Biker Boy Ballsup
When I was 18, I was an apprentice in a steel factory in South Africa. It was a huge complex, so we had a few 100cc bikes we used to get from one side to the other. It was private property, so there were no rules: no requirement for me to have a license. No helmets, either - we had hard hats. Yeah, right.

One subsection of the plant was accessed by a long ramp leading to a working floor about three floors up. I had only been there once before, and didn't really know how it was laid out. One day I went there in a hurry, screaming up the ramp at full tilt. Which wasn't that much, considering how weedy the bike was, but it was still way too much for the circumstances.

I shot off the top of the ramp, in to what turned out to be a car park full of managers' luxury cars. I don't know how I managed to avoid them all... or careening in to the barrier at the far end, which would have sent me flying in to the ground - or worse, in to the middle of a steel factory, complete with molten metal flying around. A steel factory is no place for cocking about.

PS: though I didn't see it myself - thankfully - some colleagues saw a guy commit suicide by jumping in to a pot of molten steel. Put it this way: molten steel is still steel, and a human being barely ripples the surface. 8(
( bnt what, me worry?, Sat 14 Feb 2009, 1:08, 6 replies)

Nasty.
I didn't see this one either, but at a company I used to work for, a woman jumped into one of mincers, this thing was the size of an artic. lorry, and could take two tons of meat at the time, the screw was abot a foot and a half across. There was nothing left of her. What's wrong with a pot of valium if you must top yourself, that's what I say.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sat 14 Feb 2009, 9:56, closed)

I always wondered...
...what do they do with the steel when someone jumps in? Presumably it fucks up the carbon content, so it's all scrap - oh, and it's got dead person in. Do they funeral the entire ladle full?

Or does everyone just shrug their shoulders and pretend they didn't notice?
(inflateable, Sun 15 Feb 2009, 9:49, closed)

fix it
Steel, essentially, is a tightly controlled amount of carbon in iron - so yeah, they can't sell it with the extra carbon in it. They should be able to fix the carbon by running it through the BOS process again, mixed in with good iron, but nitrogen can also be a problem. There can be zero tolerance for excess carbon or nitrogen in steel: get it even slightly wrong, buildings fall down and people get sued, or dead.

Well, you did ask..!
( bnt what, me worry?, Sun 15 Feb 2009, 23:28, closed)

I guess
they'd be able to sell it as a screwed batch. For use in ballpoint pens or PC enclosures- something where they'll appreciate the cheapness and there's no real risk of a death.

I wonder what it feels like to die jumping into one of those vats. And if there'd be a way of being dipped inside it, not feel anything, then die.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Mon 16 Feb 2009, 12:29, closed)

Suicide
The uncle of a friend of mine committed suicide by jumping into one of he brewing vats at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, where he worked. It took him three hours to die.

Mind you, he got out three time to go to the toilet.





Thanks folks, I'm here all week.
(ubergeekian, Sun 15 Feb 2009, 22:48, closed)

If
he'd been a Terminator it would have been OK. I seed it on telly.
(Rsoles, Thu 19 Feb 2009, 12:14, closed)