6 ms·

When Abandoned Mines Collapse

228 points by impish9208 1y ago

LeoPanthera 1y ago
[Video]
- gruez 1y ago
  There's a transcript below?
  - tart-lemonade 1y ago
    True, but it references visuals only present in the video. It would be nice if there were stills from the video included for those who prefer to read.
    - geerlingguy 1y ago
      It takes a lot of effort—on the order of 1-2 hours per video, from my experience—to translate a video into a blog post in a better-than-just-a-transcript form. For me, I do it because I like writing more than I like making videos, and I know many people appreciate it. But my blog maybe makes a few pennies a month, whereas my video content provides my full-time income. So I'm not surprised most content creators who can, move to video-only. It's only out of passion for the written form/blogging that I still do my text posts :(
- schiffern 1y ago
  Direct link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZg1zOKm5wk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZg1zOKm5wk I do appreciate creators who give us a real website alternative, not just drop videos on <centralized platform>. Everyday Astronaut is another great one.
varjag 1y ago
I remember visiting LKAB in Kiruna, Sweden. Enormous iron ore mining operation and not abandoned at all. I believe it accounts for 10% of all concrete consumption in Sweden. The town in all its Scandinavian mid-century glory at the time was slowly collapsing with facilities and people being moved away a few km. Really hope they saved that erect rocket from the town square.
- tilt_error 1y ago
  I think that rocket still stands [0] :) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxus_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxus_(rocket) [1]: http://www.astronautix.com/m/maxus.html http://www.astronautix.com/m/maxus.html
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  I have been down the mine with my family. It was fascinating. I wish they would allow tourists into more big industrial facilities like this.
autoexec 1y ago
I was surprised that insurance companies wouldn't cover damage from mine subsidence. I guess the lesson is to never buy property if you can't get insurance to cover something (wildfire, flood, hurricane, etc) at a reasonable rate since you're all but certain to encounter it eventually and be left on the hook for high costs.
- cogman10 1y ago
  It's why programs like FEMA are so important. The issue with private insurance when it comes to natural disasters is they don't like losing money (understandable) and the climate is changing. Those two things together mean that this year you could have good insurance that covers freak accidents, but what about next year, or next decade? An area that may have only seen flooding once a century might be predicted to see it once a decade or even once a year. People still live there. Some people lived there with the insurance coverage for those natural disasters only to see it slowly go away or to be outright cancelled. We can't expect that they all migrate.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    > We can't expect that they all migrate. They can’t expect us to cover their losses, especially predictable and repeated losses.
  - ndileas 1y ago
    I feel strongly that we should save every human life it's possible to save during disasters. Fema is pretty great at that. However, that doesn't neccesarily imply that there should be flows of money available to rebuild in vulnerable locations. Insurance becoming unavailable or unaffordable is probably the best signal available that someplace is a bad place to live. If you can't afford the price or the risk ... There are lots of other places in the world.
    - cogman10 1y ago
      This assumes you are moving into an area fresh. But what about someone that's been there, potentially for generations? It's one thing to say "don't buy beach front property in the Florida everglades" but what do you do with the millions who already own such property? This came up with hurricane Katrina and Louisiana. Multigenerational communities were completely obliterated. I really don't find "the market said you should move" to be a compelling response.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
There's also a couple of old mines that are permanently on fire. Sort of an IRL Hell.
- dboreham 1y ago
  I grew up near one. On fire and under the sea, no less.
- nosequel 1y ago
  Coal seam fires are a nasty thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire
- leoapagano 1y ago
  Centralia, PA has a mine that has been on fire since 1962 and will be on fire for at least another 250 years [0] - the town had to be evacuated in the 80s because it caused people to fall into sinkholes that randomly and suddenly opened up. Scary. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
  - foobarian 1y ago
    Just drove through there a couple weeks ago. There are basically crevices in the ground exhausting hot humid drafts. Almost uncomfortably hot for a hand, and will fog up glasses.
nickpeterson 1y ago
The number one cause of mine collapses, in my personal experience, is creepers.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Actually, it is people who come in close contact with creepers.
mschuster91 1y ago
I can only recommend a visit to the "Ruhrpott" area of Germany. Probably thousands of mines were dug over the centuries, hundreds alone after WW2 when people dug for coal on their own under horrendous conditions, and none of them documented. Accidents and incidents aboveground happen frequently when old shafts collapse. A lot of former mining sites have been converted to museums, although none of them actually allow access at the old depth. You can spend a month in NRW and not be able to visit all the museum sites! The entire Ruhrpott settled and sank so much that if the water pumps in the largest mines would cease operating for too long, the entire area would flood. It's literally called "Ewigkeitslasten" (forever burdens) for that reason.
- grandinj 1y ago
  Sounds like an opportunity to get an inland lake!
  - fransje26 1y ago
    They also have those, once they flood the open-pit coal mines they've been relentlessly digging...
    - jodrellblank 1y ago
      The Lake Peigneur diaster in 1980, drilling for oil in a lake bed in Louisiana they accidentally drilled down into a salt mine and drained the freshwater lake into it. That disolved the salt pillars supporting the mine's roof and created a 65 acre sink hole and backfilled the whole area from the saltwater bay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur
sbuccini 1y ago
A great companion piece on a government bureaucrat who solved the problem on how to optimally support the roofs in longwall mines: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/michael-lewis-chris-marks-the-canary-who-is-government/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/mic...
- niccl 1y ago
  That was fascinating. And contained some interesting stories relating to the function profit = f(lives_lost)
  - alhirzel 1y ago
    Especially the part where improved safety tooling (bolts) were used to increase efficiency rather than safety: regulatory dysfunction at its finest. Interestingly, in other regulated areas (such as toxic emissions into the environmental), there are clear echelons regarding what is required such as BPT vs BAT (best practicable vs achievable technology). For the coal mining case, if BAT had been the requirement (and the regulating body had enough teeth to enforce it), Chris's work might have been easier to fund.
    - FitCodIa 1y ago
      > improved safety tooling (bolts) were used to increase efficiency rather than safety "And so, amazingly, for the first 20 years of its use, the main effect of the most important lifesaving technology in the history of coal mining was to increase the efficiency of the mines while preserving existing probabilities of death and injury." To me, this is the hardest-hitting sentence of the entire article. Be sure to remember this whenever a new achievement in efficiency (power or otherwise) is announced, be it in computing, industry, or transportation. Such advances are rarely aimed at lessening the load on the environment; not at first, anyway. Instead, they are used for extracting more profits, while burdening the environment just the same -- I think "more profits" is the incentive for such research and advances in the first place. I think the EU does it right, by demanding progress via regulations. Whether those directives are issued after the technological advances are reported, or the directives are the motivation for the research, I cannot say; either way, advances can be steered toward public benefits only via regulations.

228 points by impish9208 1y ago

LeoPanthera 1y ago

[Video]

gruez 1y ago
There's a transcript below?
- tart-lemonade 1y ago
  True, but it references visuals only present in the video. It would be nice if there were stills from the video included for those who prefer to read.
  - geerlingguy 1y ago
    It takes a lot of effort—on the order of 1-2 hours per video, from my experience—to translate a video into a blog post in a better-than-just-a-transcript form. For me, I do it because I like writing more than I like making videos, and I know many people appreciate it. But my blog maybe makes a few pennies a month, whereas my video content provides my full-time income. So I'm not surprised most content creators who can, move to video-only. It's only out of passion for the written form/blogging that I still do my text posts :(
schiffern 1y ago
Direct link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZg1zOKm5wk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZg1zOKm5wk I do appreciate creators who give us a real website alternative, not just drop videos on <centralized platform>. Everyday Astronaut is another great one.

varjag 1y ago

I remember visiting LKAB in Kiruna, Sweden. Enormous iron ore mining operation and not abandoned at all. I believe it accounts for 10% of all concrete consumption in Sweden. The town in all its Scandinavian mid-century glory at the time was slowly collapsing with facilities and people being moved away a few km. Really hope they saved that erect rocket from the town square.

tilt_error 1y ago
I think that rocket still stands [0] :) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxus_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxus_(rocket) [1]: http://www.astronautix.com/m/maxus.html http://www.astronautix.com/m/maxus.html
hermitcrab 1y ago
I have been down the mine with my family. It was fascinating. I wish they would allow tourists into more big industrial facilities like this.

autoexec 1y ago

I was surprised that insurance companies wouldn't cover damage from mine subsidence. I guess the lesson is to never buy property if you can't get insurance to cover something (wildfire, flood, hurricane, etc) at a reasonable rate since you're all but certain to encounter it eventually and be left on the hook for high costs.

cogman10 1y ago
It's why programs like FEMA are so important. The issue with private insurance when it comes to natural disasters is they don't like losing money (understandable) and the climate is changing. Those two things together mean that this year you could have good insurance that covers freak accidents, but what about next year, or next decade? An area that may have only seen flooding once a century might be predicted to see it once a decade or even once a year. People still live there. Some people lived there with the insurance coverage for those natural disasters only to see it slowly go away or to be outright cancelled. We can't expect that they all migrate.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  > We can't expect that they all migrate. They can’t expect us to cover their losses, especially predictable and repeated losses.
- ndileas 1y ago
  I feel strongly that we should save every human life it's possible to save during disasters. Fema is pretty great at that. However, that doesn't neccesarily imply that there should be flows of money available to rebuild in vulnerable locations. Insurance becoming unavailable or unaffordable is probably the best signal available that someplace is a bad place to live. If you can't afford the price or the risk ... There are lots of other places in the world.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    This assumes you are moving into an area fresh. But what about someone that's been there, potentially for generations? It's one thing to say "don't buy beach front property in the Florida everglades" but what do you do with the millions who already own such property? This came up with hurricane Katrina and Louisiana. Multigenerational communities were completely obliterated. I really don't find "the market said you should move" to be a compelling response.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

There's also a couple of old mines that are permanently on fire. Sort of an IRL Hell.

dboreham 1y ago
I grew up near one. On fire and under the sea, no less.
nosequel 1y ago
Coal seam fires are a nasty thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire
leoapagano 1y ago
Centralia, PA has a mine that has been on fire since 1962 and will be on fire for at least another 250 years [0] - the town had to be evacuated in the 80s because it caused people to fall into sinkholes that randomly and suddenly opened up. Scary. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
- foobarian 1y ago
  Just drove through there a couple weeks ago. There are basically crevices in the ground exhausting hot humid drafts. Almost uncomfortably hot for a hand, and will fog up glasses.

nickpeterson 1y ago

The number one cause of mine collapses, in my personal experience, is creepers.

johnisgood 1y ago
Actually, it is people who come in close contact with creepers.

mschuster91 1y ago

I can only recommend a visit to the "Ruhrpott" area of Germany. Probably thousands of mines were dug over the centuries, hundreds alone after WW2 when people dug for coal on their own under horrendous conditions, and none of them documented. Accidents and incidents aboveground happen frequently when old shafts collapse. A lot of former mining sites have been converted to museums, although none of them actually allow access at the old depth. You can spend a month in NRW and not be able to visit all the museum sites! The entire Ruhrpott settled and sank so much that if the water pumps in the largest mines would cease operating for too long, the entire area would flood. It's literally called "Ewigkeitslasten" (forever burdens) for that reason.

grandinj 1y ago
Sounds like an opportunity to get an inland lake!
- fransje26 1y ago
  They also have those, once they flood the open-pit coal mines they've been relentlessly digging...
  - jodrellblank 1y ago
    The Lake Peigneur diaster in 1980, drilling for oil in a lake bed in Louisiana they accidentally drilled down into a salt mine and drained the freshwater lake into it. That disolved the salt pillars supporting the mine's roof and created a 65 acre sink hole and backfilled the whole area from the saltwater bay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur

sbuccini 1y ago

A great companion piece on a government bureaucrat who solved the problem on how to optimally support the roofs in longwall mines: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/michael-lewis-chris-marks-the-canary-who-is-government/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/mic...

niccl 1y ago
That was fascinating. And contained some interesting stories relating to the function profit = f(lives_lost)
- alhirzel 1y ago
  Especially the part where improved safety tooling (bolts) were used to increase efficiency rather than safety: regulatory dysfunction at its finest. Interestingly, in other regulated areas (such as toxic emissions into the environmental), there are clear echelons regarding what is required such as BPT vs BAT (best practicable vs achievable technology). For the coal mining case, if BAT had been the requirement (and the regulating body had enough teeth to enforce it), Chris's work might have been easier to fund.
  - FitCodIa 1y ago
    > improved safety tooling (bolts) were used to increase efficiency rather than safety "And so, amazingly, for the first 20 years of its use, the main effect of the most important lifesaving technology in the history of coal mining was to increase the efficiency of the mines while preserving existing probabilities of death and injury." To me, this is the hardest-hitting sentence of the entire article. Be sure to remember this whenever a new achievement in efficiency (power or otherwise) is announced, be it in computing, industry, or transportation. Such advances are rarely aimed at lessening the load on the environment; not at first, anyway. Instead, they are used for extracting more profits, while burdening the environment just the same -- I think "more profits" is the incentive for such research and advances in the first place. I think the EU does it right, by demanding progress via regulations. Whether those directives are issued after the technological advances are reported, or the directives are the motivation for the research, I cannot say; either way, advances can be steered toward public benefits only via regulations.