June 28, 2016 • 42 mins
People used to use deer antlers to beat the minerals out of rock hidden in the earth. Luckily, they got better at it, and now modern mining is a mind-boggling process for efficiently removing stuff we want from inside the planet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know Frendhouse Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Child's w Chuck Bryant looking chipper and bright eye
and bushy tail. There's Jerry over there, she dressed like
snow white. Some birds flying around the place. It's like, uh,
(00:24):
all this stuff you should know. It's like Disney all
up in here. Which, by the way, we learned the
hard way. Um, welcome a dam Gilbert, so I'll mess
it up again. That's good. So, Chuck, have you ever
been inside an underground mine? No? Do you do? You
remember an episode where we talked about what happens to
(00:44):
abandon mine? Yeah? Boy, did we do a show on
that old timy crazy old It was a good one
if I remember correctly. Okay, yeah, and then we've also
done one on mountaintop removal mining with Ben so Lee. Yeah,
that was a good one too. Up, this one's totally different.
Fracking too. Oh yeah, we did do fracking. What the
(01:05):
frick is fracking did? That's what it was called. One
of our better titles. Um, but this was totally different.
This is underground mining. Yes, this is what people normally
think of with mining rather than stripping the top off
of a mountain or um fracking. This is this is mining. Yeah,
and you usually um don't think about mining much as
(01:26):
a regular person walking around on a day to day basis,
unless there's some sort of accident, and that will usually
cause regular folk to say, oh yeah, right, people still
go underground in mine and it can be very dangerous.
They're like, how terrible? Back to life like in two
(01:47):
and Chile? I remember that. I know that one was
huge while they got those dudes they did, and there's
I think a movie coming out or already out. Uh,
if I'm not mistaken Antonio Bandetas, Oh yeah, I think
so too sexy. Yeah, that's a one sexy minor do
you remember that? You don't remember the Antonio bandeis? How
(02:12):
do you say? Yes, that's right, I remember that. Now?
Did someone played him though, right? Or was he? Yeah?
I'm sure he guessed it at least once. But yeah,
I think it was Chris Ktan. I think exactly right,
the least sexy guy of all time. Actually, we're sorry,
Mr Katan, but it's true. I think he would admit that. No,
(02:33):
I think he likes himself. He doesn't care what we say.
What was that crazy character he used to do the
like Mango? Yeah, that was very funny. Oh no, Mango
is different than the monkey boy. Mango was like the
super sexy um like Flamenco dancer down in Miami or
something that like every people would like like give up
their lives for it just a year around. Mango wasn't
(02:55):
the one who ate fruit all right, I don't remember.
God rest his soul? Who Chris Catin. I'm just kidding, Well,
you can still Does that have to mean you're dead?
Or can God just rest your soul like he needs
a break. I think there's a sense of finality to that.
When God rests your soul, you can still rest in
(03:17):
peace by taking a nice nap um so yes. In Chile, uh,
it was a disaster in two thousand and ten that
uh turned out with a great ending because like I said,
they're all rescued and um, but they spent sixty eight
days underground. Yeah in a little room, crazy man. It
would probably smell a lot like p when they were
(03:38):
finally taken out of there. Yeah, it's a long time,
I mean, and that's believable. I believe the room was
designed as an escape room or something, so it worked
like it it was supposed to. But they had to
dig like an escape hatch. They had to dig down
to these miners hundreds of feet under the ground. Yeah, um,
which in and of itself put their life in danger,
I'm sure you know. And that happened in two thousand ten.
(04:00):
And Julia Layton, who wrote this article, points out that
that was a as far as mining goes, that was
a bad year. So there were those guys like thirty
three were rescued, but a bunch of their compatriots were
killed in that same disaster, I believe. Well, yeah, and um,
I think she also makes a great point that, you know,
(04:20):
the disaster gets all the headlines, but people die all
the time, individually or in you know, several dudes at once.
You know, that doesn't hit the headlines like a couple
of guys die on the job in a day, and
regionally you might hear about the news, but it's not
gonna sweep the nation like a big disaster. And apparently, also, um,
(04:44):
things like black Long are still around even though they
shouldn't be. And I was reading you know that they
these deaths although they're preventable. They are there the deaths
of people who live in rural communities outside of the
spotlight of the media, and so it still happens. So yeah,
the point is mining, underground mining in particular is extremely dangerous.
(05:07):
I have a question for you, though. I was looking
at pictures of modern mining operations, and guys are down there,
you know, without even like a dust mask on, And
I'm just thinking that seems to be the most preventable
thing you can do. Is where the like, weren't they
wearing the things that firefighters wear, but the tank in
(05:28):
the full mask, face mask. The closest thing I can
come to for an answer is that the mine. No,
the mine owners are supposed to have that place so
ventilated that you wouldn't even need that supposed to I
don't know about that. That's that, But I mean, like
in the nine Congress said there should not be black
lung anymore. We want to eradicated from the mining industry.
(05:49):
Since then, seventy six thousand miners have died from black
long um. But it's apparently it's totally preventable. It's just
mine owners being cheap and or lazy. And I guess
I mean when was this done? When did they? Oh? Yeah, okay,
well you could have stats of people that theoretically started
(06:10):
their career after that, and I'm sure you should not
have black lungs, but they they're definitely people who weren't
even born than that died of black long since man
um all right, well we're talking about underground mining though,
because as you pointed out to Jerry when she said
mining and you underground mining difference. That sound like that.
(06:30):
I've got a lot of self reflection into um. But
surface mining is different, and that is uh, a very
viable way to get or if you only want to
go down and that's a top down op, that's like
mountaintop removal. Yeah, if you want to go down a
couple hundred feet, it's a it's a good way to
get some or below that the efficiencies, um, it becomes inefficient.
(06:54):
So they say, well, why don't we get down there,
go to the working our way up. That's what they do,
or least, you know, maybe just go get that big
chunk of orbits a thousand feet down? And did you
did you see this thing about kind of the early
history of mining? Yah? So should we do that? Yeah? Man,
the when you talk about going like a thousand feet
(07:15):
down or how how far does the uranium mind go
down to ft? That's mind boggling lead deep. That's more
than a mile, right, isn't a mile something like in
the neighborhood of five thousand feet? I have no idea.
I think it is. It's something like that, right, So
that's a very deep amount. But that's using like machines
(07:37):
and mechanization, which we'll talk about. So if you go
around the world and find some of these ancient minds
like Roman minds or Egyptian minds, they were the first
ones to really get into mining um, although there are
prehistoric minds that date back to the Neolithic age. Them
going down like a hundred feet or so, that's pretty impressive,
and they're working in it's like something like three or
(07:58):
four meters a month of an advance rate. Yeah, because
they're using pick axes. They were using picks and slave
labor and prisoners and prisoners of war criminals basically, so
that conditions, as you would imagine, were terrible because they
didn't care ahead and I will just go conquer another
land and make them exactly. But as that um source
(08:23):
of employees dried up and they had fewer and fewer
prisoners of war because they conquered everyone. They said, well,
maybe this is a real job and we should make
it safer. Yeah, like paid some probably still like unskilled,
like yokels, but at least they Yeah, but they weren't
prisoners of war and slaves that they wanted to pay
(08:45):
them a little more, a little money, not much, and
make a little bit safer. No, And as a result,
the occupation of mining became more respected and respectable because
it's a pretty hardcore, a patient, um, and one that
should be admired and respected, especially if you're talking about
(09:06):
back in the day when they're using pickaxes and stuff. Yeah,
your article that you sent was pre six and um.
For hundreds and hundreds of years, it kind of stayed
the same, and the Egyptians kind of set the standard
and everyone followed suit. And you know, they would dig
down with pickaxes and shovels made of you know, depends
(09:28):
everything from bone to when they finally got metal from mining,
they would use metal, right. It kind of was like
a cycle. They also very cleverly and apparently this is
a really old technique they would use. Um. I think
it was called fired quenching. Yeah, that's says fire setting
or fire quenching. Let's just say they would heat up
(09:48):
rock with fire and then throw water on it. Yeah,
and if you've ever done that, you can see your
rockwell crack pretty quickly because of that change in temperature.
That really rapid change of temperature. Not safe. No, no,
it's not, because that rock can go flying, especially in
fifth century Rome. Yeah, and they were also using it
not just to like hurry along. It was basically their
(10:11):
their version of drilling and blasting before there was drills
or blast equipment. Um. And they would also use it
not just to to drill or blast or break up
or they were doing it so they could free their
acts as or picks that would get stuck in the rock.
So yeah, that thing could come flying out and hit you.
But again, you were most likely a prisoner of war,
a slave, or a convicted criminal who was not only
(10:35):
using a very cheap pick to break up rock. All day,
there's a guy behind you lashing you with the whip
to egg you on and keep you standing upright. Yeah,
and it is weird. I just thought about the cycle
like they they kind of I mean, they use the
metal for other things, but they were kind of mining
to just improve their own equipment for more mining and
(10:57):
the discovery more metals. Like initially they wanted to think
flint for tools and weapons, but they were using bone.
And then eventually they were like, oh, well we found copper, right,
so we'll use copper to dig, and like oh well,
now we found bronze, and like wait, we found some iron.
(11:19):
R Now let's use iron. Pretty neat, yeah, And each
time it was like a snake eating its own tail.
They just go do some more mining with the new stuff.
That's right. Um. And so yeah, like you said that,
that was pretty much the early history of mining, and
it stayed virtually the same until the age of mechanization,
that well, the industrial age. But even after the industrial agies,
(11:42):
people were still using like ancient mining techniques T and
T H. Well it's not that but blasting. And I
think what they say in this article like five of
mining today, is this that blast? Yeah technique, it's mostly mechanized, right, Yeah, Well,
let's you want to take a break. Yeah, man, Okay,
we'll come back and talk about mechanized mining techniques right
(12:05):
after this. All right, So, no, two minds are the same. Well,
(12:26):
that's probably not true. I bet you there's two minds
that are the same, exactly the same. But there are
different kinds of minds and um, but most of them
have a few common characteristics. Uh, you gotta have your
ventilation shafts. You gotta have your access shafts for the employees,
you gotta have exit shafts for the or. Um a lot.
(12:48):
There's a lot of shafts, so many shafts, but so
many shafts. There's uh, did you say vent shafts to
bend away the stuff. Yeah, that's number one recovery shafts
that the or goes up out of. Uh yeah, calm systems,
break room, we have breakroom, escape rooms, that kind of stuff,
(13:10):
and the But I think the point of Laton here
is that the ore deposit itself is going to tell
you what kind of underground mining technique you want to use, right, Yeah,
Like the what the ore actually is? What it's shaped like?
H Is it like a big flat slab? Is it
a big huge blob? What kind of rock is around it?
(13:34):
Are you mining petroleum? Jelly? Uh? Well you raised a question, Chuck.
I could not find this to save my life. So
there's two types of underground mines, right, there's hard rock
mines and soft rock mines. Sound their sound Garden and
Steely Dan. I had dock In and Brett, did you really?
(13:54):
And oh is doc and metal? Yeah? But see the
the thing hard rock or metal. That's a fine line something. Yeah,
But I think bread about sound Garden and bread look
at us sound Garden working together. Um, So I couldn't
figure out if that is meant to describe the or
(14:16):
the type of thing that's being mined or the rocks
surrounding the ore. I saw both if you know what
now for the hard or soft? Right? Oh, you see
what I'm saying? Yeah, I never I think I assumed
it was the ore, but you may be right. Maybe
it's so. Layton says, for example, coal coal deposits live
(14:40):
in relatively soft sedimentary rock, which would make you think
that she's she's saying that it's the rock that's around
the ore's soft, yeah, and that that would be a
soft rock mine that is not dependent on the type
of ore you're getting out. I saw elsewhere. I saw
that what she was saying being supported and other places,
But I also saw no, it has to do with
(15:02):
it describes the ore that's being removed. So if there's
any miners out there that can tell us the difference definitively,
we want to know. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get a
wonderful follow up emial. But the point is, depending on
whether you've determined it's a hard rock mine or a
soft rock mine, UM, that's going to also inform not
just the the the where the ore is and the
(15:24):
size of the in shape of the ore deposit, but um,
whether it's hard rock or soft rock is going to
determine what type of mining technique you want to use. Yeah,
it seems like there's more hard rock minds than soft.
They list gold, diamonds, copper, silver, zinc, and nickel. It's
hard rock and the only mentioned of soft is coal. Yeah,
(15:45):
but there's a lot of coal mining going on, so
maybe you know tons literally tons. Uh, So let's talk
a little bit about hard rock mining. Um. It really helps.
I found to look at either cross actions, Like if
you look up um room and pillar mining, there's always
(16:05):
a great cross section diagram. The kind of brings it home,
you know, looking at this stuff. I saw you watching
a video that I saw too. It like brings out
the Little Boy who Loved Honker Truck in again, like
this stuff is really neat. Yeah, you're well, we'll get there.
The continuous minor, Yeah, that's definitely probably, but also like
(16:26):
trucks driving underground and like going beep. Yeah, just awesome,
all right. So room and pillar is um for a
flat or deposit that doesn't let's say like oh it
starts at two feet and goes down a thousand more feet.
It's more horizontal and flat. And this is where basically
(16:47):
you use this machine called a continuous miner. Uh. And
they say it drills, but maybe that's the terminology. But
when I think of drill, I think of um, something
long drilling a hole into something. This looks like a
boxy tank with a huge metal dust pan at the
bottom and a huge rolling pin with teeth on it
(17:11):
at the top and a big appetite for coal. Yeah.
And and when I say rolling pin, it's like kind
of like a bulldozer. You can raise and lower it
and you just drive that thing through earth. But you
leave these pillars, so you basically clear out a huge
room with these big pillars left to keep you from dying.
(17:31):
I find the terms room and pillar They're kind of
misleading because it makes you think that the room is
going to be vast and then there's these little kind
of supports that are left behind, and that's not the
case at all. The pillars are huge, They're enormous. They're
from what I saw, they're frequently bigger than the room itself,
and they're left behind to keep the rock above from
(17:51):
crumbling in. Right. Yeah, that's still gotta be scary. So
oh yeah, I'm sure you know, like this is extremely
dangerous work. Yeah. So, I mean you're allowing out inside
the mountain. That's super dangerous. Well, I mean when I
did my one caving experience a few years ago and
I was in there was this one I think they
called it a pancake crawl or something where for twenty
(18:15):
feet you have to shimmy on your back with with
the world's largest stone slab five inches above your face.
And I just kept thinking, like, what if the earth
moved a little, Yeah, this thing just smashed me flat,
you'd be a pancake yourself. And that's one of the
dangers is trimmers and things underground trimmers. Have you been
(18:38):
to Rock City? Yeah, when I was a kid, so
a while you know, there's like the enormous rock that's
being held up very precariously by a small boulder. You're
walking under that same same thing. I don't need to
go caving. I can just go to Rock City. Yeah,
and then you can go to Stuckies and buy a
pecan log after love those Yes, crazy. No rock City
(19:00):
as a Tennessee right, yeah, Chattanooga, Tennessee. It's very beautiful area.
It's it's our version of Carl's Bad Caverns. You've got
Rock City, well, it's super kitchy. There's like nineteen thirties
glow in the dark gnomes everywhere. It's really interesting cool um.
And then you've got Ruby Falls. You walk underground and
come into a cavern and there's the water coming down. Uh.
(19:24):
And then there's also like Lookout Mountain. It's beautiful. Yeah,
definitely worth going to. Not too far from your beloved Dollywood, Yeah,
it's not far. So. The point is with the room
and pillar, right, you're basically your pac Man or your
dig Doug going through a coal scene and then that
space you just carved out is called the room. When
(19:46):
you come back through, you leave a big space in
between of coal and then come back through again and
that's another room. So what's in between those two rooms
now is the pillar. It's just the strip of coal
that you left intac Yeah, and um that that they
will come in at the very end and even take
care of those pillars one by one, allowing everything to
(20:07):
collapse as it leaves, which sounds probably like the most
dangerous phase's knocking the pillars down there, like make Todd
do it. Uh, he's in the break room having a nap.
Wake him up. That's why they he always sleeps on
the job. Did you see that picture of Richard Branson
like squatting next to one of like a Virgin Airlines employee,
(20:30):
like sleeping on a couch in the break room. He's
like squatting next to him giving the thumbs up. What
was this whole thing? Because he's like the boss of
all bosses of this guy. No, he's saying like, I
busted you sleeping on got you? It sounded staged. It
was a real thing, supposedly. Yeah. Did he stick his
hands in hot water, him and himself in Italia on
(20:54):
the guy's face was sharp. He put toothpaste on his
hand and tickled his nose. He's a fun loving boss.
All right, So that's room and pillar. There's also the
cut and film method, which I don't fully understand. It
is for narrow deposits, and you basically drill a ramp
adjacent to the deposit from the surface of the earth
down to the bottom of it, and then you start
(21:17):
at the bottom at the bottom and just start drilling sideways. Yeah.
So so imagine like the ore deposit is just like
a big tall um like rectangle okay in the earth
going upwards. It's a vertical or deposit. You just go
down the bottom, you make a cut across where you're
(21:38):
digging out the coal from one side all the way
to the other, all the way to the other right,
and then you backfill that with um rock rubble that
say you you gathered when you made the initial shaft
down to the bottom, and then you drive on that
backfill to do the next thing. So you fill the
entire room you just did with rubble, and then when
(21:58):
you cut above that, you're using that rubble to drive
on and then yep, just up. Well that makes sense. Yeah,
that's pretty pretty good one. And if you imagine a
big yellow truck doing it, it can just send you
barreling right back to age four or five. I didn't
play a ton with Tonka trucks a little bit. There
(22:21):
was a lot of model cars. Richard Scary was really
good at drawing stuff like that. Those books were great,
but I was big on I had the Evil Knevil
stunt cycle. Oh yeah, that was just amazing. Yeah, like
that was my toy of choice for like probably three
or four years. I can imagine. Yeah, I used to
(22:42):
we my brother and I made don't try this at home, kids.
This is the seventies. We were much more dangerous. We
would make hoops out of coat hangers and dip them
in gasoline. I was really really hoping that you were
going to say a ring of fire. Yeah, when you
could jump the evil can evil through it, it's really awesome. Yeah. Man,
I really missed out on having a Scout on my own. Yeah,
(23:03):
it's good to have a scott arown. Yeah. Uh. He's
gonna be at our New York shows by the way,
Oh great, just randomly going to be in New York,
same exact them. Actually, I don't know if he's going
to come to the show. He was going to, but
then I said, it's the same topic you've already seen,
so he said, Yeah. Anyway back to um cut and fill. Uh,
you can use it for wider deposits as well. You
(23:25):
just have to have two adjacent rams. I guess you
have one on each side. Yeah. I didn't really get that,
aside from maybe it's it's a they're just criss crossing it.
Think they're doing one above the other. That seems really dangerous. Yeah,
well it's all dangerous. All right. Let's talk more about Scott.
(23:45):
Uh what about block caving? This one is um you
don't see it a lot now. It's for hard rock
excavations and basically it's not for like precious metal or anything.
It's for low grade junks. So I saw that here.
But then I also saw like videos of UM that
(24:06):
that sounded a lot like this. That seemed a lot
like this too, So I don't know if it's just
for junk or whatever. Yeah, it's it's basically where you
cut through and then you let the roof collapse behind you. Yeah,
you dig out a room and then blast it and
let it just fall in on itself and then you
caul that stuff out. Yeah. I guess you wouldn't care
(24:27):
about the stuff you're recovering like that much. Obviously it's
worth going into the earth and retrieving it. But I
guess it's not high grade, you know what I mean?
That's right. So um coal, like we said, is softer
and that is usually room and pillar style. But now
there's a thing called long wall mining that is all
(24:48):
the rage in the break room of the minings. So
it's really efficient they get out of available or with
this method where room and pillar is only about fIF percent,
which is a huge deaf right. So we said that
we were talking about hard rock mining, right with the
room and pillar works for hard rock mining and soft rock, yeah,
(25:10):
it crosses over. But then the cut and fill that's
just for hard rock, right correct, Okay, and then long
wall that's just for soft rock basically, uh think so yes,
so long while Yeah, that's the one where I'm like,
oh man, this is so cool. Yeah. The machine, it's
pretty awesome. How much those machines cost. Boy, I don't know.
(25:31):
A lot likes easy easy at least it's really neat. Um,
you're not drilling into a single deposit. Through the deposit,
you basically have a machine that just kind of it's
sort of a cross cut and just shaves it off
as you go onto a conveyor belt, just constantly moving
(25:51):
the stuff out right. Rather than drilling through going forward
or backward, You're you're going left to right. Yeah, So
what you would do is you drill a shaft down
to the ore deposit, and then you drill a shaft
that's parallel to the face of it, right, that goes
from left to right, and then you go down and
you bring in your long wall machine, which is apparently
(26:14):
up the eight hundred feet long wide right, and each
each part of this machine, which sounds like it's modular,
like you can make it shorter or longer or whatever,
and they just hook up to one another. It's like
it's like a hydraulic jack that holds the roof of
the mountain up above it, yes, and then its own support. Yeah.
(26:38):
And then on the front of it is where the
coal eater is, the soul eater. Amazing. This thing in
action is really cool looking. Yeah, it really is, because
when you're watching videos of it, um, it looks you
just see it from the side and it looks like, Okay,
it's gonna go straight, and then all of a sudden,
the coal eater shoots off out of sight further back
into the ore deposit. And as it does that, it
(27:01):
drops that coal down to a conveyor belt in the
front of the thing, and it shoots the coal off
to the shaft that raises it up. Amazing. It is
very amazing. And there's another method called short wall, and
it's the same thing. It's just for shorter cuts when
it's a narrow deposit. And then after the cut has made,
the thing advances a little further and the roof behind
(27:23):
it caves in. Amazing. I'm a big long wall fan.
What about you? Mm hmm. I like the room and
pillar really because it's the machine, a continuous miner. Well,
then I think that's why I like the long wall
is because of the mining machine. They should have named
the continuous miner the John Henry just you know, perspect
(27:47):
like a throwback. But he was a railroad guy. Who
was the guy who had the casey at the bat. Now,
wasn't it John Henry who had the contest against the
steam machine? But I think they were what you're talking about.
I thought it was a steel Oh right, he was
(28:09):
driving spikes. What was the one that was digging into
a rock? I know what you're talking about, though, and
I feel like they were. They were trying to build
a train tunnel too. I'm gonna look this up during
the break and we'll come back with the answer. How
about that, let's do It's called the Cliffhanger, all right,
(28:42):
it is John Henry. Wow, he did it all. He
did it all he was he was the steel driving man,
like he said. But here was the deal. He hammered
the steel drill into rock, uh, to make the railroad tunnel.
So it was railroading mining or not mining? Those the
best of both worlds. Well, do you call that mining
(29:03):
mining or just tunneling tunnel? And that's a good question.
And I don't think it's mining. Mining is specifically getting
or tunneling. It's just blasting a hole through something. Okay, Tonally,
that was another good episode we did tunnels. Do we
do that one too? Yeah? Jeez, man, starting to lose it. Yeah,
I like our civil engineering episodes too. Is that a
(29:25):
tranche we have? Sure, we've done bridges, tunnels, mining a
couple of times, uh, some other stuff. Yeah. I guess
landfills would probably qualify. Yeah. I could probably come up
with more, but we should move on. Do you want
to talk about the dangers of mining Chuck, Yeah, well
(29:45):
they're rampant there. Well, first of all, it's it's can
be very uh can be bad for mother Earth. It's
just a tad, just a little bit we're talking. I mean,
you're changing the physical makeup of the earth beneath our feet,
So there's gotta be ramifications um. Air pollution, of course,
is one how water flows on you know, the water
(30:08):
table underneath the earth, where that goes, that's bound to
change things well. And also a lot of times they
are releasing other things in the earth that shouldn't really
be in our drinking water, and that that stuff does
get into drinking water. The soil pollutes the heck out
of it. Sometimes there's a fire underground, fires that you
(30:29):
can't even get to to put out, like in centrally
of Pennsylvania. Isn't that crazy? If fire fire burning deep
within the earth, that that just sounds dangerous. Yeah. If
a coal steam catches, you're in big trouble because that's
that is not getting put out anytime soon, maybe a
hundred and fifty years, it will burn itself out, who knows, really, Yeah,
(30:50):
that's what Centralli has got going on still yeah, still
on fire, like it will probably be on fire for
a century. Man, I need to look into that. I
haven't heard of that. It's neat. Yeah, they had abandoned
the town. They had to. Yeah, there was a kid
in like the eighties after the fire had caught. It
was a landfill or a tire fire, something stupid, and
it caught. It caught a coal seam on fire and
(31:12):
an underground cole seine and um, like they knew it
was burning, but they didn't evacuate the town until a
kid in two was just playing in the street in
the street opened up and almost swallowed him into a
pit of fire, and they're like, we need to get
out of here. Holy cow. So that area is just
like a I mean, is it fenced up and it's
(31:34):
a death zone. Yes, but apparently there's still a couple
of people that lived there. Like I'm not moving, man,
never heard of that. There's also have you heard of
wildcat mining? I don't think so. It's basically I don't
know anything about mining. It's basically I asked the same question,
why do you know everything about mine? That's a good
(31:55):
question too, Um. Wildcat mining I know about because I
couldn't find the name of the article, but there was
a great article I think I read in Harper's a
year or two back, and it's about wildcat mining and Guiana,
and basically it's just illegal mining. But they are the
most polluting um mining operations you can imagine, Like they
(32:15):
use mercury quicksilver to bind to gold, and they're handling
the quicksilver. It's getting everywhere, they're leaving it behind, it's
going in the soil, it's going in the water. Um
and that's just like one problem with it. They do
nothing to remediate, like they're the diesel exhaust or anything
like that. It's just a really big problem. Is this
(32:35):
Guiana completely unregulated or operation? By definition, it's it's a
rogue operation. It's just unlicensed mining operation. And it's not
just Guiana that has that problem. It's around the world
there's wildcat mining, but they have a particularly bad problem
with it. Man, And I bet they make a dollar
(32:57):
a day. Oh yeah, you know, very sad um. Well,
we might as well talk about the human toll since
that's where we are. Like I said before, major accidents
of the one you're gonna hear about. But as example, uh,
in two thousand ten, um about Chinese miners died, but
(33:17):
none of them were big, big accidents. So you didn't
really hear about a lot of that. Yeah, I'm sure
you didn't hear about in China. I know I didn't
hear about it. But yeah, in China they were like
that's a big death. Hol though miner's family received windfall,
why they got paid out? Yeah? Um, and you talked
about was it in two thousand ten Chilean and West Virginia?
(33:41):
That same year there was twenty nine people killed, thirty
one people at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia,
Matthew Energy Mine, New Zealand and other twenty nine people
died that same year, Yeah, twenty nine thirty one. Again
of the people present, twenty nine thirty one died at
Pike River Mine. Things are getting better though, like a
lot of these accidents. Um, well, like you said, sometimes
(34:05):
just uh tremmors. Like we said earlier, sometimes there are explosions. Um.
You know, these gases can ignite, there's underground gases. It's
just it's really just volatile down there, and and in
developed countries though there's not supposed to be explosions, Like
the mining operations are supposed to be sophisticated enough these
(34:25):
days that there should not be explosives. I remember Massive
Energy gotten big trouble because they just were totally lax
about safety precautions that kind of stuff, and some miners
blew up because of it. Man. Uh. And then of
course the health risks that are long term. We mentioned
black long, but uh, you know it doesn't have to
(34:47):
be just black long. Uh. There are all sorts of
things you can breathe in, welding fumes, radon, mercury, all
kinds of respiratory disease that can arise from being down
there without even like a hanky over your out. In
some of these photos, it's just doesn't make sense. Yeah,
I would wear at least a dust mask. You would
(35:08):
be down there anyway I could mind. I'd be like
Derek zu Leander's family. He'd be break room. Josh, go
wake up, just make him do it. But you did
mention remediation a second ago, and um, you know it's
all gotten better, safer and more strict environmentally speaking. But
(35:29):
there are different depending on where you are, they're different
remediation laws and rules from take care of it right now,
like you were never there, which, let's be honest, it's
got to be impossible, right, um too, you know, come
back every year and check on it if you want.
I remember in the Abandoned Minds episode, it's like there's
(35:50):
a lot of really dangerous spots, especially out west, that
are just abandoned minds, that people just walked away from.
And if a company liquidates and you don't really know
who the owners were, then there's not a lot you
can do. Should we talk about the canary? I think
we should. Man, you've heard the phrase canary in a
coal mine, um, which I never really understood, not where
(36:14):
it came from. But I didn't even know what they were,
what people meant by that until more recently. It's like,
you know, the indicator that things are about to go south. Yeah,
I get it now, but I would just hear it
and go like, I don't know what that means. Well,
there's actual like legitimacy to it, right. Yeah. There was
a guy named John Holdain who was quite the self
(36:35):
experiment or he would he would try and kill himself,
or that it's not true. He would try and bring
himself near death. By sitting in rooms full of gases
so he could record results. Amazing. Yeah, my hat is
always off to scientists who getting picked themselves. YEA love
of those guys. Really. He was also very sharp right
(36:59):
from his studies. He found out that carbon monoxide poisoning
stained tissues red with hemoglobin, right, and so, uh, he's
working in the nineties here he noticed that miners um
would come up with, you know, bright flushed faces. It's
mysteriously dead. And he figured out probably carbon monoxide poisoning.
(37:21):
So he said, you know what you guys should do.
You should start carrying canaries down there with you. Yeah,
think of something really mean you could do to an animal, right,
and carry it down there in a cage. And if
the canary dies, then that means you have troubles. You
turn and run. Yeah, because apparently birds, uh, the way
(37:41):
they breathe there there, they're getting twice as much oxygen
or just intake as a human both. Okay, I guess
that they're breathing in twice as much because of the
way they're a little for a feathery little system works. Yeah,
which is pretty I didn't know. This is from a
(38:02):
think is motor article. Maybe from esther inglis arkel Um,
and she points out that a bird's respiratory system when
they suck in air, some of it goes to basically
like their lungs and perfuses their blood with oxygen, right um.
But some of it also goes to these secondary sacks
that just kind of hold it there. And then when
(38:22):
the bird exhales that that air that never went to
the lungs goes through the lungs, so they're getting oxygen
on the way in and the way out. But that
also means that whatever they're sucking in when they take
in that breath, they also get on the way in
and the way out, which makes them very susceptible to
dying from poisoned air. But great if they're not in
(38:44):
a mine and they want to fly around because they're
super oxygen eated. But if you can get your hands
on them and shove them in a cave and take
them down no mind with you, you can use them
as an indicator. Yeah, And then she pointed out even
if they didn't breathe this way, just the fact that
they're birds, theoretically you could probably take any animal, small
animal down there. Then if it died before human. Then
(39:07):
that's probably bad. But birds were small to put them
in a cage easy. And then they had the whole
double doubling down on breathing that What was that was?
Wasn't that a KFC sandwich? The double down? It's probably
I think it was. You got anything else? Nope? Well,
if you want to know more about underground mining, you
can type those words in the search part how stuff
(39:29):
works dot com. And since I said search parts, time
for listening there. I'm gonna call this um because girls
trying to sue us. Okay, it's actually not true. Hey guys, UM,
I'm new to the podcast thing but discovered yours and
it is awesome all caps. I was born and raised
in Seattle and UH an intentional community, not religious or culty,
(39:53):
just lots of hippies. Um. In late my housemates and
I set out to free the Seattle Airway via Pirate radio.
Long story short. We got up in reigning running with
the show called eight Shall Not Kill a great title. Um.
It was a mix of music, life, commentary, and How
(40:14):
Stuff Works. I actually read from one of the coolest
books I had, which was How Stuff Works. Remember we
had those books years ago by Marshall brain. Yeah, and
she would read these things like she kind of had
the first version of our podcast, and she said, even
though you guys have an amazingly sweet and popular podcast. Uh.
And I had a pirate radio show just reaching Capitol
(40:36):
Hill in Seattle in the late nineties. I feel akin
to you guys. Fortunately for me, Unfortunately, after a few months,
two guys wearing suits knocked on the door they thought
was our studio. We had a secret door and ladder
and club knocks, I guess like secret knocks, and obviously
(40:56):
we had been found out, which is crazy because we
barely had a mile radius of coverage. But the government
is a government and we weren't paying them, so they
got upset, actually sent two dudes after her. I'm not terrible.
We ended up getting shut down. And though I am
very thankful for podcasts, I still feel like the people
should own their air waves and I encourage everyone to
(41:18):
start a pirate radio station of their own. Thanks for everything.
You can't wait to hear about the feat washing Ashore
in my state? Oh yeah, great show, The Mysterious Feat. Yeah.
I love that British Columbia. Uh And I will write
you again so that is from Aaron. Thanks a lot, Aaron,
Power to the people. Yeah. I thought for a minute
(41:40):
when I was reading that she was gonna say, um
is my idea, so get the checkbook out. Yeah. Uh.
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Works dot com.
Welcome to you stuff you should know Frendhouse Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Child's w Chuck Bryant looking chipper and bright eye
and bushy tail. There's Jerry over there, she dressed like
snow white. Some birds flying around the place. It's like, uh,
(00:24):
all this stuff you should know. It's like Disney all
up in here. Which, by the way, we learned the
hard way. Um, welcome a dam Gilbert, so I'll mess
it up again. That's good. So, Chuck, have you ever
been inside an underground mine? No? Do you do? You
remember an episode where we talked about what happens to
(00:44):
abandon mine? Yeah? Boy, did we do a show on
that old timy crazy old It was a good one
if I remember correctly. Okay, yeah, and then we've also
done one on mountaintop removal mining with Ben so Lee. Yeah,
that was a good one too. Up, this one's totally different.
Fracking too. Oh yeah, we did do fracking. What the
(01:05):
frick is fracking did? That's what it was called. One
of our better titles. Um, but this was totally different.
This is underground mining. Yes, this is what people normally
think of with mining rather than stripping the top off
of a mountain or um fracking. This is this is mining. Yeah,
and you usually um don't think about mining much as
(01:26):
a regular person walking around on a day to day basis,
unless there's some sort of accident, and that will usually
cause regular folk to say, oh yeah, right, people still
go underground in mine and it can be very dangerous.
They're like, how terrible? Back to life like in two
(01:47):
and Chile? I remember that. I know that one was
huge while they got those dudes they did, and there's
I think a movie coming out or already out. Uh,
if I'm not mistaken Antonio Bandetas, Oh yeah, I think
so too sexy. Yeah, that's a one sexy minor do
you remember that? You don't remember the Antonio bandeis? How
(02:12):
do you say? Yes, that's right, I remember that. Now?
Did someone played him though, right? Or was he? Yeah?
I'm sure he guessed it at least once. But yeah,
I think it was Chris Ktan. I think exactly right,
the least sexy guy of all time. Actually, we're sorry,
Mr Katan, but it's true. I think he would admit that. No,
(02:33):
I think he likes himself. He doesn't care what we say.
What was that crazy character he used to do the
like Mango? Yeah, that was very funny. Oh no, Mango
is different than the monkey boy. Mango was like the
super sexy um like Flamenco dancer down in Miami or
something that like every people would like like give up
their lives for it just a year around. Mango wasn't
(02:55):
the one who ate fruit all right, I don't remember.
God rest his soul? Who Chris Catin. I'm just kidding, Well,
you can still Does that have to mean you're dead?
Or can God just rest your soul like he needs
a break. I think there's a sense of finality to that.
When God rests your soul, you can still rest in
(03:17):
peace by taking a nice nap um so yes. In Chile, uh,
it was a disaster in two thousand and ten that
uh turned out with a great ending because like I said,
they're all rescued and um, but they spent sixty eight
days underground. Yeah in a little room, crazy man. It
would probably smell a lot like p when they were
(03:38):
finally taken out of there. Yeah, it's a long time,
I mean, and that's believable. I believe the room was
designed as an escape room or something, so it worked
like it it was supposed to. But they had to
dig like an escape hatch. They had to dig down
to these miners hundreds of feet under the ground. Yeah, um,
which in and of itself put their life in danger,
I'm sure you know. And that happened in two thousand ten.
(04:00):
And Julia Layton, who wrote this article, points out that
that was a as far as mining goes, that was
a bad year. So there were those guys like thirty
three were rescued, but a bunch of their compatriots were
killed in that same disaster, I believe. Well, yeah, and um,
I think she also makes a great point that, you know,
(04:20):
the disaster gets all the headlines, but people die all
the time, individually or in you know, several dudes at once.
You know, that doesn't hit the headlines like a couple
of guys die on the job in a day, and
regionally you might hear about the news, but it's not
gonna sweep the nation like a big disaster. And apparently, also, um,
(04:44):
things like black Long are still around even though they
shouldn't be. And I was reading you know that they
these deaths although they're preventable. They are there the deaths
of people who live in rural communities outside of the
spotlight of the media, and so it still happens. So yeah,
the point is mining, underground mining in particular is extremely dangerous.
(05:07):
I have a question for you, though. I was looking
at pictures of modern mining operations, and guys are down there,
you know, without even like a dust mask on, And
I'm just thinking that seems to be the most preventable
thing you can do. Is where the like, weren't they
wearing the things that firefighters wear, but the tank in
(05:28):
the full mask, face mask. The closest thing I can
come to for an answer is that the mine. No,
the mine owners are supposed to have that place so
ventilated that you wouldn't even need that supposed to I
don't know about that. That's that, But I mean, like
in the nine Congress said there should not be black
lung anymore. We want to eradicated from the mining industry.
(05:49):
Since then, seventy six thousand miners have died from black
long um. But it's apparently it's totally preventable. It's just
mine owners being cheap and or lazy. And I guess
I mean when was this done? When did they? Oh? Yeah, okay,
well you could have stats of people that theoretically started
(06:10):
their career after that, and I'm sure you should not
have black lungs, but they they're definitely people who weren't
even born than that died of black long since man
um all right, well we're talking about underground mining though,
because as you pointed out to Jerry when she said
mining and you underground mining difference. That sound like that.
(06:30):
I've got a lot of self reflection into um. But
surface mining is different, and that is uh, a very
viable way to get or if you only want to
go down and that's a top down op, that's like
mountaintop removal. Yeah, if you want to go down a
couple hundred feet, it's a it's a good way to
get some or below that the efficiencies, um, it becomes inefficient.
(06:54):
So they say, well, why don't we get down there,
go to the working our way up. That's what they do,
or least, you know, maybe just go get that big
chunk of orbits a thousand feet down? And did you
did you see this thing about kind of the early
history of mining? Yah? So should we do that? Yeah? Man,
the when you talk about going like a thousand feet
(07:15):
down or how how far does the uranium mind go
down to ft? That's mind boggling lead deep. That's more
than a mile, right, isn't a mile something like in
the neighborhood of five thousand feet? I have no idea.
I think it is. It's something like that, right, So
that's a very deep amount. But that's using like machines
(07:37):
and mechanization, which we'll talk about. So if you go
around the world and find some of these ancient minds
like Roman minds or Egyptian minds, they were the first
ones to really get into mining um, although there are
prehistoric minds that date back to the Neolithic age. Them
going down like a hundred feet or so, that's pretty impressive,
and they're working in it's like something like three or
(07:58):
four meters a month of an advance rate. Yeah, because
they're using pick axes. They were using picks and slave
labor and prisoners and prisoners of war criminals basically, so
that conditions, as you would imagine, were terrible because they
didn't care ahead and I will just go conquer another
land and make them exactly. But as that um source
(08:23):
of employees dried up and they had fewer and fewer
prisoners of war because they conquered everyone. They said, well,
maybe this is a real job and we should make
it safer. Yeah, like paid some probably still like unskilled,
like yokels, but at least they Yeah, but they weren't
prisoners of war and slaves that they wanted to pay
(08:45):
them a little more, a little money, not much, and
make a little bit safer. No, And as a result,
the occupation of mining became more respected and respectable because
it's a pretty hardcore, a patient, um, and one that
should be admired and respected, especially if you're talking about
(09:06):
back in the day when they're using pickaxes and stuff. Yeah,
your article that you sent was pre six and um.
For hundreds and hundreds of years, it kind of stayed
the same, and the Egyptians kind of set the standard
and everyone followed suit. And you know, they would dig
down with pickaxes and shovels made of you know, depends
(09:28):
everything from bone to when they finally got metal from mining,
they would use metal, right. It kind of was like
a cycle. They also very cleverly and apparently this is
a really old technique they would use. Um. I think
it was called fired quenching. Yeah, that's says fire setting
or fire quenching. Let's just say they would heat up
(09:48):
rock with fire and then throw water on it. Yeah,
and if you've ever done that, you can see your
rockwell crack pretty quickly because of that change in temperature.
That really rapid change of temperature. Not safe. No, no,
it's not, because that rock can go flying, especially in
fifth century Rome. Yeah, and they were also using it
not just to like hurry along. It was basically their
(10:11):
their version of drilling and blasting before there was drills
or blast equipment. Um. And they would also use it
not just to to drill or blast or break up
or they were doing it so they could free their
acts as or picks that would get stuck in the rock.
So yeah, that thing could come flying out and hit you.
But again, you were most likely a prisoner of war,
a slave, or a convicted criminal who was not only
(10:35):
using a very cheap pick to break up rock. All day,
there's a guy behind you lashing you with the whip
to egg you on and keep you standing upright. Yeah,
and it is weird. I just thought about the cycle
like they they kind of I mean, they use the
metal for other things, but they were kind of mining
to just improve their own equipment for more mining and
(10:57):
the discovery more metals. Like initially they wanted to think
flint for tools and weapons, but they were using bone.
And then eventually they were like, oh, well we found copper, right,
so we'll use copper to dig, and like oh well,
now we found bronze, and like wait, we found some iron.
(11:19):
R Now let's use iron. Pretty neat, yeah, And each
time it was like a snake eating its own tail.
They just go do some more mining with the new stuff.
That's right. Um. And so yeah, like you said that,
that was pretty much the early history of mining, and
it stayed virtually the same until the age of mechanization,
that well, the industrial age. But even after the industrial agies,
(11:42):
people were still using like ancient mining techniques T and
T H. Well it's not that but blasting. And I
think what they say in this article like five of
mining today, is this that blast? Yeah technique, it's mostly mechanized, right, Yeah, Well,
let's you want to take a break. Yeah, man, Okay,
we'll come back and talk about mechanized mining techniques right
(12:05):
after this. All right, So, no, two minds are the same. Well,
(12:26):
that's probably not true. I bet you there's two minds
that are the same, exactly the same. But there are
different kinds of minds and um, but most of them
have a few common characteristics. Uh, you gotta have your
ventilation shafts. You gotta have your access shafts for the employees,
you gotta have exit shafts for the or. Um a lot.
(12:48):
There's a lot of shafts, so many shafts, but so
many shafts. There's uh, did you say vent shafts to
bend away the stuff. Yeah, that's number one recovery shafts
that the or goes up out of. Uh yeah, calm systems,
break room, we have breakroom, escape rooms, that kind of stuff,
(13:10):
and the But I think the point of Laton here
is that the ore deposit itself is going to tell
you what kind of underground mining technique you want to use, right, Yeah,
Like the what the ore actually is? What it's shaped like?
H Is it like a big flat slab? Is it
a big huge blob? What kind of rock is around it?
(13:34):
Are you mining petroleum? Jelly? Uh? Well you raised a question, Chuck.
I could not find this to save my life. So
there's two types of underground mines, right, there's hard rock
mines and soft rock mines. Sound their sound Garden and
Steely Dan. I had dock In and Brett, did you really?
(13:54):
And oh is doc and metal? Yeah? But see the
the thing hard rock or metal. That's a fine line something. Yeah,
But I think bread about sound Garden and bread look
at us sound Garden working together. Um, So I couldn't
figure out if that is meant to describe the or
(14:16):
the type of thing that's being mined or the rocks
surrounding the ore. I saw both if you know what
now for the hard or soft? Right? Oh, you see
what I'm saying? Yeah, I never I think I assumed
it was the ore, but you may be right. Maybe
it's so. Layton says, for example, coal coal deposits live
(14:40):
in relatively soft sedimentary rock, which would make you think
that she's she's saying that it's the rock that's around
the ore's soft, yeah, and that that would be a
soft rock mine that is not dependent on the type
of ore you're getting out. I saw elsewhere. I saw
that what she was saying being supported and other places,
But I also saw no, it has to do with
(15:02):
it describes the ore that's being removed. So if there's
any miners out there that can tell us the difference definitively,
we want to know. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get a
wonderful follow up emial. But the point is, depending on
whether you've determined it's a hard rock mine or a
soft rock mine, UM, that's going to also inform not
just the the the where the ore is and the
(15:24):
size of the in shape of the ore deposit, but um,
whether it's hard rock or soft rock is going to
determine what type of mining technique you want to use. Yeah,
it seems like there's more hard rock minds than soft.
They list gold, diamonds, copper, silver, zinc, and nickel. It's
hard rock and the only mentioned of soft is coal. Yeah,
(15:45):
but there's a lot of coal mining going on, so
maybe you know tons literally tons. Uh, So let's talk
a little bit about hard rock mining. Um. It really helps.
I found to look at either cross actions, Like if
you look up um room and pillar mining, there's always
(16:05):
a great cross section diagram. The kind of brings it home,
you know, looking at this stuff. I saw you watching
a video that I saw too. It like brings out
the Little Boy who Loved Honker Truck in again, like
this stuff is really neat. Yeah, you're well, we'll get there.
The continuous minor, Yeah, that's definitely probably, but also like
(16:26):
trucks driving underground and like going beep. Yeah, just awesome,
all right. So room and pillar is um for a
flat or deposit that doesn't let's say like oh it
starts at two feet and goes down a thousand more feet.
It's more horizontal and flat. And this is where basically
(16:47):
you use this machine called a continuous miner. Uh. And
they say it drills, but maybe that's the terminology. But
when I think of drill, I think of um, something
long drilling a hole into something. This looks like a
boxy tank with a huge metal dust pan at the
bottom and a huge rolling pin with teeth on it
(17:11):
at the top and a big appetite for coal. Yeah.
And and when I say rolling pin, it's like kind
of like a bulldozer. You can raise and lower it
and you just drive that thing through earth. But you
leave these pillars, so you basically clear out a huge
room with these big pillars left to keep you from dying.
(17:31):
I find the terms room and pillar They're kind of
misleading because it makes you think that the room is
going to be vast and then there's these little kind
of supports that are left behind, and that's not the
case at all. The pillars are huge, They're enormous. They're
from what I saw, they're frequently bigger than the room itself,
and they're left behind to keep the rock above from
(17:51):
crumbling in. Right. Yeah, that's still gotta be scary. So
oh yeah, I'm sure you know, like this is extremely
dangerous work. Yeah. So, I mean you're allowing out inside
the mountain. That's super dangerous. Well, I mean when I
did my one caving experience a few years ago and
I was in there was this one I think they
called it a pancake crawl or something where for twenty
(18:15):
feet you have to shimmy on your back with with
the world's largest stone slab five inches above your face.
And I just kept thinking, like, what if the earth
moved a little, Yeah, this thing just smashed me flat,
you'd be a pancake yourself. And that's one of the
dangers is trimmers and things underground trimmers. Have you been
(18:38):
to Rock City? Yeah, when I was a kid, so
a while you know, there's like the enormous rock that's
being held up very precariously by a small boulder. You're
walking under that same same thing. I don't need to
go caving. I can just go to Rock City. Yeah,
and then you can go to Stuckies and buy a
pecan log after love those Yes, crazy. No rock City
(19:00):
as a Tennessee right, yeah, Chattanooga, Tennessee. It's very beautiful area.
It's it's our version of Carl's Bad Caverns. You've got
Rock City, well, it's super kitchy. There's like nineteen thirties
glow in the dark gnomes everywhere. It's really interesting cool um.
And then you've got Ruby Falls. You walk underground and
come into a cavern and there's the water coming down. Uh.
(19:24):
And then there's also like Lookout Mountain. It's beautiful. Yeah,
definitely worth going to. Not too far from your beloved Dollywood, Yeah,
it's not far. So. The point is with the room
and pillar, right, you're basically your pac Man or your
dig Doug going through a coal scene and then that
space you just carved out is called the room. When
(19:46):
you come back through, you leave a big space in
between of coal and then come back through again and
that's another room. So what's in between those two rooms
now is the pillar. It's just the strip of coal
that you left intac Yeah, and um that that they
will come in at the very end and even take
care of those pillars one by one, allowing everything to
(20:07):
collapse as it leaves, which sounds probably like the most
dangerous phase's knocking the pillars down there, like make Todd
do it. Uh, he's in the break room having a nap.
Wake him up. That's why they he always sleeps on
the job. Did you see that picture of Richard Branson
like squatting next to one of like a Virgin Airlines employee,
(20:30):
like sleeping on a couch in the break room. He's
like squatting next to him giving the thumbs up. What
was this whole thing? Because he's like the boss of
all bosses of this guy. No, he's saying like, I
busted you sleeping on got you? It sounded staged. It
was a real thing, supposedly. Yeah. Did he stick his
hands in hot water, him and himself in Italia on
(20:54):
the guy's face was sharp. He put toothpaste on his
hand and tickled his nose. He's a fun loving boss.
All right, So that's room and pillar. There's also the
cut and film method, which I don't fully understand. It
is for narrow deposits, and you basically drill a ramp
adjacent to the deposit from the surface of the earth
down to the bottom of it, and then you start
(21:17):
at the bottom at the bottom and just start drilling sideways. Yeah.
So so imagine like the ore deposit is just like
a big tall um like rectangle okay in the earth
going upwards. It's a vertical or deposit. You just go
down the bottom, you make a cut across where you're
(21:38):
digging out the coal from one side all the way
to the other, all the way to the other right,
and then you backfill that with um rock rubble that
say you you gathered when you made the initial shaft
down to the bottom, and then you drive on that
backfill to do the next thing. So you fill the
entire room you just did with rubble, and then when
(21:58):
you cut above that, you're using that rubble to drive
on and then yep, just up. Well that makes sense. Yeah,
that's pretty pretty good one. And if you imagine a
big yellow truck doing it, it can just send you
barreling right back to age four or five. I didn't
play a ton with Tonka trucks a little bit. There
(22:21):
was a lot of model cars. Richard Scary was really
good at drawing stuff like that. Those books were great,
but I was big on I had the Evil Knevil
stunt cycle. Oh yeah, that was just amazing. Yeah, like
that was my toy of choice for like probably three
or four years. I can imagine. Yeah, I used to
(22:42):
we my brother and I made don't try this at home, kids.
This is the seventies. We were much more dangerous. We
would make hoops out of coat hangers and dip them
in gasoline. I was really really hoping that you were
going to say a ring of fire. Yeah, when you
could jump the evil can evil through it, it's really awesome. Yeah. Man,
I really missed out on having a Scout on my own. Yeah,
(23:03):
it's good to have a scott arown. Yeah. Uh. He's
gonna be at our New York shows by the way,
Oh great, just randomly going to be in New York,
same exact them. Actually, I don't know if he's going
to come to the show. He was going to, but
then I said, it's the same topic you've already seen,
so he said, Yeah. Anyway back to um cut and fill. Uh,
you can use it for wider deposits as well. You
(23:25):
just have to have two adjacent rams. I guess you
have one on each side. Yeah. I didn't really get that,
aside from maybe it's it's a they're just criss crossing it.
Think they're doing one above the other. That seems really dangerous. Yeah,
well it's all dangerous. All right. Let's talk more about Scott.
(23:45):
Uh what about block caving? This one is um you
don't see it a lot now. It's for hard rock
excavations and basically it's not for like precious metal or anything.
It's for low grade junks. So I saw that here.
But then I also saw like videos of UM that
(24:06):
that sounded a lot like this. That seemed a lot
like this too, So I don't know if it's just
for junk or whatever. Yeah, it's it's basically where you
cut through and then you let the roof collapse behind you. Yeah,
you dig out a room and then blast it and
let it just fall in on itself and then you
caul that stuff out. Yeah. I guess you wouldn't care
(24:27):
about the stuff you're recovering like that much. Obviously it's
worth going into the earth and retrieving it. But I
guess it's not high grade, you know what I mean?
That's right. So um coal, like we said, is softer
and that is usually room and pillar style. But now
there's a thing called long wall mining that is all
(24:48):
the rage in the break room of the minings. So
it's really efficient they get out of available or with
this method where room and pillar is only about fIF percent,
which is a huge deaf right. So we said that
we were talking about hard rock mining, right with the
room and pillar works for hard rock mining and soft rock, yeah,
(25:10):
it crosses over. But then the cut and fill that's
just for hard rock, right correct, Okay, and then long
wall that's just for soft rock basically, uh think so yes,
so long while Yeah, that's the one where I'm like,
oh man, this is so cool. Yeah. The machine, it's
pretty awesome. How much those machines cost. Boy, I don't know.
(25:31):
A lot likes easy easy at least it's really neat. Um,
you're not drilling into a single deposit. Through the deposit,
you basically have a machine that just kind of it's
sort of a cross cut and just shaves it off
as you go onto a conveyor belt, just constantly moving
(25:51):
the stuff out right. Rather than drilling through going forward
or backward, You're you're going left to right. Yeah, So
what you would do is you drill a shaft down
to the ore deposit, and then you drill a shaft
that's parallel to the face of it, right, that goes
from left to right, and then you go down and
you bring in your long wall machine, which is apparently
(26:14):
up the eight hundred feet long wide right, and each
each part of this machine, which sounds like it's modular,
like you can make it shorter or longer or whatever,
and they just hook up to one another. It's like
it's like a hydraulic jack that holds the roof of
the mountain up above it, yes, and then its own support. Yeah.
(26:38):
And then on the front of it is where the
coal eater is, the soul eater. Amazing. This thing in
action is really cool looking. Yeah, it really is, because
when you're watching videos of it, um, it looks you
just see it from the side and it looks like, Okay,
it's gonna go straight, and then all of a sudden,
the coal eater shoots off out of sight further back
into the ore deposit. And as it does that, it
(27:01):
drops that coal down to a conveyor belt in the
front of the thing, and it shoots the coal off
to the shaft that raises it up. Amazing. It is
very amazing. And there's another method called short wall, and
it's the same thing. It's just for shorter cuts when
it's a narrow deposit. And then after the cut has made,
the thing advances a little further and the roof behind
(27:23):
it caves in. Amazing. I'm a big long wall fan.
What about you? Mm hmm. I like the room and
pillar really because it's the machine, a continuous miner. Well,
then I think that's why I like the long wall
is because of the mining machine. They should have named
the continuous miner the John Henry just you know, perspect
(27:47):
like a throwback. But he was a railroad guy. Who
was the guy who had the casey at the bat. Now,
wasn't it John Henry who had the contest against the
steam machine? But I think they were what you're talking about.
I thought it was a steel Oh right, he was
(28:09):
driving spikes. What was the one that was digging into
a rock? I know what you're talking about, though, and
I feel like they were. They were trying to build
a train tunnel too. I'm gonna look this up during
the break and we'll come back with the answer. How
about that, let's do It's called the Cliffhanger, all right,
(28:42):
it is John Henry. Wow, he did it all. He
did it all he was he was the steel driving man,
like he said. But here was the deal. He hammered
the steel drill into rock, uh, to make the railroad tunnel.
So it was railroading mining or not mining? Those the
best of both worlds. Well, do you call that mining
(29:03):
mining or just tunneling tunnel? And that's a good question.
And I don't think it's mining. Mining is specifically getting
or tunneling. It's just blasting a hole through something. Okay, Tonally,
that was another good episode we did tunnels. Do we
do that one too? Yeah? Jeez, man, starting to lose it. Yeah,
I like our civil engineering episodes too. Is that a
(29:25):
tranche we have? Sure, we've done bridges, tunnels, mining a
couple of times, uh, some other stuff. Yeah. I guess
landfills would probably qualify. Yeah. I could probably come up
with more, but we should move on. Do you want
to talk about the dangers of mining Chuck, Yeah, well
(29:45):
they're rampant there. Well, first of all, it's it's can
be very uh can be bad for mother Earth. It's
just a tad, just a little bit we're talking. I mean,
you're changing the physical makeup of the earth beneath our feet,
So there's gotta be ramifications um. Air pollution, of course,
is one how water flows on you know, the water
(30:08):
table underneath the earth, where that goes, that's bound to
change things well. And also a lot of times they
are releasing other things in the earth that shouldn't really
be in our drinking water, and that that stuff does
get into drinking water. The soil pollutes the heck out
of it. Sometimes there's a fire underground, fires that you
(30:29):
can't even get to to put out, like in centrally
of Pennsylvania. Isn't that crazy? If fire fire burning deep
within the earth, that that just sounds dangerous. Yeah. If
a coal steam catches, you're in big trouble because that's
that is not getting put out anytime soon, maybe a
hundred and fifty years, it will burn itself out, who knows, really, Yeah,
(30:50):
that's what Centralli has got going on still yeah, still
on fire, like it will probably be on fire for
a century. Man, I need to look into that. I
haven't heard of that. It's neat. Yeah, they had abandoned
the town. They had to. Yeah, there was a kid
in like the eighties after the fire had caught. It
was a landfill or a tire fire, something stupid, and
it caught. It caught a coal seam on fire and
(31:12):
an underground cole seine and um, like they knew it
was burning, but they didn't evacuate the town until a
kid in two was just playing in the street in
the street opened up and almost swallowed him into a
pit of fire, and they're like, we need to get
out of here. Holy cow. So that area is just
like a I mean, is it fenced up and it's
(31:34):
a death zone. Yes, but apparently there's still a couple
of people that lived there. Like I'm not moving, man,
never heard of that. There's also have you heard of
wildcat mining? I don't think so. It's basically I don't
know anything about mining. It's basically I asked the same question,
why do you know everything about mine? That's a good
(31:55):
question too, Um. Wildcat mining I know about because I
couldn't find the name of the article, but there was
a great article I think I read in Harper's a
year or two back, and it's about wildcat mining and Guiana,
and basically it's just illegal mining. But they are the
most polluting um mining operations you can imagine, Like they
(32:15):
use mercury quicksilver to bind to gold, and they're handling
the quicksilver. It's getting everywhere, they're leaving it behind, it's
going in the soil, it's going in the water. Um
and that's just like one problem with it. They do
nothing to remediate, like they're the diesel exhaust or anything
like that. It's just a really big problem. Is this
(32:35):
Guiana completely unregulated or operation? By definition, it's it's a
rogue operation. It's just unlicensed mining operation. And it's not
just Guiana that has that problem. It's around the world
there's wildcat mining, but they have a particularly bad problem
with it. Man, And I bet they make a dollar
(32:57):
a day. Oh yeah, you know, very sad um. Well,
we might as well talk about the human toll since
that's where we are. Like I said before, major accidents
of the one you're gonna hear about. But as example, uh,
in two thousand ten, um about Chinese miners died, but
(33:17):
none of them were big, big accidents. So you didn't
really hear about a lot of that. Yeah, I'm sure
you didn't hear about in China. I know I didn't
hear about it. But yeah, in China they were like
that's a big death. Hol though miner's family received windfall,
why they got paid out? Yeah? Um, and you talked
about was it in two thousand ten Chilean and West Virginia?
(33:41):
That same year there was twenty nine people killed, thirty
one people at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia,
Matthew Energy Mine, New Zealand and other twenty nine people
died that same year, Yeah, twenty nine thirty one. Again
of the people present, twenty nine thirty one died at
Pike River Mine. Things are getting better though, like a
lot of these accidents. Um, well, like you said, sometimes
(34:05):
just uh tremmors. Like we said earlier, sometimes there are explosions. Um.
You know, these gases can ignite, there's underground gases. It's
just it's really just volatile down there, and and in
developed countries though there's not supposed to be explosions, Like
the mining operations are supposed to be sophisticated enough these
(34:25):
days that there should not be explosives. I remember Massive
Energy gotten big trouble because they just were totally lax
about safety precautions that kind of stuff, and some miners
blew up because of it. Man. Uh. And then of
course the health risks that are long term. We mentioned
black long, but uh, you know it doesn't have to
(34:47):
be just black long. Uh. There are all sorts of
things you can breathe in, welding fumes, radon, mercury, all
kinds of respiratory disease that can arise from being down
there without even like a hanky over your out. In
some of these photos, it's just doesn't make sense. Yeah,
I would wear at least a dust mask. You would
(35:08):
be down there anyway I could mind. I'd be like
Derek zu Leander's family. He'd be break room. Josh, go
wake up, just make him do it. But you did
mention remediation a second ago, and um, you know it's
all gotten better, safer and more strict environmentally speaking. But
(35:29):
there are different depending on where you are, they're different
remediation laws and rules from take care of it right now,
like you were never there, which, let's be honest, it's
got to be impossible, right, um too, you know, come
back every year and check on it if you want.
I remember in the Abandoned Minds episode, it's like there's
(35:50):
a lot of really dangerous spots, especially out west, that
are just abandoned minds, that people just walked away from.
And if a company liquidates and you don't really know
who the owners were, then there's not a lot you
can do. Should we talk about the canary? I think
we should. Man, you've heard the phrase canary in a
coal mine, um, which I never really understood, not where
(36:14):
it came from. But I didn't even know what they were,
what people meant by that until more recently. It's like,
you know, the indicator that things are about to go south. Yeah,
I get it now, but I would just hear it
and go like, I don't know what that means. Well,
there's actual like legitimacy to it, right. Yeah. There was
a guy named John Holdain who was quite the self
(36:35):
experiment or he would he would try and kill himself,
or that it's not true. He would try and bring
himself near death. By sitting in rooms full of gases
so he could record results. Amazing. Yeah, my hat is
always off to scientists who getting picked themselves. YEA love
of those guys. Really. He was also very sharp right
(36:59):
from his studies. He found out that carbon monoxide poisoning
stained tissues red with hemoglobin, right, and so, uh, he's
working in the nineties here he noticed that miners um
would come up with, you know, bright flushed faces. It's
mysteriously dead. And he figured out probably carbon monoxide poisoning.
(37:21):
So he said, you know what you guys should do.
You should start carrying canaries down there with you. Yeah,
think of something really mean you could do to an animal, right,
and carry it down there in a cage. And if
the canary dies, then that means you have troubles. You
turn and run. Yeah, because apparently birds, uh, the way
(37:41):
they breathe there there, they're getting twice as much oxygen
or just intake as a human both. Okay, I guess
that they're breathing in twice as much because of the
way they're a little for a feathery little system works. Yeah,
which is pretty I didn't know. This is from a
(38:02):
think is motor article. Maybe from esther inglis arkel Um,
and she points out that a bird's respiratory system when
they suck in air, some of it goes to basically
like their lungs and perfuses their blood with oxygen, right um.
But some of it also goes to these secondary sacks
that just kind of hold it there. And then when
(38:22):
the bird exhales that that air that never went to
the lungs goes through the lungs, so they're getting oxygen
on the way in and the way out. But that
also means that whatever they're sucking in when they take
in that breath, they also get on the way in
and the way out, which makes them very susceptible to
dying from poisoned air. But great if they're not in
(38:44):
a mine and they want to fly around because they're
super oxygen eated. But if you can get your hands
on them and shove them in a cave and take
them down no mind with you, you can use them
as an indicator. Yeah, And then she pointed out even
if they didn't breathe this way, just the fact that
they're birds, theoretically you could probably take any animal, small
animal down there. Then if it died before human. Then
(39:07):
that's probably bad. But birds were small to put them
in a cage easy. And then they had the whole
double doubling down on breathing that What was that was?
Wasn't that a KFC sandwich? The double down? It's probably
I think it was. You got anything else? Nope? Well,
if you want to know more about underground mining, you
can type those words in the search part how stuff
(39:29):
works dot com. And since I said search parts, time
for listening there. I'm gonna call this um because girls
trying to sue us. Okay, it's actually not true. Hey guys, UM,
I'm new to the podcast thing but discovered yours and
it is awesome all caps. I was born and raised
in Seattle and UH an intentional community, not religious or culty,
(39:53):
just lots of hippies. Um. In late my housemates and
I set out to free the Seattle Airway via Pirate radio.
Long story short. We got up in reigning running with
the show called eight Shall Not Kill a great title. Um.
It was a mix of music, life, commentary, and How
(40:14):
Stuff Works. I actually read from one of the coolest
books I had, which was How Stuff Works. Remember we
had those books years ago by Marshall brain. Yeah, and
she would read these things like she kind of had
the first version of our podcast, and she said, even
though you guys have an amazingly sweet and popular podcast. Uh.
And I had a pirate radio show just reaching Capitol
(40:36):
Hill in Seattle in the late nineties. I feel akin
to you guys. Fortunately for me, Unfortunately, after a few months,
two guys wearing suits knocked on the door they thought
was our studio. We had a secret door and ladder
and club knocks, I guess like secret knocks, and obviously
(40:56):
we had been found out, which is crazy because we
barely had a mile radius of coverage. But the government
is a government and we weren't paying them, so they
got upset, actually sent two dudes after her. I'm not terrible.
We ended up getting shut down. And though I am
very thankful for podcasts, I still feel like the people
should own their air waves and I encourage everyone to
(41:18):
start a pirate radio station of their own. Thanks for everything.
You can't wait to hear about the feat washing Ashore
in my state? Oh yeah, great show, The Mysterious Feat. Yeah.
I love that British Columbia. Uh And I will write
you again so that is from Aaron. Thanks a lot, Aaron,
Power to the people. Yeah. I thought for a minute
(41:40):
when I was reading that she was gonna say, um
is my idea, so get the checkbook out. Yeah. Uh.
If you want to see us, please don't. Instead, you
can just get in touch of this. You can tweet
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
hang out with us on Instagram s y s K
podcast as well. You can hang out with us on Facebook,
(42:00):
dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to stuff podcast how stuff works dot
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