: I don't want to get political with this. I know
Speaker 2: that everything is political in some way, but this is
Speaker 2: the thing that is so hard to explain. Look, I
Speaker 2: am more libertarian than a lot of people who say
Speaker 2: work in the entertainment industry, but it is very difficult
Speaker 2: to talk to someone who is on the extreme libertarian
Speaker 2: site who acts like they don't understand why regulations exist
Speaker 2: at all, because it's like, well, you know, if you
Speaker 2: want to open a cupcake shop in America, you got
Speaker 2: to fill fill out three hundred forms and get a
Speaker 2: license for the oven. And it's like, okay, I get it.
Speaker 2: If you've ever tried you know, anybody who's ever tried
Speaker 2: to build anything and get permits, I get it. It
Speaker 2: is a pain in the ass if you don't understand
Speaker 2: the history of why we have eight million pages of regulations.
Speaker 2: It is because if you don't have it explicitly spelled
Speaker 2: out in the law. What you're not a allowed to
Speaker 2: do to your workers, they will do it to the workers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was an era in this country where we built
Speaker 2: very fast, and we dug a lot of coal, and
Speaker 2: we did a lot of mining, and we put down
Speaker 2: a lot of railroad tracks with none of that stuff
Speaker 2: on the books, and there are mass graves to show
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And one of the things I don't get is
Speaker 1: so a lot of the people who would make that
Speaker 1: argument that you're making are folks who believe that part
Speaker 1: of why you need the right to bear firearms, the
Speaker 1: right to own in bear firearms, is that it provides
Speaker 1: some sort of check to state power, right that one
Speaker 1: of the things that could keep the state honest is
Speaker 1: if you have an armed citizenry. This is something a
Speaker 1: lot of those people would argue. It's an argument I'm
Speaker 1: sympathetic to to a significant degree. But I don't see
Speaker 1: how you can go from that to then saying like, well,
Speaker 1: shouldn't you have something that can do that to these corporations?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, that's what a regulatory entity is. It's the state
Speaker 1: basically holding a gun on these companies that are otherwise
Speaker 1: going to cut whatever corners they can, no matter how
Speaker 1: much it harms its laborers. Like, I don't understand the
Speaker 1: why that, why that there's not like any kind of
Speaker 1: consistency with that, with that viewpoint among a lot of people,
Speaker 1: not everybody.
Speaker 2: Or if you're a Republican and if one of those
Speaker 2: workers was to steal a bunch of coal, they would
Speaker 2: want that worker thrown in jail, no mercy. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, but why isn't the company if you
Speaker 2: believe in law and order cops being tough on criminals,
Speaker 2: if you have a criminal company, why don't you have
Speaker 2: that same attitude? Why are you looking at those executives
Speaker 2: and those you know, those people on the ground who
Speaker 2: knew what was going on, Why don't you have the
Speaker 2: same lock them up and throw away the key attitude
Speaker 2: that you have toward you know, a kid who sticks
Speaker 2: somebody up in an alley, it's like, no, that that
Speaker 2: he's it's too unsafe to have him out there. It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: but do you understand there are some too, some corporations
Speaker 2: where it's too unsafe to have them operating as a corporation. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: why don't you have that same knee jerk reaction of
Speaker 2: throw them, you know, throw them under the jail.
Speaker 1: This is I mean, I have thought for a while
Speaker 1: that like we need some sort of equivalent to like
Speaker 1: a corporate death penalty, right where if a company is
Speaker 1: acting irresponsible and enough of a scale, then it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, well we're going to sell off your assets.
Speaker 1: Your executives get nothing like this is a this is
Speaker 1: the penalty for certain levels of irresponsibility. But you know,
Speaker 1: we don't even really manage antitrust that well, So that's
Speaker 1: that's probably And I'm not a not a law nowhere guy,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure that that's illegal for a thousand different reasons.
Speaker 1: But we should get back to the story fundamentally here.
Speaker 1: So sorry, yeah, no, no, no, no, this is I
Speaker 1: mean I think about this a lot because it's something
Speaker 1: that I feel like a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: I agree with on other things should get. But you
Speaker 1: still you still encounter that attitude a lot. Anyway, Federal
Speaker 1: agencies that are tasked with reducing sickness among workers and
Speaker 1: managing working conditions are again hamstrung in this area. All
Speaker 1: they can do is make recommendations. And this is the
Speaker 1: era we are you know this story we're talking about
Speaker 1: happens in the in the early nineteen thirties. This is
Speaker 1: like right around the period where not far from where
Speaker 1: this happens, the United States Army Air Corps is basically
Speaker 1: bombing mine workers from the sky on behalf of management
Speaker 1: as a result of like one of these miners uprising.
Speaker 1: So it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of mine
Speaker 1: workers are unwilling to spend money to keep workers alive. Now,
Speaker 1: workers in Nevada courtz mines in the eighteen nineties get
Speaker 1: diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of silicosis. Ten percent
Speaker 1: of them die in a five year period, and this
Speaker 1: is kind of the worst silicosis disaster prior to the
Speaker 1: one we're about to talk about. There's another case where
Speaker 1: a bunch of zinc miners in Missouri suffer high rates
Speaker 1: of silicosis. Several hundred die within ten years of entering
Speaker 1: the mines, and so by the time the twenties roll around.
Speaker 1: Both of these stories are extremely well known, and precautions
Speaker 1: against silicosas have become much more common even in the
Speaker 1: United States. And as a result of some of these
Speaker 1: precaus like wet drilling and a lot of operations coal operations,
Speaker 1: in particular, morbidity from silicosis had plunged. So to sum
Speaker 1: up quite a lot of research and trial and error
Speaker 1: in the US and around the world by the start
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirties. Mine operators have three major methods
Speaker 1: of reducing the lethality of their minds. Number one is
Speaker 1: wet drilling, which we've talked about already. Number two is
Speaker 1: providing ventilation, right, installing ventilation ducts and mines in order
Speaker 1: to get bad air out right. That should be pretty obvious.
Speaker 1: I don't think people need explanation as to why ventilation helps.
Speaker 1: And the number three is issuing respirators from miners to
Speaker 1: wear right. These are This is like a more primitive
Speaker 1: version of the respirators. A lot of US war and
Speaker 1: wear as a result of the COVID nineteen pandemic the years,
Speaker 1: and I actually didn't know there were functional respirators this
Speaker 1: far back, but the US Bureau of Mines started publishing
Speaker 1: recommendations on which specific respirators to issue in nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 1: And all of this wisdom is going to be ignored
Speaker 1: deliberately to the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, so that part
Speaker 1: of the story starts with the town of gaully Bridge
Speaker 1: in Fayette County, West Virginia. In nineteen thirty, it had
Speaker 1: a population of just over seventy two thousand. Now, West
Speaker 1: Virginia is like a lot of parts of the world
Speaker 1: that are have a troubled history with this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Rich in natural resources and also always poor. You run
Speaker 1: into a lot of these spots when you talk about
Speaker 1: industrial disasters, and you will not be surprised to learn
Speaker 1: that it was hit particularly hard by the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: The unemployment rate in most counties of West Virginia hovered
Speaker 1: between thirty and forty percent, which is I don't think
Speaker 1: it's like an exaggeration to call that like near apocalyptic, right,
Speaker 1: think about, like the Great Depression, how bad it is. Famously,
Speaker 1: in most of the country unemployments like maybe twenty to
Speaker 1: twenty five percent, Right, You've got forty percent or in
Speaker 1: some cases higher in most West Virginia counties. It's just
Speaker 1: a calamity for the whole state.
Speaker 2: Let me say, let me venture this. You're for you
Speaker 2: to correct me if I'm wrong. Forty percent unemployment in
Speaker 2: this era in that place, with the state of the
Speaker 2: infrastructure that they had at that time. There's no pore
Speaker 2: in the United States now that compares to that kind
Speaker 2: of core. Like that's poor on a level that most
Speaker 2: of us can't comprehend.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I believe with that. I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm being like exaggerating here. At forty percent unemployment in
Speaker 1: the US, like this would be a failed state, Like
Speaker 1: the basics of infrastructure would no longer function, It would
Speaker 1: be a calamity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the elements of the social safety net stuff that
Speaker 2: came about after the depression. There's a whole lot of
Speaker 2: stuff that did not exist exist back then in terms
Speaker 2: of assistance, in terms of everything, in terms of where
Speaker 2: you would seek medical help if you had an infection
Speaker 2: or a broken leg or anything. It is hard to comprehend.
Speaker 2: This is crucial to understand because when we start talking
Speaker 2: about this case, you're going to be asking, if you
Speaker 2: are very naive or very young, well, why did they
Speaker 2: just quit or why did they go to the press,
Speaker 2: or why didn't they complain to this? You know, the
Speaker 2: labor Relations board got to understand the context here. This
Speaker 2: is a place where if a job comes along, you
Speaker 2: don't say no to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, period, For a lot of these people like it
Speaker 1: might seem like the world's ending things are so so bad.
Speaker 1: So part of why they are so bad, why unemployment
Speaker 1: so much higher in West Virginia, is that over the
Speaker 1: course of the twenties and thirties, the mining industry that
Speaker 1: had largely built what prosperity West Virginia had had fallen apart.
Speaker 1: The region is obviously very rich in coal, but for
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons, including under regulation in that particular state,
Speaker 1: its minds were also inefficient. So by the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 1: a lot of the nation's coal needs are being served
Speaker 1: by newer and more efficient facilities in other states. And
Speaker 1: because there's so many additional new and more efficient minds,
Speaker 1: there's a surplus of coal for i think, pretty much
Speaker 1: the first time since we started needing it, and that's
Speaker 1: disastrous for West Virginia's mining industry as well. All of
Speaker 1: this deals a near fatal blow to the United Mine Workers' Union,
Speaker 1: which provided the bosses with opportunities to basically make ad
Speaker 1: hoc agreements with groups of starving miners that would deny
Speaker 1: them any of the protections and security that previous generations
Speaker 1: or the generation right before them had fought to gain right.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's happening here is because
Speaker 1: of how disastrous this is, there's not really any labor
Speaker 1: power in the state of West Virginia that can provide
Speaker 1: any kind of countervailing force to the bosses that are
Speaker 1: going to be running this project. But you know what
Speaker 1: does provide a countervailing force to this podcast, I suppose
Speaker 1: is ads we're back ugh, so we're talking about why
Speaker 1: the setup to this disaster. So one of the other
Speaker 1: things that's happened here is that, like West Virginia used
Speaker 1: to be covered in old growth forests, those are basically
Speaker 1: all gone by this point. So that's an industry that
Speaker 1: no longer exists. That's another part of why so many
Speaker 1: people are out of work, and so because coal isn't
Speaker 1: really profitable right now, the forests have basically been killed.
Speaker 1: The one thing that West Virginia has an abundance is
Speaker 1: moving water. Right. The state's got a lot of big rivers,
Speaker 1: and those rivers can be harnessed to provide hydro electric power,
Speaker 1: which we have figured out to do pretty well by
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, So the Electro Metallurgical Company, the
Speaker 1: start of the century starts building hydro power capability in
Speaker 1: the state, and they start buying up smaller companies who
Speaker 1: are involved in like mining different kinds of minerals, like
Speaker 1: the Wilson Aluminum Company, and adding that to their portfolio. Now,
Speaker 1: the founder of this company is a guy named Major Morland,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen eleven he draws up plans for a
Speaker 1: massive new hydro electric facility which will use the power
Speaker 1: of a river to support the manufacturing of futuristic new
Speaker 1: alloys that required high to temperatures and state of the
Speaker 1: art power hungry facilities to provide. I think this facility
Speaker 1: is going to be a significant part actually of like
Speaker 1: our production of the alloys that make the US part
Speaker 1: of World War II possible. Right, you need a lot
Speaker 1: of metals that don't just come naturally out of the
Speaker 1: ground on their own in order to make let's say,
Speaker 1: a P fifty one Mustang. So they pick for this
Speaker 1: hydroelectric plant an area of the new River Canawa Falls,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the ideal location in their mind.
Speaker 1: So construction begins at first at a place called Glenn
Speaker 1: Ferris on the river, and a small, rather primitive dam
Speaker 1: is built than in nineteen seventeen, the Electro Metallurgical Company
Speaker 1: merges with three other corporations in West Virginia to form
Speaker 1: a new entity, the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. So
Speaker 1: this is the start of Union Carbide. This is actually
Speaker 1: going to be its first big project, what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. So now that it's flush with cash, plans
Speaker 1: move forward to create a new and a much larger dam.
Speaker 1: The problem is expanding the size of this dam the
Speaker 1: way Union carbid once is illegal. The Army Corps of
Speaker 1: Engineers has laid out strict requirements about how large such
Speaker 1: facilities can be because you have to have a navigable waterway, right,
Speaker 1: you can't just like destroy the ability of a river
Speaker 1: to like function, to be traveled across, to be utilized
Speaker 1: by people for a variety of other reasons, just so
Speaker 1: you can build your hydro electric facility. So, since this
Speaker 1: is illegal, Union Carby decides what if we just break
Speaker 1: the law and build it anyway, which they do, and
Speaker 1: they build this fucking thing, and in the nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: when it's done, they reach out to the government and
Speaker 1: are like, hey, you know this thing we're not allowed
Speaker 1: to do. Well, we did it. Can we get retroactive permission.
Speaker 1: Now to their credit, the government's like, well, no you can't,
Speaker 1: but they don't do anything. Again, we have at this
Speaker 1: point these regulators are able to like say all the
Speaker 1: right things like you can't illegally build this dam that
Speaker 1: fucks with the waterway, but they don't have any kind
Speaker 1: of like power to actually take action, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty bad mix in my opinion. Not to get political here,
Speaker 1: but Union Carbide makes plans to expand its holdings on
Speaker 1: the New River. They construct two additional dams, and they
Speaker 1: file plans in nineteen twenty seven through a corporate entity
Speaker 1: they cut out to handle this whole business, the New
Speaker 1: Cana What Power Company. And so this is going to
Speaker 1: be a project of this company called the New Cana
Speaker 1: What Power Company. But that's Union Carbide, right. This is
Speaker 1: a thing that they build and create in order to
Speaker 1: mitigate risk for themselves. If they like fuck up the
Speaker 1: whole project and get a bunch of people killed. It's
Speaker 1: a kind of thing that corporations don't do anymore. Right, obviously,
Speaker 1: that would be ano.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I do want to talk about something because
Speaker 2: to this day you have Silicon Valley billionaires talking about
Speaker 2: we want to just move fast and break things out
Speaker 2: and we can always like apologize later, we'll pay whatever fine,
Speaker 2: but we're just going to take off and do it
Speaker 2: because that's you know, that's how innovation happens. We're not
Speaker 2: going to worry about all of these little rules, all
Speaker 2: this stuff. We're gonna launch our rocket. We're I'm gonna
Speaker 2: worry whether or not debris reins down on houses for
Speaker 2: six miles in every direction. Like we'll just what matters
Speaker 2: is that we achieve the rocket launch and then all
Speaker 2: this other stuff we can smooth smooth it over later.
Speaker 2: Like there's this spirit of once we build it, we
Speaker 2: may have to pay a fine later maybe like they
Speaker 2: may yell at us, they may shake their finger at us,
Speaker 2: but the thing we built is going to stay built. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's been true. I feel like for a long time,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, let's just do it, and then once
Speaker 2: it's done, it'll be harder for them to because you know,
Speaker 2: what are they going to do? Fill it back in?
Speaker 2: It's like no, most likely they'll just shout at us
Speaker 2: a little bit or even if that, yeah, and then
Speaker 2: we'll have our thing. We'll have our dam.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's frustrating like how consistently that works, because there's
Speaker 1: really there's still not a counter to that kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: because like, what are you going to do, like dismantle it?
Speaker 1: It would be kind of cool if they did, but
Speaker 1: also probably would cause a bunch of other people to
Speaker 1: die of silicosis.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I'm just gonna say, likewise, if you compare
Speaker 2: the size of the fines for say, the opioid epidemic
Speaker 2: to these form of companies versus the amount of profit
Speaker 2: they made, Yeah, selling the pain killers, it's nothing. It's
Speaker 2: a drop in the bucket. So it's like, well, why
Speaker 2: not just invent the new addictive thing, because yeah, you'll
Speaker 2: have to pay back five percent of it in the
Speaker 2: form of a fine, But so what nobody went to jail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the kind of thing you know, you'll hear
Speaker 1: debate a lot when people talk about like Enron, right,
Speaker 1: where maybe the two thousand and eight crash wouldn't have
Speaker 1: happened if more of those guys had gone to prison.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that that would have done anything.
Speaker 1: But it couldn't hurt to try, right, Like, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have hurt to try. It wouldn't have hurt to try
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. It wouldn't have hurt to
Speaker 1: try in nineteen thirty with this thing, you know, treating
Speaker 1: these crimes that have much higher body accounts than like
Speaker 1: bank robbers do with a similar degree of severity. But
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen in this case, so I
Speaker 1: guess we should just move along. So this new plan
Speaker 1: for this massive, massive hydro plant involves the creation of
Speaker 1: a sixteen thousand, two hundred and forty foot long tunnel. Right,
Speaker 1: they're going underground to divert water from the new river
Speaker 1: through a mountain, gaully mountain, and because of like the
Speaker 1: angle at which the water is going to be coming in,
Speaker 1: they're basically building an underground river that they can use
Speaker 1: to funnel water from the existing river and run the
Speaker 1: hydro electric plant with that. This is a three mile
Speaker 1: long tunnel through solid rock. So it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that, like to the fathers of the people building
Speaker 1: this thing would have been an impossible project in their youth,
Speaker 1: Like this is something that modern science and machinery has
Speaker 1: just made possible now because the goal of this tunnel
Speaker 1: is to provide electricity for the electro Metallurgical co subsidiary
Speaker 1: that exists within Union Carbide. This is not a mining
Speaker 1: project technically, right, It's just a construction project, which means
Speaker 1: none of the workers are protected from any of the
Speaker 1: regulations that do exist to keep miners safe from silicosis.
Speaker 1: So the minimal protections that existed aren't in place here
Speaker 1: because they're technickly not mining, even though as we'll cover,
Speaker 1: they are going to be mining. But I want to
Speaker 1: quote now from a fascinating study in the American Society
Speaker 1: of Safety Professionals journal vantage Point that's analyzing this disaster. Quote.
Speaker 1: Union Carbide received thirty five bids and awarded a two
Speaker 1: year contract to rein Hart and Dennis, one of the
Speaker 1: few construction companies able to manage such a large project.
Speaker 1: During the bid process, rein Hart and Dennis reported having
Speaker 1: built fifty one tunnels in the past thirty five years.
Speaker 1: Engineers from New Kanawa Power were to design and oversee
Speaker 1: the operation. The contract specified that reine harton Dennis would
Speaker 1: assume all liability, thus Union Carbide was shielded. The contract
Speaker 1: included a clause that allowed engineers for New Kanawa Power
Speaker 1: to force changes into the contractor's procedures if injuries were
Speaker 1: caused by negligence on behalf of the contractor, but New
Speaker 1: Kanawa Power never intervened. The contract also called for reine
Speaker 1: Hart and Dennis to furnish an equipment on site hospital,
Speaker 1: but only four first aid stations were provided, one at
Speaker 1: each dig. Workers sustaining major injuries were transported to Coal
Speaker 1: Valley Hospital fourteen miles away. So even under the terms
Speaker 1: of the very again even more minimal than the protections
Speaker 1: that existed. Like contract they sign this subsidiary, Ryan harton
Speaker 1: Dennis is going to further cut costs, right, because they're
Speaker 1: trying to maximize what they get from Union Carbiden actually
Speaker 1: get to take home. Union Carbide wants to cut costs
Speaker 1: because that's going to get their facility up and running,
Speaker 1: which is going to let them produce alloys faster. So
Speaker 1: they want this faster and cheaper. Everybody's interest, like the
Speaker 1: further you go down the chain is just how can
Speaker 1: we do this faster? How can we do this cheaper?
Speaker 1: And the easiest way to cut costs is with the workers' lives.
Speaker 2: Right. So I know that it gets confusing getting into
Speaker 2: stuff like loopholes and subsidiaries and all that, but I
Speaker 2: cannot emphasize enough, and I don't want to belabor the point,
Speaker 2: but the reason why the regulations are a stack of
Speaker 2: papers eighteen feet tall is because the companies have lawyers
Speaker 2: to do things like say, well, technically, this is a
Speaker 2: construction project, not a mining project. They're not mining for anything.
Speaker 2: They're built in a tunnel, So why do we need
Speaker 2: like finding little ways to sneak around the regulation so
Speaker 2: you don't have to provide the respirators or go through
Speaker 2: the rules with normal governed mining, because well, technically, according
Speaker 2: to the paperwork, a mine is this, and technically we're
Speaker 2: doing this, even though everyone knows it's the exact same
Speaker 2: work with the exact same dangers. That is why the
Speaker 2: regulations look the way they do, because you have to
Speaker 2: close every conceivable loophole because the companies have their own
Speaker 2: lawyers specifically to find them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think one of the best ways to
Speaker 1: look at how complex and labyrinthine regulations get is think about, like,
Speaker 1: if you're a military history nerd, like like I am.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not sure about you, Jason, but I like
Speaker 1: reading about that stuff. When you look at the maps
Speaker 1: of like civil war battles, right, there's just it's it's
Speaker 1: this hugely there's all these different colored little symbols that
Speaker 1: stand for these different units, and these arrows moving all
Speaker 1: in all around and like to show like where everyone's gone.
Speaker 1: It's these incredibly complex series of movements and counter movements
Speaker 1: and advances and retreats. When you're looking at regulations, what
Speaker 1: you are seeing is, to some extent, the fossil record
Speaker 1: of a conflict. Right of government makes regulation, corporation finds
Speaker 1: loophole to get around it. Government has to clarify or
Speaker 1: add in new rules or make a new law to
Speaker 1: deal with the loophole that provides new loopholes. Like that's
Speaker 1: that's what you're seeing is like a record of a
Speaker 1: conflict that is fundamentally over Like how much can you
Speaker 1: endanger people in order to make a profit.
Speaker 2: Just look at the list of terms of conditions when
Speaker 2: you buy anything, and this is like do I need
Speaker 2: this documents eight pages long so I can buy a toaster?
Speaker 2: It's like, yes, you're looking at the history of houses
Speaker 2: that have burned down. Yeah, every other thing that it's
Speaker 2: like that you're looking at a fossil record of a
Speaker 2: fight between regulators and consumers and every other thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, so we're going to be getting into darker
Speaker 1: territory from here because the workers hired by Ryan Hart
Speaker 1: and Dennis aren't just devoid of protections, they're also being
Speaker 1: thrown into a working environment which their bosses are incentivized
Speaker 1: to take risks with their lives in order to make
Speaker 1: more money. Because the contract for the tunnel has incentives
Speaker 1: and penalties. There's a two year target date, and if
Speaker 1: they beat the target date for every day they are
Speaker 1: shorter than two years, for every day that they finish
Speaker 1: like earlier than two years, they get two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. So as a spoiler, they're going to finish
Speaker 1: this thing in about a year, which is a significant
Speaker 1: amount of extra money for them. And the only way
Speaker 1: to do that is by cutting down on things that
Speaker 1: take time. And one thing that takes time is wet drilling. Right,
Speaker 1: it's slower to wet droll. I think it's like half
Speaker 1: as fast as dry drilling. So I just want to
Speaker 1: keep in your mind right now, rhin harton Dennis, the
Speaker 1: construction company, because of how Union Carbide has structured the deal,
Speaker 1: has a vested financial interest in rushing this gig now.
Speaker 1: On March thirty first, nineteen thirty a Union Carbide executive
Speaker 1: pilot's a steam shovel to dig the first load of
Speaker 1: earth away from what will become the Hawk's Nest tunnel.
Speaker 1: This is purely a media gesture, and I think there's
Speaker 1: also it's one of those things the contract they have
Speaker 1: with the state, they have to start digging by a
Speaker 1: certain point, so they do it for that, But real
Speaker 1: work is going to take a little bit of time
Speaker 1: to spin up here. Ryan Hart and Dennis are going
Speaker 1: to need about five thousand workers on the project total,
Speaker 1: and I think about three thousand who are going to
Speaker 1: be in the tunnel, right. Tunneling like this requires a
Speaker 1: huge number of people now, and only some of the
Speaker 1: jobs are what are known as high skill positions. So
Speaker 1: a high skill position in an operation like this is
Speaker 1: manning a drill. There's like machines to kind of like
Speaker 1: suck extra track.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: All of the kind of machine work, right, most of
Speaker 1: which happens outside of the tunnel are that's high skilled jobs. Right.
Speaker 1: The engineers who have to oversee everything, those are high
Speaker 1: skilled jobs. But the workers in the tunnel who are
Speaker 1: physically digging through the chopped up rock, who are moving
Speaker 1: it into the bins and stuff to take it away.
Speaker 1: Who are doing the actual tunnel digging. That's a low
Speaker 1: skill job. Again, I'm not making a judgment about this work.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it. I'm just saying, like, within kind
Speaker 1: of the parlance of the times, that's what they're calling it.
Speaker 1: So given the ongoing depression, it should not be surprising
Speaker 1: that workers flood into this project begging for jobs. The
Speaker 1: company claimed that they hired mainly from local men who
Speaker 1: had been mine workers and had experience making tunnels, but
Speaker 1: this was a lie. Experienced miners from the area made
Speaker 1: up a small percentage of the workers. The company didn't
Speaker 1: mostly want to hire those guys because number one, they
Speaker 1: know how shit's supposed to work, so they're going They
Speaker 1: know how to organize their experience. So if the company
Speaker 1: is taking risks with their lives or is treating them wrong,
Speaker 1: there's a higher risk that they might stand up for themselves. Also,
Speaker 1: locals have more protection than migrant laborers. If you fuck
Speaker 1: with a local that town, right, if you get people
Speaker 1: in that town pissed off enough, they might literally take
Speaker 1: destructive action against your facilities. That kind of stuff had
Speaker 1: happened and was happening around the country at this period
Speaker 1: of time. Migrant workers have no support base. They don't
Speaker 1: have family they can go to for one thing, they
Speaker 1: don't have anyone who can help them if they wind
Speaker 1: up being taken advantage of. So Union Carbide is mostly
Speaker 1: going to hire migrant workers, and the vast majority of
Speaker 1: these migrant workers are not white. So over eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the locals in this county are white people. Union
Speaker 1: Carbides records, though, report that sixty five percent of the
Speaker 1: men working in the tunnel are black. I've heard reports
Speaker 1: as high as like seventy five percent. Most of these
Speaker 1: men came from outside Fayette County, and the best records
Speaker 1: we have suggests that less than twenty percent of the
Speaker 1: men who are on the project in the tunnel line
Speaker 1: out of it are from the area. So yeah, traveling
Speaker 1: black laborers are obviously the easiest group of workers you
Speaker 1: could have to fuck with, right for one thing, the
Speaker 1: miners camp I mean, obviously, racism is a major factor here. Golly,
Speaker 1: the town that's nearby. Some of the reports I've read
Speaker 1: from that interviews with black labors say that like it
Speaker 1: was better than most towns if you were a black
Speaker 1: person it was not as bad as a lot of places,
Speaker 1: but you still can't move there, right, You don't have
Speaker 1: connections there, and these white locals are extremely unlikely to
Speaker 1: stand up for you if something like bad happens. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're kind of if you're one of these black
Speaker 1: laborers who's traveled from like the Carolinas or whatever to
Speaker 1: work on this project, you're kind of in space, right,
Speaker 1: Like your only tether to being able to get food, water,
Speaker 1: medical care is the company that's employing you. Right, You're
Speaker 1: totally at their mercy. And I'm going to read another
Speaker 1: passage from Martin Cherneyac's book that lays out how most
Speaker 1: of these workers get hired. The account of an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old from South Carolina may be typical. With his
Speaker 1: father and uncle, he had worked for yin Hart and
Speaker 1: Dennis on seasonal jobs in the carolin He first heard
Speaker 1: of the tunnel through a work acquaintance, a company stringer
Speaker 1: who was supplied with bus fare and a stipend to
Speaker 1: promote employment amongst southern blacks. The boy paid his own
Speaker 1: fare to Gallybridge. He was immediately added to the roles
Speaker 1: because he was known to several of the contractor's foreman,
Speaker 1: and there are some sources that will claim that a
Speaker 1: lot of the black workforce was press ganged into the job,
Speaker 1: basically kidnapped by company agents sent in from other states.
Speaker 1: This actually was a common strategy across the country, particularly
Speaker 1: the South. Like Cherniacs book is, like most mining and
Speaker 1: large construction projects in large chunks of the South had
Speaker 1: some degree of press ganging people literally being forced to
Speaker 1: work there. But in this particular case, Chenniac says, at
Speaker 1: least based on the interviews that exist with surviving black labors,
Speaker 1: most of those guys insisted that was not really a
Speaker 1: part of this. You didn't need to write because of
Speaker 1: how desperate the economic situation is.
Speaker 2: I want the listeners to please appreciate the layers of
Speaker 2: deniability the company gives itself here, because they can say
Speaker 2: nobody forced them on this job. They could have quit
Speaker 2: at any time, and likewise they could have said, well,
Speaker 2: this subcontractor that actually did the work, we didn't tell
Speaker 2: them to do dry drilling. We didn't tell them. It's
Speaker 2: like no, but you set an incentive and a deadline
Speaker 2: that they couldn't meet unless they did. But you gave
Speaker 2: your self deniability, And I cannot tell you how many
Speaker 2: of history's horrors have worked that way where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: we didn't tell them to do that. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: you gave them parameters that could only be met if
Speaker 2: they did X, Y and z, even though you did
Speaker 2: not explicitly tell them to do X, y and z.
Speaker 2: X and X, y and z are atrocities. Like you
Speaker 2: didn't have to spell it out. You simply gave them
Speaker 2: a situation where the only way to do the thing
Speaker 2: you asked them to do was to cut these corners.
Speaker 2: And likewise they can say, well, these weren't slaves. It's
Speaker 2: not like some of these other minds where they literally
Speaker 2: made them work at gunpoint. These people came there voluntarily
Speaker 2: and they got paid, and they could have they didn't
Speaker 2: like it. If they felt it was unsafe, they could
Speaker 2: have quit. And it's like in the strictest sense, maybe,
Speaker 2: but not as a practical matter.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, and yeah, it's it's uh, we'll be getting
Speaker 1: into that even more here because it's it's actually like
Speaker 1: worse than I have I have laid out already. I
Speaker 1: should also note that a lot of these these migrant
Speaker 1: black labors are still from West Virginia, right if you
Speaker 1: look at the known death toll, they're just from other
Speaker 1: parts of the state. Right, So a huge number of
Speaker 1: these migrating labors they come from deeper in the South,
Speaker 1: from places like Georgia, from the Carolinas, and they're they're
Speaker 1: in West Virginia on their way north.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The plan is, we need to get out of the South.
Speaker 1: Jim Crow is too horrifying. I'm going to take this gig.
Speaker 1: A lot of them bring their families with them, right,
Speaker 1: because they're like, I'm going to take this gig. I'm
Speaker 1: going to make you know, enough money, and then we'll
Speaker 1: get set up in some nor in you know, will
Speaker 1: get set up in like New York or wherever.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's the goal is to make money that will allow
Speaker 1: them to get to a place where they have some
Speaker 1: kind of hope of a future as opposed to staying
Speaker 1: in the Jim Crow South. But one of the issues
Speaker 1: this causes is that, like there's nowhere for a lot
Speaker 1: of their families to stay. They're not allowed in the
Speaker 1: mining camps, they're not really welcome in the nearby town. So,
Speaker 1: like I think a lot of these people basically just
Speaker 1: wind up kind of camping near the mining town because
Speaker 1: like there's there's not a lot of options open for them.
Speaker 1: I should also note that the white migrant workers suffered
Speaker 1: from a form of discrimination by the townies of Galli
Speaker 1: Bridge as well the urban population. The people who actually
Speaker 1: live in this town consider themsel there's a conflict because,
Speaker 1: you know, being miners and being these like you know,
Speaker 1: industrial labors is such a part of like the conception
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people in West Virginia
Speaker 1: today have of like their past. This gets lost a lot,
Speaker 1: but at the time, if you lived in a town
Speaker 1: or a city in West Virginia, there was a good
Speaker 1: chance that you hated miners, right because they're they're bad
Speaker 1: for your your rep as a state. Right, These like
Speaker 1: backwards poor coal miners, these like you know, dirty rural
Speaker 1: folk who are unsophisticated. We in the cities are much more,
Speaker 1: you know, are much better people. So there's this kind
Speaker 1: of like attitude that a lot of these these miners
Speaker 1: who are out of work and who are coming to
Speaker 1: this project should have you know, invested the money they
Speaker 1: had back when mining was booming better, and the fact
Speaker 1: that they were like poor and desperate now was their
Speaker 1: own fault, right. There are that co. That is a
Speaker 1: conflict that exists in this situation. It's not one that
Speaker 1: I think it's talked about a lot today. So the
Speaker 1: living situations enjoyed by black and white workers at the
Speaker 1: mining camps were wildly different. Everyone does live in tar
Speaker 1: paper shacks that are roughly twelve feet by fifteen feet,
Speaker 1: but that's where the similarity ends in For white workers,
Speaker 1: these twelve foot by fifteen foot shacks are divided into
Speaker 1: two rooms, and there's two workers living in each room.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Their shacks also have electricities, They've got lights and stuff.
Speaker 1: The shanties for black workers are very different from one thing.
Speaker 1: They have no electricity, although they have to pay the
Speaker 1: company a fee for electricity. The company's literally making them
Speaker 1: pay out of their paychecks for nothing. Their shacks are
Speaker 1: also more than twice as crowded. While an entire shack
Speaker 1: would hold four white workers, there were often ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen black workers in the same space. I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote again from that article in vantage point. Imagine the
Speaker 1: stench of body odor in such cramped quarters. All the
Speaker 1: shacks were provided empty, so occupants had to buy bed linens, coal,
Speaker 1: and if wanted a stove from the company. Commissary to
Speaker 1: drive out any remaining workers. The shacks were burned down
Speaker 1: at the end of the project. So that's that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're surely seeing a lot of care being given to
Speaker 1: these people since they had to live at the work camp.
Speaker 1: Their actual take home wages are much less than what
Speaker 1: had been advertised before. When you get right down to it,
Speaker 1: these guys are getting about half or more like forty
Speaker 1: percent of what they were told they'd be getting because
Speaker 1: so much is taken out of them in order to
Speaker 1: pay for them to live at this camp. Right, the
Speaker 1: company's not going to foot that bill. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't have any option to fight back though, because if
Speaker 1: you're a migrant laborer, you show up here with no
Speaker 1: money in your pocket. Right, So if you learn that
Speaker 1: this is kind of a con that you're not getting
Speaker 1: near the as much as you were promised, well, how
Speaker 1: are you going to get back home? You don't have
Speaker 1: any money, You don't have any food on you like
Speaker 1: you have no You either starve or you finish the
Speaker 1: job for like the pittance that they're going to throw you.
Speaker 1: So to work, these guys went where. They soon learned
Speaker 1: that for black laborers, even the promise of getting paid
Speaker 1: at all was exaggerated. White workers received their payment promptly.
Speaker 1: Black workers are paid in script, right, which is a
Speaker 1: They get a card that says you're owed this money,
Speaker 1: but you can only use this money in company stores
Speaker 1: to purchase necessities. And I'm going to quote from Cherneyacts
Speaker 1: book again. Deductions for food and clothing at the camp
Speaker 1: commissary could be made directly from the script ticket. The
Speaker 1: ticket could also be redeemed for cash, but only at
Speaker 1: the end of the weekly paid period. Between these times,
Speaker 1: the worker had to pay a ten percent commission to
Speaker 1: receive cash. The system served to keep black workers dependent
Speaker 1: on the company for goods and services. The rationale for
Speaker 1: the system offered by the company was that the memories
Speaker 1: of black workers would not last through a pay period,
Speaker 1: and thus the use of script would minimize the number
Speaker 1: of arguments over the amount of the daily wage. So
Speaker 1: white workers are getting paid like every day you finish
Speaker 1: your shift, you get cash in hand. Black workers are
Speaker 1: given a card that they have to pay additional money
Speaker 1: out of in order to get the pay that they
Speaker 1: were promised. And the justification is, well, you black people,
Speaker 1: you can't remember that you're owed any money, right, it's
Speaker 1: pretty racist, pretty openly raisist. Right. And again cheriny Echle,
Speaker 1: note this is not uncommon for the time.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be glib here, but I find
Speaker 2: it fascinating that that old song from the forties, that
Speaker 2: sixteen tons song, Yeah, you load sixteen tons and tell.
Speaker 1: You you get another day, older and deeper in debt.
Speaker 2: The fact, the fact that that's song hates a much
Speaker 2: rosier picture of mine than this reality of the story
Speaker 2: we're telling here. Like that, like that's almost a romantic version.
Speaker 2: It's literally about a man who can't go to heaven
Speaker 2: because he owes his soul to the company store because
Speaker 2: he's so much because he's only getting paid in company
Speaker 2: store credit, and it just keeps getting worse every day.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, even that song actually paints kind of
Speaker 2: a sunnier picture than what actually was happening.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, it's I mean, there's really no bottom to it.
Speaker 1: But speaking of things, there's no bottom too. There's no
Speaker 1: bottom to the love I have for the courageous corporations
Speaker 1: that sponsor this podcast. So please everybody, here we go,
Speaker 1: ads and we're back. Oh boy, good times. We're had
Speaker 1: by all I'm feeling happy. Yeah, So before we get
Speaker 1: much further, I think it'll be valuable to give the
Speaker 1: listener and an idea of precisely how the work proceeded
Speaker 1: on this project, since I based on and our data
Speaker 1: isn't perfect here, you know, we it's been a while
Speaker 1: since the last listener's survey. But I think, Sophie correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong here, less than half of our
Speaker 1: listeners are professional tunnel diggers or mining engineers, right.
Speaker 2: I think it's about thirty two percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a big difference for Jason and I
Speaker 1: because Jason, if I'm not mistaken, about seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the audience that cracked were professional tunnel diggers.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, That's why we had so many articles on
Speaker 2: the subject. It is like the six Funniest things about
Speaker 2: when your mind cart overturns at the end of your shift.
Speaker 2: And everybody nodded. Everybody nodded. Know what we were talking about?
Speaker 1: Eight things you learn getting black lung. So here's Cherniac
Speaker 1: describing this is like the what what the daily workload
Speaker 1: looks like for most of these tunnel guys. Drilling preceded
Speaker 1: by the standard heading in bench method named for the
Speaker 1: vertical and horizontal planes of the drilling axis. Routinely sixteen
Speaker 1: drills were in simultaneous operation, tin boring horizontally into the
Speaker 1: heading face and six into the bench or stone platform
Speaker 1: as yet unexcavated, on which all the drillers worked. Holes
Speaker 1: were drilled for ten or twelve feet and packed with
Speaker 1: dynamite by powder monkeys. Typically a driller would drill two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet of drill steel in a shift
Speaker 1: about twenty holes. Although the eighty pound anger saw drills
Speaker 1: were equipped with supports, drilling into the heading face required
Speaker 1: the work of a driller and an assistant. The easiest
Speaker 1: vertical drilling could be done by a single driller. When
Speaker 1: a charge was detonated and the debris cleaned away, the
Speaker 1: first bench would be leveled to the tunnel floor or
Speaker 1: invert on which a track could be laid for the
Speaker 1: movement of heavy equipment, and the whole crew would advance.
Speaker 1: The heading, now cleared of rock, became the new drilling bench.
Speaker 1: If the tunnel was wide enough, more than one bench
Speaker 1: could be drilled at a time. The bottom bench segment
Speaker 1: rose from five to fifteen feet above the floor. Hence,
Speaker 1: in the narrower parts of the tunnel, a single drill
Speaker 1: crew could suffice. Either two drills were assigned to enlarge portions,
Speaker 1: or the bottom bench was removed at a later point.
Speaker 1: This at least describes a typical opera. So that's basically
Speaker 1: how it works, right, that's physically like kind of what's
Speaker 1: going on here, right, You drill holes, shove dynamine at them,
Speaker 1: blow them up. Then the whole crew advances. Right, So
Speaker 1: shortly after the drilling begins in earnest, they start analyzing
Speaker 1: the rock that they're pulling out of this tunnel as
Speaker 1: they blast their way through it, and coal is I
Speaker 1: think like three or four percent silica usually, and obviously
Speaker 1: that's enough that after years in the tunnel you can
Speaker 1: get silicosis. The rock they're digging out of the Hawk's
Speaker 1: Nest tunnel is almost one hundred percent pure silica. Like
Speaker 1: it is. It is so pure it basically does not
Speaker 1: need refining in order to be used in because this
Speaker 1: is how you like make glass. You make a bunch
Speaker 1: of shit out of silica. You don't need to even
Speaker 1: like do anything. This this shit is like almost like
Speaker 1: industrially pure as it comes out of the ground. Now,
Speaker 1: that's great for Union Carbide because they're looking at making
Speaker 1: all sorts of different alloys that require the use of silica. Right,
Speaker 1: The Appellation Studies Association notes, quote, during the construction of
Speaker 1: the tunnel, the work crews encountered silica rock. Fortunately for
Speaker 1: Union Carbide, the rock proved to be a valuable resource
Speaker 1: that could be used at the alloy industrial plant. In fact,
Speaker 1: the silica rock used to make ferro silicon, a component
Speaker 1: of steel, saved Union Carbide millions of dollars. And because
Speaker 1: this is such like a windfall for them, they decides
Speaker 1: let's massively expand the size of the tunnel, right, let's
Speaker 1: make this a lot wider, which you know, in order
Speaker 1: to do that and stay on the timeframe, Ryan Hart
Speaker 1: and Dennis is going to have to put even more,
Speaker 1: hundreds of more guys underground, and they're going to have
Speaker 1: to keep them underground longer and longer shifts a lot
Speaker 1: of the time.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Now that they realize that the rock
Speaker 2: they're getting out of there is an actual valuable substance
Speaker 2: that they are going to use, this of course becomes
Speaker 2: a mine. And I'm sure they filed the paper saying, hey, guys,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, this is a mine. We're mining this stuff
Speaker 2: like the tunnel we need, but also this is functions
Speaker 2: of mind. Let's go ahead and please saddle us with
Speaker 2: the additional regulations, Yeah, because it would be irresponsible otherwise,
Speaker 2: because this is clearly a mine. At this point, we
Speaker 2: are mining silica for use in a factory. No I.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it seems like you
Speaker 1: don't have to be regulated as a mine if the
Speaker 1: mining you're doing is a happy accident, right, if you
Speaker 1: get lucky, then no regulations at all. That's that's how
Speaker 1: the Industrial Code was written at the time. That's certainly
Speaker 1: how Union Carbide are acting. Right.
Speaker 2: Okay, but does the silica does know that it's not
Speaker 2: in a mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem to because it's getting everywhere here
Speaker 1: and they're not. Part of why it's getting everywhere is
Speaker 1: they're not wet drilling, right, because that's going to slow
Speaker 1: progress down. So reyin Hard and Davis are like, don't
Speaker 1: wet drill, and they also decide we're not going to
Speaker 1: give these tunnel the black tunnel labors are low skill
Speaker 1: labors respirators, right, because that's going to be too expensive.
Speaker 1: Now when this a lot of people die later, Union
Speaker 1: Carbide will say, well, there were no approved respirators for
Speaker 1: combatting silicosis. The regulatory agency, the Department of Mines, hadn't
Speaker 1: approved any. And it's technically correct because the Department of
Speaker 1: Mines had made a list of recommended respirators for silicosis,
Speaker 1: but they had not listed them as approved because that
Speaker 1: wasn't the thing that they did. But they did not
Speaker 1: approve respirators for silicosis. All they did was recommend at
Speaker 1: that point. They changed the language a couple of years
Speaker 1: after this to approve to get around it. So the
Speaker 1: company's just saying, well, you didn't do the thing that
Speaker 1: you never did for this, and ignoring the fact that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there was a list of respirators they said would
Speaker 1: definitely work for this that you should have when you're
Speaker 1: doing this kind of mining. It's just like it's like
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. It's the ways in which you've
Speaker 1: got enough lawyers that'll tell you like, oh no, it's okay,
Speaker 1: we can kill these people because like there's this this
Speaker 1: kind of like this little jink in the wording of
Speaker 1: the law that we can get around, you know.
Speaker 2: And any one of those people if they had had
Speaker 2: to send their own son, oh well the other or
Speaker 2: best friend into that mind would not dare let them
Speaker 2: go in without something like on a human level. That's
Speaker 2: the whole thing about all of this, is it It lets
Speaker 2: you completely detach yourself from the humanity of the decision.
Speaker 2: And also the fact that one load of the silica
Speaker 2: they hauled out of there would have paid for the respirators.
Speaker 2: The amount of money they made from just one batch
Speaker 2: of that probably would have covered the equipment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, further to your point about
Speaker 1: like if they were sending their loved ones and they
Speaker 1: would have respirators. All of the skilled white workers, right
Speaker 1: the machine operators and stuff who are doing these high
Speaker 1: skilled jobs, the engineers that are overseeing it, and the
Speaker 1: management who are coming into like check in on the project,
Speaker 1: they are all issued respirators. It's just it's basically just
Speaker 1: some of the unskilled white workers and all of the
Speaker 1: black workers who don't have respirators. The other thing the
Speaker 1: company does, so the two ways you're getting exposed to silica.
Speaker 1: One when they're drilling, it creates a lot of dust
Speaker 1: because they're dry drilling. And two when they detonate explosives
Speaker 1: it obviously it fills the ton with dust. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is a known problem. This is a non issue.
Speaker 1: And the way that you deal with that is very simple.
Speaker 1: You wait a while right after you blow it. You
Speaker 1: sit and you wait until the dust falls down, and
Speaker 1: then you can go in there and you're not going
Speaker 1: to breathe it in. But that means it'll take longer
Speaker 1: to make progress. So pushed by this, you know, you
Speaker 1: get two hundred fifty bucks a day. The faster you work.
Speaker 1: Reinhart and Dennis cuts the time back into the tunnel,
Speaker 1: And basically they're shoving workers in there immediately after the
Speaker 1: detonation to just get back into it, even though that
Speaker 1: means these guys are walking through clouds of silica dust
Speaker 1: so thick that they cannot see their hand in front
Speaker 1: of their face. The American Society of Safety Professionals noted
Speaker 1: in their analysis quote a break between shifts was alleged
Speaker 1: to be two hours to allow the dust to settle. However,
Speaker 1: in as few as thirty minutes, supervisors often sent the
Speaker 1: next shift three hundred to four hundred feet down the
Speaker 1: tunnel into the swirling dust cloud with visibility restricted to
Speaker 1: three to five feet now when black tunnel workers would
Speaker 1: fight through this cloud and get back to their workstations,
Speaker 1: the air is just dust. And I found a single
Speaker 1: sentence in a paper by the Oxford American magazine that
Speaker 1: drives home how fucked up this is. By some reports,
Speaker 1: conditions were so dusty that the workers drinking water turned
Speaker 1: white as milk, and the glassy air sliced at their eyes.
Speaker 2: We cannot convey how nasty this dust is. Like the
Speaker 2: dust we've all had to breed dust, we've all had
Speaker 2: to breed smoke. This is a nasty brand of dust,
Speaker 2: like that wording that it like as like glass, as
Speaker 2: slashes at your eyes, like it's tiny little razor sharp
Speaker 2: microscopic particles. Yeah, I cannot imagine.
Speaker 1: You're just inhaling little razor blades almost right, Like that's
Speaker 1: the degree of like damage this is doing to you.
Speaker 1: So it shouldn't surprise you to note that after a
Speaker 1: fairly short period of time, the men working in these
Speaker 1: tunnels realized that they had been put in a very
Speaker 1: dangerous situation. They attempted to force the company to let
Speaker 1: them wait longer after blasts to avoid exposing themselves to dust.
Speaker 1: Rheinhart and Dennis reacted with violence, and they actually sent
Speaker 1: in armed security to beat these black laborers until they
Speaker 1: would re enter the tunnel. Often right after a blast,
Speaker 1: they would just start like shoving people in to like
Speaker 1: get into this smoke filled tunnel and would just start
Speaker 1: wailing on them if they didn't move fast enough. One
Speaker 1: white engineer recalled, I have heard quite a few times
Speaker 1: that they used pick handles or a drill set and
Speaker 1: knock them in the head with it, so pretty horrifying.
Speaker 1: And obviously I talked about how with coal, I think
Speaker 1: you're looking at two to four percent silica generally in
Speaker 1: the coal you're mining, and that's dangerous, right, that'll give
Speaker 1: you the black lung after a while. But the concentration
Speaker 1: of silica in this tunnel is many orders of magnitude
Speaker 1: higher than that, and so people don't take years to
Speaker 1: get miners lung. They get sick immediately and their symptoms
Speaker 1: progressed to fatal at a calamitous rate. The first deaths
Speaker 1: among tunnel workers happened two months after the start of digging.
Speaker 1: That's how quickly this shit kills, right, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not talking anything like normal miners lung people are dropping
Speaker 1: right after they start, before they really even get settled
Speaker 1: into the job.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no way that they're not coughing the
Speaker 2: entire time they're in there. There's no way that they
Speaker 2: are not coughing up blood at some point, because that's
Speaker 2: what happens. When you cough long enough, you start to
Speaker 2: tear up you esophagus in your lungs. Like if you're
Speaker 2: inhaling enough to give yourself solicosis after a couple months,
Speaker 2: that means you knew you were breathing air that burned
Speaker 2: ye when you breathe it, Like everyone in that tunnel.
Speaker 2: Everyone's supervising that tunnel. Everyone everyone knew. I don't care
Speaker 2: if you had never worked in a mine a day
Speaker 2: in your life, if you had never seen a mine
Speaker 2: or heard of a mine. If a small child was
Speaker 2: brought there and asked, do you think it's safe to
Speaker 2: work in here? The child would say no, the air
Speaker 2: burns to breathe. You know, you don't need to be
Speaker 2: a doctor. Like any ignorance was claimed later is laughable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we will talk about the company doctors in
Speaker 1: the next episode. But one of the things I should
Speaker 1: notice that, like, not only is this obvious. As you stated,
Speaker 1: there's a diagnosis of what's killing these men very quickly.
Speaker 1: There's a company more tician. The first twelve deceased workers
Speaker 1: that he gets in his office, he cuts into their
Speaker 1: lungs and he diagnoses them with scilicosis. This happens very quickly,
Speaker 1: and when it happens, panic discussions erupted among Reinhardt and
Speaker 1: Morris officers and as well as the union carbyte officers
Speaker 1: overseeing them. The responsible thing to do, the thing you
Speaker 1: should do when this happens is shut down construction and
Speaker 1: rework your safety plan to mitigate this. That's not what
Speaker 1: they did. They make public denials that there's any danger
Speaker 1: in the tunnel. They say that the sickness is just
Speaker 1: this is a communicable disease, basically, like the flu is
Speaker 1: running around. Everybody's getting the flu. You galla got pneumonia.
Speaker 1: It's fine, don't worry, guys, it's tuberculosis. You're good, you know,
Speaker 1: Just try to wash your hands better. So to compensate
Speaker 1: for the fact though that like this is tearing through
Speaker 1: their labor force at an accelerated rate, a lot of
Speaker 1: guys are getting too sick to work. They have to
Speaker 1: accelerate their recruiting. They have to start pulling even more
Speaker 1: men into this mind and the goal is very simple,
Speaker 1: finish the project fast and then deal with the fact that,
Speaker 1: like you're getting all these people killed, right, because then
Speaker 1: you'll have the money to handle it. So that's part one. Jason,
Speaker 1: how we feeling well again?
Speaker 2: I know that this episode ended on a downer, but
Speaker 2: I'm sure that in part two, all of these people
Speaker 2: making these decisions, they're going to get what they deserve.
Speaker 2: Like they they're going to regret. They're going to rue
Speaker 2: the day they they didn't try to be human beings
Speaker 2: for once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the This is the one episode of
Speaker 1: our show that's going to end with justice for the aggrieved.
Speaker 1: So everybody look forward to that in part two. We're
Speaker 1: not lying to you. This is not a con. Another
Speaker 1: thing that's not a con, Jason, is your new book.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about it a little bit
Speaker 1: as we close out here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Zoe Is Too Drunk for the Dystopia.
Speaker 2: These are science fiction novels. The first two. The first
Speaker 2: one is called Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits. The second
Speaker 2: one is called Zoe Punches to Future, and the Dick.
Speaker 2: The first two are available on Kindall unlimited. If you're
Speaker 2: one of those people, it would be free. Otherwise you
Speaker 2: can probably get them at a used bookstore for dirt cheap. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I steal a copy from somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jacket. You know, if you're listening to this show,
Speaker 1: you like Dystopia's, you're fascinated by collapse, and you're probably
Speaker 1: interested in the idea of a weirdo libertarian future, independent
Speaker 1: city state in the desert with posthumans and high technology nonsense.
Speaker 1: It's good, you'll love it. I do so. Check out
Speaker 1: Jason's book, and it is.
Speaker 2: About a young woman who inherits a corrupt company. I
Speaker 2: chose to subject for this podcast on purpose because she
Speaker 2: finds herself at the wheel of a corrupted capitalist system
Speaker 2: and it's like, Okay, how do you fix this? And
Speaker 2: it turns out not easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, there we go. Everybody that has been the episode,
Speaker 1: so let's all have a happy time. Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or
Speaker 1: check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.