4 ms·
Seems like there could be more to the story.. perhaps an alternate explanation than scrap value. a giant steel frame for an antenna would have scrap value, but
by 486sx33 3y ago
Seems like there could be more to the story.. perhaps an alternate explanation than scrap value. a giant steel frame for an antenna would have scrap value, but relatively not that much. For a lot less hassle and more money you could grab a couple semi trailers and cut them up, they are usually just laying around unhooked.
Then again I guess meth heads aren’t masters of cost benefit analysis
- lxgr 3y agoScrap metal thieves are indeed not always the brightest. I've heard of cases of attempted thefts of (powered) power lines of electrified railways...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- boringg 3y agoI should feel bad for the outcome, but i don't....
- 486sx33 3y agoI agree. A tire manufacturing plant closed in my home city back in the early 2000s. I guy we knew from high school wanted the copper that came to the plant under ground in a vault. He figured for some reason it was disco … and blam fried his legs and hands completely cooked all his nerves in them and apparently one of his teeth exploded.. I mean , why would they turn service off to a manufacturing plant when they can just pull the meter ?
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago20 years ago rotten.com would post pictures of charred thieves that managed to electrocute themselves at the top of a pole.
- jacquesm 3y agoThis happened in Amsterdam a couple of decades ago. There was a newly minted industrial area on the other side of a bridge and the power company had temporarily run a pretty beefy hookup to the other side of the canal (Zeeburgerdijk) to power the various businesses there. The cable was about 4" thick. One night the power went out without warning and the power company showed up, when they found the break they found a hacksaw embedded in the cable fused solidly to the cable guts. They never bothered to file a report with the police because they figured whoever did that had been punished enough and sure enough there was a report of a guy with massive burns reporting to a nearby hospital that same night.
- inferiorhuman 3y agoHappened in San Francisco too, although without any report of injury. https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/thieves-steal-16-feet-of-copper-from-muni-tunnel/article_16acd49b-8cd1-5e3e-ac9f-25ab34b2d873.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/thieves-steal-16-feet-of-cop...
- mynameisnoone 3y agoDeath porn and poverty porn are disgusting.
- beAbU 3y agoIn south africa we have multiple stories of people destroying massive power transmission systems for the smallest piece of copper pipe or conductor thats exposed on the side of a transformer. Metal theft is almost universally not accompanied by common sense.
- boudin 3y agoIt reminds me of this story, an elderly woman cutting Armenia off the internet after mistaking a fiber with copper https://www.neowin.net/news/75-year-old-granny-cuts-off-the-internet-for-an-entire-country/ https://www.neowin.net/news/75-year-old-granny-cuts-off-the-...
- mynameisnoone 3y agoSouth Africa is one the most unequal and dangerous advanced economies where middle class white people almost universally live in fortified compounds. Desperation, unemployment, and crushing poverty is what drives such property crime. A friend of mine lived in the suburbs of Moscow in 1991. The family was watching TV when suddenly the power went out. It turns out someone stole the power lines to sell for scrap. Infrastructure cannibalism is a sign of civilization on the verge of collapse.
- beAbU 3y agoIm sad to admit that this has happened about a dozen times in my life since the 00s, in South Africa.