The Day's Dumpster Fire
In this podcast, Kara and Ed regale history's greatest mess ups. They do not celebrate humanity's successes but its most fantastic failures! This show is not dedicated to those who have accomplished incredible things, but to those who have accomplished incredible things and how they royally screwed things up in the process.
You might ask why they are doing this podcast: it's because you've botched up the best laid plans and you know what? THAT'S OKAY!
Let this show help you navigate the mishaps that you have come across where there is no clear answer available.
So sit back, relax, and listen about people who messed up way more than what you could of possibly imagine.
The Day's Dumpster Fire
Deepwater Horizon Fire Part 2. - Episode 64
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It might be a few days late, but not more than $70 billion short.
In part two of the Deepwater Horizon dumpster fire, Ed describes the ecological, economical, and legal fallout from the Deepwater Horizon explosion back on April 20, 2010. The explosion itself cost the lives of 11 me, which unto itself an unmitigated tragedy that will affect generations to come.
However, when the drill rig buckled and sank two days later, an underwater oil geyser developed that spewed up to 210,000 gallons of crude oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico.
This resulted in the largest ecological disaster in American history, and the results of this disaster are still around today.
Ed will break down what happened shortly after the explosion, how the massive oil leak was eventually contained, the impact the oil spill had on the ecology and economy of the coast lines of the Gulf of Mexico, the ramifications that followed suit against the companies involved, and perhaps what just caused the problem to begin with.
For more details, head on over to the the Daysdumpsterfire.com!
If you find this episode interesting, check out the below suggestions for your watery dumpster fire itch:
Episode 27. First Oil Spill Disaster (the Torrey Canyon Incident)
Episode 37. The Transatlantic Telegraph
Episode 46. Byford Dolphin Incident
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If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you!
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Hello and welcome to your days, Dumpster Fire, where we don't celebrate humanity's humanity's successes, but its most fantastic failures once I learn how to talk. It's not that late. Uh it's it's well it's 1 p.m. It's late enough. I guess. I've been plowing this stupid episode out for like since like two in the morning. Trying to figure that how I'm gonna tell this story. Fair enough. But yes, that that voice you heard in the background there, that is uh our famous co-host and prohibitionist, anti-prohibitionists, pro everything right, con, everything wrong.
SPEAKER_02:We'll go with that, I think.
SPEAKER_00:But yes, so yeah, joy joining joining us as always is Kara, and she is uh joining me on this rabbit hole of mine that try as I might, I could not get this to be like a four-part series.
SPEAKER_02:Because if I did, uh I feel like half the nation would be like, oh god, oh god, just a lot of explanations about how oil really reacts to water. Oh god, like so.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, if if uh you're joining us today, we're talking about the consequences of the fallout from the uh uh deep water horizon oil rig, drill rig, fallout. Um so if you haven't heard us talk about this before, you might want to go back to what episode 63? Yeah, I think it's 63.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, 63.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 63. So in episode 63, I kind of like broke down, you know, what was the deep water horizon, what was what was going on, what happened. Yeah, it's kind of uh it's kind of a hot mess. Where unfortunately it left 11 men dead, and there was a period of days where like nobody even knew, like the family had no idea. They they were not aware of where is their loved one. So they're out in the middle of the ocean with no way to communicate until after the fact, so yeah, and we still at like at the end of the last episode, we still don't know like what actually happened. Now, with that in mind, with my minutes of experience in engineering, I think I kind of figure out what happened. So let's get into it. So, yeah, let's get into it. But first, let's go back a little bit. Um, let's talk about part five, the response. So, shortly after the uh catastrophic explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, Maydays were called everywhere, it went out everywhere, it was like received all over the place. Do you know what Mayday means?
SPEAKER_02:I've never actually looked into it.
SPEAKER_00:It's actually a French term.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Mayday means help me.
SPEAKER_02:Because I know it's a call for help, which makes makes sense, but I have never I never actually looked into the history of the word, I guess, the etymology.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, and I'm I and I'm pointing to my screen here. I'm I'm I'm noticing that I have completely misspelled that. But yes, is it's a French term to say, I need help, I need help, I need help. Technically, it only needs to be said once, but in a case like this, it was probably said 200 times. Yeah, because we're talking about a deep water horizon drill rig was one of the most safest rigs out there. Its sole job was to kind of like sail out, you know, and then it would sink down into the water, it would sink down, kind of like stabilize itself, and then it would start drilling, and it would drill for like tens of thousands of feet. And its sole job was to like, okay, cool, find oil. They put a blowout preventer on it. Here we are, we're good to go. We're moving on to the next site, and the deep water horizon was rocked by this Mikondo site because it wanted to like push back. It there was so much pressure involved in this oil reservoir that it wanted to blow up the deep water horizon, and unfortunately, it kind of did. So here we are, April 20th, going into April 21st and April 22nd. They the Mayday went out. Uh, and and I'm really shocked that like the Coast Guard sent out like an armada of ships within 24 hours of this. And they were like, they they literally sent out like fire ships, they sent out everything that you could possibly think of to kind of like quell this this fire. So this isn't a uh like what we're getting into is the ecological, the economical, uh, the cost of all this. We're getting into all of that nitty-gritty in this episode, and it's no fault of the responders.
SPEAKER_01:No, they were there to help.
SPEAKER_00:They well, yeah, yeah, that they're there to help. But how many times in history have we been like, oh my gosh, responders, what are you doing? Like, why what's going on? And yet the American Coast Guard and like they were out there instantly. I did talk to a guy who was about 50 miles away from the actual explosion. He was on another drill rig, and he saw the explosion, and then about 15-20 minutes later, he felt the heat from that explosion.
SPEAKER_02:That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:So, like, everybody is just like, what is going on? The Coast Guard, what is going on? And so, yeah, the I we gotta give credit where credit's adieu. The Coast Guard was out there doing their best. However, on the 22nd of April of 2010, the deep water horizon essentially melted and sank because all that oil that was coming up was just burning in some crazy inferno, yeah, and it just melted and collapsed. And to this day, the deep water horizon is living up to his name, unfortunately. Um, it's in the deep water, and it is I think it's about a few hundred yards out of from where the BOP was. Okay, so when I say BOP, I want to specify like the BOP is the thing that sits at like the well head and then it extends above, and the BOP has like multiple different types of safety mechanisms that can close off the pipe, it can close off the mud pipe, it can close off the well head, it can close off everything to the point where yeah, it can just shut off everything, it can throw out what is known as a dead hand or a blind shear, meaning you push this button and it will shear off the pipe, like multiple different layers, and it will kill everything.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's the um the kill switch you were talking about last episode.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a kill switch or a a dead hand if you're in the uh the the Soviet era and and whatnot. So that's what they tried to do. That failed, everything exploded, and that's where we get our 11 men who who passed and all this. And there's a a lot of heroes, there's a lot of leaders, there's a lot of your average worker, and I didn't want to bring them up in the last episode because uh, like as I kind of like sorted through the news articles and whatnot, they got blamed for everything. That kind of irritated me to like no end, yeah. Because how how how can one person in that situation understand what is going on globally? And so, like, yeah, I kind of left them out, but you can find their names, you can find their records, you can find these families. These 11 families are still battling for some sort of settlement, they're battling for some sorts of like closure. So, yeah, it's uh it from a human resource standpoint. From a um, I don't know. Um God, what's the word I'm looking for? Just from a like a corporate type of perspective, how do you re-e how do you even respond to this?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I don't know. I'm a historian. No, it's tricky, but yeah, yeah, no, the HR of it all is is it's pretty tough.
SPEAKER_00:But I also know you, Kara, and I also know because you've ran accounts and and stuff like that, there's things that you can do to try to like stem off chaos.
SPEAKER_02:That's true.
SPEAKER_00:Be careful, be empathetic, and try to provide a solution. Yeah, so yeah, shortly after the uh catastrophic explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, Maydays went out, people got picked up. It's it's a hot mess. The Coast Guard sent out an armada ships to spray water on the rig, and then and you can find pictures of this. There, there's like four or five like vessels, all they do is spray water on things, and yeah, it's usually one of the first images that come up when you look it up. Exactly, yeah. And then Deep Water Horizon sinks, and now we have a modu in a spot horizontal to where it was drilling. That means the pipeline to the surface had to be severed, and now it is estimated, and it really varies. It varies between about 47,000 gallons of oil per day to 210,000 gallons per day of crude oil was spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. Oh, it's so bad. I know, but what like we make it like ultimately humanity fixes it, but we also kind of figure it out after breaking it, yes, after breaking it, but like hey, like ultimately at the end of the day, nature is gonna be like, dude, I kicked your guys' crap in, but good job. I don't know what that looks like in your mind, but once I kind of go over like the fallout from all this, like you you you may see it. So BP calls in a guy, they call in aerospace agencies, they call in all these people, they call in anybody that can provide any sort of data. Bear with me here. There's a lot that BP could have said or done to kind of like ameliorate the situation immediately. However, though, they really did dump some serious money into this, and they did not hesitate, as you will see at the end, because it's not just billions of dollars, it is tens of billions of dollars that they spent to try to like fix this whole issue. So for 87 days, the drill hole spilled oil into the Gulf of Mexico. I know it's the Gulf of America now, but it's the Gulf of Mexico.
SPEAKER_02:Continue.
SPEAKER_00:Let's face it, yeah. Anybody who's ever grown up in this nation knows that it is a Gulf of Mexico. But for 87 days, this drill hole was just left open, and it was kind of like unabated. And then the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, so the NOAA is how I'm gonna refer to them, and the Coast Guard and the EPA or the Environmental Protection Agency, and a bunch of other federal agencies, as well as universities, created a coalition umbrella over BP. Now, I want to specify right now, yes, BP stands for British Petroleum, British Petroleum. So is this like a British problem?
SPEAKER_02:I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this is where it gets really confusing.
SPEAKER_02:It happened in American waters. So even though BP is controlling it, it probably has to be a collaboration of the two countries to fix it.
SPEAKER_00:Ah so you fall into the majority in this regard because British Petroleum was bought out by an American company. Ah. But they kept the BP name, and BP, well, I don't want to say BP. BP took a lot of hit, but like England, the Prime Minister, you name it, from 2010 to like 20 whatever, they received death threats. Uh, they received all sorts of nonsense over stuff because well, if it's an American company now, even though their name is the same, then it has nothing to do with the British. I know. That's silly. Anyway. Well, it's silly, but it's also really freaking stupid. Like, come on, people.
SPEAKER_02:Just take five minutes to look up the company before you start setting up death threats.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, they did.
SPEAKER_02:It makes no sense.
SPEAKER_00:And this is what frustrates me about this to no end, is that the media never took the time. And I don't care what media you look at, you read it all, they never took the time to specify that this is yes, British Petroleum, and it's now this other company, it's now based in America, it is controlled by America, it is owned by America.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, then it has nothing to do with the British government.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. It's just like whatever. Could you imagine being the prime minister and being like Right?
SPEAKER_02:They did nothing.
SPEAKER_00:What's going on? Uh uh this is the first I'm hearing about it. So, yes, um, the coasts of like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, uh, they were going to get wrecked by all of this oil. And what's crazy is that the oil that actually ended up on their shores, super small. It was like less than 10%.
SPEAKER_02:That means it's all in the water, though.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and that's where it gets complicated because now we have to figure out in part six how to cap this well from hell. And I use well from hell endearingly because the people that worked on the deep water horizon, they called it the well from hell. This thing kicked a lot, it it tried to do everything it could to blow up the whole rig. I'm amazed that it got to this point so far. There is enough energy in this well or whatever to kind of like be on proportions with a nuclear bomb. So the first step is one, you gotta figure out what in the world is going on. So they sent ROVs, remote operated vehicles. They knew that this was going to be with when the Deepwater Horizon sunk, they knew that it sheared off the well pipe. The BOP was still in place, but like they knew that this was gonna be a hot mess. So they sent ROVs to go out and be like, can we just like turn some knobs and levers and stuff and shut this off? No, no, because there was nothing left to turn off the knobs or turn the levers, but it gets better, and this is where the oh gods are gonna start to come into play. Because, like, the guy they call in, oh, what was his name? He was Bonnet.
SPEAKER_02:Uh David Bonnet?
SPEAKER_00:David Bonnet, yes. They call in a guy. David Bonnet was literally in Abu Dhabi, and he was like an oil engineer kind of a guy, and they they called him like literally the next day and be like, hey bro, we need you in now. Like in Louisiana, get in here now. Uh, you need to figure out how to fix this. And he's like one of my favorite guys because yeah, he's got like 40 years training in oil digging or uh drilling, he's got all this time, uh, what engineering background and whatnot. So yeah, they call in this guy to be like, we kind of need you to figure this out. So, first response is is this okay. We know that oil floats, therefore let the oil float. He put together a team of people that built a dome. So, like, we have a uh a mega a mega spill here, and it turns out there was actually like two locations, so like he kind of like built this mega rig that would like sit as an umbrella over the entire oil spill, and then that that pipe would feed up into like a uh oil collection vessel and all that kind of stuff. Okay, on paper that it seemed to work. On paper, so in May, yeah, yeah, no, it really does. It's like, hey, dude, if oil floats, like just you know, collect it and just bring it up, and then we'll keep collecting it, and then we'll bottle it up and sell it. On paper, they seem simple enough. And in May of 2010, the dome was placed over the well, and things work fine for a bit. So this is a dumpster fire within a dumpster fire within many, many dumpster fires.
SPEAKER_02:I feel like if you look at dumpster fires, that's how they go. It's usually the giant one, and then there's a bunch of little ones in there.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, like what garbage bag catches.
SPEAKER_01:Is on fire in between.
SPEAKER_00:It turns out that the gases mixing with high pressures and extreme cold of the bottom of the ocean creates a substance called methane hydrate crystals. That's fun. I mean, if you're Daenerys store born, you would have loved this stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Sounds like it smells like a fart.
SPEAKER_00:Um yes, it probably does. Methane hydrate, yeah, it probably does smell like a fart. The problem is it's a solid. That's worse. So it smells like poop. Uh no, it's an ice cube. It doesn't at these temperatures, it would be fine.
SPEAKER_02:It would form a solidified fart.
SPEAKER_00:It was it was solid methane hydrate poops, and then it would collect underneath the collection well, and then it would build up like severe constipation, and then just block everything.
SPEAKER_02:Look at us talking about the three states of matter.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. We're actually getting to the fourth state here in a little bit. But yeah, no, like it's actually a a brilliant idea of just like, hey, let's just cover up everything and then just let it all just behave on its own and then travel up the pipeline, and then we can bottle it up, sell it as oil or whatever. But when you have that that methane hydrate crystals, or uh another name for it was called fire ice, it just clogged up everything and it didn't work. The next step is can't we just turn the thing off and rely on the dome thingy to collect all the oil at least contain it?
SPEAKER_02:Okay, fair.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, to be fair, this would be a logical step. I could see where it would go wrong, I think, but well, the next step was to try to use our old friend mud.
SPEAKER_02:Uh mud. We like mud. I like mud.
SPEAKER_00:So that's right. All the rectal and poop jokes from the last episode come back to us, but in reverse.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, so it sucks right back up there.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's gonna be right back up there.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's not healthy, that's awful.
SPEAKER_00:It's the bottom of the ocean, the fish don't care. Exit only, they eat their own poop, anyways.
SPEAKER_02:Not this kind of poop.
SPEAKER_00:Have you seen a goldfish?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but not this kind of poop. This is fatal poop.
SPEAKER_00:I think all poop is fatal. It's the reason why it exits our body, not goes in.
SPEAKER_02:That's fair.
SPEAKER_00:Anyway, but yeah, the idea here uh with Bonnet's group was like, okay, drilling mud is super heavy, and it can really weigh things down, it can like reduce the pressure. So Bonnet's team tried to block the diarrhoea with constipation. I hate to word it that way, given the ecological disasters, but I kind of have to roll with it. Fair. It is kind of true. So, again, this is a policy that looks good on paper. I'm not sure how this analogy looks on paper of reverse constipation. Um, but I'll let you roll with it. I'll let you create your own mental visual on this.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm just trying to figure out how they made it constipated.
SPEAKER_00:Did they give it a bunch of cheese or sort of what they did is they gave it a that they tried to like block it by doing junk loading, meaning, hey, let's dump in all this mud, all this concrete, let it solidify, let it be super heavy, let it push it all down, and hope that works for the best.
SPEAKER_02:Got it. So basically tried to plug the hole.
SPEAKER_00:They tried to plug it with constipation, but we all know at the end of the day, diarrhea is gonna win. Okay. So when this pump is now suffering from humanity's meat sweats, uh, now we have an extremely violent well pumping oil into the ocean, and all that mud on top of what was already expelled earlier, and all this other stuff that's coming out is mostly toxic to marine life. Uh it's all now jump the marine life.
SPEAKER_02:It's so bad.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this is this is where it gets absolutely wild, and this is where we are getting into billions of dollars of repairs and and environmental issues and whatnot. So that mud, I would argue, is even more dangerous to marine life than the oil itself. Because at least the oil itself is made of hydrocarbons. The oil itself is made of you know, just like broken down dinosaurs. That's not how it works, but that kind of computes on her head a little bit. This mud is gnarly, it is heavy metals, it is heavy compounds, it is teratogens, it is all sorts of nastiness. So they've tried to cap this thing off, they tried collecting oil from it with this doohickey, they've tried sticking pipes inside of pipes to try to like get down into there to try to like figure out like, all right, cool. Okay, we can't send one. I hate to say it this way. You don't want to send one big pipe down the hole, you want to send many smaller pipes down the hole. Uh I see Kara just like, oh dear. It's like a uh it's like a junior high locker room right now.
SPEAKER_02:It's so bad.
SPEAKER_00:It is, uh, but when it comes to stuff like this, it it it it it does kind of work. So the issue when you have multiple pipes in one hole, um you're you're gonna get some stuff that's gonna leak out.
SPEAKER_02:And even that's what I was thinking.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes. Um, but yeah, you're you're still gonna get stuff working its way around this method. The drill ship Discoverer Enterprise managed to collect 924,000 gallons of crude oil using this method. So by sending a whole bunch of stuff down there, even though knowing that stuff was going to be escaping, by trying to collect as much as they can, 924,000 gallons of crude oil that they can now turn around to sell, that's uh that's not a half-bad approach. And it did buy some time for the surface cleanup crew to try and figure things out. Because don't forget, at the same time that this was going on, you had tens of thousands of people trying to like collect this oil, absorb this oil, skim this oil, burn the oil.
SPEAKER_02:Like just trying to get rid of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they're just trying to just collect it for whatever it's whatever it can be, and yeah, it it still was a problem, and this was not a permanent fix. They found out they had a second leak.
SPEAKER_02:Good. I'm sure they were real thrilled about that.
SPEAKER_00:Actually, they weren't.
SPEAKER_02:You don't say well, they weren't surprised by it.
SPEAKER_00:So, Kara, and and and you as our audience, you can do the same thing, and this is gonna tie in later on to what I'm talking about pipes with multiple holes and and and all that kind of stuff. Next time you make spaghetti, take a dry noodle. Again, that sounds weird, take a dry noodle, grab it end to end, and then bend it. How many pieces does it break into?
SPEAKER_02:I'll let you know. I'll go try it, and then I'll report back.
SPEAKER_00:You're gonna discover that it's gonna break into three. Because when you bend a rod, such of brittle substances like a uh starches or carbohydrates or whatever, or metal, when you bend it, when it breaks, it's gonna break into three separate sections. So now we have two leaks. So thankfully, on May 10th, some uh smart people, I'm assuming they had really, really thick glasses, lots of pens in their pocket.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's a stereotype. Leave the nerds alone.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but it's also the nerds that figure stuff out. Right, that's why we need them. They kind of solve a lot of these problems.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, we need them, they're good people.
SPEAKER_00:So in May, what these nerds decided to do, and and and nerds is an understatement, it's actually it's a misstatement. Um, these are people like Bonnet and the rest of them that are like, cool, I just got pulled out of my site to go spend the next 87 days here working 24, 7 hours a day to figure this out. And if I don't, I lose my career. Like what they were able to accomplish, I'm sorry, yes, did it take 87 days and did it cause unbelievable amounts of damage because they couldn't figure it out sooner? Yes, however, though, they did figure it out and it could have been so much longer and so much worse.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, that's fair.
SPEAKER_00:That's kind of how my mindset is, and and you'll notice that I really haven't focused on names of the executives of BP. I haven't focused on a lot of like, oh my goodness, what could have possibly happened? Who screwed up? I don't know. I just don't think people screwed up here. I think this was a matter of people trying to do what they feel is best to fix the problem, given what they were given. I can't fault a person for that. I'm sorry. I I know our show is about dumpster fires. I know our show for the most part revolves around people that have really crapped the bed, but it's super hard to really pass judgment for anybody who is in that moment sometimes, especially in a situation like this where it was only 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_02:I think we have done a good job in explaining the perspectives of people who make the choices they make. So I I I I would defend us in that we don't really unless it's somebody who deserves it.
SPEAKER_00:We don't really like Adolf Hitler.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00:We we can't even have a show on Adolf Hitler because the animosity that we have against such a guy would would tarnish a show. Like there was no way we could ever be balanced on somebody like Himmler or Hitler or other mass murdering psychotic despots out there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I couldn't. It would have to be done in a certain way.
SPEAKER_00:It would be, or like with the Native Americans, because I know we're we're passing Thanksgiving. Like, I I would want somebody from the Native American community on this show to moderate it, regulate it, and keep it truthful. So there's a reason why we haven't done a lot of stuff like this, and and and it's with that train of thought, is one of the reasons why, like, I'm kind of taking the approach that I am with this, is like I'm trying to focus on the people that are trying to fix the problem, not cover it up. Like, let's celebrate those guys. So, what Bonnet and his team did was like, okay, Kara, have you ever had an explosive ejectile like pimple before?
SPEAKER_02:I feel like everybody has, especially in their teenage years, you know? Yeah, that's a normal human body thing.
SPEAKER_00:Where it's like, man, you squeeze this thing, and it's you're you're gonna spend a half hour cleaning your bathroom mirror.
SPEAKER_02:That's a long time to clean up a mirror. That's a big pimple.
SPEAKER_00:I think it happens more to like male sports players. Possibly. So there was another idea brought on board that I thought was kind of clever was like, okay, the main deep water horizon site is like the pressure is just astronomical. Whatever we would do with this thing, like if we try to cap it with a dome or whatever, it doesn't work. And like the next step is like, okay, let's try to relieve the pressure. Hence the pimple analogy. If you have two pimples that are connected, releasing one eases the pressure on the other. This is exactly what has been running through your mind all day today, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02:No, I've been deep in the 1930s. So no.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, no, the idea was that they sent out, and uh I love the name of these ships, the development driller three.
SPEAKER_02:I like the number at the end. It's good.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I I feel like this is something that you could only find in very specific shops. So I'll just let you roll with that. Because they also send out another driller for the uh the for the purposes of of releasing more pressure, the development driller two. Wow. Right. On on May 16th. So, like the idea, so May 10th, hey, let's send out a driller, we'll go down near the Mercando site, try to relieve pressure. And what it was is that it would try to vent out gases again. If you're uh if you're a specific item and a specific source called the uh development driller three and the development driller two, releasing specific gases, you've got a task on your hand.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it's a mission. Yes. But yeah, the idea was like, okay, if we can drill enough holes around the bottom of the ocean until the main leak to just like calm the F down. Like, dude. Now, the engineering involved in this is incredible because they had to look at the pressure of the values of the oil, the crude oil and gases spilling out of the main drill head from the deep water horizon. And then they had to figure out how far out they need to go to drill relief holes to vent some of those gases and pressures out so that they could readdress the the main issue. That's uh that that's some incredible modeling and math. And I was in engineering school around that time where we were kind of given much scaled back problems to this, like way back when there was this like, oh, you know, what's the difference if you subtract 30% of the pressure of this heat sink versus that flow valve and and whatever? And from what I remember being awake in those courses, it's pretty involved.
SPEAKER_02:I commend you for being awake.
SPEAKER_00:Um, well, for the ones that I was awake for. There's a reason why I became an English teacher, which that gives you an idea of just how bad it was when you go from mechanical engineering to British lit.
SPEAKER_02:I wouldn't even give engineering a try. I know my limitations.
SPEAKER_00:So but I also know that you would never give British lit a try.
SPEAKER_02:I would. I have. I've done it. Remember, my minor is in literature.
SPEAKER_00:Literature, but like old school British lit from like John Dunn.
SPEAKER_02:And I've I've taken a class on Brit lit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's kind of boring.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there were some there's some that I like, and there's some where I'm like, it's not my favorite. You know, it's fine. Just like everything else.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. There's gonna be pros and cons to all of it. So they start drilling these these vent wells, and now it it made it possible to like start capping off this main leak. By June 3rd, pieces of the damaged well head were removed and a new cap was installed that in conjunction with the reef wells and a subsequent cap, the flow of oil can now be somewhat retained. However, the US government, when they kind of looked at what happened, uh thinks that 50% of the oil was still being vented into the Gulf of Mexico.
SPEAKER_02:But that's only 50%.
SPEAKER_00:It's half yeah, yeah, that's less than glass half full. Yeah, yeah. It's it's way less than than what it was, but it's still well, it's like the 3.5 Ronkin thing in Chernobyl. It's like, oh, it's not terrible, but not great, kind of a kind of a thing. But some containment was achieved, and some value could be pulled from the wreckage. On June 10th, 2010, we're introduced to what I love the name of this. And I'm I'm reading a book about like interstellar travel through like timelines and everything, and the universe purposely puts these things in place to keep us like I cannot appear in a timeline when you're in high school, like the universe won't let me, and in physics, that's called a top hat. Okay, so a top hat is what keeps 42 year old men from showing up in you know, 15, 16 year old girls' lifetimes, but it also that does a laws.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, yeah, thankfully we have social laws for all of that. Um, unless I was a school teacher.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, what year did you graduate?
SPEAKER_02:2011.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I started teaching in 2012. So the laws still don't apply. Cool. All right. But like these top hats are kind of designed to be like an end-all be-all. Like, we're gonna cap this thing off with these top hats, and it's gonna be great because we have the top hat number 10. It's better than the number nine.
SPEAKER_02:Does it go to 11?
SPEAKER_00:Doesn't go to 11. It doesn't need to be 11. It's just easy to be. And um, this thing was interesting. And and I've seen some of the engineering on it. It's kind of cool because it combines everything from like siphoning oil out to using vents to dump in more and more uh cement and mud to try to like keep the pressure down. Like it was the end all be all. Like it was supposed to do all the things. It's supposed to, and and you know how well anything engineered that is designed to do all the things.
SPEAKER_02:The uh the construction guys on the field would beg to differ with the engineers, the time old argument that is in the construction world.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, like the the the machinists and the whatnot were that and my my dad, who was a machinist, hated engineers because he would look at these plans and be like, This can't work. This is this is breaking the laws of physics, yeah. And then the engineers would go back to my dad and be like, How can you not figure out how to break the laws of physics?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it's still it's still in uh that conundrum is still in effect today.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yes, given your current profession, I'm pretty sure you are well aware of that. It's funny. I find it is kind of funny because then you go back and you'd be like, guys, physics isn't just recommendations, it's the freaking law. It just won't work. So you can imagine whenever you have a top hat number 10 attached to uh this sort of situation, it's gonna go off just like I hate the word it, it it's gonna pop off like Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
SPEAKER_02:There were so many other analogies that I could have thought of.
SPEAKER_00:A party. I'm just trying to think of top hat, and whenever you think of top hat, but actually, no, wait, wait a second. He didn't wear a top hat, he wore a stovetop. Yeah, he wore a top hat. No, it was a stovetop. It was like a little top. Yeah, straight up and it was super tall. Yeah, those were the stovetops.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:A top hat is shorter.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. I think most people think top hat, they don't really think about the technical differences.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so what analogy would you provide?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know. You said pop off like a party, you know, like a poop party or something that would have a poop party? Yeah, with the mud and the oil, you know, we're gonna keep the poop thing going. But you went with assassination.
SPEAKER_00:I I went to like you went to like eight or nine, I went to like 12. Just okay, so like a uh a party pooper popper, uh the the top hat thing didn't work. So back to the drawing board. Shockingly, on July 15th, the best option up to this point, and and it it just blows my mind how simple this was. You send one of those remote operated vehicles down with a bolt-on valve. Okay, you open up the valve so that the oil and the gases can pop out, do whatever they need to do. Keep in mind, we are in July, 210,000 gallons of oil a day has been spent. So bad. So here's the thing, and this is what I love, and this is this is where like I I love the engineering behind this. You put this open valve down, you bolt it on to the BOP. Okay, that's the damaged BOP, the blowout preventer from the last episode that caused all the havoc. Let's just bolt it onto this thing. Now, here's the key: you slowly close it. So this is where it's it it gets really interesting, and and I want you to keep this in in mind here. Okay. If you slowly close something, would you agree that that would help reduce stress in other areas?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I feel like it would give it time to slowly equalize its pressure, kind of like when we were talking about the Biford dolphin, and you have to slowly come up to give your body time to adjust. Similar to that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and that's the thing, is it's like there was a few people that understood that, like, okay, let's manually close it off, but do this over the course of hours. And this is the point where like BP and Transocean had an idea, or some people did, that like, hmm, let's try approaching this differently. Instead of just trying to like solve it in one crack shot, because it's already been blowing out oil at 210,000 gallons a day for the past 60 days, eight hours isn't gonna change much. So, you remember those two root uh relief wells? So on I have August here, that's feasibly impossible.
SPEAKER_02:Actually, no, no, July, so that makes sense. We were in July, so that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it did. It took him a couple of months. I thought I mistyped it and put April in, but that one even made more sense. So, like on August 4th, testing on those two uh relief wells were proving effective, and then what they were doing is they had those two relief wells just sending everything it could up to the ships up top. The ships would separate the gases and then just barted out the side of the ship at a flame. A lot of blue flames. I'm pretty sure all the men were like, oh yeah, I can relate after that last breakfast burrito. I know you you're married to. You've you've experienced those gas blowouts.
SPEAKER_02:I plead the fifth.
SPEAKER_00:It's called a uh Dutch oven for anybody who's been in the game long enough.
SPEAKER_02:But she's just as the woman, I am not going to respond.
SPEAKER_00:Because anybody who is not married understands it's both parties that contribute to that action.
SPEAKER_02:It's true.
SPEAKER_00:But like those those two relief wells, um, yeah, they they tested positive. And so, like, suddenly now, like, okay, we can address this original well, and anybody can go onto YouTube. This is one of the coolest things about this whole incident, is like, you like a lot of this stuff was made public. A lot of people had a higher speed internet in 2010 through 2015. A lot of people could see live time real footage of what was going on, and they literally had like a webcam just focused on this well, like 24-7, just watching it just billow out, you know, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil. So once the media saw that, like, oh, okay, it sounds like somebody's got this under control, they were now able to take off on September 3rd the 300-ton failed blowout preventer. Think about that. A 300-ton failed blowout preventer was removed and a new one was installed. On September 16th, here's our friend Mud again in cement was injected into the reef wells at a very, very, very slow weight. There's that phrase again. Let's let's proceed slowly. Let's not let's not try to piss off the guy and gods here anymore than we need to. And there is a company that's gonna get sued to oblivion. Um they left on the deep water horizon early without confirming that that cement pad that they had the blow-up preventer on and everything was fully cured. Here, they're like, no, no, no, no. Let's give it some time, let's give it a few days, let it cure. We can now close off those valves. And finally, on September 19th, 2010, National Incident Commander Tad Allen. Sorry, I have nothing against Tad, it's just really T-H-A-D.
SPEAKER_02:It's a name, I think it's short for Thaddeus.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02:I think so.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I had no idea. That actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah, whereas like Thaddeus is kind of a cool name, which is short, shortened up, like uh Frank Franklin. What about Todd?
SPEAKER_02:Todd.
SPEAKER_00:Todd?
SPEAKER_02:I think that's another version for Thaddeus, too. I could be wrong though on that one.
SPEAKER_00:Or it's just Todd. Like everybody I've ever known. Yeah, it's just Todd.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it could just be Todd, and that's cool, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've never known a Todd that could go by any other name, but I could see Tad going by Thaddeus.
SPEAKER_04:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:That's yeah, that's kind of cool. So, all right. Thanks for correcting my research on that one. That's what I'm here for. Yeah, I should have picked up on that earlier. Uh, but, anyways, yeah, the National Incident Commander uh Tad or Thaddeus, if that's your name, please email us at the uh daysdumpster fire gmail.com. Let us know what your real name is. And if you do want to like add something to this, because I know I'm missing a bunch of stuff, like hit me up. We're totally cool having having you on. So yeah, on on September 19th, uh Ted Allen officially declared the well effectively dead, and like it's it's so crazy because like that's how they refer to this like, how do we kill the well? How do we kill the well? How do we kill it? How do we end the life of this thing? And there are so many pictures and diagrams out there. You care, I'm sure I'm sure you'll have some on the days from Safire.com. Like, it is such a complicated process to get all of this to work in tandem just to put a cork in it. Like, that's all they had to do was just put a cork in it. And it was such a monumental task that took 87 days, and like when Bonnet and his crew was called in, I I'm pretty sure out of all those 87 days that he was working on this, he probably got nine hours of sleep.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I can imagine.
SPEAKER_00:So, part seven. The cleanup. Here's another dumpster fire. I'm gonna make some references to the uh Tory Canyon episode.
SPEAKER_02:It's a good one.
SPEAKER_00:Because like cleaning up the oil is just as tricky as like trying to stop it from flowing. So there was a whole bunch of different methods that were used to clean the oil slick. Um, like people were out there treating this as though it was like a shipwreck, right? Like the Torrey Canyon cracked open outside of Britain and all this oil dumped out, but we knew how much was on there, and they knew the measures that would effectively take care of that. But there was 210,000 gallons of crude oil being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico per day. This made contaminant or uh containment and cleanup very difficult. The daily dose of crude oil being dumped into the Gulf made it seem like to some people, when I was listening to some other podcasts about it and whatnot, they're like, dude, this disaster has a mind of its own. Like we have to respond differently every day to because it it changes every day. Whereas if you crack a boat in half, well, we can look at the paperwork and tell how much oil is really on this thing. So, one huge advancement um that the uh NOAA or NOAA had at their disposal was satellite imaging. And this was a game changer. This was a a new thing that was coming out. This is when Google Maps was starting to come out, and this made it so that like every day people could log on, look at satellite imagery, and see like, oh, here's where this flood is, here is where you know that that leak is at, here is where this slick is at. And they actually got to the point where they could do infrared imaging because like certain thicknesses of oil would have a different infrared bounce back than say like a lower thickness, and they were even able to tell, like, okay, we need to send boats out with booms here, we need to send boats out that can just light the stuff on fire here, and then we can send out the boats that can put disbursement or disburns all over the place here. This is this is probably one of the greatest accomplishments to restoring human-related disasters in history, and and we're talking aerospace companies, we're talking tech companies, we're talking like everybody was just like, hey, look, we spent billions of dollars getting these satellites up there, use them from whatever you need. And that's like to me, one of the coolest things was one, how fast your response was to the initial disaster, and two, like everybody, like universities and whatnot, just go take our equipment, do what you gotta do.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:That that to me is called human advancement. Yes, humans caused this problem or had a hand in it, but humans also banded together to try to make it better again. So it's just not something that we see every day, and I want to celebrate that more than like, oh, this business executive wanted to cover this up, or this HR person wanted to cover that up, or I don't want to focus on that crap. I want to focus on the people that were like, okay, we're gonna figure this out, and we're gonna fix this at all costs. I kind of like that. So that's that's that's that's the big difference between this, and and there's like other podcasts out there, and I encourage you to listen to them because they do an incredible deep dive into all of this stuff where they look at every aspect, every person that was involved, everything. Remember, we don't celebrate humanity's successes, we celebrate their fantastic failures, and the people that are cleaning up these failures and the things that went wrong, they need to be celebrated. Anyways, let's go back to these satellites. These satellites concluded that the oil slick was, and this was about June, July. The oil slick was about the size of the state of Oklahoma. There weren't enough, yeah, that that's massive, and there weren't enough ships with booms to try to like encapsulate the oil. Because you've seen it before. I think uh anybody's seen it before where they'll send out ships with these giant floaties that will try to like circle an oil slick and then like contain everything. There wasn't enough ships, there wasn't enough booms to affect or to correct what was going to happen to all five affected states. So that's like Florida to Texas. It got so bad that President Barack Obama had to fly out and work with my personal hero, Rear Admiral Mary Landry of the United States Coast Guard, who was one of the first ones to respond to the April 20th disaster. Basically, he got with these folks and like, okay, who are we gonna prioritize because we don't have enough to go around? And yeah, it's just like, yeah, he they they they had to call the shots. Like, I'm sorry for other states. Uh, you're going to lose billions of dollars of your coastal economy because we have to do what we have to do. And it kind of goes back to like when you and I were both working together in trucking, when something was failing horribly, the proper procedure was one, tell the customer that their load is failing. And then now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always told anybody that I trained or I worked with, it's like, you tell the customer what is going wrong, and then what are you going to do about it?
unknown:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:It may not want to be what they want to hear, but it is going to be what they need to hear. And that's all there is to it. And I feel like that that solves so many problems. But we're also talking about paper rolls failing, not your entire billion-dollar fishing coastal line being slathered in crude oil.
SPEAKER_02:Though I did have that one that caught fire that one time.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, you did. I think every good account manager should have a load that catches fire.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Anyway, my brother had one of full of pizzas that caught fire. In a cornfield.
SPEAKER_02:Probably smelled good.
SPEAKER_00:At first, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's like being thrown on the rack, right? You know, where you got your arms and your feet. Being stretched out, you know for a fact there's a period of 10 seconds where, like, oh yeah, this feels great.
SPEAKER_02:That's true. And then your body straightens out.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Oh man.
SPEAKER_02:And then it gets painful after that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then, and then 10 seconds later, your arms are ripped out of your sockets. That's gotta be what that pizza load was like. Where it's just like, man, man, where's the pizza? Oh oh oh man, it smells like uh people are dying out here. I feel like it's gotta be one of those things. Unfortunately, none of that happened here with the uh Deep Water Horizon. So, oh boy. Um, so yeah, the president and rear admiral Mary Landry, they had to come out and they're like, okay, this is what we've got to work with, this is all we can work with. I I will give BP some credit here. At the drop of a hat, they ordered like 32 more vessels to come out to help with the cleanup. Like they just paid cash, whatever, get out there, do what you gotta do. Uh, and they also paid for a lot of helicopters and planes and all that kind of stuff. Now let's go back to April 22nd, 2010. Deepwater Horizon just sank. And first, since the day of the incident, the US Coast Guard was like, Yeah, we don't see any oil floating around out here because there wasn't any. Um, they the oil hasn't come to the surface yet. And before that, they couldn't tell anything different because, well, think about it, it wasn't a thing. They're all the oil was just being leaked out, was being burned at the inferno on top of the Derrick on the rig. So cool. However, once the rig sank, the US Coast Guard and NOAA saw oil forming on their surface, and there was like an O crap moment. They're like, they did hit oil, and it is now spewing into the ocean on April 22nd. Planes carrying tons. We're talking, I think I saw somewhere, it was like 1.3 million tons of chemical dispersants started dumping their their contents all over where they could think where there was a leak. God. Now, the dispersants, I I okay. They they may they may have kind of had like an knee-jerk reaction to it, but I can also see why. Because in a lot of respects, that oil that was coming up could have already been the thousands of gallons of oil that was only on the rig, right? That's a static situation. Cool, you know, we have uh a couple hundred thousand gallons of oil that's spewing out of a rig. That's fine. We'll just put the dispersants on it and it will go. But when we look back at the uh Tory Canyon episode, those those dispersants are like a double-edged sword. Yes, they help disperse the oil, they help it sink below where microbes can take care of it. They they do their job well, they're also like insanely toxic to the wildlife and the corals and invertebrates and the fish and everything else. So I have a funny feeling, and I know for a fact, Carrie, you and I have both been in this situation where it's just like we need to contain this issue, we'll deal with the aftermath, whatever it may be later on, but we've got to get something going now. And it's like a a Franklin Delano Roosevelt approach. Say what anybody wants to say about him. I we we've got to accept the fact that his mindset was like, okay, a third of our nation is in poverty, we've got a mass murdering psychopath across the ocean. Winston Churchill hasn't been sober since he was an infant. Like, we've got to try something. If it doesn't work, then try something else.
SPEAKER_02:And sometimes we'll be talking about him a lot next episode.
SPEAKER_00:Well, sometimes it's just like, yeah, you just gotta try something, and and and it may result in problems down the road, but I can't fault somebody not being none the wiser and okay, this has gotta be coming from the the rig, not the well. Use dispersants, it'll be fine. So by May and June, every available ship that could be that could pull booms were out 24-7. The goal was to corral as much as the oil slick as possible so that it could be barreled up and sold. I didn't know this, but there was like actual according to the uh NOAA podcast, there's like actual companies, that's all they do. There's an average of 200 oil spills a year, granted they're not as big as this as the Deep Water Horizon, but like all they do is they like they suck up this oil and then they turn around and sell it as like their own crude oil. Like, they literally have their own business model revolving around other people spilling their oil, and then they just turn around and sell it for a profit. Like, it's kind of like all those times we had those paper roll shifts, and there were companies that were set up, that's all they do is they just hang out on that Oregon uh Northern California coat or uh boundary, and they're like, hey, your load is shifted, we can fix that for you in 10 minutes for$6,000. Like that's all they do. Which I mean, yeah, it's I I don't want to say it's shallow. I don't want to say I don't want to criticize them because they are actually helping. Like we're using a capitalist Yeah, you're using a capitalistic environment or a situation to really clean up something. Like I said, the first trillionaire in human history will be the one that can get the carbon out of our atmosphere and fix global warming. The guy who can figure out how to do that and use that carbon in a profitable way, instant trillionaire. That's just my my own two cents. You probably don't agree with it, but in a in this world, if you can figure out a way to solve a massive problem and still be profitable, then kind of good on you, man. Like, and I'm not saying electric cars are the way. Sorry, Elon. You can email me at the daysomier at gmail.com. Kara may not read it. Because it's a we we we are now kind of getting into another problem here. At the peak of the cleanup process, 47,840 men and women were assigned to the 6,000 marine vessels, 82 helicopters, and then the little tiny 20 fixed wings aircraft that were probably dispensing dispersants everywhere. But they that that is like how many people were called out to work on this. The other thing was hey, let's just burn the oil. So, what they actually had, they had ships uh that came out, and there was like 411 controlled burns. So they would try to like corral as much like thinner level oil as possible. Whereas like the thicker level oil, they could skim that, bottle it, sell it, or barrel it and sell it. The thinner stuff that was only like one or two microns, dude, just flick a match in the ocean, just take care of it. So, like, yeah, there was between uh April and mid-July, there was 411 controlled burns that took place. So, like, imagine the pollution that put in the air. Imagine the stuff that didn't burn now sinking into the ocean. It's a double-edged sword.
SPEAKER_02:Like, we gotta take care of putting it like we gotta take care of the oil, but uh so like the air now, the ocean, the air, our world, our planet.
SPEAKER_00:We got well, so the idea is that so this is like a bioengineering thing, and I actually studied this for a week in college. If you can render something down to basic carbon, there will be bacteria that will eat it. There will be biomicromes that will take care of those other toxic things that can come down. Because what happens is that things now eat those things, and then it gets rendered down further. So, like you and I, your family, my family, we know that you're an idiotity thing. You don't have a lot of fat on you, but the the fat that you do have, and you're like, no, I'm actually a Twinkie, I'm just small, but but the like the fats and the cholesterols and the phosphates, the sulfates, the permanganates, all those things that are in your body now came from a bacteria that got eaten some point in the past. And a lot of times, those compounds, those polyatomics, can only be derived from burning hydrocarbons. Now, generally speaking, in nature, that's like forest fires, that's wildfires, that's like you know, being having that the you know, the one six fish that are just getting blasted by lightning, like that's that's where those come from. That's why they're in such minuscule amounts. But that's kind of the idea is it's like, hey, this is gonna suck short term, but again, Earth is gonna try to figure itself out one way or another. And by reducing the elements, reducing complex, like we saw that list in the last episode of all the things that you can pull out of crude oil, none of which nature can use. Yeah, but if you can render that down, okay, it's gonna look like crap, but it may be able to work itself out that way. There was another problem, though. The satellites that were surveying everything like on a daily basis, they're like the amount of oil that we are seeing on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico doesn't come anywhere close to what is spewing out of the wellhead below. So now we run into the problem of like the Torre Canyon, right? You take a oil tanker, you crack it in half, oil spills out. Yes, it is a disaster, yes, it isn't a mess. But you can look at the paperwork and tell, like, oh, this is how much oil we're going to be dealing with. It is a static incident. The deep water horizon is a very dynamic situation. Every day it's different. Every day it's just more and more oil being dumped out. And one of the things that they discovered was those dispersants that they sent out, where they drenched the surface of the ocean with all the dispersants. Yeah, it did their job, but then those dispersants sank. But now you have an oil well that is spewing out 210,000 gallons of oil every day being carried by the current with the dispersants now raining on top of it, thousands of feet below. Well, those dispersants are going to get to work. Those dispersants are, oh hey, there's oil, let's go. And it proceeded to disperse the oil, which prevented it from ever getting to the top. And it is estimated that 50 to 75 percent of the 134 million gallons of oil that came out total of this well, so 134 million gallons of oil, 50 to 75 percent of it never made it to the surface. Dang, it stayed in the middle of the ocean. Crazy. Which now we've got wildlife, animals, fish, sharks, you name it, breathing that in.
SPEAKER_04:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And crude oil is nothing like the oil that you get from like your parts store. Crude oil, like I I would I would wager that you could take a spoonful of motor oil, swallow that. I'm not a doctor, I'm not saying anybody do this, but I feel like you could take a spoonful of that stuff versus crude oil, take a spoonful of that. I guarantee you the crude oil is gonna rock your world. The nasty stuff. The motor oil is gonna rock your world, but like the crude oil is gonna rock your world in terms of like exclamation points, with maybe a death metal band playing in the background.
SPEAKER_04:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:So, so yeah, all those dispersants that like they they're thinking that at least half to three quarters of the oil that was being dumped into the ocean never made it to the surface where it could be reclaimed, regardless of BP's efforts, regardless of all the other ships, like they did a remarkable job. They really did collect like millions of gallons of oil, but millions of gallons of oil compared to 134 million. Drop in the buggy. That's that's brutal. So eventually, once they kind of got this thing somewhat capped off, where they were able to replace the old BOP, put a new one on there, they got their the relief wells, those are now capped off. Everything just turned their attention to the shorelines. Um, economically, this was a disaster because the volume of fishing that takes place between Florida and Texas. By June 21st, 2010, 37% of the Gulf of Mexico's fisheries were ordered to shut down, uh, which cost them about six billion dollars of revenue because you safely can't eat the fish that are coming out of the oceans when they're filled, were in the pet industry. You never really worked, you never worked in a pet shop, have you?
SPEAKER_04:Mm-mm.
SPEAKER_00:So there's there's a thing in the pet shop industry where it's called gut packing. So let's say you want to feed your leopard gecko some crickets. What you would do is you'd buy crickets, you would give them all sorts of vitamins and nutrients and whatnot, and then you would feed them to you'd gut pack them, you'd feed that to your leopard gecko, so then your leopard gecko would get all those nutrients and vitamins and whatnot. It's the exact opposite in this situation, because now you have fish that is being gut-packed with toxic chemicals that's not safe for any consumption. Yeah. So, like, sorry, fishermen and and vessels and fisheries, you gotta shut down. Um in terms of tourism, it is estimated that 20.8 billion dollars was lost between 2010 and 2013. A lot of it's because the food couldn't be eaten. And there are so many documentaries of like people are like, dude, we're we're gonna die. Like, we we can't produce food, we can't make money, we can't do anything because of this oil spill.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, people don't realize it's a vital part of our not just our economy, but it also it's where we get fish in that area, it's where we get a lot of stuff, rely on it.
SPEAKER_00:And I would hazard to say that whenever you have a any coastal community, the seafood that you get is a part of their culture. Like it is a mainstayer in their culture. So, like if you go to Japan and you suddenly tell the entire country of Japan, sorry, you can't collect fish for sushi, that's gonna really collect fish at all, that'd be bad. Yeah, like you can't collect anything, like that's gonna be very damaging to somebody, uh like a business owner or whatever in Japan, then say, like, in North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like, yeah, it's one of those things where when you look at the culture of that area in between Florida and Texas, and you you look at all those coastlines where it's super tourism heavy, it is super food heavy, uh super seafood heavy, and it all comes from the Gulf of Mexico, and everything is covered in oil. Like, I saw so many videos on YouTube where they were doing interviews with like local fishermen and whatnot, and I could see in their eyes like they have no idea what their future is gonna be like. Because this problem is gonna take years to fix. And I don't know about you, I I don't have enough saved up for years to figure out something else.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, but when that's all you know for generations on end, yeah, but you still need to figure it out, or else you're dead in the water. Yeah, you can't let stubbornness and pride mess you up like that.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no, no. It I I agree. I'm just saying, like, at first, when that happens to you, that sucks.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's terrifying, yeah. It's terrifying, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Because a lot of them did figure it out, and a lot of them, like ultimately, if you've got a family you need to provide for, you're gonna figure it out.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but I I've been in that feeling before, and it is terrifying.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It it especially when you don't even know how to proceed. Like, okay, cool. I gotta change professions now. What? I don't know what to tell you, man. Like, thanks, government. Appreciate you for telling me that my life is ruined. So the U.S. Fish and Wildlife uh department, uh, they began uh work to start rescuing animals from this spill. Uh the spill area that the Deepwater Horizon incident caused affected nearly 9,000 different types of species. Man. Yeah, you know, like when you play Minecraft and you switch over to like God mode, and you can just like hit spacebar twice, go up a bunch of blocks, and then head forward for like five minutes, and now you're suddenly in a different biome where you've got like weird mushrooms and whatnot.
SPEAKER_02:You're talking to the wrong human, but I'm sure we have a few listeners who know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:You've never played Minecraft to the point where you just went to a different area, like No, I get bored of Minecraft. Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It's not for me. I tried it.
SPEAKER_00:I could share my screen with you right now. I literally have SimCity 3000 playing in the background.
SPEAKER_02:I actually love um those like Sim games, Roller Coaster Tytoon, Zoo Tycoon, Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster, all of those games. I love them.
SPEAKER_00:Like City.
SPEAKER_02:I just can't do Minecraft.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It is kind of weird, but it is also like a great way to just be like, what happens if I try this?
SPEAKER_02:And no, it's fair. I understand.
SPEAKER_00:We had a lot of students that were like hardcore Minecrafters.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I always felt bad when they asked me if I played it, and I had to tell them no.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:If it had better graphics, would you play it?
SPEAKER_02:Probably not. It's not the graphics.
SPEAKER_00:It's just the concept behind the game where you're just plopped down in the middle of nowhere and just figure it out.
SPEAKER_02:I just don't have enough interest in it. Because I can play ARK for hours.
unknown:Interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, see, I won't get into ARC because that will like there's a reason why I gave up on City Skylines because I can't I don't have enough hours in the day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:To I have to work eventually.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway, we're on a tangent.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, anyways. Um, but yeah, there was like 9,000 different species of animals, and we're talking a the entire Gulf of Mexico here that was affected by this. So we're we're talking, and the reason why I brought up the Minecraft thing is we're talking like biome to biome. We're talking everything from marshlands to wetlands to deep sea fishing to the weird guy that's doing weird stuff on the west coast of Florida with the goats and and the kerosene. Like we're Florida man, okay. We love you, Florida. You you make all the news special. Um, there's a lot going on, and there's the matter of also trying to catch these animals, so like the seagulls and the turtles and all that stuff you'd like, and you gotta try to clean them up. That there's not a lot of stuff you can use to clean things up. That's why Dawn Soap is so popular, is because it does treat animals without killing them. However, universities along with the uh along with NOAA or NOAA and private aquariums, so like the one that we have here in um Phoenix, Odyssey, um they they still do water and wildlife testing. They they still go out and they check on fish, do DNA testing and whatnot. And to this day, they are seeing elevated cancer rates, uh, synthetic chemicals that you don't want in the food that you eat, uh, and other teratogens uh that make their way into the offspring. So a teratogen, I'm not sure, I'm not sure, Kara, if you've heard of that term before, but if you have a child and you smoked crack cocaine while you had that child, that crack cocaine is gonna make its way into the child, and that is what a teratogen is, is where a parent animal passes toxins onto their offspring, and then the offspring now has to deal with that. Yeah. Uh like I I kind of want to look at like syphilis uh cases and like in Africa, because it's one thing if you are born, uh it's one thing if you are born, attract um syphilis, and then you live the rest of your life, but it's a completely different thing if if you've contracted syphilis and then you pass it to your unborn son or daughter, and then they're born with it. It is horrifying the effects because that's a now congenital disease. So this this whole thing has now sparked multi-generational issues with all the uh the wildlife and even the economy and what people can eat and what they can't eat. So now, part eight. My second longest part title ever. Okay, so part nine. Part eight, cool. One of us is paying attention for every action. This is like the longest title I've ever had for a part. Part a every action, there is an equal and opposite lawsuit and settlement payout for that action, of course. So for BP, this is ugly when you when you factor in everything. Uh needs to say that there was an investigation. Um, you had an entire uh oil drill rig explode, break apart, sink to the bottom of the ocean. You have a hundred and thirty four million gallons of oil that spilled out. I like, yeah, I I can't even keep track of the lawsuits, the litigations, the hearings, the meetings. Um, there was one schedule that was released, and it was just a raw schedule of what these here the like there were just the titles of the hearings, and it was like a hundred thousand long.
SPEAKER_02:Good lord.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So apparently, when you cause the largest ecological disaster in American history, a lot of people are pissed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Don't blame you. I really don't. The last I counted, there was 133 of them, which includes like many uh it includes an umbrella of other people that were like, oh, I had this type of cancer that was these, you know, that that was derived from this incident. Oh, you have this type of cancer that was, you know, derivative of this incident. So we can we can like formulate a joint lawsuit kind of a thing. So there was that's also the definition of a class action lawsuit. Um some of these 133 are still going on today. On June 16th, uh, 2010, President Obama. This this must have been a fun meeting. He's like, hey, BP executives, state leaders, government agencies, and anybody who's involved with any part of the alphabet. Let's have a meeting. Let's talk about what we're what we're gonna do here. This was called the settlement, and$20 billion would be put forth to help with further cleanup and ramifications of the spill, which became known as the spill response fund. It is still going on today.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like 15 years later. Now I wonder who had what company do you think had to pay the biggest portion of that settlement?
SPEAKER_02:Considering you said BP got wrecked, I'd assume it was BP.
SPEAKER_00:That's just the tip of the iceberg. It gets better, and actually, I hate to say it, like knowing what I know about like corporate culture, corporate everything, everything is so much more complicated than what meets the eye. And and I know BP took a lot of hit in the very beginning for not saying anything or coming up with accurate estimates or whatever. There is there's a percent of me that's like, yeah, that's just corporate BSing, but there's also a percent of that that is like, we don't have all the facts, we can't say too much until we get more information.
SPEAKER_02:That's usually where I camp out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, where it's just like, okay, let's just be patient, let's see what unfolds. But then again, though, there are 11 men who lost their lives, their families are still trying to figure out if they're dead or not days after the incident, right? Like, if my if if one of my children were affected in in some sort of disaster, and the police had an idea of what was going on, but they can't tell me, I would be livid.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But because we've done this podcast long enough now, it's like, okay, I can I can kind of see where BP is coming from. I I really do genuinely feel where the families are coming from, and this isn't even the communities that are affected ecologically in all that.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, it's a whole complicated mess of issues. It's not gonna be a black and white thing.
SPEAKER_00:No, and and and like I said before, like a lot of this is still going on today. Like they're still trying to work this out.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:By May of 2010, 130 civil okay, so we now have the federal stuff, like the federal litigation stuff going on. We also have 130 civil lawsuits were filed against BP. And between the spill response fund and the civil suits and the criminal suits and the neglect of BP and all that, they had to shell out 69 billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01:Ooh, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.
SPEAKER_00:Well, BP wasn't gonna just take this all by themselves. BP sued the crap out of Transocean. So that was a company that ran the rig. They sued the crap out of Halliburton Energy. That was a cement company that was supposed to like lay the cement to cure the pad for the BP to prevent a blowout. And then they sued the living crap out of Cameron International, which was the manufacturer of the original blowout preventer for 40 billion dollars. So whenever you file a lawsuit like this, you always want to diversify your the sueze, I guess. Like you want to diversify it because let's say two of them get out of it and one of them doesn't, well, cool, they get stuck with all 40 billion. So, like, BP really went crazy or went ham on this. It gets better for BP because what does BP stand for?
SPEAKER_02:British Petroleum. Oh, this is the conversation we had at the beginning of the episode.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Where is BP located?
SPEAKER_02:Somewhere in America.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, because you remember the conversation from the beginning.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:BP was and it still is British Petroleum, and it still is British Petroleum, but they merged with an American company, Amaco, and they moved their headquarters, they moved everything over to America. British Petroleum Amaco is an American company. But the news media did everything in their power to say that this is a British problem. This is Britain's failure. And so, like, there was like death threats. There were there there was all sorts of shenanigans going on in Britain that had nothing to do with this incident whatsoever. And it got to the point where the British Prime Minister at that time it was like, America, calm it down. Yeah, like, yeah, just because there's the name British in there, that doesn't mean we we cause this problem. Like, get off our backs. And even to this day, they're still battling the PR from this whole incident. And I'm not trying to paint BP in any sort of like innocent camp, like they had nothing to do with this, they were completely, they should be exonerated, they should be completely devoid of uh any responsibility. I'm not trying to say that. I'm just trying to really focus on that there was a problem. I don't think it could have been fully prevented. A lot of people were lost, but a lot of people stepped up to fix the problem. And yes, the higher-ups, the executives, the leaders of these companies, they could have done better. But I honestly don't know what I would have done in their situation if I was thrown into that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Part nine. The final part. I'm almost gonna turn this into one of your uh mega episodes.
SPEAKER_02:Do it. We'll see how big the depression one is, and we'll just keep trying to up each other's links.
SPEAKER_00:No, you're you're still gonna win. I said at the beginning of all this that there was no way this could be prevented. And this is gonna strike a chord with a lot of people because you could be writing with a pen, right, Kara, and your your pen runs out of ink. Knowing you, the point zero zero zero zero zero one seconds is going of your mind is gonna be like, I'm gonna slaughter the person that failed to fill this pen properly. But then after that, you're like, no.
SPEAKER_02:I actually no there's not in the literal sense, no, there's not that.
SPEAKER_00:There's gotta be a part where you're like, ah, but it happens so short, like you don't even realize it. Because it's not even a thing in your main conscious. It's like um, it's like when you stub your toe on a coffee table, you want to burn down the manufacturer of the person that just took out your pinky toe of the coffee table, but then within a fraction of a second, you're like, no.
SPEAKER_02:Usually I just blame the coffee table. I don't blame anybody else, but the coffee table. Just the coffee table. Yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to blow up your analogy. I just I I don't get mad often at all. Often when I do get mad, it's like the coffee table.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:But I I very rarely get mad at people.
SPEAKER_00:But would it be all coffee tables?
SPEAKER_02:No, just the one that stubbed my tooth. Just the one that particular coffee table at that time.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so it's just homicide.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, just oh, darn coffee table, and then I move on with my day.
SPEAKER_00:Got it. Okay. Um, you're totally ruining my analogy, even though I gave you an I gave you an out that was like at the subatomic level of time of frustration that you could have been like, yeah, I probably could have gone for a plank time and and been fussed.
SPEAKER_02:I'm like the worst person to to talk about that with.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you're killing me.
SPEAKER_02:I know.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Try to reach out to a listener, will I sure understand me not so much, but I'm sure a listener will totally get it.
SPEAKER_00:So when when stuff like this happens, when we look at say, um, you know, like a dam breaking or um the Hindenburg bergs, if we want to look at those two episodes, we we humanity because apparently you're not a part of humanity. Um weirdo. Yeah. Um we want to like point fingers at a human being. We we we want to blame somebody who is still living. Look at Titanic. Like, look at look at the uh Boston molasses flood, look at Custer's last stand, look at Gallipoli, look at all the stuff that we've covered. Everything zeroes in on a human being. In this case, and what I am discovering is that dumpster fires happen outside of human control. It's more like how does humans control the dumpster fire?
SPEAKER_02:What are the choices being made in response to?
SPEAKER_00:Um, one B410 and 3.14. Perfect. No, what I'm what I'm trying to get at is in a very roundabout way, is that yes, Transocean messed up. Yes, British Petroleum Amico messed up. Uh, yes, the other two companies that were affiliated with them messed up. But when they pulled that BOP up from the bottom of the ocean, I'm sorry, the Gulf of Mexico, and they took that thing apart, and they they they like took micrometers to everything. There was a couple of ways that this was catastrophic, and the first one was that like, yeah, one of these things was human related, but even if it was, if it wasn't for this other catastrophic failure, it would be different. So let's go back. Let's go back to that night, okay? The pressure gauge skyrocketed like 5000 psi. They saw mud flying out of that hole, like the diarrhea that we have constantly referred to. There may have even been pieces of corn in there or whatnot. Okay, they hit that dead hand, and that dead hand is a blind shear where it is two sharp blades converge over the L the oil well, and they block it off, and there's three of them. Okay, I have pictures on this, so and and you can you can post them on the website. Um those shears are based solely on the functionality of a solenoid. Cool time to really impress you, Kara, with more engineering terms and science and electromagnetism that that you love so much.
SPEAKER_02:Do it, because I'm sure there's somebody out there who loves it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's say you're floating down a river. Okay. You're in a canoe or whatever. You're floating down a river and you start rowing backwards. Okay. Are you gonna go back up that river?
SPEAKER_02:Am I going with the flow of the river or am I going against the river?
SPEAKER_00:You're going against, you're trying to flow up river.
SPEAKER_02:Oh no, I'll just stand still. I'll just either stay still or keep going with the current because I'm not strong enough to keep up with it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So let's say one of your paddles doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02:And now you're trying to go spinning out of control.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're spinning. Yeah, yeah. You're going, you're doing donuts in the middle of the river, and well, that's how a solenoid works is you take a piece of metal, throw it into the middle of a copper coil. Okay. The copper coils are supposed to send positive electrons or positive energy one way. That one-way action is going to interact with that metal rod and throw it out because it's going downstream. It's going to throw it out with a great deal of force. That's a solenoid. Okay. That's how your car engine works.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So, like when you go in and you turn the key on your car, there's a solenoid in your starter that throws a gear out to the flywheel of your car and then starts spinning really, really, really fast to get your car running. If that solenoid is not wired correctly, it won't throw the gear out far enough where it'll engage or do anything at all. Because you have half of it saying go forward, and then you have the other half saying going backwards.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So when we look at these dead hands or these blind shear rams, they found out that there was a couple of them that were wired in reverse. So like they did shoot out with a ton of force, but it wasn't enough to sever the pipe. Therefore, everything could work around it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, like, yeah, they did find some evidence to indicate that okay, yeah, these solenoids weren't developed or assembled appropriately, and then that's where that company got sued by BP. Like, hey, you you built a failed BOP. This is where I think it's a bit more complicated. You can do this yourself or whatever. Uh, the audience can do this. Take a soda straw, okay? Put it on your desktop so and with your finger, and don't do this while you're driving. Um, put it on your desktop and just gently push on one side of it, okay? Still have your other hand pushing down on it, but then just push sideways on it. What do you think's gonna happen?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, it's gonna bend until or it's gonna bend until there's a little hole in it, and you can't drive it.
SPEAKER_00:Or it's gonna bend until it buckles one way or the other.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Or another way to look at it is this if you take a soda straw, put it on a table with your, you know, your finger on top of it, and you push to one side, well, that pressure that you're pushing with one finger in the middle of the straw is going to deviate from the amount of pressure that is going to be in the outside of the opposite edge of that straw.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:You follow me?
SPEAKER_02:Think so.
SPEAKER_00:So, like, if I had a straw with, say, one pound of pressure sitting on top of it, and then I push to the side of that straw, say, like, you know, a half a pound of force, would it be safe to say that one side of that straw would be at like 1.5% or 1.5 pounds, whereas the other one would be at less because it's now being deformed, and then the pressure inside is like super confused and doesn't know what to do.
SPEAKER_02:I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Now, that alone wasn't enough to cause the BOP to explode, or not explode, but cause everything to fail. What happened was at the molecular level, we're talking at the atomic level. We're talking the degree of precision to manufacture a pipe like this would have probably cost more than what the rig was worth to build. When they had that kick, when they had that kick on on April 20th at around what was it, 9 50, 10 p.m. ish, it caused that pipe to warp. And so when the blind shears were engaged, they missed the pipe, or they only partially engaged it. And if it only partially engaged it and missed the mud return line and all that kind of stuff, then it would have just that pressure that they experienced would have blown all the mud through the mud return collections, which is what killed those 11 men, and the subsequent crude oil flow going upwards would have been enough because it would have been preceded by gas. And for the lack of better words, and I and I apologize for being this crude, but you tend to fart more before you poo. So all those gases came up, then the oil came behind it, or the mud came behind it, for the lack of better words, and then all the oil came up. So the mud is what killed everybody. The gases are what simultaneously fell into the engine airtakes that caused them to rev up at the same time that the oil was now spewing out of the derrick, and then when the engine is engines exploded, it ignited the oil, and here we are.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think there was anybody on that rig that could fully comprehend what was going on.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting though.
SPEAKER_00:It's kind of like on the Hindenburg episode, is like the guy who threw down the rope to the ground, and that wet rope grounded the frame of the Hindenburg to the capacitor that was the outside shell. Now it it was later determined by a litany of litigation settlements and and and all that stuff. That like, okay, BP and Transocean and that Cameron Company and and all that, like, they were horrifically neglected negligent of all of this, and there was even some BP executives that were put on manslaughter charges. And then it was later discovered that, like, there was no way that BP executive could have known what was gonna happen, even given the reasonable expectation of his experience. Right. So, like, I know it sounds weird, but it's one of those things, it's just like when we when we look at something like the the Deep Water Horizon, whenever, and and and I'm gonna quote or reference Willem Cullen Bryant's uh Thanatopsis. Whenever we try to pull something from the earth, we exact a debt. We have to give that back sometime. And that's what happened here, in my personal opinion. I understand that that BP and on all these billion-dollar companies could have handled this completely differently, and they should have. Um, but I also think that eleven men died to pay some of that debt back to Earth in in a respectful way. That hey, these guys died and they paid the ultimate price, and Mother Earth, you better respect these guys, given how like difficult it is to try to fully understand what happened on that night. So I don't know. I this was this was been running through my mind for like the past week or so trying to tell this story, and yeah, it's a it's a it's a wild one. And when we really dive into like the engineering aspects of it and how the BOP works, and then also like what were these companies doing to try to cut costs and all that stuff, I I I I kinda see the perspectives here, and I just hope that we can live the rest of our lives knowing that hey, as humanity progresses and pulls resources from Earth, a price will be paid, and a price will be exacted, and these 11 guys more than made up for it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think there's something that can be learned from too. You look at the mistakes that were made, see what went wrong, and then learn from it, and try to remember it next time you make a decision, next time you make an oil rig, or next time you just decide to drill somewhere.
SPEAKER_00:So there's um there there's one line in um the Deep Water Horizon movie that I I liked a lot, and it's one of the technicians, I think he was one one of the ones that passed away when they were doing that initial test, and they saw that huge kick, right? That thing, the pressure went up super, super high. And he's like, it's okay, it's okay, it's just the well keeping us honest. And I thought that was a very from a uh from a writing standpoint, I thought that was a very unique statement, especially when you hear the dialogue between one of the bosses of Transocean dealing with one of the bosses of of um BP, and they don't get along and how things are supposed to work. And there was a there was a like a brief discussion about like what is Gaia, and the Transocean guy was like, Oh, it's pronounced Gaia. No, the BP guy is like, no, it's pronounced Gaia, both of which are the terms for Earth. And and then you have another guy who's just like it's okay, it's it's just the well trying to keep us honest, that's all it is, therefore, we're better off being honest. And I feel like if they had slowed down on that first test, if they had just slowed down on the process of drilling further, if they had just slowed down, given it an extra day for that concrete to cure, if they had just slowed down and be like, okay, let's just give it another day, let's hammer out our procedures, because the Deepwater Horizon got an award the same day that it exploded for having the most amount of unaffected days of issues, like they they were heralded for their efficiency for their safety. If they if everybody on that rig had just slowing down, much the same way that we look at how, like, okay, we got these relief wells now. Let's slowly put the mud in, let's slowly put the concrete in, let's slowly close them down, let's cap off the main well and slowly close it down, not just slam it shut like a BOP would, which would then build up pressure, bend the pipe, and then we would have another explosion. Let's just take that extra day or so, and let's proceed with caution. And I feel like there's so many dumpster fires that you and I could have, like, if we could go back in time and just be like, guys, guys, guys, time out. Build that stupid molasses tank with a few more bolts. Just right, like just a little more, a little extra. Yeah, just a little extra. Before Chicago burned to the ground, just like fill up more trucks with water and head in and then try it. You know, it's just there's just so many times where like we I could I could yell at Winston Churchill, like, bro, shell the beach lines and shell the water lines before you head into Gallipoli. Just take that extra few minutes. And I feel like that is one of the core constructs of this podcast is we have so many dumpsterfiers because people are rushing through things. We have so many dumpsterfiers because an answer has to be met now. Uh, the exception would be Nero. That guy was crazy.
SPEAKER_01:He's special.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, he's like 50 stages special. But but that was like the thing that I took from this is that instead of rushing to try to find the answer to a problem, maybe slow down and work my way to a solution to the problem.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, or better yet, don't cook all your eggs and throw them in a basket and then throw them over the Grand Canyon. Right. That's an there's actually a dumpster fire around that, too.
SPEAKER_02:I believe that.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, no, that that was like the thing that like personally in my life I took from it. The other thing, too, is like I get to wake up tomorrow morning knowing that I'm not being sued for 70 billion dollars.
SPEAKER_02:There is that, yeah. Yeah, that is nice.
SPEAKER_00:Because I also found out that a lot of those litigation suits are still in progress, but BP had to pay that out immediately. And whatever they win, so like let's say they win 20 out of the 130 billion or 130 class action lawsuits. So say they win 20 of them. The money that they win from that, they have to give to that restoration fund. They can't keep it, they can't reinvest it, they can't do anything. It all has to go back into that coastal um like that rebuilding fund.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's a big check to write.
SPEAKER_02:Kind of reminds me of the uh World War I reparations Germany had to pay.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Yeah, that that that's it, that's another that's another one because there was no way, there was no way they could pay that off, but yet they did, what was it, 10-15 years ago?
SPEAKER_02:Uh more recently.
SPEAKER_00:Angola Merkel?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Merkel paid it. That was a good one.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she paid off the last check.
SPEAKER_02:Five, maybe six years ago.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, sorry. I thought it was further than that.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, we're gonna talk about that next episode.
SPEAKER_00:Really? I thought you're going in the Great Depression.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Or are you looking at it from the perspective of like Europe and and whatnot? Because they were way worse off than America. And don't get me wrong. Well, don't get me wrong. Like America was in a pretty bad spot, but like Europe was way worse.
SPEAKER_02:We're gonna talk about all of it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so it's gonna be another, it's gonna be a 20 episode.
SPEAKER_02:I I don't know yet. I don't know how many episodes it's going to be.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you need to have at least an episode figured out in the next two weeks so that I can get it edited in out.
SPEAKER_02:It's already the research is done. I'm typing it. It's fine. But we're typing it up.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, no, that's that's the Deepwater Horizon. Um this one really affected me. It it probably because I remember the events.
SPEAKER_02:I was yeah, I was a senior in high school, but I didn't pay much attention to it at the time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I was I was just working in retail at that time trying to figure out how to pay a paycheck because I uh lost everything in 2010, but whatever. Um but yeah, this one this one hit me differently, and I wanted to try to approach it differently. I didn't want this to be a blame game, and I feel like ultimately the message is is that we can accomplish so much more if we just don't blame each other as much as we see each other as the solutions to these problems.
SPEAKER_02:Work together, not apart. Yeah, keep the eating together that whole deal.
SPEAKER_00:If I have a driver that failed the crap out of a load, that same driver is going to be the solution to getting that thing delivered appropriately.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I feel like I I kind of came to that realization after what 64 episodes of or 63 episodes of this show. No, 64. Um, yeah, stop treating each other as a problem, start treating each other as a solution, and we're gonna get a lot further.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And speaking of solutions, be sure to check out the day Simpsonier dot com where Kara is gonna have all our show notes. I'm kind of throwing her under the bus right now, but she can just copy. Yeah, well, I know, but you get a lot going on. I do. But I did try to write out these notes with a lot more pictures and stuff like that because it's very, very tough to describe.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh vocally. But like, yeah, check out thedaysimsifier.com. Please email us at the daysimsifier at gmail.com. Uh, if you have suggestions, I I personally find my suggestions from the audience. So, like, if you have ideas, hit us up. Um, if you want to see some of Kara's amazing artwork, yeah, the website is where to go. Uh, one of these days, we're going to update the uh Instagram feed. I don't know anything about all that hipster technological stuff, but I'll figure it out. So we will we will get our Instagram feed updated. Uh, but more importantly, um, if you if you know somebody who is struggling through stuff and who could probably benefit from other people that have really gone through it and come out on top or come out okay, then yeah, find the show form on wherever they get their podcasts.
SPEAKER_02:Usually it's on you know, podcast or what is it, uh iTunes or is it iTunes, Spotify, there's Castbox, Amazon, uh yeah, wherever you get your podcast. What whatever you want to use, you go for it. It's there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, you mentioned Amazon, right? Okay. So yeah, where we we are completely ad-free wherever you go. So we're not here to make a killing off of this. However, if you do want us to make a killing off of this, let me know. And then I'll give a percent to care.
SPEAKER_02:Like, subscribe, leave a review. We'll talk to you next week with the Great Depression.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes. We we will we will depress you and then economically. Yeah, just economically. After we've come out of like a what is it, a a 40-day government shutdown. It's gonna be a great time. So, but yes, thanks for listening, and uh, we will catch you on the next one. Bye.