Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 97: Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Truck goes in tunnel. The inevitable happens.   Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Our Merch: https://www.solidaritysuperstore.com/wtypp Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 40178 Philadelphia, PA 19106 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Open wide for podcast. It's your slop. It's a podcast. It is in fact what you came here to see Which is Well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters. It has slides I'm Justin Ross. The active person is talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go I am Alice Coldwell Kelly. The person who's talking now my pronouns are she and her yay Liam. Yeah, Liam Hello, I am Liam Anderson. My pronouns are he him. I'm the guy swearing at you for the podcast Twitter Now is it down? Yeah. Well, because there's your quality using good. Yeah, if you know, I'm an audio file This is why I don't tell anyone that I'm an audio file. I only fucking listen to what there's your problem on vinyl

Yeah, it's weird. We actually make Ross press it himself When it's like a three hour episode Yeah, yeah, we actually also release on laser disc We recorded lossless version We record a flak version of each of these and then we just keep it for ourselves We don't let you listen to it because you don't deserve it. You don't listen yet We will laser disc version is great because you can use that scroll wheel to go Individually through each frame, which is identical to the previous one because it's a slideshow

I Do like the idea of us releasing on title I just just it flack or something. Oh, yeah, if you want that extra crisp Alice, you can get that You don't deserve Chris William. So sorry You deserve whatever the $2 a month you pay you go get whatever Liam we have in stock. All right. Yeah, this is America We don't call it crisp. We call it a chip Chip Alice

Chip Liam. Yeah, Chip. Yeah, dude. I Alice. Do they have fried pickle chips or crisps? Like over in Glasgow, they're just about making their debut now that we're getting more American fast food chains Like I think smash burger has them Yeah, and obviously as a transgender woman, I I love a pickle and I love a fried food. So this is perfect for me I I am a big big fried pickle chip guy Roz, do you like a fried pickle chip? I like a fried pickle chip. It's very good. Yes You got to get that like garlic mayo going on. This is why I weigh 900 pounds Yeah, I

You what we're at the We can't do the live show all in person because we'd all have to roll each other up the hill I broke down 98 explore. Yeah, the thing about the live show is we can't do one in Pennsylvania for a while because the three of us Exceed any safe weight limit for the venue collectively Oh Man I was feeling good about myself today Here we are being fat phobic to ourselves

That's right. That's right. Listen, if you can't be prejudiced against yourself, who the hell can you be prejudiced against? That's my philosophy. Well, someone told me a couple weeks ago that a bicycle infrastructure was fat genocide So we covered that pretty well last episode I blocked you. Are they blocked me too? I think they got the triple. They blocked us. They blocked all of us So, you know, I I love when I just go to some random person like I random person say and then just get blocked at the next instant. I'm like, ah Make me feel warm inside. Yeah. Yeah

Well, there's the guy who told me to eat shit you fat fuck when I critiqued bar store and then blocked me Barstool has no fucking standing to be calling anyone fat like barstool fans You fucking coward like no come out here and fight like maybe I'll sit on you. Maybe I'll eat you Who knows come out here and find out beat your fate asshole. I do think that's uh, that is um, that as a uh, sort of um Method of uh interacting with people is not a great one. You insult them then then you block them. It's like well, you know You want to you want to prove that you're able to withstand? You know the retort or whatever. I I don't know why you insult and then block. That's that's kind of you know, shitty The move of posting bushy dude is like uh, uh, it's like the mute the gentleman's mute

Where you just let them tire themselves out for as long as it takes until they realize that you're not responding to them See also our pinned comments. Yeah that guy I don't know if he's still going as of today, but he You were probably right in making me delete the retort from the podcast account, but like yes Let's complain to the current about that and I was like brah brah's maybe delete the account even though Maybe delete the comedy though. Wasn't that bad and she's like He does have a point. Oh, I was like, no, he doesn't brah's ever has a point only leo Yeah, so

What do you see on the screen here? Are the remains of a truck It looks in fine shape. I mean, I've seen worse. Yes, and it's in central pennsylvania. That's true. Yeah I've seen some shit It's in a hole Right in the caves. Yeah Um, it's not supposed to be like that. Oh Uh, today we're going to talk about the 1999 mont blanc tunnel fire for which primary sources weren't possible to find

Very irritating stuff that was supposed to be in the public domain was stuff I had to pay for to look at and I refused to do that on principle I'm not gonna pay to view a public domain article Very poorly reported, especially in english, uh, like you google this stuff and like the you know, the biggest the biggest Responses now are like Some journalists going. Oh, yeah, I wrote this story about this that I actually turned out wasn't true at all. Yes Uh, so like thanks. That's helpful. That's very helpful But first we have to do the goddamn news

To make a northwest passage Listen, uh I my current obsession like the guy who's gotten under my skin on twist of the most recently Is the guy who's like actually the freedom convoy in canada has a left-wing class character Those nazi flags, you know, they just get there Socialists Excuse me as I stick my hands up my He managed to get the perfect tweet which was like, oh, I'd like to see you keep a process without like nazi flag free

They just they just generate themselves and it's like So far 100 success rate on on not having any nazi flags at anything I've been to a lot of demos in my life and I don't think I see nazi flags by the people we were fighting It's just like those right-wing trolls who uh go to like a big, uh, dsa protest and then they unfurl the banner That says it has dsa shaking hands with nambla. You know, it's the same thing, right? Yeah, they're doing like ops to discredit Cesis is trying to discredit the freedom convoy by bringing in nazi flags that they had from home from their ukrainian grandpas There was uh, there was a uh, an article on I think Barry weiss's sub-stack. Oh, christ

Jesus, man Why do you even know that? What do The truckers actually want in the opening paragraph was something like well the freedom convoy has a lot of diverse different types of people, right? Not all of them are opposed to just whites And and they're not all opposed to these man dates, right? It's not only about vaccine mandates and then she they proceed to interview

16 people who all are mad at vaccine mandates um Yeah, and like barry they're not they're not mad at you vaccine mandates for the same reason you are they're not on some like Emily Oster We have to get the schools open because I hate my children Shit. No, this is just purely just introduced as a gay communist who is going to inject me with the 5g I don't want to therefore i'm going to park my privately owned mind you tractor trailer on the ambassador bridge Which is what we're seeing here, right? Yes. So what happened was they don't they're not actually parking on the ambassador bridge

They're blocking it at the end of the ambassador bridge And all these trucks full of people who aren't in the freedom convoy are stuck on the ambassador bridge the ambassador bridge Of course links Detroit to Windsor and 25 percent of the trade of trade between Canada the united states By value not by weight or by volume, but by value no one ever talks about that part goes over this bridge um Yeah, all the maple syrup coming south and then all of whatever Canada buys from you coming north lots of auto parts I believe Because ford has a battery right over the bridge in Windsor. I think yeah

Um, you know and this I I thought this was an interesting demonstration of um, you know People moved to like we moved to trucking absolutely everything Uh because of a lot of reasons but one of them was you know supposed flexibility of the truck Yeah, you can take another route, right? Yeah, and then it turns out Uh, actually no No, this is the only route the trucks can practically take is over this 92 year old bridge Uh, isn't there another bridge like upstream by like a little bit? Yeah, you 60 miles up the river There's the blue water bridge, which is actually a wider bridge, but it has smaller customs facilities

Ah, okay. So yeah, so you got to get on your like shengen shit You got to like nafta nafta a bit more until there's no border checks at all honestly though, um That would make for an interest some interesting times. It's stupid that goods can go across Without being held up by I mean to a point Not being held up by customs, uh, but we can't you didn't used to need a passport to go to canada And uh, you're doing for no good fucking reason because 9 11 because of all those canadians. I know why I know why Yeah, because 19 canadians flew that's hijacked planes

Uh into into the world trade center famous canadian zackery. What is his name? Zachary missouri. Zacharias missouri. Zachariah. Yes, there we go Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes famous famous fan of the habs Of course the habs are a designated terrorist organization Yeah, you just pull the expose balaclava down over your face and then you you take over the aircraft sure But uh, yeah, so the the freedom convoy are people associated with it are blocking the ambassador bridge And that's some affords plants are having to be idled. Um, you know, this has some Some knock-on effects, but I think it's mostly the automotive industry that's feeling it This this this is costing like 200 million dollars a day canadian. So I don't know that isn't real money myself

I might have a job now. Oh, hell. Yeah, boy. You're back. You're musing yourself from your other job to accept a new job Which is a girl boss. Um Yeah, so this this might be the thing that kills the freedom convoy, right? Because you can you can fuck with the population of a capital city for as long as you want, right? Yeah, uh, that's that's fine They don't care about you doing arson or hate crimes You can't fuck with the Ford Motor Corporation You cannot fuck with the Ford Motor Corporation and you can't fuck with the money And I think once you do fuck with the money, you're gonna you're gonna find out very quickly. Um, so spam

Well, well, at least you're getting a penis in large now. So, you know, you've got that going for you. Yeah Just But I call me Liam ginormous shlong anderson. I'm yeah, absolutely. We're gonna introduce you as that the whole time And it definitely has been frustrating seeing people carry water for the freedom convoy and like oh, yeah Real working-class people when you know, most of them. They're not these are these are almost entirely people who have The ability to take two weeks off work and bring their truck that they own to go protest Uh, a thousand miles away, you know a guy who drives are like tfi international or jb hunt or something like that They're they're not in this this protest

If you drive a truck for a wage as opposed to being an owner operator You would have a hell of a time trying to participate in the uh freedom convoy because I imagine The guy who monitors the gps on your truck is going to give you a phone call and say why are you in Ottawa? We're supposed to be in winnipeg Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is like a small business tyrant sort of like, uh, jackery that's happening here Exactly. I was gonna call it a jackery because of the language laws. It's like, uh, it's like a fascist sort of like reactionary Riot on the one hand the jackery on the other and you got to use both yes

the french A jackery jackeries weren't weren't fascist. I'm gonna have to like correct myself there. I just want to use a french word for riot I am I apparently there's some rumblings about trying to get a united states freedom convoy started I've seen that so I'm just gonna go straight to washington dc and run down every pedestrian they see Well, kiss dharma kiss dharma the famous like worm slug person leader of the opposition here managed to Get like heckled and assaulted by the british freedom convoy, which was five guys But five guys who like by accident showed up in the right place to do that. So, you know

So anyway, yeah, um, if uh, if you live in dc be prepared to see some morons rolling cold because they're mad about vaccines mm-hmm Be prepared for the fucking uh, the canadian government and the ontario provincial government to finally kick the rcmp in the OPP into like acting like it's the ochre crisis and doing some repression finally Yeah, you know, they gotta they they they gotta just think about these people like their first nation's Need you to turn on the racism. Yeah, exactly Appreciate that all of us went to the same tasteless joke there. Yeah, exactly. I I apologize to our indigenous viewers um

All right in other news In Sao Paulo A contractor drilling the new I believe line nine of the Sao Paulo metro Accidentally drilled into uh, I believe a sewer cistern Oh, you don't want to do that. I think it's a combined sewer stormwater infrastructure thing Um, and as a result the entire brand new subway tunnel under construction filled with poop That's that's not so good

Yes, that's not ideal. You don't want that to happen poop is always funny It is true. Hmm All the workers managed to get out. I believe two were treated for contact with sewage Oh, yeah, not good. But uh, yeah, so this is this is a pretty bad situation to be in if you are Trying to build a tunnel and that fills up with poop Hmm. Well that that civil engineering degree really paying dividends are us. Yes You don't you don't you don't want to do that Uh line nine has had many issues during construction

um, but recently um after a long pause in construction they restarted it as a public-private partnership with the spanish infrastructure company called echiona right It's a spanish for here is the poop Apparently, yeah, what a beautiful language I I paid uh, 250 000 dollars to tell you that uh, don't put poop in that Mm-hmm. That's that's called consultancy It's a pretty good pretty good, uh pretty good start. Don't fill the hole with poop when the hole is not supposed to have poop in it

But uh, yeah, this is uh, this has been a couple videos of this floating around on like youtube and twitter I can say is yeah, all I can say is uh, wow, that looks expensive Expensive and probably doesn't smell great either. Well, I'd say it's a kind of a shitty situation. Here's a shitty situation. Yes Low effort poop jokes Uh, good luck to these folks Absolutely, have have have an interesting moment Yeah, you lead an interesting life. It's just poop falling from the ceiling Yeah, this is uh, this is what happens when the poop submerges the fan

um Yeah gross Poop is funny poop is funny. That is true. That is true. Yeah Onward to Our neck our our our subject today. That's the end of the news All right, this is what a tunnel looks like when it's not full of poop Mm-hmm very clean very clean tunnel here very someone's been through that with a blower. I really appreciate that. Yes

I believe this is the goddard base tunnel um so Now we've talked about tunnels on the show before One of the things we talk about extensively is how you know tunnels. They're good for trains They're good for boats Sometimes they're good for buses, but usually not Uh, preferably you have electric buses

In there What they're really really good for though is individual teslas Oh, yeah individual teslas or like Individual cars driving through the tunnel and trucks full of flammable shit driven by just guys Right. Yeah potential freedom convoy adherents. Yeah. Yeah, exactly You know, it's great to have all these individual vehicles navigating the tunnel on their own without you know any kind of uh Uh, supervision now, obviously truck drivers are professionals people driving cars or you know morons usually Yeah, you still don't either way. You don't really have to have any like specific training to use a tunnel

They don't stop you before you go in like, okay. Where's your tunnel license? Well, the english I'm sure are working on it after today's incident. They did put in some precautions like that in the tunnel we're talking about Um, the as as an english woman this appeals to my heart of asking people whether they have a license for the activity They're about to conduct Oi, do you have a license? You have a license for that tunnel That's subterranean traversal you got a license for that But generally speaking when you build a tunnel that's designed nice not for a nice clean electric train

Not for a boat Not for an electric bus But for cars and trucks that run on diesel and gasoline it complicates things a lot because you need massive amounts of ventilation And you need like all kinds of safety systems because at any point Someone could take a hard ride into a wall and burst into flames and kill everyone, right? I think we'll do that They love doing it. Yes It's it's everyone's favorite thing to do

In a tunnel is they just crash into a wall and explode you guys remember cruising exotica. It's kind of like that Yes um Now with that in mind, let's talk about transporting goods from italy To france and vice versa Hey, you want to put that shit on a mule and like haul it way up over the Alps Slut out Hannibal. That's what you had to do

for most Of recorded human history Right guy in a big like wool cake for an Alpenstock and he like, you know leads those mules with all your Also parts or whatever you want to you know deliver And that that's it. You know, yeah, yeah to go through like really gnarly mountain passes and all that stuff Um now by the mid 19th century, we had railroads, right? And the railroads got into like the foothills of the Alps and fairly well up river valleys Right, but they didn't they didn't quite didn't quite cross them

um You know, so the railroad would end where it ended And you take everything out of the boxcars and you put it on mules and then you mule it over the mountain And you put it back on a train on the other side, right? And you know in in in the summer Okay, you can put them on like carts in the winter sometimes you could put them on sleds But a lot of times the mountain pass was just closed, you know, you could you couldn't ship things in the winter right

sure Now in the late 1800s several several major railroads were finally driven through the Alps, right? so You had the line from Turin to Mondane, which is somewhere over here that went on through uh Shambhuri and Grenoble The thing is every every place name that you pronounce ends with like west virginia after shambhuri west virginia Grenoble west virginia. Yeah

Um, so this was opened in 1871. This is a good double track electrified line It wasn't electrified when it opened, but it was electrified by like 1910 or something This is this is something very helpful to spb. The Swiss railroad is that uh, there's fuck all coal in switzerland Uh, which means you can either do like a a wood burning steam engine, which they tried for a bit Or you can electrify once electrification is a thing and that's what they did very early Yeah, and uh, well during coal shortages is world war two They actually took some of their steam engines Because they didn't have any access to coal

And they just added electric resistance heaters in the uh firebox how put a panograph on top That rolls that's that's your That's your poor man's electric locomotive. It's engineering. Yeah um So you had the line along the coast that went from marseille to uh Ventamiglia I don't yeah Yeah, okay, okay, and that goes through monaco. Right. So that's it. That was another option. That was opened in 1872

This was another good double track main line And then the the third line was uh, torrent Denise Right, you got both of those, right? Yeah. Well, those are the easy ones Um, and that was uh, that one took a long time to build because it was uh, it was built During world war one Oh, in two countries. We're fighting each other. Oh, perfect. Yeah, so actually a lot of the capital Yeah, well, no, they were still building it because they assumed I guess well after the war, you know, we'll probably

We'll probably be fine, right Yeah, it's like the it's like the the the end of the transcontinental railroad when the two guys meet each other But they're almost trying to kill each other with hammers A result of this is the tender line is what it's called Um, a lot of the engineering works a lot of the engineering works have built-in fortifications Nice. Yeah, so like the tunnel Shooting at each other The the tunnel will have like, uh, you know some uh, some like, um, slits are firing guns out of right next to the portal, you know

um So this was this was not finished until 1928 though Um, and it was just in time for there never to be another war between trance and italy exactly um So and that was that was built to a much lower standard than either the other lines also but the um the line up here from uh turn to mondane was the uh, The busiest one right because it's the most direct route

To like leon and onto paris and places like that I think turin's the largest city in this in this map here Yeah, turin is and that's where they make all the stuff is turin Yeah, um shrouds famously Yes shrouds fiat It's droughts of fiat's Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's jesus, but he's three wheeling uh a fiat an old school fiat 500 They have like a miraculous topolino

Well, I mean in the cars universe. What kind of car would jesus be that's a real question um And absolutely nukes out you go I think the answer is there's like schisms and fights over what kind of car people believe Jesus to have done that makes a lot of sense actually. Yeah, doubt you go I don't know if there's um, I don't know if there's any Cars indigenous to the middle east You might say

I think there's like a couple of like turkish brands, but if you count them maybe Oh, yeah, that makes sense I don't know if you cars of mesopotamia um Yeah, yeah The question wasn't like an aromaiac car would be that's quite vexed or aromaiac obviously That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's true Um, anyway, so this is a very direct route over the mountains

For its time But after world war two we invented a new concept Which is let's get rid of all these old fashioned electric trains and replace them with nice new shiny diesel trucks for moving everything I'll tell you right You're um, yeah, so but that means you need new road routes over the alps because while The roads had been improved. They were still pretty bad Right as here's uh, here's part of the mountain pass that follows

Roughly the same route as a tunnel. We're about to discuss You start down a mountain That looks very fun to drive if you're not in any hurry and you're not driving a massive truck Exactly, right? This this uh, this sort of switch back road. It's a hill climb, but uh hill descent Yeah, this sort of switch back road is like all over these passes that you had to take and you had you know, you're Your your shitty citron truck or whatever With loaded with like, I don't know a bunch of like Pigs or something. Sure. Um, yeah, and then and then you have to like drive up this mountain and the engine

Like stalls out at like 25 miles an hour or something Um, you know, and it takes you three hours to go um, you know Five miles horizontally and half a mile vertically um But yeah, so this is this these passes are slow. They were unreliable You didn't really have snow removal. So they were closed in the winter. They were impassable motor vehicles uh, yeah, the ship things like trains the ship things by train and

This this was a problem because again in the 20th century we had a goal to ship everything by truck right So plans were developed for the longest road tunnel the world had ever seen Directly through Mont Blanc Isn't Mont Blanc this massive heap of granite? Yes. Yes. Here's some guys surveying on the top of it The tunnel Yeah, you'd climb them out That's kind of cool. Check surveying is kind of a cool job except when we gotta see when you're getting shot at

I never read ahead to the safety third so it comes as a total surprise to me It's not today's today safety third though Uh, okay So the Mont Blanc crossing would be more northerly than any of the existing railways that went into france Right and it would offer a more direct route Not only to france, but also destinations like Geneva It would bring Milan about a hundred kilometers closer to the french border by road as well

Right so in 1946 Count Dino Laura Totino Wow That's children's television. You made that up Dino Laura Totino decided the tunnel would be a good idea and he just started digging right? Uh, the french Dino the digger. Yeah, the french town of shimoni It's shimoni, right? Sure. Why not? It's probably sheminwabba. Who cares dude? I I don't know the shaminy shaminy

Jesus christ. All right. Well, you know the Fucking uh, the mansion over in fairmont park is called shimoni. So and it's spelled the same way Yeah, alice. Yeah alice. Okay. Yeah, excuse me. Yeah, excuse me. Anyway Okay, shamanu, right shamanu Shoving a love of ding dong if you will They granted him room for surveying the tunnel portal on the other side The italian government found out he was digging the tunnel and he they shut down the whole operation Hey quit it quit it. You're not allowed to do that. It's a hard job to do nothing

After about 260 meters of tunnel had been bored, right? But you know the desire for this tunnel had been proven, right? People wanted to drive their car through the mountain and crash into the wall and die in a fire, right? Yeah, of course an irrepressible human instinct. Yes. It's like going in a cave Baby To be like why I don't want to like slam my car into this wall at 100 miles an hour, but bad and less

so France and italy conceptually agreed to fund and construct the tunnel in 1949 That tunnel was the tunnel companies were chartered formally in 1953 construction didn't begin until 1959 Some of the initial plans called for two separate tubes, but ultimately the design chosen had a single tube with two lanes Oh good That that seems more adaptive preventing disasters any any wheel movement in either direction instant death Instant death and I was more efficient at killing people. Yes. I was just thinking that you can really spice up your

Fatality count Absolutely. Absolutely. You see a car coming towards you. You don't like the look of just yank that Shit to the left and uh, both of you die. Yes instantly. I'm so sick. I've seen Porsche Cayenne's Right to the right into the wall. I go The mont block tunnel was to be 11 kilometers long And the steepest point would be two and a half kilometers under the top of the mountain This was the deepest tunnel in the world until the goddard base tunnel opened in 2016 Don't don't be in there thinking about the fact that you have two and a half kilometers of granite over your head

Thank you, Alice All all that granite is you got a thing all that granite is actually keeping the rest of the granite from falling on you Hey, don't take your life for a granite. I think is what you meant to say. Wow Thank you. We're on fire today, bro. I had a lot for lunch. I feel great. I almost did that Do you know how much it costs near me now seven goddamn dollars seven dollars at the whole Getting getting closer to making you both Muslim Do I get a Seven dollars is

We used to eat a lot more halal food than we do now. We used to go down to the halal truck outside the AICP islamic center like every single day Yeah My favorite was during Ramadan when they when they just opened it late But because we live in west philly, we were now also observing the fast Yeah, basically because they didn't open the truck until like 11 It's like how having a vegetarian girlfriend makes you vegetarian too by default, you know, you you live around enough Muslims and eventually you Uh, you're fasting

Exactly. I didn't believe that was true until our roommate literally started dating a vegan girl and himself Went from meat loving shrub to vegetarian shrub. Oh, yeah, it happens. It happens. I'll do that to you So the main part of this tunnel was blasted, right? There was a huge drilling machine on rails You see here a guy like ladling up a dynamite to Mont Blanc And they're like, are you gonna build the tunnel? He's like, no, I just hate this fucking thing. So anyway, I started blasted Yeah This huge drilling machine named jumbo Right here to me jumbo. Yeah, if it was if it was french, it probably would have been like jumbo or something like that

Ridiculous. Yeah We call it jim bob for short They they'd roll this thing up to the face of the rock They drill holes in the uh in the rock and you put sticks of dynamite in there And then you roll it away and you blow up the dynamite We clear away the rubble you put down more rails you repeat this process until you get through the whole whole mountain, right? They used about 1200 tons of TMT to bore the whole tunnel, right? Now during the construction about 23 guys died

Including three in an avalanche that hit the italian work pants. Yeah I mean, this is like that's the thing about the Alps. You can just die in an avalanche Constantly all the time is what like the deadliest front of world war one because like a mountain just falls on you That's what happens when you use artillery on the on the on the mountain Hmm Well, maybe you could like shoot artillery at the enemy and have an avalanche bury them And then also bury you done. Yeah You got the phrase danger close comes to mind

This is uh, this is one of the portals. I don't remember which one you can see all the Tiny narrow gauge trains they use to carry the spoil away I love a tiny narrow gauge train I love a tiny narrow gauge train Here's uh, here's a few inside the tunnel. You can see this is it has a very large cross section Uh, you have your two narrow gauge tracks in here. You have your big ventilation tubes Because that's that's always the problem with supplying When you're building a tunnel is you got to supply fresh air and you got to get rid of the bad air

um You know, so you need lots and lots of that ventilation while you're building it And then well also after it's finished if it's a red tunnel that road tunnel, then you definitely need lots of ventilation Yeah, so people don't die. Exactly It's very it's a very difficult process and you're only making it harder on yourself by trying to put fucking cars in there But I want to drive my Thinking about my own death every 30 meters, man. Mm-hmm. Uh, just thinking about it August 14th, 1962 they hold through right?

um You know, is it really calling a hole through? Yeah, you hold through that's Nice, I mean, I like I said, this is a very arousal So this is the pair of the workers clambering over the pile of spoil from the last explosion Uh, you can see, you know the the two the two sides of the tunnel were out of plumb by 13 centimeters. Wow, that's not bad for you know under a big fucking mountain. Oh, yeah And then, you know, the workmen celebrated the exchange flags

You know, then they start fitting out the work fitting out the tunnel, right for guns Yes Here you can see some of the dignitaries taking the shitty little train to the uh to to the place where They hold through some fantastic like european post-war faces there. Oh, yeah, everyone looks like kissinger Everyone looks like they all have the glasses and that's that that's how you you know If you're a sort of a europeanist if you're a being on the european project, that's how you had to look What part are you? I'm a christian democrat. Oh, I'm also a christian democrat, but from a different country I hate you

When they fit out the tunnel you can sort of see how it's arranged here You have these three galleries underneath the main road surface And then um and these are for ventilation um Mostly for ventilation theoretically for evacuation, but we'll get to that later Um, uh-oh, but yeah, then the road surface is farther up, right? And there's a couple galleries that provided connections from the ventilation shaft to the main tunnel, but not too many, right?

Hmm, and then your safety features on here They carved niches into the wall every 600 meters That were fitted with fire doors And if there was a fire You went into those niches and you closed the door and you waited to be rescued Hey, just waste it out. Perfect. Exactly. And the doors were good for two hours

of uh fire That's not that is that better than normal Worse than like it's better than normal at the time. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just didn't I don't know much about tunnels I mean, it's better than fucking like self-rescue or tunneling up through the mountains. So this is true Yeah, you can't really in real life. You can't really minecraft your way out of there by punching the rock, you know Oh, that goddamn attitude. Do you stack ice up easy? Yeah Um

Here's here's an image of uh, I want to say the french side of the tunnel I had this nice fun canopy up here Uh, still has this nice fun canopy actually right um And here's some guys driving through the tunnel In their 1960s european cars. Oh, is that a fucking citroen ds? Uh

Where oh, you uh, are you jumped ahead of slide from me? Yeah. No, I I I see the nice alpha there. I do like the alpha. Yeah Hell yeah, it's an alpha van behind it too. Oh, yeah one of those. Yeah Oh engine problems. You can't even begin to fathom You can see on the side here. Here's one of the uh traffic lights that they use to stop traffic in an emergency Also, not the tunnel is plenty wide enough for a car to turn around but only if it's this 1960s european car Yeah, um, yeah, if you're in your comical little italian van taking your various ingredients to market on the other side of the Alps, you can do that fine. Yeah, no problem. There's a problem the tunnel turn around. Uh, leave Yeah, if if there's a fire you just drive out

Hit the bricks if you will. Yeah, exactly commemorative postcard from when the tunnel opened I think that's kind of cool. I think that's a name. Yeah, that's driving my fucking didi on bouton through uh through the Alps So this is a a momentous achievement in the field of shipping everything by truck Yeah, and getting rid of you know, these Obsolete electric trains, right? Um, this is something that would never come back to haunt civilization Um, well, thank you all for that very precious of you ross. Hmm the uh the mont block tunnel

Soon became home to nearly a third of trade By value not by volume or by weight This this is a theme for you Just really realizing that trains are very good at transporting both value, but especially volume very good. Yeah I mean, you know, I know that you can easily have a truckload of electronics That is more valuable than like three trains a coal Yeah, who would win like one van full of tv's or you know, a six mile long train full of aggregate That's worth five dollars plus parts and labor. Oh, probably the aggregate tv's are really cheap now

Yeah, well, but we got to figure out a way to make tv's out of aggregate That that's the next frontier Do get on that flintstone shit, you know, that's a good point. Yeah. Well, you need you need uh, you need uh, recruit some animals Uh that makes snarky comments. Yeah, that's sure. It's a living. Yeah, totally Probably the this was uh soon home to a third of trade by value between france and italy Right and operated without incident for many years, right? Um, well, there were some incidents. There were a couple minor fires in the tunnel But they always extinguished on the spot by uh truck drivers, right?

um You had a very complex scheme for monitoring the tunnel in which there were separate French and Italian organizations that monitored their respective sides of the tunnel This sounds familiar from the channel tunnel fire after so But wait a second the channel tunnel fire was after this. Are you saying we didn't learn from history at all? Alice guess what? Well, you know you know No, um

We are a dumb species All right, so you didn't have you had those several small fires, but nothing serious happened There were some safety improvements that were carried out in 1990. They added additional places of refuge They added cctv cameras They put big changeable signs on each end of the tunnel um You know and then uh, and then they upgrade change them round to you are now entering italy on the french side for laughs Yes, exactly

And they upgraded painted welcome to cleveland Uh on his house in cincinatic Hmm And then they uh, they upgraded the fire doors on the uh niches on the wall Do a whopping four hour fire rating. Oh, yeah. Now. You're twice as safe. You can just hang out You can watch two like long movies in there they also install the sprinkler system

and two separate automated fire detection systems All right. All right feelings feeling safer and safer. I'm in my fire refuge. I'm watching avengers endgame I can finish the whole thing before I die Um, yeah, no, I feel good about this now. These weren't two separate Conviguous fire detection systems. It was just that the french and italians use different systems for their half of the tunnel Oh, okay. They should they should put a border post in the middle of it with that attitude Just just yeah I'm the one italian guy who has to like raise and lower this barrier for every car and truck that comes through

I think the french used an electric system and the italians used a system that was diesel gas and tubes Oh, hey, I wish I wasn't right if it catches fire then, you know, there's a fire as it turns out flammable and inflatable I mean the same thing I And you had a lot of disputes Uh over capital improvements to the tunnel in general between the french and the italians as to who was supposed to pay for it again, this is um This is really managed as two separate tunnels that happen to be connected to each other

Yeah, there's a little tiny join in the middle where it's just like bare rock and you just like, you know trip over that bit It's like when you cross the ball It's like when you cross the border between like, um Uh, what you might call it really any state in any other state and there's sudden disrepancy in the pavement Yeah, yeah, Pennsylvania any other state? Yeah I think we should we should investigate more comical ways of doing this I think we should have a border post on a long staircase and then the stairs change in height at the exact border So you just fall flat on your face when you hit the border

I It's Justin Uh, so this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to People are annoyed by these so let me get to the point. We have this thing called patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month and we give you an extra episode once a month Uh, sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for Um, it also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes So you can learn about exciting topics like guns pickup trucks or pickup trucks with guns on them

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March 24th 1999. Oh no. Oh boy Bill Behr de Grave. Oh boy Was driving a Volvo at fh 12 semi That's uh, that's this. Oh, no, this is an fh 16. Excuse me. Close enough of same same Volvo 240 for this slide. So I I don't love that you're using a guy's name. You know, like That that's generally a worse sign even than a date. Yeah He was driving it not with the trailer full of logs like this shows. He had a refrigerator trailer Full of 12 tons of flour, which doesn't need to be refrigerated and nine tons of margarine, which does

I mean, listen, it's it's a cold trailer. That's the opposite of fire. It's a good point. Yeah Um, and he was bound for italy Right, he entered the tunnel from the french side And he got nearly halfway through the tunnel before drivers started waving and flashing lights at him And he figured out pretty soon why The truck Was on fire I'm accidentally doing some metal shit. I'm driving a truck that's still on fire

I mean, if you're halfway through that's the point at which you should just floor it, right? I think it was only a little bit on fire at this point. It was really just a white smoke coming out of the cab Yeah, well, that's an interesting one So I I the more I read about this the more I wonder if he had just kept driving Would the fire have spread as quickly? Um, interesting. Yeah, I I I have no idea. Um, I'm not I'm not a fire safety expert, but But anyway, what he wound up doing he stopped the truck. He got out his fire extinguisher He started trying to fight the fire

Yeah, and this is a big truck like even if you like, uh, you pull over or whatever. You're still blocking one lane like Yes, right. Um, now once he stopped and he got the fire extinguisher out The fire suddenly grew much bigger very quickly Uh, which I would suspect is because of paralysis, right? You know off-gassing from various heated materials in the truck suddenly instead of being swept away by the air current Um, they are now just accumulating the fire gets a whole lot bigger a whole lot faster That's that's my theory is that maybe if you kept going this wouldn't happen But again, I'm not qualified to make a definitive statement there

In either way, uh, make sure you know how to uh operate a fire extinguisher You want to use the pass acronym? You pull the pin you aim at the fire the base of the fire and you sweep and you keep going until it's out Well, you don't have a fire extinguisher anymore. Yes case run for it. Yeah, there's no shame in running for it Throw the empty fire extinguisher at the fire to try and disorient it and then run for the exit So anyway, when the flames got much bigger, um, he was like Well, I can't do shit about this and he ran away towards the italian side of the the tunnel Okay, um, he kept running and he got out of the tunnel. Um, I mean that's that's good cardio. Yeah, that's pretty good cardio right there

You're doing like a minimum 1.2k. Yeah, I would run for it Yeah was uh It was 11 kilometer tunnel. He was smack dab in the middle. Oh, Jesus. Wow. Okay. He did a full like 5k off of Like a standing start. I mean with adrenaline going but still that's that's pretty good. That's not bad So there were 18 trucks and 10 cars stuck behind this and now out of control fire Right on the french side Um, and we're still coming in behind uh, uh at this moment. Yes

Great Yeah But those were that's what those are the vehicles that get wound up Being found at the end. Um, oh, no There are a couple that's just like popping out of the oven a little bit There are a couple vehicles who managed to do a three-point turn and drive out of the tunnel Couple vehicles coming from the italian side just drive right past the fire. Don't stop um

Hell yeah Um, but most of the vehicles behind the truck they stayed in place, you know, it's like, all right, roll up the windows Let's wait for the authorities to do something about this, right? Uh, which proved to be a bad idea Yeah, but nobody tells you any different like again, they don't they don't give you any training if you're just driving a car They're just like, yeah, all right. I'm just a safe safe trip. You know, all of the trucks can't get out Yeah, um, they can't turn around at all. They're stuck in there mm-hmm

Now the mont block tunnel Situated as it is under a mountain Frequently experiences conditions where the weather on one side of the tunnel Is significantly different from the weather on the other side of the tunnel. Oh dear And this results in sustained air flow In one direction through the tunnel, which today was towards france right good You just have a big like chimney going

In addition, the italians decided the thing to do for this fire Because at this point where a couple minutes after the fire starts the italians find out about the fire the french find out slightly sooner um To separate control room sort of guys just articulating and yelling at each other. Yes Yes, and and they are they they the italians decide We need to get this smoke out of the tunnel so they kick on the ventilation system and really start pushing Air into the tunnel as much as possible from the italian side, right? Yeah in order to intimidate the fire by giving it too much air

Yeah, sorry. I took the fire. Yes. That's how that works mm-hmm Now a major fire in a tunnel That's pretty bad, right? Oh sure But even a major fire in a tunnel With artificial ventilation Providing more air to the fire It turns out to be much worse

So one of the things the ventilation system wound up doing Is they De-stratified the um the smoke right ordinarily, you know, the smoke would rise the top of the tunnel sort of flow out that way Um because of the air flow The smoke now filled the full cross section of the tunnel right Oh, okay. So it's just like it's his mortal in the whole length Oh, yeah

The whole length of the tunnel from from the middle of the tunnel towards the french side It's just all smoke, right? The smoke is mainly composed of carbon monoxide and cyanide Ah our old friend it keeps showing up in like big structure fires for some reason. Funny how that works Yeah, you know, it's it's uh that that old hcn. It turns out it's relatively easy to make in a lot of combustion scenarios There's a lot of shit that like off gases cyanide when it's on fire Meanwhile, I'm just thinking of like french truck driver rolling down the window and like lighting a galloise off the air The fire Grew extremely quickly at reach temperatures estimated at 1000 degrees celsius or 1800 degrees fahrenheit, right?

mm-hmm Now firefighters were dispatched from the french side of the tunnel almost immediately and they arrived At the scene or close to the scene just as the power went out in the tunnel Oh boy Now they're in total darkness. They're in very thick smoke And the firefighters found themselves blockaded in the tunnel by stopped vehicles So they can't really get close enough to the fire to fight it And they can't turn their fire engines around

mm-hmm so They they can't do shit They wind up abandoning the fire trucks and seeking refuge in one of the fireproof niches along the walls of the tunnel Right, so 15 of them crammed into two of the niches, right? Oh, Jesus They have time to get like breathing apparatus on or are they just raw dogging it? I was not able to figure that out, but I think they had breathing apparatuses based based on later events I would assume they had them. Um, yeah, oh like that

You don't want to leave those in the truck. I guess Yeah, exactly Some of the some of the civilians also managed to cram themselves into fireproof cubicles But the problem is they were they were relatively fireproof, but they were not smokeproof, right? Oh Don't like that. Yeah, so this is uh, so you know you get in there and then there's this horrible smoke sort of drifting in under the You know, it's not good. Mm. We're still only minutes after the fire started Yeah, and you're in there with the firefighters. So you're like, oh, we're gonna be fine, you know, we're saved

Anyone who is in a car on the french side of this point Had found their cars had stalled out for lack of oxygen, right? So they can't they can't drive out of the tunnel at this point A couple of them tried to escape on foot and they all died um, mm-hmm Firefighters who are cooped up in the cubicle they reported hearing Popping sounds from the tires being uh, exploded by burning fuel. They heard cars fuel tanks exploding The Italians are absolutely apocalyptic. Oh, yeah, the Italians were still pumping air in And they hadn't managed to get their fire crew into the tunnel yet, right?

Yeah, I mean all of them are on like mandatory nine-week vacation because they're all in like unions. Exactly, right? Because they're all PCI guys No, they're all busy like getting held up by 20 simultaneous operation gladio attacks Yeah, they also they got word of the fire later than the french did because their side of the fire protection system um Had been partially switched off Why because that's given because it was given to It was giving too many false positives NATO had been told that Gaddafi was going to be driving through the tunnel that day

Uh, things of this nature Let's get it was it was unclear to me exactly when they found out the fire was happening, right? Um, two weeks after the french firefighters are still on the company in the niches and they still have radio contact With the french side not the italian side. They use a different radio frequency God damn it It's the same radio frequency but there's a slight accent on one of the numbers. Yes My favorite thing about humanity is we just never learn from our mistakes. Yes, we used to as a species Please note this is a photo of the goddard tunnel fire

And not of the tunnel fire we're talking about because there's no photos of that happening But you know a representation of fire in a combined space Yeah, yeah Everything else I could find for this was like more obvious demonstrations where it's like a single car parked perfectly in the middle Yeah, this gives you some more idea of I think the like wall of flame effect Yes, just imagine that for several kilometers and you're like off to the side of this in a tiny little fucking smoking room Um, now the fire at this point is spreading to other vehicles in the tunnel. You know the cars the trucks Um, all the people in there are long dead by now

Um, basically everyone's stuff. It's like catching light out of sympathy. Yeah Um, yeah, because all the all the cars and trucks behind the burning truck it all stopped very close together um, you know, there's a big traffic jam in there full of dead people and um, Little worse. Yeah, exactly. You know, because you know, they're not going to move. Um It gets sort of bastards. Yeah, no matter how much you honk at them And so You know at this point The the the fire's reaching other trucks and they're also full of flammable cargo, right?

And the firefighters are still trapped In the niches behind the fire Um, the italians finally got their shit together And their fire trucks arrived near the scene at 11 and 11, right? And the italian side of the tunnel Was completely free and clear of smoke. Hey, the ventilation works It turns out it works pretty good for the italians. That's so good for the french. It's making it france's problem. Yes Meanwhile on the french side, it looks like satans fucking urethra, but on the italian side

You're like sunbathing off of the nice radiant heat of this Hey Giuseppe, you're blocking my life Italian firefighters all like putting sun cream on each other's backs So So they were able to get close to the fire, but the the fire was so hot at this point They couldn't get close enough to actually fight the fire. They were forced to retreat as well And this was not great if you were say a trapped french firefighter In a niche, right?

But they were still alive and they had radio contact, right? And they the the the french Initiated what they called plan rouge Oh, I would love to initiate plan rouge. Yeah This is also around the time when it's rumored that an italian man who was sort of a tunnel patrol officer named pure lucho spadino To nazi, right? Oh, he wasn't

Yeah, uh-huh I wouldn't call them spadino because he's very thin Like spadino is italian for rapier right He was equipped with the self-contained breathing apparatus He rode his motorcycle in and out of the french side of the tunnel to repeatedly save victims from the fire. That's the rumor Uh in actuality what likely happened is he rode in once He managed to pull a guy out of a truck and shove him into a fireproof niche

Uh, and and then he died And then the guy who shoved in the he shoved in the niche also died. Oh, uh, yeah You don't want to be an amateur rescuer. I don't think Unwise. Yeah So it's one o'clock now The fire is still completely out of control Plan rouge is in effect There's specialized confined space rescue fire companies come in from switzerland and from leon

Right. Oh, yes, and they arrived to mount a rescue effort to get the firefighters and anyone else trapped in one of the fire niches out They enter the tunnel by way of a ventilation shaft under the roadway And they find an exit close to the fire And start searching the fire niches Like the worst thing I can imagine is like, oh, you have to climb through this ventilation shaft It's like a thousand degrees like immediately above you No visibility Uh, and you're looking for a bunch of ghosts are probably dead already. Yeah

And they um, it takes them until four uh, four o'clock to reach the niche Where the firefighters were And they were all still alive How These things are rated for like four hours total. They've been in there for like getting on for like eight, right? They've been in for five hours at this point. Oh, okay. Okay They were all recovered rescued alive, but in serious condition and the fire chief later died in the hospital Um, now I assume they must have had breathing apparatus because no civilians were rescued alive

Yeah, that makes sense anyone on the french side who didn't immediately get out was killed Mostly in the first 15 minutes of the fire Now if everyone on the italian side survived though so I mean I get a bit Doing a fantastic job of making it france's problem And I mean as far as i'm concerned if you're an italian patriot and italian nationalist This is a big success for you

It's like the yeah, no, uh, not a bug system working as intended Yeah, that's fine Yeah, yeah, we we found out later than they did and we still managed to make it their problem. So The fire in the meantime was completely uncontrolled, right? And even once active ventilation was shut down The shape of the tunnel effectively acted as a chimney, right? Because there's sort of um That the tunnel sort of goes on like a relatively level grade

from uh French side uh, and then in the middle it sort of drops down to the Italian side, which is also a tree color. So there's actually no difference between these two flags. I I drew Don't you have colors on the john madden? Yeah, I could but then I would get the colors in the wrong order probably It would be embarrassing So

So the fire was right in the middle at that grade change, right? And so this acts as a chimney from the italian side Drawing fresh air up into the fire and then ventilating out towards france, right? Yep Now at this point they're relatively certain that no one is alive in the tunnel Well, you look at it. You're like, um, yeah It'll be good. Yep. Yeah Um, and so they make the decision will let the fire burn itself out

Great chill 56 hours later the fire went out. Jesus christ No, thanks That's a lot of like uh burning trucks. Yes, you know It took another five days for the tunnel to cool down enough for anyone to go in and inspect the damage Italians on their own just putting like fucking like pizza stones in there to heat them up Jesus I I will not stop doing anti-italian racism on this episode of the show. I'm sorry. Jesus christ

So in the aftermath about 39 people have been killed in the disaster All on the french side of the fire I mean, that's low relatively speaking, right for what a fucking like Disaster this is like how apocalyptic it looks to like Ah, you know, you get that same number out of a big coach crash This is true. Yeah, uh, the tunnel itself was a mess, right? It's full of molten metal Um, no melted melted trucks No bodies only bones

Yeah And so, you know the recovery effort starts after this. Yeah, they pull everything out now. We got to figure out Who do we blame? Right everybody everybody sounds about right Well, lots of people were sued Uh, Gilbert de Grave who was a belgian by the way, of course He was the first guy. He was the first guy who were highly flammable blackface the whole time. Exactly He was sued. Um, I believe later acquitted because

He probably he did all he reasonably could Um, that's fair. Yeah, I mean like he wasn't like negligent and like letting the truck catch on fire In the first place. I don't think yes. Um Volvo was sued The trucking company was sued the french and italian managers the tunnel were sued Regulators the mayor of shimoni I'm gonna start pronouncing shit like shiboy can like you pronounce shimoni should like should be pronounced shibwagaw Uh

Charborg Now during the investigation it came out that no joint fire drill had been conducted in the tunnel since at least 1990 And possibly not since the 1970s. Yeah, due to insane like european feuds where they're like, we're not talking to each other They're not gonna talk to each other. We're gonna have separate fire drills But With entirely separate philosophies of how to respond to the fire Yeah, one fire crew gets to like the halfway line There's a car on fire five feet over the line. They're like, no, you got to wait for the other guys

Yeah, no, not not our problem. It's out of our jurisdiction Um, I think the the italian company responsible for operating the tunnel wound up paying 13 and a half million euros to victims fund one of the guys who wound up testifying was uh eduard abalader Who was eventually prime minister of france? Because he was in charge of the company that operated the tunnel during the time they weren't

Conducting fire drills. He must have done a pretty good job if they elected him anyway Oh, yeah, the french famous or you know, it's fine. Oh, I got out of he got out of the company before Before the incident happened They wound up Convicting gerard ronkali who was head of the security of the tunnel I mean, that's not really a security issue. Like it wasn't on purpose. That's like a safety thing I feel like there should be a a sharper divide there, you know

They sent him the jail for six months and two years suspended Italian jail or french shell because italian jail isn't real Good question. That's not that's not a joke that italy has functionally done prison abolition For a lot of white collar crimes because what happens is If they don't fucking sentence you within a certain absurdly short period of time After it's alleged to have happened just fucking leave and just go and like most of the time it's house arrest anyway This is what kept happening to to friend of the show silvio burlesconi um

You know, it's very cute. He was he was prime minister of france before the tunnel fire 93 to 95. Okay That's that's such a like thriller novel twist is like, oh, we have to we have to call the one witness We can't call the president. Yes. I mean Everyone who was charged received, you know suspended sentences Except the one guy who got six months in jail um And of course we we begin the process of cleanup Many shovels. Yeah

They uh hate proof shovels. It took three years to reopen the tunnel Wow during which time all the trucks are going over those shitty roads again um And they they did a bunch of safety improvements both physical and organizational They form a new organization around the whole tunnel Right as opposed to having competing french and italian teams Um, you know, we give it all to the swiss as like a neutral observer country. Honestly though. Yeah a bunch of un blue helmets We actually have uh, we have one muslim

That's right. That's right. It has to stay in that family. Yes um One of the passages behind beneath the roadway was now formally designated an evacuation route um, they also added a water supply reliant. They had better smoke extraction systems You know and they installed more fireproof niches, but also actual formal entrances Down into the evacuation tunnel. They had barriers in the tunnel. They got spaces for people to turn around You know, they did a whole bunch of stuff and they installed a whole fire station in the middle of the tunnel

Oh, that's cool. I'm gonna work in the fire station in like the underground base It has a special double-ended fire truck Oh, that rules. Yeah. Yeah. So if you if you get stuck you can just you know, go to the other cab and leave Oh, yes Um, and the actual source of the fire was never determined But sort of the consensus on the speculation Is that um, someone threw a cigarette out of a passing car and it was sucked into the truck's air filter Dude, you can't wait fucking like 10 minutes

You love to like discard a cigarette carelessly don't we dip I was always so so paranoid about that when I smoked. I was always like, you know I I all fucking like grind that shit to dust with my boot heel if I have to Um, that's why you dip folks. No, that's too or bisonous Um, that's bisonous.com very very difficult to start a fire with dip. Not impossible, but much more difficult much more difficult. Yes Well, what the hell do we learn from this other than make you smoke apparently don't don't smoke Don't split your critical infrastructure into a two separate

Uh different nationality organizations friends. Yes. Don't don't be french. Don't be french. Don't be french. Be italian Give a nice back make it need sir again in fairness all the people who died were trying to leave uh france Well, I mean that's that's that's a fair point. Yeah. Yeah And uh, you know, the tunnels that there are species of cave as far as I'm concerned and you should stay well clear of them Especially if you're in a car full of gasoline If if you're just in a car take the fucking switchback bullshit thing Take longer and just enjoy the view. You know, yes. Yes breathe breathe mountain air You know, look have a nice time feeling like you're on the the outside of like a milker packet or something

Exactly. God, I want a fucking bar of milker actually. Yeah, anyway Well, we were second on this podcast called safety third Not to be confused with the podcast safety third There's a podcast safety third. There's a podcast called safety third. We got to get a lawyer, dude We got to fucking yeah, we got to get on to that shit that's That's gonna establish precedent for who's saying to come after 10 000 uh losses. Yeah, yeah You can't have like an undefended trademark. You got we got to fucking make an example of them. I'm sorry

Oh, no, they uh, they they made it four episodes three three episodes Oh, well, I mean, let's make the last episode. Um, look it. Well, there's two. I think safety third podcasts Oh, uh, they started after us Murder murder murder actionable threats. Wow. I hope they have a nice time Great. Okay Hello, ross, alice possible guest and liam No guest today. It's no just we shot them actually what you should do What you should do when you when you write a safety third, which by the way, you should do and you send to

Wtyp pod at gmail.com Uh, what you should do is recommended length about one page Yeah, you you should speculate you should bet at the beginning whether or not you think there's going to be a guest on that episode Oh, I always laugh at that whether like possible guests Guests and then uh, the ones that are just hello, but like don't mention the guests at all. Yeah, that's right Yeah, I want you to like put a little fucking like roulette bet on whether you think there's going to be a guest or not So we can make fun of you if you're wrong You don't get anything if you win, but you get made fun of if you're wrong

That's right. That's the world is your problem from us. Well, there's your promise Alice we were in such a sink today. Oh, yeah, no, it's it's great. We're fucking drift compatible like that. Yeah Hey Shut up my safety third story comes from when I was still a student and I worked in a grocery store on the side In my job, there's a little bit of everything stocking shelves Ashering back room work and etc The only thing I was expressly forbidden to do

it's fine Even though I was trained to do it Was to work the customer service desk Never do it if you can avoid to tell you that in the words of the store's general manager He'd rather have a cute young girl there than me Ugh, you can already tell we got on great. Oh, I bet The story, however, is not from the customer service desk. It was from the back room Here we had a machine that we called the cardboard monster

Which was the machine a bear used to crush and shred Hardboard boxes. I need one of those to be honest Baylor's seem like the Honestly, they're just terrifying machines to me. You know, I got too much mail. I need this. I need a big industrial cardboard disposal Also, I'm very into the the idea of like what do you have it? Do you have it in the back? No, we have nothing in the back The only thing we have in the back is the fucking threshing machine from fargo and we use that to destroy shipping boxes I have included a picture of such a machine

Well, this isn't the exact model that we had is the closest I could find and it illustrates the story well enough Looks cool as hell The machine is about two and a half meters tall and has a hopper on top Inside there are two rollers with spikes to crush and shred the cardboard. Yeah, I need one of these Those shreds were then dropped in a plastic bag Which when full was sent off with the rest of the recycling that we collected in our store I guess I guess this is different than a Baylor then because Plastic, yeah, yeah, but like still though like I did for my sins like I

Unfortunately despite my principles. I keep buying stuff off of amazon because it's convenient and I'm a hypocrite and like You know tearing should apart with your hands or use your box cutter. That's that's too much effort for me I need I need the best That we will For me leo technique can offer me This this is this is very much like any of those words sounded It sounds to me like you know the the the pits with the spikes in vietnam Oh, pungy sticks. Pungy sticks. It's that but for cardboard

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We use a small anti-personnel mine to incapacitate one of the cardboard boxes and halt the advance of the others Yes, right, right, of course. This machine worked well enough in reducing unwieldy boxes of cardboard into shreds Stent it on the side of my guitar. This machine works well enough in reducing unwieldy boxes of cardboard into shreds. Yes Had just one small flaw I could not detect when the bag was full Instead it would keep on grinding and grinding until eventually Me too Until enough cardboard was caught between the rollers to jam the device It was at this point that someone had to climb into the hopper

Remove cardboard from the rollers until they were unjammed. Oh, no, and then get the hell out of there Um, I don't like that. Excellent. I have a lookout tag out thing. But uh, yeah This was a dangerous and physically heavy task. So only a few people were trained on how to do this I was one of them Q joke about the cute young girls not being allowed to do that to preserve their cute young customer service desk faces Yeah, because they're gonna get fucking like, uh, Threshed off. Yeah, they're gonna get mauled by the bell command. Yes To the store's credit. There was a decent safety procedure in place

Before climbing in we'd have to press the emergency stop button Then place our ladder over the button panel So everyone could see that there was someone in there. That's not a decent safety procedure. It should be It should it is a safety procedure I suppose it should not be powered and there should be some kind of a fucking like mechanical interlock between turning the thing on and You being fucking in there. That's why they call her Spoils for Caldwell Kelly. That's right. I think the best safety procedure here would be to not have a system

Where people have to go into the hopper full of crushing devices Yes, but if need be it should not be powered, you know On top of that Another co-worker would have to be standing outside of the machine to warn people that they shouldn't throw boxes in there That last part was that last part was often skipped when there was nobody available mind As and here's another quote from the general manager. Everyone knows what the latter means anyway Very angry now you you can you can get one of those like little fucking like lockout tag out padlocks You just loop it around something inconvenient so you can't fucking start the thing. They cost like two bucks

Yes, lockout tag out folks. It's a very good idea Um, the saturday before christmas between 11 and 12 in the morning was typically the busiest hour in the store for the whole year It's one of those years at 11 30 when the cardboard monster jammed I was on back room duties that day. It was alone as everyone else was in the store running around trying to get as much done as they could I figured there would be nobody available to stand guard as this used to be a problem even on a quiet saturday Let alone the one before christmas So I started the unjamming procedure

I pressed the emergency stop I pressed the start button to verify the emergency stop button was working Then I placed my ladder over the button panel before climbing in As I was removing cardboard from the monster's innards I didn't notice a co-worker had come up to the machine Threw in a few boxes and pressed the start button. No, no, no, no, no, no, no Fortunately for me the emergency stop button still worked Unfortunately for me that co-worker also noticed the emergency stop button was pressed and they proceeded to reset it and press the start button again

Jesus christ Okay The only reason how did you type this was this like uh, it's like speech to text or The only reason I'm still alive to tell the story today is that I hadn't actually removed enough cardboard from the rollers yet to unjam them So the motor activated but the machine was still jammed I was always very aware that while I was arms deep in the device I would have no chance of survival if the machine suddenly turned on Oh, yeah

First the other person knows about it is they're getting sprayed with red stuff. Yes If it did the rollers would tear my arms clean off at my shoulder followed by my head a few seconds later A quick but guaranteed death Not quick enough So when I heard the motor activate I panicked As I yanked my arm from between the rollers in a desperate attempt to save my life I snagged on one of the spikes tearing my arm open from my elbow to just above my wrist Fortunately this did not hit any arteries, but it was a serious enough wound regardless

Yeah, enraged. Yeah, that's what I would say too. Holy fuck, dude Holy fuck Enraged so I poked my head over the top of the machine and I said excuse me Would you please desist from your current course of action? In a very nice like moderate tone of voice Enraged in pain and adrenaline adrenaline fueled I shouted out. What the fuck are you doing you fucking idiot? Close enough as I poked my head above the hopper. I was staring right at the responsible co-worker the general manager Death penalty

She's she's right death penalty honestly though. Yeah While in the manager's office waiting for the ambulance He wrote me up for cussing him out something worse than the death penalty. Can we can can we give some of the death penalty twice? Do we like show you we're gonna get we're gonna kill you then resuscitate you then kill you again Yeah, you got you got three hits of the defibrillator. Yeah I signed the write-up with my bloody arm making sure to get just enough blood on the signature field that it was essentially illegible I was then taken to the hospital where my arm was disinfected stitched up and I was sent home with some painkillers and antibiotics I really hope this isn't in a country where you have to pay for that. Oh boy that night

All right, well they mentioned they mentioned meters at the start. So I assume it's not the United States of America Just not on that arm Yes That night I called my direct manager who was not on shift that morning and told her what happened She was one of the rare good managers and I heard a level of rage in her voice that I had not heard before or since in the six years It was working together nice good

I don't know what has transpired between her and the general manager But the general manager called me back less than an hour later to very meekly apologize Which was something I was sure he had never done before in his life Nice after that it became a 100 percent mandatory thing to have a co-worker on guard duty when the cardboard monster jammed That's still not enough if there was no one available it would have to wait I also made sure to unplug the power to the machine whenever I had to unjam it again. There we go Not taking my chances anymore. Unfortunately, nothing like this ever happened again during my time at that store

My arm recovered well and other than a large scar and a good story. I suffered no permanent ill effects from this ordeal management bastards and Liam I think I'm an anarchist now. Do you have any like reading recommendations? I can give you some uh But yeah, uh, hopefully, you know what, uh, you go ahead. I don't know about by making your job difficult that manager Should be dragged into the public square and hanged upside down like Mussolini

I think that's in malatesta actually. I'm not naming the manager. Oh, this is totally That's that's that's fine. It's kosher. Leave it. Leave it mm-hmm I hope you enjoyed this story professional minted uh professional editor to do it for me I hope you enjoyed the story and keep up the good work. Thank you all the best Martin with a j Not a real name, but I I forget Okay, well, I I take it all back. I now understand the manager's position

Our next thumbs Our next episode will be on the boston molasses disasters. Does anyone have to commercialize before we go kill james bond trash future lions led by donkeys uh 10 000 losses uh Justin I reinstalled cities skylines the other week and I want you to know i'm never going to mention the word franklin to you again That game is a torment. Um, I I tell you what there was just a big scandal because one of the modders apparently, um

Stuck a bunch of malware Into a bunch of his mods and uh, they just got kicked off of steam and then they returned and then they got kicked off of steam again Oh, not before republishing all the shit Which one I gotta unsubscribe from some modifications I think it's uh, it was like it was like, um It was like a fake fixed version of the harmony mod. I believe Ah, the actual harmony mod is fine, but the thick the quote-unquote fixed version was uh I'll link you the article afterwards. So that's why my computer is mining bitcoin suddenly. Yes. Oh, yeah

I'd like coin or whatever else. Uh, we do have I do have one announcement before we go How we uh, we got a very nice dm Just so you know, this is the first person to have done it. You're not getting it. You're not getting a shout out But I did want I give a happy birthday to this person's boyfriend whose name apparently is dash bong Uh, if that's his real name I I yeah, we need to see I did we need to see some photo ID So happy birthday dash. I get out of engineering Yeah, yeah, we're always saying this. It's a good idea podcast or instead. Yeah, start a podcast with your friends

It's easy and so long as you don't mind people Making fun of you for yelling at you to do like better audio quality. You know, you'll never have to work that hard all right, well As a nice decently short one everyone. Yeah, I was perfectly on time I got to go to bed because this is my third podcast of the day Excellent. Uh, yeah, let's uh, we'll coordinate. Uh, we'll hop offline to coordinate. Uh, that sounds good Yeah, all right. I'll speak to you guys for the fucking cycle infrastructure one, which we're thinking Wednesday, right? Yes

All right, perfect. All right. All right. Bye everyone. Bye. Oh stop the zencaster. Yes