Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 27: Bhopal Disaster (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

In this episode we talk about man-made mass death and destruction on a scale completely unprecedented in history. fun! The Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod image credits: slide 1 chemical plant By Julian Nyča - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17238674 king bhoja By Bernard Gagnon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33358272 taj ul masjid By This file is not in the public domain. Therefore you are requested to use the following next to the image if you reuse this file: © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9646626 bhopal city of lakes By Deepak sankat - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38548396 train station By Suyash Dwivedi - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82889986 insecticide pump By Photographed by User:Bullenwächter - Hamburg Museum, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28973407 union carbide gas By Union Carbide; scan and commentary by Don O'Brien - Country Gentleman magazine, 1922-10-07, via Flickr: Gas Lighting, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15488089 MIC tank By Julian Nyča - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17238598 tea time By joyosity - Tea at the Rittenhouse Hotel, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2217142 bhopal sunset By Sankalpbhatt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60345777 give us anderson By Obi from ROMA ,LONDON - BHOPAL, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3165085

Okay, this is part two of the Bhopal Disaster episode. Part one is linked in the description. So this was recorded at the end of a day which involved six hours of podcasting. So if we sound a little bit loopy towards the end of the podcast, that's the reason for it. Anyway, on to the podcast. All right. So they had, I want to put some like relaxing music here, you know.

Yeah, they put in some like relaxing Minecraft music or something. Yeah, exactly. So they had they had some tea and then after tea time. All right. So the reading on the tank kept rising, right? 25 PSI, 30 PSI, finally topping out at 55 PSI, which is as far as as high as the gauge went, right? Off scale high.

Some of the indicators on field valves indicated 100 PSI and 100 degrees Celsius. Again, as far as they went, right? It is. So it's just vigorously reacting with this water. Yes, the water is going in, which is still being poured in. They're still pouring in the water. It's also full of metal schmoo, right? Which, yeah, of course.

And like accidentally open the valve that leads my kerosene tank to my fire tank. This angry bubbles coming out of the water, right? Out of the dangerous chemical. Excuse me. It's all coming out the tank, you know, out there. So one of the control room operators went to check on the tank himself, heard a bunch of rumbling, heard the concrete, which was on top of the tank, cracking, hissing from the safety valve, all kinds of shit.

And they decided, yeah, we should probably stop washing the pipes. Yeah, well, points points for quick thinking. Relatively quick thinking. Well, tea time is sacred. But yeah, you need to have some tea time. They wouldn't have thought this clearly if they didn't have their tea. That's true. Yeah, you have you have to have a caffeinated control room crew.

Yes, it's better than the Quebec Bridge episode. Just like work just finished. I'm going to go home. Yeah, I'll do it tomorrow. So one of the alarm sirens goes off automatically at this point. And it was too loud for the loudspeakers to be used. So they followed usual procedure and turned it off. Well, I mean, look, it's it's an alarm siren.

They're clearly alarmed. So job done. It also turned off the public alarm in the surrounding neighborhoods. Oh, tight. That's a good. So there were three tanks of M.I.C. They were all interconnected, right? This is only one of them.

And the other two had several successful transfers out of them that day. Now, this is one account, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But it was in there. So I will relay it because it is funny. By funny, do you mean terrifying? Same thing. But that's so much out of brand. So it's gruesome and therefore amusing and we're not respecting the dead or whatever.

At 12 20 a.m., the interconnection between tank six ten, which is the problem tank and the other two tanks was closed, right? And according to some accounts, tank six ten immediately reared up out of its concrete housing and stood up vertically, right? And then fell right back down. No, thank you, which somehow didn't sever any of the pipes that led to it. Wow. That's that's the part I don't get on it. Yeah, I don't know.

Like, if you told me that I keep coming back to Chernobyl just because it's like the frame of this is like the long lead up to it. If you told me that like a guy went into the reactor building and he saw the control rods bouncing up and down on the floor, I would be like, no, that doesn't make any sense. So I get it. But like, I don't know, man. Just imagine, yes, stumbling into the control room, just like, you already know bad shit's happening.

And then you run into that. Nope. Like, no, tea time is a definite now. I'm going home. Yeah, you see this tank, which you know, to be full of death. And it's just it's out of the thing. That's yeah. I will say this, which is this is objectively a worse accident than Chernobyl. Oh, yeah, by far. And yet, you know, this chemical is still legal in the United States.

Mm hmm. Where's this mini series? It's about to say, yeah. All right. So at this point, workers were instructed to just evacuate the plant, right? The supervisor determines that, yes, the tank is actually leaking. And yes, it was all about to go out the turned off flare stack, right? So they decide that's your moment of horror, right? Because you can't do anything about that, right?

It's just going to it's just going to go. Yes. So M.I.C. reacts with water to create actually much less harmful products, right? Still so pretty bad, but less harmful. So the idea was that they were going to try and use their firefighting equipment to just drench all the potential leak points and try and neutralize as much of this M.I.C. as possible. At least this is my understanding. That's again, relatively quick thinking after this long, like

this long chain of like dumb ass decisions. That's I don't know that I would have thought that quickly. I would have just been like shitting still. Yeah. I too would just be shitting. And I mean, as much as this M.I.C. Of course, it's all reacting with water in here, obviously, because it's very high pressure, the M.I.C. The raw product is being forced out.

So you can't count on it all being harmless by the time it makes out the stack, right? Now, the thing is, their firefighting equipment was all busted. It was all fucking broken. So garbage. It was like working at much reduced pressure. They couldn't get all the water they needed everywhere they needed to be. They certainly couldn't get at the top of the flare stack, right? This is and furthermore, of course,

because this water that was coming in here was full of shmoo. There were additional reactions occurring, which weren't the usual M.I.C. water reaction. Oh, good. Just a black box of like this this thing that's happening. You don't know what this is like firefighting nightmare mode. Yeah, that's that right. So they positioned the firefighting equipment and, you know,

it was running at reduced pressure. It's still got a little bit of it, but, you know, it's not good. So, you know, this. Went out the RVVH, it went out the pipe out here, which went went into the vent grass scrubber, which, of course, was not working. So it went out the big pipe, right? And some of it went out the little pipe, mostly at the big pipe. And it went out the big pipe.

It went straight up the flare stack and vented vented to atmosphere. Question raising my hand here. Yes. What time is this? Because this is still night shift. So this has to be like, what, like 11? This was just after 12 20. OK. And it kept venting until two 15. Just the times, the times where you really want to be trying to like

evacuate people. All the bad stuff happens in the middle of the night. Every single fucking alarms are off, too. Because, of course, they are. You know, it's a sport. These poor people just have like no fucking idea. I just that that's the fucking scariest part to me. It's just assuming you basically don't get liquidated.

You don't even get a fighting chance. Yeah. So temperatures inside tank 610 were still off the charts through this entire period. Keep that in mind. The tank did stay intact, despite all of this absurd chemical reactions. Yeah, give that tank builder a medal. That is about to say, yeah, they did a fucking good job. Hmm. Around two 15 in the morning,

they noticed that the M.I.C. Venting had affected the community outside the plant. All right. When you say affected. So this is Bo Paul Junction down here, like that lack of an answer. This is this is a different train station from the one we showed earlier. The less interesting building. So the plant is up here in this plot, right? OK, most of this gas was vented at a height of 33 meters.

It drifted south and west, right? Right, right through this whole populated area. Bo Paul Junction was straight in the middle. A lot of close in neighborhoods were actually spared the worst effects of the gas because it was vented high up in the atmosphere. But this is all gases which are denser than air. So it started drifting down, right? You just do you just do a chemical weapons attack on a city.

Yeah. And, you know, again, like all horrible disasters, it happens in the middle of the goddamn night and the alarm again. The alarm had been sounded briefly in silence so they can instruct the workers. So. The exact composition of this gas cloud is hotly disputed. We'll get into that later, especially the presence of cyanide, which may or may not have been there. A lot of folks notice the smell of gas by 1130 in the evening. A lot of folks are waking up feeling as fixiated by 1245.

And a lot of folks decided, all right, time to get the fuck out. Right. Hmm. Well, is wait just real quick. When you say people decide to get the fuck out, was there any direction at all? I mean, like from either the plant or like like a local authority or just like, wow. Well, the alarm went off. I'm sorry, I just that I thought it had. So now there was a brief alarm, which some people may have heard.

Some people may not have heard, right? And it was shut off so that, you know, they could direct workers at the plant. And the alarm went off fairly frequently. So so people had been accustomed to not meaning anything. But what I was asking, some people basically felt sick on their own accord, decided to leave. Is that right? Yes. I just have it right. Yes.

But OK. So a lot of folks decided to run away. From the plant, right? Oh, boy. As best they could. Cool. Yeah. The thing is, the gas cloud was also moving away from the plant. Cannot catch a fucking break. So the one the one thing I remember from like, I spoke to a CPR and guy who he was he was doing. He spoke about chemical weapons attacks and why they're so rare

and why they don't kill a lot of people. And the the only piece of advice he had there is that you'll probably be fine. Just like go the direction into the wind, right? And so you're not like following the thing. But like, who the fuck knows that? I didn't know that. Yeah. No. And then can you imagine like that happening? It's 1245 a.m. Yeah.

And you have to. You can't breathe. I have to figure out where the wind is. Like, even like, and assuming like a city is relatively well lit at night, at least parts of it, like, I don't know, obviously everything. But like, can you fucking imagine being like, oh, yeah, now we've got to walk in the direction of the wind where the thing that's literally choking me to death is coming from. There's the nope, nope.

It is. It is like once we get to Capron, too, there's there's a lot of this really perverse thing about surviving disasters turns out to be that you have to run towards the danger as the fastest way out of it, which, of course, is not exactly a natural human response. No, no. Plus, also, it doesn't really help you if you're like the one time when that doesn't apply and you're like, oh, no, it turns out you actually just round your head long into your death.

I just want to run into the giant massive rotating knives. That was didn't work for me this time. I was just thinking about like, if that, you know, I suppose if the refinery really did blow it and we had to get up at 1245. Like, I'm just more or less run for it. I mean, we'd be dead in a minute. Railing winds bring it to South Philly. We'll talk about that later.

Actually, I need to use the restroom. I'll be right back and then we will talk more about this. Yeah. Anyway, like it as far as like counterintuitive decisions go, the other one is like running at all because yeah, if you can't breathe, you get the fuck out, right? I'm being choked for breath. Yeah. And perversely, it's it's safer to like that's why they always tell you to like shelter in place, right?

And you close all of your windows and your doors and shit and you like try to keep breathing whatever like air you have in your house or your apartment or whatever, because you don't want to be going outside. But on the other hand, if you can't breathe, you just yeah. Yeah. I mean, and obviously, like as we know, everything leaks, gas and liquids get into everything. So just like I was just thinking like trying to imagine like waking either Ross or my girlfriend up at 1245 a.m.

And like shaking them awake and being like, we have we have to go not knowing where we're going, not knowing what's happening. I mean, maybe conceivably, we can see the South Kali refinery on fire or whatever, but saying to them, we have to drive. I don't know in what direction. We just have to like get away. Hopefully, we basically pick the right direction to run it. Yeah, absolutely.

So the thing that gets me about and the thing that really got me about Chernobyl and a couple of these other disasters, you know, we've done is just the sheer fucking callousness of it. And you know, we talked about when we talked about Grenfell. Yeah, just the, you know, the fact that this chemical is still legal in the United States, the fact that, you know, war and Anderson wasn't basically rushed back to India on the next flight and hanged. Yeah, it's it's we do.

We do a show about the way I would categorize it. And I would I would keep this in mind for everybody listening for future episodes is we don't do a show about accidents. Right. We do a show about disasters. They're very little about this is accidental in any real sense, because there's always going to be material causes back to that back to our friend, the Prophet, most of again. And so, like, yeah, on the one hand, some of this stuff just seems like bad luck.

But on the other hand, it's it's a consequence of very active, very conscious decisions being made by people who will never, ever feel consequences. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's that's the thing that I think we do try to hammer home for especially people who don't think we take this shit seriously. Like, we I think there's a general just genuine anger, even at the ship being categorized as an accident. Like, yes, in the most like basic sense, I suppose it was. But that framing, especially, you know, with all the kind of whatever

neocolonialism around it is fucking it. You're treating these people like some human don't fucking do that. Like this is the city the size of Billy. Yeah, the board of Union Carbide didn't like sneak in there with a burglar mask going to wrench and like open any of the valves. But morally, they may as well have done. And they'll get there. Yeah. And I feel like that's that's becoming more and more explicit

as the show kinds of like finds its feet and we find our like consistent voice or whatever. Is like it's a it's not a mysterious act of God's love, if you like. And it's it's insulting to claim it as one. And it's that's why we're all so angry. Now, people built a fucking shitty chemical plant. Like that's just what it is. Yeah, it was that was built poorly. There were procedures that should have been followed,

even if you're in a country other than the United States. Right. It just shows such a blatant disregard. And I think one of the things that like I I can't talk about sometimes in my personal life, you know, like people who don't get along or whatever. It's like sometimes shit is no one's fault. And I understand that it's like a very human thing to find blame and to find rationale for things. And that's not always possible.

But in all of these things, it's very possible. It's OK. And you should be angry at people who treat, you know, a country like India or especially like the entire continent of Africa as basically a dumping ground. Like you should be pissed off about that. Yeah. The fact that it has, you know, I'm going to do the I'm going to do the good Marxist thing again and say that the fact that individuals may not be strictly relevant and that it has material causes

doesn't absolve you from being fucking furious at those individuals. Because they're still going to they're fine. You know, you can still be real fucking bad and Warren Anderson who died peacefully in his home. Like you should be you should be fucking bad about that. You should be mad about the United States just straight up not giving a shit about 50,000 plus people dying or being sick because it just didn't happen here. But that's so good. Yeah.

So. All right. Back to the comedy. Comedy, tragedy, what's the difference? All right. So. Most a lot of folks who ran away from the gas cloud ran with the gas cloud. They inhaled more of the gas and died, you know, killed over in the street. Yeah, Liam and I were talking about this and we talked about like the impossibility of the the quote unquote smart option,

which is to either shelter in place or try to like run into the wind direction is like how the fuck do you do either of those things? And the thing you wanted to do, which of course no one knew to do was put a wet cloth over your face. And those few people who knew that was what to do fared pretty good. If you sheltered in place, you're usually better off than the folks who fled on foot. A lot of people fled in vehicles, too. Well, not a lot of people.

Like I think I read like five percent of people fled in vehicles. They were mostly fine. Yeah, but like that. But that's so basic. And that's kind of what I was talking about. You can say as Union carbide, like, hey, we don't think anything's ever going to go wrong. But like if it does put a wet cloth over your face, like we'll deal with it. Shit happens. Not even being able to do that.

Not even to being able to have the most base of humanity to say, here's here's here's a way to give yourself slightly better on. Well, the thing is, Liam, that costs money and they have they have a duty to their shareholders to pamphlets and shit printing pamphlets costs money and they have a duty to their shareholders to maximize their return. The state of Delaware was a fucking we should burn it to the ground. Seventy three chemical plants like right around me right now, not including like Atlantic refining, excuse me,

Senoka, excuse me, Philadelphia Energy Solutions and Burn Houston. Tell you how they like it. I've never I've never received a single pamphlet saying what I should do in case, I don't know, let's say a hydrogen fluoride tank explodes. Literally, the common factor between all three hosts of the show is that we all live across the street from extremely dangerous, heavy industry. Yes. And a laundromat. Computerized.

It is theorized. They sell cigar. They never put an S on that side, so it just says cigar. And I was like the idea that they do stock one single cigar. Yeah, it's like, no, you can't have it. It's it's like a velvet cushion underneath bulletproof glass. It's that episode of Futurama. Yeah. Yeah. They sell cigars across the street.

No, they sell cigar. Why don't you listen? Justin's going to get into smoking cigar. Oh, not again. All right, my God, the issue is like when I smoke a cigar, like it feels great when I'm doing it. And then like the next day, I get this like residual tobacco in my mouth for the rest of the day.

And like, this is garbage. I don't want to do this. That's me with vaping, right? As I get the I get the vaping lung thing where like I feel like my lungs have been coasted in like popcorn grease for the next week. The same thing with cigarettes. Like I just can't I don't understand how people get addicted to them because it's like when I have one, I never want to have another one.

Hey, it just it makes it makes your head spin in a fun way. Cool. Yeah, that's true. That'll be cool. I've never I quit. I quit smoking because a it's insanely expensive and B I just made me a massive bitch to everyone I came into contact with because like it was like it has been a minute and a half since I smoked a cigarette. And now I'm going to be the world's biggest cunt.

You could become you could become a Red Scare host. Yeah, that's right. Anyway, let's deal with morbid reality. All right, we have to. I was I was enjoying distracting us and getting us off topic. Let's go. Orbit, all right, fine. Let's keep desensitizing ourselves.

So most of, you know, so folks who are running away from the gas, we're actually inhaling more gas. People five kilometers away were feeling the influence of M.I.C. You know, it's causes your eyes to water and a whole bunch of other garbage. But, you know, if you're far enough away, it's just like tear gas, right? Now, lots of cows in the area because this was a little bit more rural at the time. Lots of people's livestock just started to keel over by one forty five in the morning. Just like cow, cow tipping, but like it kills the cows, right?

You know, all union. You can just say one forty five one forty five. What you said one forty five a.m. in the morning. Well, oh, again, I would die on this hill. Oh, my God. So one four five hours. Yes. Oh, one four five hours.

Union Carbide told the police who had been alerted to lots of disturbances in the area, including massive crowds of people leaving the area and like a giant gas cloud so on and so forth that the leak I'm doing air quotes, the leak had been still doing air quotes, plugged at three a.m. All right, like my God, yes. Which it's is the same time that the first reports

of fatalities were coming into the police. I this is testing my usual. It's good and cool to lie to the police principle. There's sometimes that you should not lie to the police. You just have to you have to think very carefully about it. I think I can say pretty confidently one of those times you should not lie to the police. When there's an incident occurring, which is well beyond your control, maybe you should just tell the police what is happening.

If they're not going to arrest you, you should just tell them what is happening. I mean, they might arrest you anyway, because there's a police you never know. But just actually making it worse because they keep trying to shoot the tank and just depressurize it more. So it's just a level of whatever kind of trying to shoot the cloud. So at this point, there's also like chaos and pandemonium at hospitals, right, because they're overwhelmed with folks with serious respiratory symptoms and chemical burns, right?

Well, look at all these hospitals, right? There's like, what, six of them in that photo alone? Seven? Yes, there's one that was very close to the incident. I believe it's right about here, which got hit the hardest. So I don't know. I'm there's a lot more hospitals than we have in the United States. The Indians have their shit together, it seems. India, actually, very nice, it seems.

So the pro-India podcast is not a pro-Modi podcast. Yeah, I thought we'd specify that. Some of the worst stuff that happened, but also some of the biggest heroics was at the train station right here in the epicenter, right? Bhopal Junction, right? Which, again, is not the train station we showed earlier. That was further down the line. Bhopal Junction is here because there's a Y here.

So, you know, this is where most trains stop, as opposed to the main train station, where fewer train stops. This is the train station, a convenience, as opposed to the train station, which has the architect. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this is again from the book I was referencing before, the Bhopal saga. The two railway employees who were on the shift this night stuck to their posts and tried to send messages to adjoining

stations to stop all incoming trains. When the Garakphur Express approached, they walked onto the rails and signaled with lamps, but were not detected until it was too late. When the train arrived at the station, the station master the station master immediately went out to send it away. The two employees died. The station master became an invalid. The station was, as usual, crowded with travelers, porters, homeless

people, and also a group of gypsies, the Roma people, of course. I'm just quoting directly. Yes, yes. They were all found dead the next morning. Jesus. And there were a lot of pilgrims in town for. Alice, you may have to help me here. Ishtima. Ishtima. OK.

Yeah, it's it's it's like an Indian Muslim thing. It's like a gigantic conference. And it's once again, cannot catch a fucking break, right? It's just everything lines up to make this as bad as possible. So around imagine imagine sending that train on when you're like, yeah, I mean, that's probably the closest thing to a route out. And you're like, no, I'm actually going to stay. I, you know, the thing is, I know a lot of ways to signal a train to stop,

right, which is just wave anything red. How do you signal a train to keep going? Yeah, a lot of I hope you have a lot of green lamps. Yeah, I very rarely, at this point, tear up or cry when we record these, but I just did. So in case anyone's yeah, I just. It's it again, the idea. I think it's not to get too bogged down here, but when we talk about,

you know, the kind of like health care heroes and stuff like that, it's again, it's important to recognize like the decency of humanity. But I think it's also people kind of get buried in that they want to, you know, we always want to talk about the nobility of people, but you have to also remember like these people never stood a fucking chair. Oh, no, no. It's and like I think also the other thing about the heroics is that it kind of has a way of erasing how miserable it is.

And like there's there's no getting like these these guys who were currently eulogizing what did die, right? There's nothing else going on for them. And they died miserably suffering. And the fact that they did so in order to save a bunch more lives makes that very, very laudable. But I don't think we should let that overshadow the the suffering that they were caused in doing so by a bunch of Americans in suits.

Yes, in Danbury, Connecticut. Miserable place. Oh, Connecticut to the ground. Oh, God. All right, so around six a.m. the next morning, police vans with mounted lance police vans with mounted lance loudspeakers. Excuse me. It's been a long day. Yeah. And this one's been emotional, too.

They started announcing in. But whatever the. This is like in whatever the language is. There's there's there's like, well, he's the link with a couple of hundred languages. Yeah, the unfortunate thing I did later in the show is I tried using Indian numbers, which is going to be confusing. Anyway, so they started announcing something had gone wrong somewhere.

Everything is normal now. Citizens are requested to return to their homes. Cool. That's almost parody. Yeah. Yeah. Everything's fine. I think it's fine. Everyone was dead is already dead. Sure. Yeah. I mean, once again, not not to make this hackass observation that I want to do every time.

That's like, oh, this is Shinobu, the Soviet Union, casual disregard for human life. But like to be like everything's fine. Is it just driving the truck around over like heaps of bodies and stuff? Is casual disregard from you for human life is very much a capitalist thing. Hmm. Yeah. Official relief efforts did not get under way until later that morning. We have to have tea time first.

Yeah. Well, you know, you need some caffeine. Just a minuscule amount of caffeine because it's just like just like walking, walking to the temporary mortuary with a don't even talk to me until I've had my tea. Mark drinks some fucking coffee like an adult. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anyway, I was like, get some fucking coffee. Anyway, so you wouldn't need tea time if you just drank fucking coffee. You know, 24 ounce fucking Wawa coffee.

And you will be able to handle the disaster. Anyway, we all we all cope in different ways. When the morning light came, the extended disaster was obvious. In areas around the factory, every goat, cat, dog, cow and buffalo had died. Outside and inside the houses, dead human bodies were lying. Only the birds and rats did not die. In a few days, all the leaves of the trees fell off and the grass became yellow. The day after the dying, several thousand

Bhopal residents tried to storm the factory. Plan of plant officials and police guarding the plant only succeeded in turning the crowd away by telling them that another poisonous gas leak was in progress. That's it, I call. That's fucked. I mean, on the other hand, I kind of guess it because if they hadn't, they would have lynched all of them and they would have been right to.

But oh, man, out of the hospitals in the area, the doctors and the staff were taken completely by surprise as thousands upon thousands of survivors entered the gates. They were half blinded, gasping for breath, foaming at the mouth and vomiting. Most of the patients had to be treated outside. There was no time to keep any kind of records. All types of medicines were tried to give relief. When the hospitals got hold of the doctor of the plant,

they were given the message. It is only like tear gas. Yeah, sure. That's why everyone's fucking dead. The pain, the patient's clothes, hair and beards were impregnated with toxic emissions that also affected the medics. One student died after successfully treating a child with mouth to mouth respiration. This is a really bleak thing as I remember when I when I did my first like serious first aid course, I was like,

man, I have this CPR face shield thing. I'm never going to use this ever. And you just like you just know that one the one time when you need it, right? Yeah, it's the time when you really, really need it. Yeah, you don't need it often, but it does. It helps. I just like not even to make this all about, you know, today, coronavirus, whatever. But, you know, it's just the flu, whatever, bullshit.

New York has 20,000 more deaths than they normally do. There's a story about a doctor in New York who worked in Columbia who killed herself the other day. Yeah, it's just we keep talking, like I said, about these health care heroes or whatever. And I think in a way it strips people of their humanity because it forces suffering into these neat little boxes. And it forces like these people to just kind of become these faceless orbs that just do good or do bad.

And I think like we should talk about the decency and humanity and people. But like in a way that recognises the lack of agency, right? The one thing I think about is NHS, NHS Trusts in the UK, one of the things that they're doing as kind of a psychological measure is you set a rumour side where your medical stuff can come off of the wall and just fucking punch walls and scream at stuff for a while. And like and then go back to work.

And I feel like that's I don't even have have like. The word that comes to mind is insulting because like it's insulting. But like, yeah, no, I think it's like having a therapy dog. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like, you know, we know you're drowning and you can't keep your head above water. But look at all these, you know, look at all these dogs we brought for you to cuddle like during finals week or something. And it's like, don't fuck yourselves.

I think it's just like they I think they just like just set aside a room where you can like have a breakdown and like I'm sure it is helpful. Right. The reason why I bring it up isn't even that it's insulting. I don't think it's that I think that it reflects like if you're a hero, you're just kind of stoically bearing through this. And that like I think it is I think it's not that's not realistic. That's not how people act. I think people can act heroically and be like, yeah, this is actually this is fucking shit.

This is the worst time in my life. I hate every second of this and you still do the thing. I really I hate this idea that like you're this kind of like you're this aloof kind of. Yeah, exactly. And you're just grinning and bearing it instead of like, no, this is this is a horrible thing that has that is happening. The fucking blue angels fly over we had today. We're by the way, that's insulting.

We couldn't even see. Well, we already paid for the flight time. Shut up. We couldn't even see. My favorite friend of the show, Matt Lobchansky, they had a tweet that was like the only time I'm going outside is I'm going out onto my balcony to flip off the blue angels. Yeah. Yep. It's just like, well, the flight times paid for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's like, yeah, that's not the fucking point. Like the fucking point is that we're still doing this shit. We have more aircraft carriers than everybody else fucking put together. And yet for some goddamn reason, we can't get people fucking mass. Yeah, that's there aren't words for how how pissed off I am. And you should be there are some numbers at you. Sure. Like the coronavirus numbers understated. The official death toll was initially

twenty two hundred and fifty nine radar lays to thirty seven and eighty thirty seven hundred eighty seven. There were five hundred and fifty eight thousand one hundred and twenty five people injured by the gas cloud. Oh, what the fuck? So wait, the general rule of thumb, right, is that like the deaths are like 10 percent of the total casualties, right? Yes. So that that three three thousand seven hundred and eighty

seven dead and half a million injured. So some estimates of the initial deaths are much higher up to sixteen thousand or so. There were also thirty nine hundred people severely and permanently disabled. Yeah. And again, the death toll of sixteen thousand is probably still too low. Because again, this is India in the 1980s. It's not like every everyone was. By their own addition, they they could not keep up with the paperwork.

Yeah, much as this is a relatively developed country, it's not like. It's a developed country that's been immediately overwhelmed and also was in a in a period of like unprecedented growth at this point. Yes, you don't get everyone. I mean, we don't get anyone in the don't get everyone in the United States with, you know, no, we certainly don't see Britain. Yeah, you never get everyone on these things. And this is just an absurd mass casualty event,

which is just completely unprecedented. Right. So talking about the aftermath. Now, we're looking at the ruins of the factory. One of the things you may notice about the ruins of the factory is that there are ruins of the factory, right? Yeah, they're still there. It doesn't even look like there's a fence or anything. Well, usually parts of these chemical plants are resalable.

You know, you can relocate them to a no location. You can, you know, rebuild them because, you know, these processing units are very valuable, you know, they're very expensive. They're very complicated. You can turn the rest of the thing into condos that are called something like the apartments at. Yeah, you just take out all the the process. It's got to be the lofts at one of the things about

one of the things about the Bo Paul plan is all these things are so badly constructed, they couldn't resell them. Not so good. So they're all still there by this fucking carbide. They're just like it's the fact that it's like uneconomic to like take it apart. It's probably the most heartbreaking thing. Like imagine imagine you're going to live there and you're going to see that shit.

I believe the the actual flare stack, I believe, was attached to this scaffold here. Right. That's that's the one thing I could not get a picture of, unfortunately, because I couldn't find it. So here's here's the thing. Union Carbide, of course, is a responsible public corporation. Right. Mm hmm. Who is it responsible to the shareholders? Yes.

Yep. Maximum return on investments. I love that. Yeah. So the first act is to limit its limit the company's liability, right? Yeah. Why am I trying to get a low degree again? So they have a pretty bold legal defense. Number one, that plant is not ours. Union Carbide, India limited, not Union Carbide,

which was majority owned by who? Union Carbide. Yeah, which shares a name with irrelevant. Yeah. Right. I mean, check this out. Check this out. Train train goods Union Carbide. Huh?

A little bit of like lightening the mood a little bit. Yes. Yeah. Sure. Why the hell not? Number two, if it is our plant, we didn't do it. It was sabotaged by radical seeks. Oh, yes. Of course. Radical seeks. Radical seeks.

I mean, this is this is about in time for the like her bodyguards to have murdered Indira Gandhi. But like that was because she literally had a tank drive through the front door of the Golden Temple in Amritsar. That's not what why would I've I've never met a seek who wasn't like the nicest person I've ever met. Hmm. Yeah. Well, Indira Gandhi did, but she kind of had it coming.

Yeah, probably don't probably don't. Like if somebody ran through the synagogue with a truck, I, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't be too mad if that person were instantly killed. Yeah, in Minecraft. Oh, God. Oh, it's fine. Whatever. Number three is if we did it, it wasn't that bad because M.I.C.

It's basically tear gas, right? This is Donald Trump. Yeah, the like staged fallback lines and what really fucked me here is like it is so it's not even like a limiting liability in just in a legal sense. It is limiting liability in a purely financial sense. It is if we can stymie this at the earliest opportunity. Great. If not, then the next thing, if not, then the next thing

and each one of those is designed to try to limit the amount you pay. Number four, if it was that bad, it was someone else's fault. You know, that incompetent Indian medical system, right? Yeah, I mean, it's a competent medical system is totally prepared for 3,000 people to show up with. Folding up the mouth and dropping dead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Number five, if it was our fault, we can outspend and outlive you.

And they were right. Yes, that's the that's the thing that gets me. They were right. They know this was coupled with a widespread and expansive PR campaign showing how Union Carbide was being a good corporate steward assisting in cleanup and relief efforts, paying compensation, blah, blah, blah. Union Carbide never admitted culpability in any court. And this defense strategy worked extremely well.

Multiple civil and criminal lawsuits have been filed against Union Carbide and its CEO, Warren Anderson over the past few decades, as late as 2012. Right. Mm hmm. All of them had been dismissed in U.S. court, right? Numbers and repeated extradition requests were refused, etc. Yeah. And while Union Carbide, the company started to fall apart, right? It was eventually absorbed into Dow Chemical, Warren Anderson himself lived on and died a free man in 2014, right?

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Actual legal proceedings. Happened in Indian courts in India, of course, because that's where the Indian courts are. Um, and the government of rapidly industrializing India passed the Bhopal Gas League Act in March 1985, which authorized it itself to represent the victims in court. Right. The government. Are you suggesting that a government might be acting corruptly?

There's no conflicts of interest here. None whatsoever. Um, there's no way. I mean, yeah, imagine you get you get that last one. You're like, yeah, cool. The government's going to going to take over my case. And like, they're going to represent me as a citizen. And then the government is just like, hmm, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Sorry, sorry for being a Reaganite there for a second. Um, so there were also a few efforts from Union Carbide to muddy the waters, right? OK, so let's start with. I think the less dumb one, which is the cyanide controversy. Right. Mm hmm. This is something which is very hotly debated. So cyanide is a very known quantity as to what it does to the human body. It also has a readily available and mostly non-toxic antidote, right?

It's usually very safe to administer in any sort of situation where you suspect there might be cyanide poisoning. And there's there's there's a little bit of confusion here as to why it was not administered as much as it could have been because even Union Carbide's doctors said you should administer the cyanide antidote. Like if it seems like you may have cyanide poisoning. But in court, Union Carbide argued, you know, there's no way the M.I.C. could have formed significant amounts of cyanide, right?

Despite evidence of cyanide poisoning amongst among the deceased, right? And again, Union Carbide's doctor said you should try. Anti cyanide antidotes and not a lot of those antidotes were given to people. Among those folks who received cyanide antidotes, most of them recovered pretty quickly. With. But the the doctor on site, of course, who said it was mostly like tear gas said, you know, just give people a bunch of water, right? So it's yeah, this is such a legalistic argument to be like, oh, well,

the the presence or the absence of of these particular molecules in the gas cloud coming from my plant, which is causing people to die. That's very relevant to my liability, whether or not this this carbon is attached to this hydrogen in this way. Well, as I understood it, there was a big, big legal argument where Union Carbide insisted there was no way that this this tank full of M.I.C. reacting with excess water and various oxidized metal schmoo. There was no way it could ever have exceeded 250 degrees Celsius

where cyanide would be produced, right? Despite the fact that this is off scale pressure and temperature on every single gauge in the plant, right? Yeah, I mean, my my my answer to that is, you know, motion for the respondent to crack open a vial of that shit in the courtroom. It's so safe. Yeah, it's like it's bad to say. Yeah. Well, I really appreciated that farmer. I think of Nebraska after, you know, fracking is safe, fracking is safe.

Came to a hearing and had a bit of ground water. Yeah, I was just like, all right, you drink it like drink a tower. Yeah, my my my favorite legal motion is still a motion for prosecutors to spend the night in the jail if he thinks it's so safe. God, all right. So the the cyanide controversy is very, very stupid because, you know, who care? I guess I guess Union Carbide would have more liability

if it could be conclusively confirmed that cyanide was in the cloud. Sure. But it's immoral to ask people to even make that determination and in order to get some kind of justice for it. And again, there were a lot of signs amongst the deceased of cyanide poisoning, you know, the cherry red viscera being one of them. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, so we're going to be thinking about that for a while. Oh, boy.

Well, you signed up for this. I did. Yeah. Actually, I signed you up for this. Yes. So in addition to the cyanide controversy, like there's definitely no cyanide in the cloud of chemical gases, which reacted violently with various other chemicals that we don't know what they are, which all contain the components of cyanide.

There was also the sabotage theory that Union Carbide put forth, right? Radical Sikhs hate those radical Sikhs. I was about to say radical Sikhs. You know, they're always carrying knives around, you know, which I respect highly. I kind of want to, you know, it makes me want to be a Sikh. Seems like a dope fucking religion. Yeah.

I kind of I kind of love that this happened before you could use Muslims for this. And so they just like picked the even dumber option of like Sikhs. It's the Turban guys. The Turban guys did it. That was a nice innocent Union Carbide. So they said someone possibly a radical Sikh, they literally changed their stories to a disgruntled worker, had deliberately sabotaged the plant, right?

And their theory was that they had introduced water into the M.I.C. tank via a missing pressure gauge, right? Because you're telling me that history's greatest chemical terrorist just showed up to work one day. Yeah, and did exactly the right thing in exactly the right place to just kill. Oh, well, apparently, exactly what he was doing the whole time. Which is totally plausible to me. I don't think there's any reason to investigate this any further.

Frankly, I imagine most of the workers on the ground knew that like the extent of how bad the safety procedures were. But like also, this is this is a method of sabotage, which is highly risky to your own life and limb. And number two would only put the non-functioning tank out of service. Yeah, I mean, the fact that it's like it would kill you to that's not necessarily a determinant, ask me about my plan to like throw hands with the like reanimated soul of Andreas Lubitz sometime.

But like the fact that it could have been worse is a big one for me. There's a lot of reasons why there's a lot of holes in this theory. Not just that like it would put your own life and lemon at risk. If you're the Savator, you know, why would you sabotage the broken tank? It's supposed to one of the action working tanks. You know, one of the main issues is like the water hoses didn't fit the broken pressure gauge. Hmm, you can't actually put the water in that way

without like holding it there for hours. You know, it's just a guy just standing there like looking at his watch just with just filling it up with a hose the whole time. Yeah, and even skip the tea break. But that's when that's when he did it is the perfect crime. This is like this. This turns into like an Agatha Christie locked room mystery. The lights go out.

We hear a gunshot and then there's just a guy just like the hose. So Union Carbide was forced to recant this theory in court. Mm hmm. If you go on their PR website, which is somehow still up still active. Www dot Bo Paul dot com. No, which makes me feel sorry for the city that they couldn't get that for their municipal website. Imagine that. Imagine Philadelphia dot com is the thing about how you like died because I don't know.

It wasn't like the move bombing was good, actually. Oh, good. They still maintain on that site that the cause of the accident was sabotage. This is according to a report on that site, which I didn't look at because I. Don't believe it just out of hand. I'm on the website and it is it's fucking bad. Responsible care is a registered service market. The American Cancer Council Bank.

We're going to get to that. Yeah. Yeah. A great deal has been written and or broadcast about the tragedy in the ensuing years, some of it factual, but much of it inaccurate or misleading. I need another drink. I'll be right back because the government closed off the site for many and all operations following the gas release. UCIL noticed that they don't use Union Carbide was only able to undertake

cleanup work in the years just prior to the UCC sale of its stock in 1994. I spent some two million dollars on that effort. Wow, how fucking noble. Mm hmm. I'm I'm so congratulations for kind of paying to fix your mistake. Maybe you shouldn't have been so fucking negligent in the first place. I hate this just like, well, you know, sometimes accidents happen and that's just the way it is.

It's like, no, no, no. Sometimes you just don't fucking care about people and then a whole bunch of people die and you're held legally liable. And then you think, wow, I would sure love to shimmy my way out of this one. That's what you did. Like just, yeah, at least admit it. I'm well, you can't admit it because if you admit it, then you have to pay people. And that's an externality like God forbid the shareholders will be mad.

Yeah, another thing. This is funny. He was only mentioned as an aside was that one of one of Union Carbide's first defenses was that their Institute West Virginia plant, right? Had the same design and safety features as the bullpaw plant, right? And this is why it had to be operator incompetence. Hmm. Well, if it's so bad, then how come this one hasn't killed a bunch of people?

Huh? You got to pay a lot of money for lawyering that good. I'm sorry. I just I love the idea of just like as gruesome as it is that like Union Carbide lawyer, hopefully in like a top hat made out of ball. Oh, yeah. And like children's tears. Just coming into court, smoking a cigar and being like, well, it hasn't happened. You know, if you're so smart. Yeah, look at all these West Virginians.

They're alive unless they get black lung disease. That's not our fault. Hey, we we we did our shitty thing where we where we killed a bunch of people in West Virginia already. West Virginia is the United States own internal colony. But the the thing is that the Institute West Virginia plant is, of course, upwind of Charleston, West Virginia, the largest city in West Virginia and also capital, I think.

Yeah, I believe so. So what happened when they mentioned this in court and it was reported was that there were massive protests to get the Institute West Virginia plant shut down once they mentioned it. It's like, no, we're not going to do this again, because, of course, Institute West Virginia is upwind of Charleston. Oh, that rules. So they they had to recant

their testimony in Indian court to say that, oh, no, actually, the safety procedures at Bhopal were a lot worse. Sorry. The worst part is that you know that they only did that after doing an analysis and figuring out that that would cost them less than shutting down the Institute plant in order to prove a point. Oh, God. And Institute is called Institute because West Virginia State is right here.

That's what this. I said that. Well, I'm highlighting them. Oh, my God. We've been here. We have. We have. We went to Vice Palooza on the high 64. My favorite thing about Vice Palooza and here's a here's a hopefully light hearted bit.

So we rented a Ford Fusion hybrid, which hell, yeah, which was great downhill. And by great, I mean, terrifying, because uphill, it sounded constantly like it wanted to die. It was just it hated it. It couldn't produce any power. The guy right ahead of us lost a tire on his trailer, which was super tight, like less than an hour into the drive.

And so I had to heroically swerve to avoid him. You're welcome for not dying, Roz. But all the way down into West Virginia Hills, just I constantly was like, ah, we're going to hit VBACs in this enterprise for Fusion. Five percent grade, next five miles. Yeah, 64 is a hell of a highway. I just drawn a giant deck and balls on Charleston, by the way, because West Virginia is a big dick state.

All right. So, you know, they had to admit that the Institute plant was designed much more safely. Right. So anyway. So this is a stuff. This is a picture from 2006. You'll notice you want Osama, give us Anderson. Yeah, please stop me, though.

What? Why? My last name is Anderson. No, no, no, I mean, why? Why? Why is the summer in India in 2006? Like, why did you think Osama was in India? See, they're India or Pakistan. It turned out to be Pakistan services. Sometimes technically correct.

Yes, are not great. Yeah. Look at this point, this like Osama is living in Pakistan's equivalent of West Point and just like watching Whitney Houston videos and like Bible Black on CD. That's true, by the way. He had Bible Black on his computer. Good for him. So I'm going to have a lot of weird stuff on his computer.

Oh, yeah. They won't release the porn. That's one of the things that really annoys me is that they won't release the porn. Like, come on now, give us Osama's porn collection. Isn't there like, I thought there was like a list of what the porn was, but they won't release the porn. Because I thought it was like a whole bunch of anti. I'm going to look. Yeah, although they weren't sure whether it was like his hentai.

I'm just holding this hentai. It's not my hentai. I've never seen this hentai before in my life. No, no, no, no. C.I.A. to release huge cache of classified Osama bin Laden files, except his pornography stash. Look, we I paid taxes, right? You heard it here, folks.

The only the only thing that which is actually protected by copyright is pornography. Yeah, honestly, this is if we ever get around to making the C.I.A. episode, I'm going to put that in when we're somebody tried to fire bin Laden's porn and the CIA outflank them because it would be illegal for them to mail obscene matter to them. We're going to release all the bonus episodes on only fans from here on out. All right. So anyway, this picture is from 2006.

Again, when they thought of Osama bin Laden was in India, right? So a lot of lawsuits work their way through Indian courts. Again, with the government representing the victims, right? So the only in the best of faith, I'm sure. The Indian government, which had no conflicts of interest, didn't want to high of a settlement, right? They wanted a signal that India was open for business, right? No, for fuck's sake.

So they thought something on the order of three point three billion US dollars was about right. No, OK. Union Carbide offered three hundred and fifty million dollars. Jesus. So to their credit, the Indian government rejected that offer. The Indian Supreme Court said, yeah, I'll need to meet on a fresh plane, right? Which they did. And the Indian government accepted their offer with interest in 1989, which gave them a total settlement of four hundred and seventy million dollars.

Well, that's as fuck. Mm hmm. Yes, still don't know with any kind of certainty what the death toll is. No. So, OK. Let's talk about Indian numbers because we should all know what Indian numbers are because they have a weird number system, which is kind of fun. All right. So relatives of the deceased received between one lakh rupees to three lakh rupees, right? That's about thirteen hundred to four thousand US dollars.

A lock is a hundred thousand dollars, which is the other the other big number is a crore, which is 10 million, right? Mm hmm. So so they got between a hundred thousand dollars and three hundred thousand dollars. Oh, rupees. Sorry. Yeah, they got between, yeah, to put it in US dollars, thirteen hundred to four thousand US dollars. Couple of Xboxes. Couple of Xboxes. Yeah.

Well, it's 1989. So I know, but I like our recurring bit of measuring the kind of the travesty of damages by how many Xboxes a kid gets you. Yeah, but you have to consider this is like SNES's. Yeah, yeah. Really, any S's. Yeah. You get a Calico vision. If you had a severe debilitating long term injury, you would get four lakh rupees, right? That's fifty two hundred US dollars.

How noble. Wow. Yeah. If you had a partial with long term disability, I don't know how this was determined. You would get fifty thousand rupees. I assumed charitably. Fifty thousand rupees to two lakh rupees. And then there were additional compensations for damaged property and destroyed livestock, right?

And all of this is coming out of four hundred and seventy million dollars. Yes. I mean, one of the things is, of course, money does go a lot farther in India, but this is not a large amount of compensation, right? No, no, especially for a lifelong. Well, a reason for one thing. Or yeah, just absolutely catastrophic injuries. Yes. Now, Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide,

he did visit Bro Paul shortly after the disaster. He was actually briefly arrested after he showed up. I hope he shits himself. I thought he was allowed to leave. Yeah, like the Indian government said, get the fuck out right now. No, no, no, that's when you just summarily execute a guy now. So he left India.

He left his team behind, you know, whatever that was to either, depending on who you want to believe, either, you know, they were there to assist in the recovery or they were there to figure out ways to limit liability and, you know, shortly afterwards, well, not shortly afterwards, a couple of years afterwards, local courts in Bo Paul charged him with a manslaughter in 1991. He didn't show up to court. So they declared him a fugitive from justice in 1992.

And they called for extradition in 1993. Obviously, he was not extradited. Yeah. Well, how how sad and pathetic is it that you can be like the one the closest thing to a bright spot? And this is like, well, he got arrested once. And I hope it like put the fear of God into just for a couple of days. Yeah. Yeah. So residents of Bo Paul, especially the victims, continue to protest

Dow Chemical to this day because Union Carbide was absorbed into Dow Chemical apart from some of the brands that were spun off. I believe Union Carbide, India is now ever ready industries, India, and they mostly do batteries, but they hold Dow Chemical responsible because they handle most of the chemical operations that Union Carbide, India did. And they demand justice from Dow Chemical. Dow Chemical accepts absolutely zero blame for what happened because it's not one time that they did,

which is are you going to tell that story afterwards or should I do it now? Should do it now because I didn't write it down. I think I know what I'm you're talking about. Yeah. So like we make fun of ad busters and such as being like kind of cringe. But like one of the things that they did was they they they blagged a fake guest onto BBC News claiming to be a Dow Chemical executive. And he announced that Dow was unilaterally apologizing and offering like some large number of billions in compensation.

And it wasn't real, of course, but the as like a protest to draw attention to Dow not doing that. God. Yeah. We're going to get assassinated the next time we go to Staline Lakers. Because it's right across from the Dow Chemical. We will cross from the Dow Chemical plant. We will be on top of a gas armistice with a sniper rifle. We will be going through Maryland. We'll take the log way if we have to.

God. OK. So yeah. So Dow Chemical is not interested in paying any kind of reparations. The the the people of Bo Paul, again, are doing are doing what they can. And it's a long, long struggle. Yeah. But they got away with it, right? Like the dude in question, the CEO, he died. So it's like it. The Indian courts did charge and prosecute several of the operators of the plant.

Well, good, I guess. But like in terms of like in terms of making the the consequences fit the actual the actual crime, let the punishment fit the crime. Uh huh. Oh, God. No, this is this is this went way up the corporate ladder like it. I honestly think none of the people who operated the plant should have been charged. It should have been way up there. The guy the guy who was making the decision to just try and like

stem leaks by firefighting them, that I don't know that that guy belongs in jail. Right. But like, yeah, yeah, not the guys we want. The yeah. Yeah. Not the guys we want. No justice, no peace. So as a response to this, like the general attitude towards the chemical industry goes way, you know, folks are very suspicious of the chemical industry, even in the United States, right? Hmm. So let's talk about responsible care. Folks thought, you know, chemical plants, they're dirty, they're unsafe,

they're unsanitary in the slit to a sort of self regulatory effort by the chemical industry. There's always work. Yes. Yes. So this was responsible care. You can see their logo. You might have seen this on tank cars or on on big tanker trucks, right? Yeah, a big pair of mittens grasping a molecule. Yes, I do that every day. It started in Canada.

This touching molecules started in Canada in 1988. It's now a global safety and self regulation initiative amongst most of the chemical industry, not all of it, most of it. Yeah, crazy. Varklav's House of Ethelins is not going to subscribe to this. The one guy at Maryland. It's mostly associated with the American Chemistry Council, which was formerly the Chemical Manufacturers Association,

which was founded in the late 1800s as a sort of organization to oppose government regulation of the chemical industry. I should I should be able to make my nitroglycerin and ether wherever I want. That's what they also changed the name was before it was the Manufacturing Chemists Organization. OK, but the basic idea here, you know, when they started the responsible care initiative is like, guys, look, we probably can't do another Bob Paul. We should probably start to work this shit out. Yeah, just enough to avoid having to pay for the lawyers again.

So self regulation, you know, is largely there to head off regulation by the government. I will say responsible care has resulted in much safer chemical processes. And, you know, generally like worker safety at chemical plants around the world, because it's a global effort at this point. You know, I mean, the thing is safety is in both labor and management's interest. It's a lot of hassle when you kill a bunch of people. Yeah, as a safe, a safe plant or job site has more uptime, less damage to equipment, more productive and happier workers, runs cheaper and more efficiently.

But goddamn, it takes a lot of effort to get this through the boneheads and management's minds, especially the bean counters. Now, also, my dad works for the American Chemistry Council, so I can't be too critical of them. That's fine. We can do it. Yeah, the logo looks like dog shit. Yeah, that's that's we have disclosure, full disclosure, conflict of interest. Sorry. I also kind of do my full disclosure.

I actually do not know this for certain, but based on my ancestry dot com research and some kind of anecdotal stuff, I believe that I am related to Warren Anderson, although it would be something like fourth or fifth cousin. Well, fourth or fifth cousin, everybody's related to everybody. Just as long as you're not getting those like Union Carbide Bucks to make the podcast, I think it's fine. Well, I can confirm that I'm not getting those Union Carbide Bucks

to make this podcast, although it is the CIA front. That's it. I mean, people, somebody asked me whether Ross was a landlord and I'm like, what? I saw that as like, no, we pay rent to a guy. So. Responsible care is now doing global safety initiatives, including in you know, everywhere, including India. So. But the other thing is with these big petrochemical plants is a lot of them are pretty old and they're in populated areas.

I don't know if you ever heard of John Oval. This happened in South Philadelphia last year. I see some fire. Just a little bit. You know, locating chemical plants, petrochemical plants. This is an oil refinery in major urban areas presents a inherent risk to public safety. I mean, here in Philly. We've very narrowly avoided another bullpaw.

Yup. And that was with a big tank of hydrogen fluoride as opposed to M.I.C. and hydrogen fluoride. I the chemical effects of this. I mean, the best way to describe it is if you've seen the, you know, the Nazi who melts away after he looks at the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah, that's what it does. It was very narrowly avoided because someone realized they need to drain that tank.

And this would have just rolled over South Philly and just, you know, turned everyone into a skeleton. Instead, there was just a big explosion. Yeah, which woke everyone up, except me, because I was passed out drunk when this happened. Yeah, but that giant flare in the middle kind of looks like a frowning Marilyn Manson face. There's there's a bit of work to be done here about making petrochemicals.

See, I mean, I mean, once again, we go back to our plan, our plan. Hey, leave them in the fucking ground. Yeah. Yeah, you should probably just leave them in the ground. Just just leave the petrochemicals in the ground. It's not that hard. We leave the dimes alone, alternatives. I think we can we can smack atoms into other atoms and that smacks more atoms into other atoms.

I guess another another issue, which has been the problems now that they have they have shut down this oil refinery. I mean, you know, this is a labor organizing thing. And this is where the environmentalists and labor organizers. They're kind of, you know, put into conflict. Close down these big plants. This is the largest union employer in Philadelphia, to my knowledge. And you were certainly losing a lot of good high paying union jobs.

And if you close down a plant like this, it's going to relocate to somewhere with not a great union culture. It's going to be in Texas. Also, not just not with a great union culture, but attendently with a less great safety culture, which means, OK, you might not be turning into skeletons, but you might heighten the risk that somebody else is going to turn into skeletons. I mean, this thing has blown up at least twice that I've lived in Philly.

Yeah. But how many times have you turned into a skeleton? I've never turned into a skeleton. I will eventually turn into a skeleton. But that is all the refinery. Yeah. Future Skeleton Club. Future Skeletons of America. Yeah. Well, we recorded the second three hour episode today. We're fucking morons.

Oh, my God. Jesus, I'm going to have to type up every fucking word we said. Twice, twice, twice, two times. Yes, correct. Well, I'm glad we're all friends. Very much. I have fun doing this, you know. Next episode is about the Tacoma Naira's bridge disaster. Oh, oh, my God.

Anybody to stretch? Yeah, I don't want to stand up too quickly because I'll fall down. Oh, God. Final four of train madness. I will put the matchups up tomorrow. I am happy to report that the New York Central, in fact, did not make it out alive. And New Yorkish will be represented by the DNH. Thank you. Oh, yeah.

All right. Well, Franklin 11 will be up before this episode is up. Holy shit. So, yeah, now they have to yell at you about Franklin 12. Oh, my God. Where is Franklin 12? Where is Franklin 12? In my brain. We want answers. We want answers.

In my brain, you're going to have to claw it out of there. All right. You're not going to have this problem if you're a skeleton. I won't have a brain. I won't need a brain. I'll be a skeleton. Hey, how come the skeleton didn't go to the Dant? Why? Because he had no body to go with. Oh, all right, we got to play us out with them bones.

I'm delirious. Them bones, them bones, the right bones. East is red. One more time for Rick. Yeah, go. All right. Oh, my God. Oh, everybody. Good day, everybody. Good night, everybody.

Oh, I turned this off.