The Flixborough Chemical Fire - Episode 70

Ed is back for another "recent" historical dumpster fire in which a chemical that manufactures a chemical necessary for nylon production explodes in the largest non-WWII explosion in British history. They Nypro Flixborough chemical facility was built in the late 60's to be a sleek, state of the art facility that turned an extremely flammable substance called cyclohexane and turn it into caprolactam. Caprolactam is one of the key ingredients to making nylon which is a ubiquitous substance found everywhere in the modern era. Without nylon, everything from clothing to car parts to kitchen utensils and even surgical implants would be impossible. 

On paper and in the minds of the workers and their families, the Flixborough facility was the wave of the future and offered a means of a modern livelihood... until one of the massive reaction tanks that turns 20 tons of cyclohexane into caprolactam develops a crack and could potentially result in an explosion that could destroy the entire complex. 

In this case, the dumpster fire isn't the crack, or what managers refused to do that often results in dumpster fires, but it's what the managers DID do that caused so many problems... or one big one!

Take a listen and hop on over to the Day's Dumpster Fire website for show notes, sources, and pictures of what happened to this facility and how it affected an entire community in the English countryside. 

Some other episodes that were mentioned in this episode that you might find interesting are:

Nuclear Power Plants

Victorian Bread Making

The Boston Molasses Flood

Byford Dolphin Incident

The Deepwater Horizon Incident

All of the above episodes have something common with the Flixborough Chemical Fire. Send Ed and Kara an email at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com when you notice the connection or what they all have in common? In other words, what often gets in the way of safety, sound practices, engineered solutions, and quotas in manufacturing that turns into a dumpster fire or contents for this podcast?

Hey before you go! 

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!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Alrighty, Kara. Actually, before we start, what is g what what is your title for this episode?

SPEAKER_04 0:08

It is Carrot What W-A-T. Because I don't know what we're talking about today. I am I am carrot what? W-A-T. What?

SPEAKER_02 0:19

I was thinking of like because you like to do the alliteration thing. I was thinking of like, you know, Caprolactam Cara.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

I don't know what we're talking about today because I went in blind. So I just realized what?

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Okay. So what what will work? So let me ask you this question. You're a homeowner.

SPEAKER_04 0:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Right? Okay.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Fortunately for us. Lucky. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Right? Oh my gosh. Yeah, trying to buy a house right now. Oh. Um, okay. In your house, have you done like any sort of repairs around your house where it involved like zip ties, duct tape, and a pine cone and thoughts and prayers?

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Not yet, thankfully. Um, but we have patched our fence in the backyard with more wooden pieces, if that counts.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Okay. Okay. Yeah. I remember growing up as a kid where I we we would like when we would move from one apartment to the next, we would have to run around with like a tube of toothpaste.

SPEAKER_04 1:19

We did that too.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

And plug up the holes in the walls, like the little black.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

And then the entire apartment, even though it's empty because everything's packed up, it smells great.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Oh, yeah, it's all minty.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

Yeah. Yes, I taught my husband that trick. No, we were living in the dorm, like, no, no, no, look, you don't even have to buy putty. He's like, what?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Yeah, I know you saved yourself three dollars.

SPEAKER_04 1:44

And it smells nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

I mean, has your husband ever had to like do some really janky repairs on cars? I know he he knows a thing or two about cars, but has he ever had to do anything that's questionable?

SPEAKER_04 1:55

Um, I'm sure he has. He tries not to because I think his dad taught him not to do that. Okay. And I know my dad, my father has done a lot of that. My dad is the MacGyver of all MacGyvers, I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Oh, good. We actually I actually I actually mentioned MacGyver.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

Oh, perfect. Look at that.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

This episode.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

We like MacGyver.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

He's my dad.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Yes. That's good. I'm glad I'm glad you know about McGyver because otherwise there's gonna be a whole section here that's gonna be really confusing.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Hello and welcome to your day, Sumster Fire, where we don't celebrate humanity's most fantastic successes, but it's most fantastic failures. I said that wrong. It's fine. It's most we don't celebrate humanity's successes, but it's most fantastic failures.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

See, I'm not the only one who has to write it down.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Uh I haven't said it in like 10 weeks because I hogged it. You've been doing these multi-parter. You're right. You're right. It's also late. It's uh it's a it's it's late in the night dumpster fire talk that we do. It's true. So yeah, I'm your host, Ed. Uh joining me as always is Cara Watt. What? That's her title. That's her title today. For today. And we have like carrot cake. We've had calamity cara.

SPEAKER_04 3:32

Um I've tried to add the carrot in everything.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

I yeah, do you like carrots?

SPEAKER_04 3:37

My mom calls me carrot cake.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Really?

SPEAKER_04 3:39

Yep. So I try to add the carrot.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Okay, because I I guess you'll look exactly like carrot cake.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

I think it's just because my name is Kara.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

I yeah, I guess it's better than being like an office Karen type of thing. See. I'll take the carrot cake. So yeah, today's uh today's episode is slightly different, but also like very much in line. This is like your typical Days Dumpster Fire by Ed episode.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

I was gonna say this is an ed episode. I would I skimmed the notes and I was like, I know who wrote this one.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yeah, this is definitely a uh an ed episode, and you're gonna and one of the reasons why I chose this topic is because we have enough episodes behind us. And if you really want to see like the full library, go to the daystems to fire.com. Uh, that's where we have like your complete library there where you can you can see the whole library, the show notes that Kara puts up, the artwork, all that stuff. So be sure to check that out. But for those of you who've been listening since day one, by now you should start to see some recurring themes when it comes to dumpster fires. And this one is involving a mass-produced item involving lots and lots of money, and people making some poor decisions because of money, and corners are being cut, and it kind of leads to a a slight issue that later gets classified as Britain's largest non-wartime explosion.

SPEAKER_04 5:20

Like the non-wartime clarification.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

That's good. Well, this takes place in 1874, so World War II was very much on people's minds at this time. Like, so you do have to specify that because I'm pretty sure when when the Germans were bombing the crap out of Britain, or like especially London, and they were dropping those 2,000-pound bombs, I bet those were some pretty healthy explosions.

SPEAKER_04 5:45

It's a fair point.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

But the this one, this one's a completely different thing. So it's yeah, it's a it is a non-wartime or a peacetime explosion that killed like 28 men, injured like another 36, and it damaged like 1800 homes, and it's all because of a pipe.

SPEAKER_04 6:09

Bad plumbing is the worst.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Hey, this isn't like Deepwater Horizon.

SPEAKER_04 6:15

Whereas mud is going everywhere. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yeah, all that mud coming out of that hole.

SPEAKER_04 6:20

Like just at least we're not talking about mud and holes. There's that.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

No, this this is this is this is all about a toxic chemical, a flammable chemical coming out of a of a very dark dank hole.

SPEAKER_04 6:35

So that's worse.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

So let's let's get into it. Uh, so part one here, and and and you probably saw the title of this first part, and and this is probably gave it away as an Ed episode.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

It in fact, I took a picture and sent it to Deja, and I was like, who wrote this? Me or Ed? She's like, Ed wrote that.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

So so yeah, part one uh is what is nylon and how it's made? Nylon is a very ubiquitous material, it is everywhere, and it is in our cars, it's some of it's in our clothing, uh, but a lot of it is in industry. If you've ever had uh I mean, I've known you for a couple of years, but I'm pretty sure you haven't had a knee or hip replacement.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

Thankfully not. Um, I can't say the same for my parents. Okay, so you're on your way to yeah, it's uh it's in my future, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

So yeah, if you've ever had a uh a hip replacement or knee replacement, uh one part of the joint is usually made out of a metal. The other part of that joint that acts as like the uh cartilage part is going to be nylon. Um nylon is thermally stable. It doesn't react, like your immune system doesn't react to it. It is very durable. It nylon is one of those things where like like it's even in your car engine. They use it in car transmissions because it is so uh durable and it makes for a it's like a uh for the lack of better words, it's like a self-lubricating material. Yeah, nylon's cool, which I really wish Deja was on because she hates that word. She does hate that word. Yeah. Lube and crabs. Anyways, we're not talking about lube and we're not talking about crabs. Uh, we're talking about nylon, which nylon is kind of like Teflon in a way that is very slick, meaning you don't have to apply any sort of grease or anything to it. It it can be pretty smooth on its own. Now that's like solid nylon. And in 1938, nylon was originally developed to replace silk. Um, so if you've ever talked to a worm, you know, they make silk. And uh let me know. Let's send us an email, guys. Uh Dave Simstifire at gmail.com. If uh if you had any conversations with worms and if they've given you any specific details about silk, uh if not, congratulations, you don't need medications. Um, but if you are talking to worms and they are talking back, let us know, and then you might want to go see a doctor. Uh, but silk is like nature's super material. Uh, it is very strong for its weight. Uh, it's actually stronger than steel.

SPEAKER_04 9:38

Yeah, silk's cool.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Yeah, silk is is wild. So, like before parachutes were made out of silk because it was so strong. The issue is that it's handmade by a worm and it takes forever to make.

SPEAKER_04 9:54

And that's why it's so expensive.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Right?

SPEAKER_04 9:57

It always has been.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Oh, but silk boxers are the best.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

I would love this. Is so dumb, but I'd love a pair of like not pair, but a set of silk sheets for my bed. But considering I have so many dogs in my house, that is a bad idea.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yes, yeah, that would yeah, that would be very, very expensive. And I think dog claws would probably rip it to pieces and then all the hair.

SPEAKER_04 10:26

So much for it being stronger than steel.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 10:30

So much for that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Um, so yeah, the the issue with with silk is that it is handmade by a worm, and if you ever see videos on YouTube on how it on how silk is made, there's actually like these worm farms, and that's all they do is they cut open the little what are the crystallists or whatever, the the little silk shells that a worm builds for itself before it turns into a butterfly. That's the most scientific term that I could come up with for it works. Yeah. A biology was never my gig. So, yeah, so silk uh it takes a long time to get what you need out of it, especially when you're trying to deal with a parachute. Um, at its inception during World War II, nylon was produced by the the very famous chemical titan, DuPont, as a fully synthetic fiber that is immune to mildew and solvents and could be structured in a variety of different ways for a multitude of applications. It's it's very um um I know it's I know it's flexible, but it it can be manipulated to be a solid, it can be made into fabrics and all that kind of stuff. Like I said before, it was originally intended to replace silk parachutes. By the way, Kara, um in World War II, the Japanese actually had a lot of silk parachutes.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

Not surprised.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

And if you ever go to the Commemorator Bear Museum in Northern Mesa, they actually have wedding dresses that were brought home, or the the wedding dresses weren't, but the parachutes were highly sought after by the Americans, and then they would send the silk from these Japanese parachutes home, and then they were kind of like taken apart and then turned into wedding dresses.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

And I can only imagine how expensive those would be by like today's standards, all that that silk. But but yeah, um, it's really intended to replace silk parachutes. It took off with women during the 40s for pantyhose because yeah, you gotta have that nail on for pantyhose. Um at the time, what's that? Gotta cover those legs, gotta cover those legs, and it beats using paint because there was a time period there where women were painting their pantyhose on. Yeah. The things women do for to to look good.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

We should do fashion history.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

We'll get into that. That's a that's a discussion, but we have to write that down.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Yeah, yeah. That that would be like one of the things like we did with the uh the odd ways to die. Like it would be like a uh you'd have your part, my part, like lots of little little ones. I like it. Yeah, oh yeah, like washing your clothes with urine or putting lead oxide on your face to make you pale. And we should we should do that. I like that.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

It gives me another excuse to talk about Queen Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

All right, anyway. Yes, yes. Uh so yeah, uh, women wanted nylon for penny hoster in the 40s because you know the everything was being rationed and various other articles of clothing. Today, 52% of clothing is made from f uh from polyester, from polyester, with only 5% containing nylon. Um, primarily because polyester breathes better and nylon can get a little sticky, you know, like a lot of tents are made out of nylon. And you ever get like a tent wet and how it just feels cold and clammy and claggy and moist. Solid. Yep, just just yawn that away. Sorry. Um, but in the 40s and 50s, nylon was super popular for clothing. And there was a time where before polyester took off it, nylon was just in all clothing. Now it's in like active wear, like under armor shirts and stuff like that for its properties. Today, nylon is found in the automob automotive industry uh as good as its ability to resist wear and tear. Uh, industrial components, you know, same as the automotive industry, just you know, wear and tear. Uh packaging, because it resists impacts very well. Uh consumer goods and electronics, because I mean, why would you need silk in electronics? I don't know, but you can't really have a video game console without some nylon in it. Uh, and then probably one of the biggest uses today that wasn't really thought of back then was uh the medical and safety equipment. So harnesses, safety vests, uh the body's immune system doesn't recognize it. Uh I can't uh I can't remember what it's called. I think it's like Immuno inert or something like that. Um, so yeah, like we see it a lot in the medical scene. In other words, nylon is nylon. Nylon is found everywhere. It is not as common in the things that we wear, but it is super common in just about everything else around us. The advent of nylon stemmed from the synthetic fiber revolution of the 20s and 30s. Woo! Yeah, yeah, no, I I didn't really realize this, even though I took a uh history of technology course when I was in engineering. But like the first half of the 20th century saw the most scientific growth in humanity, ranging from chemistry, physics, astronomy, engineering to medicine and biology. Like, yes, we had the age of enlightenment, and we saw a ton of scientific advancements that came from that. But like in the early 20th century, that's where we start seeing the scientific advancements bridge into technology. So there was a lot of application stuff that was coming out of it. So, like, hey, yeah, 1800s, we finally figure out electricity and electronics and yeah, yeah, and then and then the early 1900s, we start taking those ideas and making radios and like television screens and and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

All the consumer products that we talked about. Uh yeah spot on credit. Sorry. I had to bring it back a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Right, yeah, and I gotta plug in the uh that that Great Depression there. Um, okay, yeah. So the first half of the 20th century saw a lot of technological advancements, probably the greatest in human history. Having a world war in the 1910s really helped with the uh technical advancements because humans are totally fine living in the Stone Age, but if technology can help kill your enemies faster and further away, then we're all for it. Like, that's one of the reasons why World War One was so horrific is that the technology had advanced, like the killing technology had advanced, but the strategies and the tactics didn't.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

Yes. That is why I find that war fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Yeah, like the idea of lining everybody up in phalanxes and rows to go stand before machine guns. Um, that that that that didn't work out so well. So, um, an example of this is in in World War One was the use of chemical warfare, toxic weaponry in World War I, like mustard gas, phosgene. That's a fun one, and chlorine were produced and converted um I have pain factories and converted paint factories that use the latest and greatest of large-scale chemical production available. They both apply. Yes. So, like the Germans were real big on this. Like Germans probably Germany during World War I and before made really, really high-end paint. But then they converted those factories over to making toxic chemical weapons. So now we're starting to see chemistry being applied to a lot of different things. And one such study in the early 1900s was the development and understanding of polymers. So this is where I got a nerd out a little bit because we're gonna go from poop and pee to like the synthetic. So let me bridge that gap for you here. So I'm not gonna bore you to death with like the nitty-gritty on polymers uh and all that kind of stuff because it is insanely complicated, and you're gonna see a lot of the the chemicals used to deal with polymers is uh pretty wild names. Like you'd want none of this in your food. So the soft, squishy stuff that makes up uh a human being or most of the living uh multicellular organisms on earth are made of proteins, right? We eat something and our bodies are really, really good at taking those amino acids and food and converting it into proteins, and then you can build stuff with it, like cells and muscles and nerves and all sorts of stuff. The soft squishy stuff that makes up human beings or most other living multicellular organisms are made of proteins. Proteins take organic elements like hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and a few other elements and arrange them into long chains called macromolecules. So, like a protein can go on forever. It can be like a chain of hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen, and it's just it just goes on forever. In fact, I think the longest word in the dictionary is a protein that's like eight miles long or some crazy stupid thing like that.

SPEAKER_04 19:49

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yeah, but yeah, how did you win your Nobel Prize? I made an eight-mile-long protein.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

I mean, I'd be proud of it.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

I I guess, yeah, you wouldn't be able to see it, but yes. Uh so yeah, they make macromolecules. Macromolecules can be combined uh together over and over and over again, and we can make some cool things like silk and cotton, thread, and human hair, right? So silk is organic, cotton is organic, uh, human hair is definitely organic, and like we can do stuff with that. The downside is that we need a farm, we have to harvest the stuff and manipulate these protein chains with an environment within the environment of living organisms. So we have to rely on other living things to make these long chains of proteins that we're ultimately trying to shoot for. So if you need to make a 300 square foot parachute out of silk, you'll need hundreds of thousands of silkworms eating and producing silk 24-7 for god only knows how long. Like it can take weeks and weeks and weeks to just get a material for one parachute that's super time consuming and a huge resource suck because as cool as living things are, it is horrifically inefficient when it comes to producing stuff in a large scale.

SPEAKER_04 21:12

True.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Unless it's poop.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

Also true.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Humans are very good at making poop.

SPEAKER_04 21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

And so this is where polymers come into play. Okay. Polymers are long chains of macromolecules like proteins, but they are synthetic or they're man-made. So polymers involve very non-organic elements and compounds to make their chains. The benefit of using these compounds is that you can mix everything up in a jar and poof, you have a polymer like nylon. So you can make this stuff by the ton instantly, versus having to wait six weeks for your battalion of silkworms to eat all the leaves and then produce all the silk at like silver dollar diameter sections at a time, and then turning. That into a silk parachute.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

I just pictured a little silkworm with uh a knight's helmet and a shield and a sword. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

I was actually thinking of a little silkworm wearing like a World War I helmet and so it's got like the Red Cross because they were silk bandages, so it's got like the little red cross on its torso.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

And you know, and they're all silkworms or a vet because they have no arms or legs.

SPEAKER_04 22:25

Both of these things need to be drawn immediately. A world war one a world war one silkworm and a medieval night silkworm. It's going to be done.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Sorry. Okay. Yes. Please, please send me a copy of that. At least the uh I don't know how it would hold a sword, maybe with his mouth. We'll figure it out. Yeah. I'll I'll let you work that out. So some of the chemicals that you find in polymer chemistry, and it gets insanely complicated. Uh I thought proteins were nuts. No, polymers are a whole whole another thing. Um, so some of the these chemicals that you would find are like ethylene. Okay. You know, ethylene, not too crazy. Propylene, polyethylene, polychloroprene, and then polystyrene. There's a lot of rhymes in in this. What do we have here? Hexamethylanidamine. Hexamethylmethyl andodiamine.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

That sounds right.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Yeah, normally I'm pretty good at pronouncing crap, but that one's a doozy. Uh you have adipic acid. Um, this is caprolactin. Uh, you have cyclohexane, and then you have hexamethyl. Uh hexamethyl, lena, uh methylodiamine, and dodecah yeah, dodeca nebiotic acid. I thought I was being brave doing French history, but I can pronounce French way better than some of these these things. So I can't. What do these chemicals all have in common? None of these uh by themselves should ever be consumed by any living critter, including humanoid critters such as us. None of these are excreted by a living thing. I'm sorry, but if you come out of the bathroom and like you've you just dropped a fat load of caprolactam in the toilet, you've got a problem. Uh, if you drop a fat load of cyclohexane, now we're gonna be talking about caprolactum and cyclohexane a lot here in this episode. So um, these are like the two main stars of this episode, and none of which should ever be consumed. Okay. Or lit on fire, as you'll see why. Um, none of these are excreted by a living thing. Most of these chemicals are insanely flammable, if not explosive. Sweet. But what's crazy, and the funny thing about chemistry, is that you can have something that is like insanely flammable, and then you can take like one atom, like you can take like an oxygen atom and move it to the other side of the molecule completely inner, won't do anything. But you move it back over to the other side of the molecule, and you can power an airliner with it. Like, yeah, it it's crazy how chemistry can do that. Um, there was a yeah, very uh very popular psych med in the 90s, and uh it worked great, but people, the one of the problems they were having with it is that for teenagers it was actually inducing suicidal thoughts. So they took this medication, and what they did is they changed the spin of one of the hydrogen atoms in this molecule, so they made it spin the other direction and it fixed the problem.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

Weird.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Yeah, it's it's so trippy how like one little thing can completely change the dynamic of a substance just by changing one atom. It I find it fascinating and very confusing at the same time. So making macromolecules in a natural way involves pee in poo and farts as a byproduct. That's what every living thing, that's what we all share. Every living thing on this planet, peas, poos, or farts.

SPEAKER_04 26:27

Unless you're a woman younger than 40.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Yeah, well, yeah, and all uh yeah, it does exclude women, right? Because women don't fart until they're the age of 40. Right. And then they're gonna be able to get the floor. And then when they hit 40, then they fly around the room like a balloon. Oh god. Actually, I've been married for a while, and one thing I've noticed is that women they they vent their gases at night. It is it is like a wind tunnel sometimes. Oh, my wife's gonna kill me.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

I was just gonna say, out of respect for your wife, I'm not going to respond to that.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

You laughed at it, so you're you're implicated.

SPEAKER_04 27:12

I'll text you right now, apologizing.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

We yeah, we need to yeah, right. Making her sound like she's full of hot air. Um so so yeah, make your macromolecules via the synthetic method involves mega factories with giant vats of toxic flammable chemicals, heated to ungodly temperatures, and everything is kept in check by thoughts and prayers. So, especially it going all the way up to like the 1980s, we were making synthetic polymers with the grace of God uh not blowing everything up.

SPEAKER_04 27:48

But did we know that?

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Uh, yes.

SPEAKER_04 27:51

Were people aware of that, or were they just doing it without realizing?

SPEAKER_02 27:56

No, they were these factories, especially like the uh Flixboro uh Nypro factory that we're talking about today, like it was built with the full understanding that cyclohexane is what they use to make caprolactin, which is what you use to make nylon, is insanely flammable just by itself. It is incredibly flammable. And then when you pressurize it to like 115 psi and then crank it up to like 300 degrees Fahrenheit and then pressurize it in a giant vat, and then you blow in pure oxygen, like you add all that stuff together, and uh you can end up with a problem. I believe it. So they knew that, and and and we're gonna get into it, but like special precautions were put in place to make sure that people wouldn't inadvertently blow up the entire facility, but we'll get there. Sorry. So once we get past the uh notion that synthetic fibers in a factory can be detrimental to one's health, um, in the manufacturing process as well as explosives. So let me rephrase that. Once we get past the notion that synthetic fibers in a factory can be detrimental to one's health in the manufacturing process as well as explosive, the final product can be very useful. So chemistry is one of those things where you can take three or four really, really, really dangerous things, you put it together to make something that you have to have. Case in point, look at table salt, sodium chloride. Sodium by itself will kill you, chlorine by itself will kill you, put it together, and now you have something that you have to have to survive. Yay, chemistry.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

Yay, chemistry.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

So, yes, a factory making polymers like nylon are ticking time bombs, but they can produce a high demand product by the ton every day, uh, just as long as nobody lights a match. So, part two. Where and why to build a massive, highly flammable chemical factory. That's a long chapter. That's okay, but we're gonna get into it. So, a real brief history of how the Flicksborough Chemical Factory came about. That's where everything centers. And if you want to know where Flicksbury or Flicksborough or Flicksborough, if you're British, where it's located, it's like on the eastern side of England. Um, yeah, it's over by by that one place with Shire at the end of it.

SPEAKER_04 30:12

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

We'll we'll make it a 75% of all the towns in England have right.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

So all of us in the states who are who are goofballs, just hit pause real quick. Let's look it up together and then we'll come back.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Yeah, I think in my notes here, I actually put a uh I think it's like in between London and Leeds or something like that. Um so yeah, I'll we'll we'll get there, but yeah, you could easily Google Fluxborough and yeah, it'll bring not only this event up that we're talking about, and but including everything else that was going on around there, which was a whole lot of nothing. So we gotta go back to World War II. Germany had an air force that could get to England at any time and do a lot of damage, uh, especially in London. So Churchill and Crew decided to move a lot of the production out to the countryside, right? The idea is that let's spread out all our all our hardware, right? Spread it all out so that it one bomb can't take out everything. Makes sense. Yeah, and when you're dealing with a country that's about the same land mass as California, like, yeah, okay, I can I can see the strategy there. England needed nitrogen to make everything from bombs and explosives to preservatives. Like nitrogen at this time was probably one of the most useful elements next to like oxygen. So the plan was to build stuff out of the countryside where the land was abundant, a bit further away than London, and very unassuming to the Luftwaffe, hence Flicksboro. Like Flicksboro is probably geopolitically known for one thing, and that whole region is flat. Got it. It is exceptionally flat, and it's almost kind of like when you look at pictures of it, it kind of is reminiscent of the American Midwest, where it's just nothing as far as the eye can see. Yeah. So, oh yeah, here's the part that I put in about Flicksborough and where it's located. So Flicksboro is about 30 to 40 miles south of Leeds. That probably doesn't help most people because who knows where Leeds is, but think middle of England. Oh, by the way, I noticed when I was actually looking at a map of England, it is very similarly shaped to uh Westeros. Yes from Game of Thrones. It's probably done on purpose, or at least inspired. Yep. So yeah. I I was just looking at like, huh. Interesting. It's almost like George R. Martin might be British or something.

SPEAKER_04 32:35

Yeah, it's weird, huh?

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Yeah. I mean, we'll never know because you'll never finish a book.

SPEAKER_04 32:38

So dang, shots fired.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Right. It's all gonna go to Brandon Sanderson. He's gonna be the one finishing it off. But anyways. And about 100 miles north of London. So for most people, it's probably gonna be like, okay, I know where it's at because it's a hundred miles north of London. And not sure if this helps give any idea of where Fluxbar is, but it's easy enough to find on Google Maps. So just look it up when you're not driving.

SPEAKER_04 33:04

Yes. Hit pause, pull over.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

So for the duration of the war, Fluxbar produced a lot of nitrogen-based chemicals such as ammonium nitrate that makes things go boom. Uh, N2 in general, so just nitrogen gas, really, really helpful in springs and hydraulics. So I'm not gonna go into much detail on that because I can already see your eyes getting glazed over, like, yes. And next thing you know, because we're we're sharing the same Google Doc, and what's gonna happen is that Kara's gonna fall asleep, and then I'm gonna scroll down, and I can't because it says page after page after page of like the letter T.

SPEAKER_04 33:42

That's like the middle of the keyboard.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Okay, or the letter G. Or five pages of space bar.

SPEAKER_04 33:50

That's better. Yeah, space bar is better.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Yeah, yeah. So, and a bunch of other things until the Luftwaffe found this site and correctly assumed that it was a collection of factories and blew the crap out of it in 1938. Cool. Nice. After World War II, the Flux Bar region remade a popular place to manufacture nitrogen compounds, still is to this day. Today, ammonium nitrate is used in soils. Um, and if you need to make the occasional bomb, like yes, like Timothy McVeigh, um, that's a whole nother episode there. Um, a population manufacturer of nitrogen compounds where they could get the necessary ingredients from the surrounding steelwork sites. So, like this whole Fluxboro is like its own little microeconomy, in a way, in that like you have all different types of manufacturing that produces a byproduct that then Flixboro could use to turn it into something else. That's what the region is really known for. In 1962, a company called NIPRO was founded in Clinton, Massachusetts, and quickly became a world leader in plastic synthetic fiber production. By the time of the contract for the Flixboro location in 1965, NIPRO had already developed a UK division with the very innovative name of Naipro UK division.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

I like it.

SPEAKER_02 35:07

Yeah, it's very original. It's good.

SPEAKER_04 35:10

Yeah, it says exactly what it is.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Yeah, and Nypro itself sounds sketchy. Like it does. Like Naipro is just like, I don't know, man. I just feel like it was some chemical they used in Vietnam. Like Agent Orange or something else.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Or it sounds like something the Wiley Coyote would use.

SPEAKER_02 35:30

Yeah, Naipro produced by the Acme Corporation. Exactly. Everything was Acme. Yep. It was like the Cirrus Robock of the day. So the region seemed like a great place to build the new Nypro factory since it was so remote. And yet there were enough people living there to sustain employment. And there was substantial infrastructure to transport goods to and from Flicksboro. So you had roads, you had trains, you had highways. Um, you also had like a ton of like little suburbs all over the place around there. So like, you know, people were within 20, 30 miles of getting to Flicksboro. Like it's a really weird place in England where like all this manufacturing is spread out and in between all the manufacturing are like suburbs. Whereas like in the States, you have like your industrial sector, you have your commercial sector, and then you have your residential, and the none of them, none of them intermix. Like it it stays in the city. Zoning is very much uh, yes, yeah, it's like a very sim city, like whereas at this time in England, it was like everything was kind of mixed together, but on the countryside. So uh this the plan for a Nypro UK division was set up was to set up this Fluxboro chemical plant to produce a substance called caprolactam, which is the key ingredient to making nylon. Pretty sure that caprolactam is a substance that has its own toxic properties and it could be flammable as well. I didn't really dive in too much onto that because I feel like when you start looking up, like, oh, how toxic is this chemical? Or how many people can this substance kill? It's like you just get flagged by the NSA, and the next thing you know, you have people knocking on your door wearing suits and really, really, really, really thin watches. And uh they start asking you a bunch of questions.

SPEAKER_04 37:29

Yeah, the watches and the questions that's the nerving part.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Yes, yep. For those of you who don't know, that's actually a Neil Gaiman joke. It is that yes, so read uh Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and uh Neil Gaiman. Solid book. Oh god, yeah, yeah. So hilarious. To make Caprolactam, you need lots and lots of cyclohexane. And you don't have to be a chemist to look at the word cyclohexane and immediately pick up a bad vibe. There's just something about cyclohexane that this screams, holy crap, this stuff sounds flammable.

SPEAKER_04 38:07

Is it because it sounds like psycho?

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Uh maybe. Uh for me, it's the it's almost like the uh the O part of it. So like nitromethane, nitroglycerin, cyclohexane.

unknown 38:23

That is.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

And if you look at the molecule, it is really weird. It is it's like seven carbon atoms in a ring. I think that's called a benzene ring with little hydrogen atoms going all the way around it. Uh that's all I know about it. Uh, but cyclohexane is it just sounds really sketchy. Does. Um, I like that. And so yeah, flammable is what comes to mind. Uh, what was that?

SPEAKER_04 38:46

I like the hex part. I think a witches.

unknown 38:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

Or like a cyclone.

SPEAKER_04 38:51

Oh, yeah. Sorry, a cyclone full of witches flying around. I'm sorry. But yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

So yeah, I got a you got a bunch of hexes flying out of a uh cyclone.

SPEAKER_04 39:02

That's it.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

So yeah, if if all that comes to mind, then your intuition is spot on. And this factory is going to be handling thousands of gallons of this stuff on a daily basis. This is what leads me to believe that the real reason why NIPRO, um, UK division, uh, with Parliament's blessing, chose Flitzboro. The entire region was expendable. So, like, this is the part that they people don't market. Like, oh, hey, we're gonna build this factory out here because it's gonna be great for the economy, it's gonna boost all the uh all the local neighborhoods, it's gonna bring in tons of jobs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, just between you and me, Kara as executives of this of this company, we're gonna be like, hey, we're gonna do all this cool stuff out there, but if there was a disaster and everything went tits up, as the Brits would say. I love that phrase. It's a good phrase. It is such a great phrase. I mean, it really does a great job explaining everything. So, like, if everything goes tits up, then a relatively small community would be affected or wiped out or eliminated. If the whole tits up thing went up in central London, then there'd be no telling what the damage would be. Like city blocks, thousands of people dead. It it would be disastrous. So I think that was kind of the real reason why they built the facility way out there is to support the economy. And if it did go up, yeah, it's just a neighborhood. It's fine. I don't like that. Yeah. Unfortunately, that's just the the cruel reality of economics. I know. Um ask your uh uh talk to your husband about this. He would probably be all about it, him being like an economics major. He's a MBA. Yeah, I guess. But that's what he studies is economics, kinda, and how expendable people are.

SPEAKER_04 40:57

I don't like that. He's not like that, I promise.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Yeah, yeah, it's not supposed to be that way. He's a good man, right? So I'm sure the public was not told that Flicksborough would be out of sight, out of mind to communist enemies, and the region was suitable for uh production of Keperlactin based on its history, etc. etc. So so yeah, on one hand, they probably left out the part that, oh yeah, everybody here could die and we're not gonna be affected by it. But you know, what we are gonna tell everybody is that yeah, it's gonna be out of sight of mind from the communist enemy. So if if the Soviet skis want to bomb anything, it they're not going to do it. It's just too far out of the way, and it's not gonna do that much damage. And it's like the it's the same way as like Kim Jong-un isn't gonna wake up some morning and be like, I'm going to nuke Tempe, Arizona. It's just not gonna happen, you know. Some other major like coastal city, oh yeah, they're in trouble, assuming that could they can actually make something, but um, but that's kind of the same principle here. So the age-old philosophical question from the 18th century, George Berkeley remains. Did you remember what George Berkeley came up with in all your philosophical studies?

SPEAKER_04 42:16

I just read what you wrote, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Like if a tree branch falls in a forest and no one hears it or no one is around to hear it, does it actually make a sound?

SPEAKER_04 42:26

You know how much I love philosophy, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Oh yeah, you adore it. But I I had to take a uh 20th-century approach to it. If the chemical processing, thousands of gallons of highly flammable fluids ignites and goes boom and erases an entire community from the English countryside, and no one is alive to hear it, does it actually make a sound?

SPEAKER_04 42:49

I'd imagine so. Just I think we answered the question, guys.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

To the survivors, yes. So part three, let's talk about what's inside this fancy schmancing uh factory. So, yeah, inside a state-of-the-art chemical plant. You know, this bell bottoms meet Star Trek. Uh the Flixborough or the Night Pro Flixborough chemical plant started construction in 1965 when it was completed in 1967. It was actually more of a massive renovation. There was already kind of like a chemical plant there. They just took that, stripped everything out, made it for its production, and then put a fresh coat of paint on it. Um, I love this part. And this is, and we saw this with Deep Water Horizon. It was built by Simon Carves with Stammer Carbon of the Netherlands, which is a subsidiary of DMS and Humphreys in Glasgow, and run by Ambrose Congrave. So I have no idea who's responsible for this plant. But I'm not even sure who was responsible for when things went wrong because who knows who was even running things. Right? There's, and we saw that with Deepwater Horizon, right? There was So many different corporations involved. Like golly knows what was actually going on in terms of who was doing what and what level of responsibility there was at play here. And this will come up again. So yeah, be sure to check out episodes 63 and 64 at the DaysomSport.com because yeah, you're going to see a similar thing with Deepwater Horizon. However, the chemical plant was designed from the ground up to be a state-of-the-art facility with all the recent safety protocols, cleanliness, and overall aesthetics. Four higher signs went up in the surrounding communities for pretty much all positions. And many were drawn to the cleanliness and organization of the plant. Some even commented on its futuristic appeal. Right? It was like a very state-of-the-art, fancy looking facility. A lot of people think chemical factory, and you're thinking of like grease, you're thinking of dark, dingy, corrosive chemicals. No, this plant was completely different. It was very clean. You went to work clean and you came home clean. Um, it was it was really designed to kind of set the standard for what a chemical plant is supposed to look like. Um, the new higher signs were asking for a myriad of engineers ranging from chemical and electrical and mechanical, not to mention dozens of technicians and hands who would operate the facility. So I think they were I think they hired up to like a grand total or had positions open for about 550. That's a lot of people. That is a lot of people, which is that yeah, to me that's crazy. But then again, though, I also found out like um at a super Walmart, you know, as Walmarts they have the grocery store and then a regular Walmart attached to it, they can employ up to like three to four hundred people during the holidays.

SPEAKER_03 45:54

Woo!

SPEAKER_02 45:55

That's a lot of people for a store, yeah. So yeah, 550 people. Uh if you want to look at it in terms of like military aspects, that is like a battalion, right? So here's a basic rundown of how how the factory worked. And this this will get a little technical. Um, but yeah, just just just try to follow along. Uh, there's gonna be some use of measurements, so I'll try to use America, freedom units, and metric at the same time. So the entire facility, the entire Night Pro UK division flixborough factory or plant or whatever revolves around six tanks. Like, cool, six tanks, all right. These tanks is where the magic happened, so to speak. So each one was about six feet four inches tall or five meters, and about 11 feet six inches in diameter or 3.5 meters, and were capable of handling 20 tons of material or cyclohexane. 20 tons of cyclohexane. That's a lot. So one 2,000-pound bomb weighed about 2,000 pounds. That sounds did you know how much a 2,000-pound bomb weighed in World War II? I do know. It's about 500 pounds. That's incredible. Fantastic. So, so yeah, if you take like a 2,000-pound bomb, there would be about you know the size of a very, very small car. Uh so multiply that by 10, and that is what one of these tanks held. Yeah, just uh the little bit of perspective there for you. The six tanks were positioned right next to each other. So, like if you ever see pictures of the plant before it blew up, you can actually see the six tanks uh on the outside. Uh, it's like the most apparent feature of the entire thing. Each tank was 14 inches lower than the previous one. So you'd have your first tank, and then tank number two would be right next to it, but 14 inches lower. And tank three would be next to tank two, but 14 inches lower from tank two. So they kind of like they step down. But why it has to do with how you make caprolactin. Uh-basically, it's like a distillation process, which I will I will get into here in a minute. Um, in fact, actually, that's coming up here really, really soon. Each tank would be connected by a 28-inch in diameter pipe. So that's like a pipe that you could fit in. That is a big pipe. As a huge pipe. Yes. And it's designed that way on purpose. So this 28-inch in diameter pipe would connect one to two and then two to three, and three to four, and then four to five, and then five to six. Uh basically 20 tons of hike uh cyclohexane would be pumped into tank number one and then heated to about 155 degrees centigrade. Or that's I think that's approaching 300 degrees Fahrenheit approximately. So hot. Uh, keep in mind cyclohexane is a lot like rubbing alcohol, it's a lot like gasoline. Uh, you know how like when you get rubbing alcohol in your hands, your hand feels really, really cold. That's because it's evaporating, it's turning into a vapor super fast. And when it turns into a vapor, it pulls heat away, and then you got cold hands. Uh, cyclohexane is like that, but like a thousand times more potent.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 49:39

So typically in the pyrosity of this stuff, like the lower the vapor point, the more flammable it is. So if this stuff is super flammable, more flammable than rubbing alcohol, but then you heat it up to 300 degrees and then you pressurize it to turn it back into a liquid. So that's like 116 psi of pressure. Uh, once you get it up to that temp and pressure, then you inject you, it's it's a blast process. You blast in massive amounts of pure oxygen, you blast that in there, and then from there that creates the environment where that heat and the temperature and the cyclohexane and the O2, it starts making the caprolactum. The caprolactum is in vapor form, it rises up, and then that 28-inch pipe collects the uh the vaporized caprolactum and then transfers it to the next tank.

SPEAKER_03 50:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:45

And so, like, you want it to go up, go through the pipe, and then cool, and then drop down into the next tank. There the process would happen all over again. So it's almost like uh it's like you're uh distilling alcohol, except for like when you're distilling alcohol, what you're trying to do is you're trying to heat up the water and alcohol mixture to get the alcohol to evaporate up, cool down, and then condense back into a liquid, right? You're trying to separate the alcohol from the water. Here, you aren't trying to separate it so much, instead, you're trying to create an environment where the product that you get from the cyclohexane and the heat and the pressure and all that stuff will then kind of distill itself, meaning it'll go up into the pipes, cool down, and then collect in the next tank.

SPEAKER_04 51:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

And then that then they do that like six times.

SPEAKER_04 51:41

What if they tried that with moonshine?

SPEAKER_02 51:43

Uh well, they they have. So if you ever see a bottle of alcohol that says like double distilled or triple distilled or whatever, uh that's all it is.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:53

Yeah. It it just increases the alcohol content to the point where I mean that's how you get Everclear. Is that you keep distilling it over and over and over again until you get something that what is it, what is the highest proof, like 151 or something like that? I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:09

My prohibition research didn't go that far.

SPEAKER_02 52:11

Yeah, I I yeah, I never really have a uh a good relationship with alcohol to investigate that. Um, but I know all I know is that Everclear can rock your world if you don't know what you're doing with it. What's that?

SPEAKER_04 52:24

That's what I've heard.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:26

I refuse. I'm too small for that.

SPEAKER_02 52:28

Yeah, like a catful can lay you out pretty much.

SPEAKER_04 52:31

Yeah, no, thanks.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Anyway. So by the time the capilectam leaves tank number six, it's like in its purest form. That is what you need to start manufacturing nylon. So that's essentially what goes on inside of this whole facility.

SPEAKER_04 52:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

Now, that's a really dumbed-down version of it. I don't know if I have it completely accurate. Uh, I'm not a chemist. So if any of you chemists out there that are like, if you're just screaming at your phone right now in traffic or cussing me out, hey, shoot me an email, daysimstrifier gmail.com. Like, send it my way, like, so then I can correct it. And I have no problems doing a shout-out for that in a future episode.

SPEAKER_04 53:13

Would your wife be able to prove free? Or is she a different type of chemist?

SPEAKER_02 53:18

She's a biochemist.

SPEAKER_04 53:19

Okay, that's different. Yeah. So she's the old yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

She yeah, she deals with like the proteins and and all that kind of stuff, the pee and the poo and the farts.

SPEAKER_04 53:29

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

Of squishy things. This is the yeah, you're you're right, the exact opposite. So I mean, I'm sure she could look at the the chemistry, like the equations behind it, and figure it out, but that just that just seems really boring. I I I want somebody to yell at me from online. Like Okay.

SPEAKER_04 53:48

That's fair. That's understandable.

SPEAKER_02 53:50

Because then we can call that engagement. So yeah, I want to be the first time I get yelled at for being inaccurate. So now, let's do a thought analysis.

SPEAKER_04 54:06

Great.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

Yeah, that's exactly what you want to do at 1137 at night.

SPEAKER_04 54:11

It's all good, man.

SPEAKER_02 54:12

You got your you still got your coffee in you?

SPEAKER_04 54:14

No.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

It's like you just pee it out?

SPEAKER_04 54:16

Probably. That's all right though.

SPEAKER_02 54:18

I still I still got my caffeine. I had to hit three different gas stations to get it, but I finally got it. Anyways. Let's see if we can draw any conclusions here. And I know you're not the biggest chemistry person out there.

SPEAKER_04 54:32

I've said it before, I'll say it again. I respect it. I think it's awesome. My brain has a hard time working that way. I'd have to like rewire it.

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Well, let me let me test your knowledge of what's gonna happen here. So let me lay out the facts. We have a factory that turns an insanely flammable substance into something else.

SPEAKER_04 54:53

Okay. Cool.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

To do this, we have to pressurize this flammable substance and heat it to nearly 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Then we pressurize it to 116 psi. Actually, I think it's supposed to be 115 psi. But what's a pound between friends? So you gotta pressurize this super heated, super flammable substance into a liquid. Then you're gonna blast O2, pure O2, into the tanks of heated, pressurized, insanely flammable substance. And then pray to God that nothing goes wrong. Like a leak, right? And then you also gotta pray to God that nobody throws a spark in the area. Can you guess what the dumpster fire is going to look like when it takes place, given what I have just told you chemistry-wise?

SPEAKER_04 55:45

You know what I explained to you my next episode that I'm working on? That's what I think of. Just more explody.

SPEAKER_02 55:57

I mean, that is the purpose of science, right? It's to make things more explody. That's true. Yeah, little little uh portal to Cave Johnson quote there.

SPEAKER_03 56:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

For those of you that are millennials that play that game a lot.

SPEAKER_04 56:10

Such a good game.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

So, yes, we are creating when we look at the ingredients that is going into this dumpster fire or into this dumpster, and then we literally light this. Holy moly, watch out. Like basically, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are gonna go up to Britain and be like, Tag, you're it. Lovely, it's not as big, but it's gonna be as hot, and it's going to do a lot of damage here. So, in terms of operation, the plant worked well, right? I mean, wells could be expected, right? Um, so like people they had their observations of what went on. I have an audio clip here that I'm gonna play here in a little bit that well, like, oh yeah, it worked fine, but there was this stuff that would go on. So it was common knowledge that working in such a place was inherently dangerous. However, there were two factors that kept people working there. One, the pay was really good, right? That is the perks of working in an industry that is in high demand at the only facility in the country that is producing what the industry needs to function.

SPEAKER_04 57:22

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

So, again, going back to Winston Churchill here, like this is centrally located, all of the caprolactum that was being manufactured in England was coming out of this one plant. Whereas in like America, you could probably find like 50 different plants across the whole nation that was making the same thing. Two, if a catastrophic event took place and the whole plant went up, it's okay. You'd be erased from this plane of existence before you even knew what happened. There's the the that's like the good sign, kind of like the uh Titan submarine, where that implosion was so fast that the people inside of it, like their nerves couldn't even process what happened because it's like the the nerves needed like five or six milliseconds to transmit any sort of pain or whatnot, and their bodies only had like one to two milliseconds to work with before they were gone. So, hey, look on the bright side. If the place does go up, you're gone. Like, no pain. However, the family members, including the wives of the workers, were under the impression that the explosion, if it did go up, the explosion would just go up into the sky and leave pretty much everyone safe on the ground. Meaning, because it's a gas, right? It's a vapor. Vapors rise. So people just assumed, like the wives, that's kind of the impression that they had, that it would just go up and away, not like a normal bomb, which just goes out horizontally violently.

SPEAKER_04 58:59

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 59:00

Okay. So I got a clip here from a newsreel uh that took place shortly after this incident. Um, this is these are some magnificently British folks here, and you can never go wrong with that.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

We're used to seeing we're used to seeing the fire engines go down as well. We know we just went to the windows to look because we see them in fire, you know. They often flash from the corner. They often have fires here. Oh, yes, there's been fires, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

I've lived here for 26 years with air chemical works because it was Fison's. My husband worked for Fison's for 23 years. And I knew it was dangerous then. And I've been all over this plant when it was built. We were taking on a conducted tour because we worked for Fison's, and I knew it was more dangerous. And I thought someday something might happen. But I thought it would be something like um uh an explosion that would go up in the air. There would be a loud bang, and and we would see an explosion. Nothing. I never in my wildest dreams thought anything like this would happen to us.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

So yeah, I love the first guy because he's come at him like, oh yeah. I mean, we would see fire trucks going down the road all the time heading towards the planet. It seemed like there's fires all the time. Okay, that's a little sketchy.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:17

But it's a red flag.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:19

Yeah, that's just but but it happens so often, and and humans are really good about this. Humans are really good at seeing a really, really big red flag. And then if it happens so many times, it's like eh, it's just it's normal for that. It's part of the HOA. Like, it's just and if you watch the video, it's it's fascinating because like the these the guy and this woman here, like their homes got completely destroyed, and they're standing outside this rubble, and it and their homes were 300 yards away. Oh man, when this factory went up, and like the lady that was just talking, she was blown down the side of her house by like 20 feet. Jeez, yeah. So much for the explosion going up and then away. Yeah. So yeah, I I love how the first one is just all about like, oh yeah, no, and it's just every day, right around this time, it's you know, the fire trucks go down, and then the other lady is just like, oh yeah, no. I mean, I knew it was dangerous, but hey, you know, I was under the impression that it would just go up and away, and then it would leave everybody for the most part safish on the ground. So from 1967, when the plant was finished with construction to the first quarter of 1974, uh, the plant worked and was for the most part safe, other than your ritualistic fire truck going down the road, right? Uh during the work week, the plant would have over 200 men and women working. Uh, there was 50 women that worked in the offices. So, like, yeah, during the week, there were it was a it was a busy, busy place. And the weekends would have between 70 and 80 men working.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

So thankfully, when this incident took place, it was a Saturday. Otherwise, if it happened like on a Monday or whatever, it would have been far, far more devastating.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:07

On top of what it already was. Like, I'm sorry, but 28 people dead, 36 wounded, that's pretty devastating. But man, if it was a weekday, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

And it wasn't as though safety was lax during this either. Like everyday workers were searched for lighters or anything that could throw a spark. Because you know, it was the 70s, everybody smoked.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

So everybody had a light on them. Um, but yeah, they would have to handle those over. Uh, special shoes would have to be worn that would negate the uh collection of static electricity.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

Yeah, you may not realize it, but your shoes actually are what pick up static electricity, um, especially if you're walking on carpet. I remember working in retail, uh, we had that apparel pad in the middle of the store, and we would have to hang something from the rafters up top, and we would take the forklift over that carpet, and it would just build up and build up and build up. And then when you touched your finger to the rafters up top, now you are transmitting all that static electricity from the carpet up to the ceiling. Oh my god, it it it looked like the Sistine Chapel with the spark of life going in between Adam and God. Oh no, oh, it was so bad. Like you would feel it in your heart. That's how gnarly that is. And static electricity is like thousands of volts. Yeah. So it it is like when you see it, yeah, you you have thousands of volts coursing through you, but usually not at enough amperage to kill you. But it could be enough to ignite cyclohexane. Um, and even clothing was inspected to make sure that it was the right kind to have inside so that a shirt wouldn't throw a spark as well. So like they were really they people understood that that this place was very dangerous and tricky to work in. And they were taking measures, right? Yeah. So hey, I give them credit for that. Um, the only issue was that the plant needed to produce 70,000 tons of caprolactam a year. I think that's like it comes out to like 120 tons per day. That's a lot. That is a lot of caprolactam.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:14

Yeah, that's a lot of chemicals flying around through pipes and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on there. Yeah. And dangerous stuff. Yeah. However, less than half of that was being manufactured and the pressure was on, no pun intended. Uh, actually, pun intended. I I wrote that down. I'm like, hey, that's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

I like it. I like it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:33

The pressure, uh, no pun intended, yeah. Uh the pressure was on uh mounting to get that yield as close to the quota as much as possible. So fancy new factory, they dumped millions of dollars into it, and it was producing less than 50% of what the quota needed to be just for the facility to break even. Okay. This is now a big deal, right? Now money is a deciding factor.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:58

Right. Now that's an issue.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:00

Yes, yes. And we've seen that before.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:04

Yep. Right. Many times, actually. And they're usually your episodes.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:09

Yes. Yeah, I'm like the I'm like the the the the bringer of doom for factories, I guess. Yeah, but I think what was a phenomenon uh retro causality. So by me bringing this up is causing the the stuff to fail in the past. Right. Um, but yeah, uh there is that other factor that we see in other dumpster fires that I've covered in the past is money. When revenue is being jeopardized, bad decisions, stupid practices, and a lot of established procedures are forgotten. So we think of Chernobyl, uh, the Boston molasses flood, uh the Radiant Girls, which we still need to do.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:54

I need to read that book.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:55

That's gonna be like a special episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:57

Yeah, that'll be fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

Even Victorian bread making. Like when when revenue is being jeopardized, we see caution and responsibility fly out the window. Yeah. So I'll be linking to all those episodes on the DaysMar.com. So if you want to check those out, if you really want to binge listen to all of Ed's disastrous episodes of factories and facilities gone bad. Um, but yeah, it seems to be a recurring trend. Yeah. Is once you start throwing in money and making that the priority, everything else kind of gets pushed to the wayside. Yeah. Alrighty. Part four, the crack to end all cracks.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:41

Cracks and pipes and plumbing and it's all it's all starting to make sense, kind of.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

Yeah, it's just it's like one continuous crack. Oh yeah. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:01

There's things are for those of you who I I know we're not a video podcast, so my face probably was pretty great.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

Yeah. Yes. You you probab you probably make you probably just made the same look that my wife would.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:14

I was gonna say it was probably like the the wife or the mom face that women make when they hear a man say something stupid.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:24

Oh god. But you're also kind of laughing a little bit at the time. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:28

Like it's funny, but you're trying not to laugh that whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:31

Well, how many times when we were teaching, like the kids would say something between amongst themselves that was so horribly inappropriate but funny at the same time. And you you just have to Yeah, you had to be the adult. Yeah, you're just trying to hold it in and not laugh.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:45

Yeah. Because it is legitimately funny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Happens a lot. You don't want to like keep that going.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:52

Like be the adult. Time and place, time and place.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:55

Right. Yeah. So speaking of time and place, let's talk about the cracked and all cracks. Um with holes and pipes and stuff. So on March 27th, 1974, during a routine inspection of the six reactor tanks, a massive crack was discovered on number five. Okay. Okay. As on all things, size is subjective depending on who you ask. However, when dealing with a 16 foot four-inch tall tank with 20 tons of explosive solution in it, any crack is going to be too big.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:27

I I happen to agree.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:32

However, the crack that formed on number five was 28 inches long.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:37

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:38

I don't care who you are or who you ask, but 28 inches of anything is too big.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:45

Yes. Or you just have a really good plumber. The longer the crack, the better the plumber, so I've heard.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

That was very nuanced. That was pretty good. Thank you. That's a lot to handle. That's a lot of crack. So oh gosh, here we go. Who knows if the crack went all the way through the tank? But given the contents, it was decided to shut down the entire operation.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:20

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:21

Wise decision.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:22

Yes, I I agree with this decision.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:25

Yeah. Shut that place down, get everybody out of there, and like, don't light anything.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:31

Yeah. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:33

Yeah, yeah. No, like I'm totally supportive of this. So this was a sound idea, even though the emphasis was on increasing production at all costs. So like they still had this financial thing weighing over management's heads, but they're like, eh, let's just shut it down so we can investigate this. Um, management understood that something like this crack could be a deal breaker for the entire facility if it went unaddressed. You gotta address that crack and you've gotta address it appropriately.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:01

Pull up those Levi's.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:03

Yes. Or it needs to be addressed in an appropriate, delicate manner. Right. It needs to be respected. Right. So the whole facility was shut down. And it wasn't necessarily a problem of management leaving the problem unaddressed. It was how they addressed the problem that made things go sideways. So they get an A for doing the right thing, and then they get like a D minus or an F plus for how they addressed it. And that's what we're going to get in here here shortly.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:43

To put a band-aid on it, a little piece of duct tape.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:47

Just a tip? Duct tape? Duct tape. Oh, duct tape it. Okay. I think it's just a tip. I'm like, Nope. What does that have to do with anything?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:55

It has nothing to do with anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:58

That's late. It's too late for this conversation. Way too inappropriate. Oh, Jesus. Uh yeah, it's like the day of Semster Fire, but after hours. Um that sounds like a good idea. I agree. Anyways, we'll get there, audience. We'll get there. So the whole facility was shut down and evacuated on the 27th. Cool. Discussion quickly turned to what to do about the crack. So we have three options here. Uh how to uh how to figure out what to do with this crack. So option one, stay shut down until a replacement tank could be manufactured and installed. All right, keep in mind that a 16-foot tank is like a custom job. Like you just can't go to your hardware store and pick up a 16-foot tank or a tank that is manufactured to the exact specifications to what is needed. Like it's just not going to happen. Um, so you would have to go back to the original factory that made it for your place and order, and it could take months for that thing to show up. Now, bear in mind this would be a 100% guaranteed solution to the problem that would be permanent, right? Best option, however, though, it's gonna be very expensive, and the whole place is gonna be shut down for months. Management can't have that. That would be devastating to the bottom line, and the workers aren't getting paid either. So, like, crap. All right, this is the this is the most efficacious solution, however, financially disastrous. Option two, uh patch up the current tank. So it would be the quickest option, but everyone knew it would be the dumbest for a multitude of reasons. Like, you can't weld it, because if you try to weld it, all the fumes and everything that's inside of there, kablooy. Right. You'd have to vent it and super clean it. You can't put tape over it. Yeah. Everybody was just like, yeah, no, patching it and hoping for the best isn't going to be the best rep. Option three, run the plant without tank number five. Yeah, just run it without tank number five and just bypass it. So the caprolactum would uh go from tanks one to two and then three to four and then four to six. Bridge it and move on without tank number five. This way the plant could stay up and running, and a new tank number five could be manufactured and replaced in time. Option three was heralded as the best option, and I think it was probably the best option. I mean, I can understand. What's that?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:29

I can understand the logic.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:31

Yeah, yeah. No, it keeps it up and running, and uh people are still getting paid, money is still coming in. Um, the problem is, is like, okay, what will this repair look like? So the idea um disconnect tank number five and make a makeshift pipe that would go from tank four and descend 28 inches down to tank six.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:01

I know we're gonna get there, but I'm gonna ask the question and you don't have to answer it this second.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:07

What does a makeshift pipe look like for that?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:10

Very good question. Great because you're like, it's a tube. It's a tube. What does a makeshift tube look like? Right. And uh, I will get there. It is actually a solid question. You're not wrong for being like, what? So so yeah, you're gonna have a pipe go from four to six that will have to angle down, uh, because remember, each tank is 14 inches lower than the previous one. So you gotta go down the 14 inches from four to five, and then you gotta go down the another 14 inches from five to six. So this makeshift pipe is gonna have to go descending 28 inches. A repair of this magnitude needs a lot of careful planning, a lot of measuring and forethought and execution. So the plans were written out on chalk on the floor of the plant, as is the way.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:07

They did it in an animal farm. We're gonna do it here.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:10

Yeah, like no place like the present. Let's just start and to think in a couple of months, they can use the same chalk to do uh chalk outlines of bodies.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:20

Oh no. Dang.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:23

Sad but true. Um, so yeah, like no CAD, no, obviously didn't exist at that time, but yeah, they it's like, oh well, you know, let's just draw out these very detailed high spec measurements that are all gonna have to be manufactured perfectly here here out on the floor. And chalk. Management did bring every expert on the payroll in. Fair enough. Okay. Uh on hand, they had the following, right? They had a few chemical engineers. Okay, fair enough. An electrical engineer who didn't have a degree. He wasn't a degreed or accredited electrical engineer, but I guess he knew more than the average layman, right? Okay. It's like he he knew not to put the fork in the electrical socket, right? Good. Yep. Yep. A plumber. Okay. Now go to the daysum to fire.com and look up pictures. Hopefully, you'll put the pictures up in the show notes, but look at this facility before and after the explosion, and you will see that this whole facility looks like a giant plate of spaghetti noodles, and it's all pipes. It is like a plumber could spend the rest of his life there just constantly doing work. So bring in Bob the plumber the plumber. I mean, well, this is Britain, so it's like Neville or Swindon or Pudge Pickle or you know, some British name.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:47

With the 28-inch crack.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:50

Well, yes. Yep. The 28-inch crack and hopefully has all the hardware to take care of it. We are going to have a pipe though. So we're gonna handle it with the with a pipe.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:04

I like it.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:05

So, yeah, plumber, yeah, you would be in high demand. And a mechanical engineer. However, this position was still vacant at the time of these events.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:15

Oh, that's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:17

So the mechanical engineer is probably the most important person to have. In this situation, yes. Because a mechanical engineer, everybody thinks like, oh, they are they work like with engines and stuff and and stuff like that. That's not necessarily true. A mechanical engineer is like a jack of all trades, right? They know something about chemical, electrical engineering, they know stuff about chemistry, they know stuff about physics. Because a mechanical engineer can come in and be like, okay, we're gonna engineer a pipe that's gonna handle this much pressure with this much fluid in it, this much volume, and based on the chemistry of this, like we've got to calculate X, Y, and Z out. So, what a mechanical engineer does is he combines a lot of disciplines of the applied sciences. So, like, that's what I studied in college was mechanical engineering. And like, it's so weird, it's just like we would be the jack of all trades but master of none. Whereas like a chemical engineer would know nothing about any other engineering, but if it came to chemistry, he was the sole expert. Whereas the mechanical engineer would come in and he knows enough of everything to try to solve the problem or identify the one person that you really, really wanted in the job for this, uh still wasn't hired yet. Cool. Part five, the MacGyver repair job. So bring out the pine cone, roll the duct tape, have the small little Swiss Army knife, we're good to go.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:50

I like it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:53

So, based on the above roster of qualified repair folks, here is how the repair went down. The main crux of the repair centered around a pipe that was going to connect tanks four and six. The normal pipe connecting each tank was 28 inches in diameter. However, nobody could find one of similar size anywhere on the property. And uh they couldn't find anything 20 inches in diameter, 28 inches in diameter that would be about 15 feet or so that would extend between the two tanks.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:25

So crap. The biggest one they could find was a 20-inch pipe. Okay, so that they could handle. Um, they figured, you know what, 20 inches versus 28 inches, it's gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:37

No, eight inches is a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:41

Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:42

That's a lot, it is, and isn't it correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't like because it moves from from tank to tank to tank, the smaller the pipe isn't the faster the liquid's going to move through it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:55

Wouldn't that okay?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:57

Yes, you are 100% right. And I'm actually gonna clarify that a little more, but you're right. If you go from a 28-inch source down to a 20-inch, the volume goes down, the pressure goes up.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:08

Yeah, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:10

So, or it goes faster.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:11

Yeah, it's like when you put your thumb on the hose.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:14

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:16

Look at you getting all scienceine stuff. I'm trying. You should drink more coffee before one of my disasters. Before bed.

unknown 1:20:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:25

Especially it's gotta be a Sunday night. You gotta be at work early in the next morning.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:29

Oh, those are the worst. Okay, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:32

Those are fun episodes, let me tell you. Anyways, the vacant mechanical engineering position would be screaming right now at the idea of using a 20-inch pipe to uh bridge the gap from a 28-incher. Since tank four was around 28 inches higher than tank six, uh, to connect the two tanks, the 20-inch pipe would be cut into three segments. Okay, the two long pieces, uh, and one, yeah, the two long pieces and one piece in the middle that was going to be cut at an angle at either end. This is what is known as a dog leg. So imagine a pipe that comes out and then it's gonna like angle down. Okay, right? So you have to cut the pipe because it's just straight. You have to cut it in a way that will then angle down so much and then go back to horizontal to connect with the other tank. Okay. So I it's not like you can just have like this pipe just immediately come out of tank number four and go straight down like a 45 degree angle, straight down to tank number six. That would be it, it it would amount too much pressure either on the top or the bottom, and it could cause the whole thing to blow. So, what they decided was have the 28-inch pipe from tank four connect to the 20-inch pipe, have that go for a few feet, angle down at about a 45-degree angle, and then once it's like at the same level as tank number six, then you have a horizontal pipe go from the angle piece straight out to tank number six. Okay. Uh, we'll have a picture up on the website that will show it beautifully. In fact, Kara, if you do scroll down to the pictures, I see it. I think it's like the last second to the last one.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:26

Yep, it's there.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:28

Yeah, you can see how like each tank it goes straight across. Whereas like four to six has that that angled piece in the middle of it to to basically account for tank number five.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:42

Not being there.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:43

Guys, I, as you know, science is not my forte. I am self-aware. I know this. But even I can point out the issue at this.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:57

Yes. So, and it's gonna get a little crazier too.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:02

So, to account for heating and cooling and the subsequent expanding and contraction of all the metal of the pipes and whatnot, a bellows adapter would be put on either end of the dog leg pipe to connect four and six. So basically, a bellows pipe is like a uh super thick, super durable piece of like rubber tubing that has like ridges in it so that it could be flexible. Kind of it's like a think of it as like a corrugated uh piece of rubber hose.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:35

How how hot is this?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:37

Um 300 degrees. But you could but they could make the rubber because they use these bellows between tanks one and two and then two and three and all that stuff. It just makes it so that the pipe, uh the metal part of it could flex a little bit in between tanks so that they're not blowing out welds and all that other fun crap.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:58

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:59

So yeah, the bellows would be on either side, and they didn't have a 20-incher, so what they just decided to use was the regular material that they used on all the other 28-inch setups. Oh, and I don't know if they just zip tied the crap out of it to neck it down to the 20-inch pipe, I'm not sure. But yes, that is what they did because when you heat up and cool down metal, when you heat it up, it wants to expand. And you know, if you're dealing with like a 15-foot pipe, that thing could expand up to like an inch. Okay, and if that was hard mounted in between tanks, it could actually snap and cause more problems. Hence the bellows, it makes it so that the the pipes can flex a little bit. So, yeah, they didn't have one that would work perfectly for the 20-inch tube, so they just went with the ones that they had for the 28 inchers and figured, okay, cool. Right, if it can handle 28 inches, it can handle 20.

unknown 1:24:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:59

Now the vacant engineering uh mechanical engineering position would be losing his mind right now based on all the jar rigging that was going on. But it gets worse. Okay, to make sure things were really secure, because this thing would weigh like a couple thousand pounds. They constructed a two by four, not a two by five, but a two by four wooden frame around the pipe connecting four to six and reduced the weight of the 20-inch pipe repair job from overstressing the bellows and connectors and snapping it off and everything. So they built like this wooden frame around the repair job to kind of hold everything into place.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:43

We're mousetrapping it.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:45

Uh yeah. Yep. Cool. Yep. So insert vacant mechanical engineering position, throwing up his hands in exasperation. Uh, if this guy existed, he would be losing his mind right now.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:59

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:00

Lastly, because you know time is money, there were no tests performed on the repair pipe, bellows, or the entire assembly. The whole thing was designed, cut, welded. By the way, they had no experienced welders on hand and assembled and attached to tanks four and six within 30 hours of discovering the crack. That's actually impressive. Is it? No. Well, it would have been impressive if they didn't try to make this to be a permanent repair. If they just kept it as a temporary one, right? To buy him like a month or something like that to get a new tank in. Sure. Brilliant. But that's not what they did. Yeah, at this point's vacant mechanical engineering position is contacting his lawyers to protect himself from the fallout associated with this dubies repair. Thankfully, there were no mechanical engineers around that could either do the repair correctly, object severely to what was going on, or quit work at litter, yeah, quit work at literally any other location in England that is safer than the one that was going on here. So, like they couldn't even send a message being like, I quit, I'm out, this is too dangerous, and get a job anywhere else. Like maybe as a uh underwater welder or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:22

Like we've done an episode on those guys too.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

So uh yeah, yeah. They would rather get sucked through a uh a four-inch opening than deal with this crap that's going on here. So, yes, uh that that's a fun one. Um, and again, I'll we'll have all these episodes linked in the show notes. So everything was hooked up by March 29th. Cool. And slowly the process of manufacturing Keprolactam was initiated, and without warning, and suddenly everything worked. Okay. That's our episode. Woo! See you next time. Woohoo! No. That's right, folks. The MacGyver rigged worked perfectly. No real leaks were detected, and nothing had exploded. This was a remarkable repair, and everyone who worked on it patted each other on the back, celebrated. Um, the yeah, yeah, they were celebrating there's probably some alcohol flying around. And, you know, they were also probably like, wow, man, we just saved a ton of money on payroll for not having to hire on a mechanical engineer. We did it ourselves. I'm not sure if the crew was thinking that, but management was probably like, dude, like we didn't have to pay a mechanical engineer to come and fix this. This is awesome. Go us. Part six temporary shemporary. Everything is fine. It's fine. Take a look at your home or car or anything else that is of a complicated build that you have repaired in the past by dodgy means. So you as the uh listener, think about this, right? How many years has it been that you use or since that you use electrical tape to cover up that frayed wire on a lamp? How many gallons of catalytic cleaner have you uh run through your cart uh to clear out the PO420 code indicating that the catalytic converter isn't working right? I'm raising my hand at that one. Oh yeah. Yep. So instead of actually replacing the catalytic converter, you just keep putting more chemicals in that dissolve seals and o-rings. How long has it been that you super glued a ripped-off button to your shirt versus watching a YouTube video on how to sew it back on? This is such a guy move. It's like, oh man, my button fell off. Glue it on. So, like, we would like we would literally like button up our shirt, put a tack of super glue down, that would button the shirt permanently, and then we would glue the button over that to make it look like we had it buttoned. Aren't men smart?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:57

I just feel like that's more work than it's worse.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:00

Oh no, super glue dries in like five seconds, whereas like and then and and super glue isn't pokey. Needles are pokey.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:07

Are you gonna take it off?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:09

Well, you just wear for the day and then you just rip it off like Hulk Hogan. Okay, and then you just buy a new shirt for the next day. This is something that you do like at your office desk or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:20

Okay. All right. You know, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:24

Ask your husband if he's ever done that. I think every guy, I think every guy has done some sort of uh apparel repair like this in the past. So human beings are marvelous engineers. We are inherent engineers, whether you're good at math or not. We do have a tendency to fix things around us. I mean, even you, Kara, who makes no claim that you're an engineer or a math whiz or anything like that, but you do engineer stuff all the time. Like at your desk, look at you how you have things organized in your house. That is all engineering, right? How you organize your kitchen. That's called knolling. K-N-O-L-L-I-N-G. You have things laid out in your kitchen to accommodate your height and and all that stuff. So that is we're inherent engineers. That's what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Um, how often we we however we often fall into this trap. We intend a repair job to be temporary until it works fine for so long that we say, screw it. And then we promote that temp repair to a permanent repair. And yeah, there have been times where, like, like I remember when my dad died, we cleaned out his apartment and he had a lamp in there that he literally repaired with electrical tape when he was like 14 and it still had the electrical tape on it from like 30 some odd years prior. It's funny. Yeah. So you gotta ask yourself this question, though, is how many times have those temporary repairs that were freshly changed status to permanent have blown up in our faces? Like often catastrophically, probably more times than we can count, or more times than we want to admit. So the management and crew of the Nypro Flix Flix the the place. It's late. Yeah. The management, the management, the people, the people in charge, and the crew at the Nypro Flixboro plant discovered this idea the hard way on June 1st, 1974. So about two months, two, three months after um the discovery of the initial massive crack.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:37

I'm surprised it lasted that long.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:39

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like this is a pretty impressive jerry rigging for this long. Yeah. For months, the jank welded two by four supported 20-inch pipe, ill-fitted between two tanks, filled with 20 tons of pressurized, heated, flammable solution, worked perfectly. There were no serious issues to report beyond the usual calling out of the fire brigade for the ritualistic random fire that needed to be put out.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:10

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:11

Yeah. Like the place catches on fire, and then we just send an email out to the fire department and then they come out and put it out.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:18

An email, they'd send the letter, get it right.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:23

Um, that is until around 4:30 on Saturday, June 1st, 1974, when 72 men experience what many thought was the beginning of World War III. So take a listen to this.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:36

We're watching the School Boy International, and we had the shumbling the noise. And the little lad went to the window and he said, Daddy said the night pro is going up, and he tried to drag me out. Well, we used to flyers down there, so I, you know, I went to the window. I'm looking with that. I said the flash and bang, and there was an explosion. Just threw me all around the room, and that was it. When I come the little lad come through, covered back in bloody, blown him through the French windows, and he came back and must have knocked me out. And he came and he dragged us out and we got in the backfield with the outside.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:09

I just saw this huge cloud of white smoke going up, you see, and I next down there, a young girl with a baby called out, Mrs. Fish, what's happening? I said, It's NIPRO and it's going to go up. And beyond that, it happened. There was that there were no noise, I don't remember any noise. There was this awful wind, I suppose, and it blew me down the drive, and I laid on the drive there, and all these tiles fell on me. And beyond that, that was it.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:38

So, yeah, these were the people that were like 300 yards away. They were the first ones to actually see what happened. Um, but yeah, the explosion was massive, and it blew these people like to the other end of the house, or it blew them up their sidewalk, all that kind of stuff. Shattered the windows, destroyed the houses, ripped roofs off. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty gnarly. The Nyproflixboro facility that took up to 10 to 15 acres of land, comprising miles and miles of piping and tubes, metal structures, office buildings, and hundreds of tons of cyclohexane essentially disappeared off the British countryside. The explosion was regarded as the largest explosion in peacetime English history. Over 40 acres of the British countryside had caught fire, which it took over 10 days to put out. So people would like residents would hear all night and all day long the fire trucks going down the road. They thought it was bad before. You know, like that's all they heard. Oh man. The entire county sent out like every fire truck that they had available to start working on this. Um, the damage there, the explosion was so massive that it damaged buildings one mile radius from the site, and people up to three miles away could hear or see what happened, and people over 30 miles away could hear the explosion. Wow. 1800 homes and other structures were severely damaged or completely destroyed as a result. Uh, what's interesting to note is that the the closest homes were over 300 yards away, and they were pretty much leveled. So, like when you watch this video, um, this news broadcast, like these people are standing outside their homes that are just absolutely wrecked from this explosion. This is where it gets a little depressing. Inside the plant, 28 men were killed instantly. All 18 men inside the control room that oversaw the reactors, as well as the pressures and operations of the reactors had died. Another 36 men were severely injured, with many now living with permanently disfiguring burns, blindness, and deafness. Hop on over to the website to see the before and after pictures. It is, I didn't put any pictures of like the bodies or anything like that. That's not necessary. But yeah, the images and the video reels of this fire is insane. It it looks like an uh post-apocalyptic type of battlefield, all things considered. For days following the incident, the rest of the NIPRO roster uh came out to help look for bodies or anyone who might still be alive. All the fire and rescue teams in the county, uh, I have country here, but in the county were called out to assist. When a body was found, the search and rescue, found by search and rescue, the workers who volunteered to help out were sent on a uh tea break to spare them the sight of their fellow burnt corpses bodies and and all that kind of stuff. So it's like, hey, thanks for helping us look, but uh we found something. You guys go take a tea break. We'll we'll take it from here. Years following the explosion, the communities surrounding the Naipro plant could remember exactly where they were and what they were doing um the day that this explosion took place. Um and many of the survivors were maimed and disfigured and around the town were constant reminders of what happened. So, like people that were sort of that did survive were horrifically burned uh or injured. Like they would they still lived in the town. That was just crazy is they spent the rest of their lives there, and they always were a reminder of how bad this explosion was. So part seven, what did happen? As you can imagine, after the investigation and forensic research and whatnot, the cause of the explosion stemmed from the janky repair back in March. But how was it that a repair that worked fine for months with no issues suddenly failed randomly? The best way to explain this dumpster fire is to break it down uh to sections because so many components failed at the same time. And we just have to assume that they all failed at the same time, because when one went, everything else went. So, 20-inch pipe. Uh pipes operate in two main variables, and this is what you're talking about a little bit ago: volume and pressure. When an amount of fluid transfers from one volume to a smaller one, then the pressure will go up. Conversely, another way around, if a fluid exits a pipe of a smaller volume into a bigger one, then the pressure goes down, right? It just conservation of mass and energy. The 20-inch pipe was never rated or tested to handle the increase in pressure from the 28-inch fitting from tank four being neck down to yeah, neck down to 20 inches or the repair pipe. So the 20-incher that they found was like this is the biggest thing we've got. And they just assumed that, well, if a 28-inch pipe can handle it, so it can the 20.

unknown 1:40:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:09

So that was something that again, a mechanical engineer would have been like time the F out. We can't do this. This also ties into the issue with the dog leg section of the repair pipe and the welds. The welds on the outside probably looked okay. I mean, you can have a weld look really, really good and be catastrophically compromised. However, there was no investigation into how much pressure these welds would have to sustain on top of the pressure increase associated with the decrease in volume. As soon as a pipe needs to change any direction or whatever, the pressure on the bend and the subsequent welds skyrockets. So, like you can have say like 500 psi of pressure going down a pipe. Now, let's say you weld in a section of pipe to like like a dog leg, right? That 500 psi could skyrocket 750 to 1000 psi right where those joints are on the welds, because it's now all that fluid is now changing directions. And therefore, you have to conserve momentum, right? We're covering a lot of laws of physics here. Uh again, a mechanical engineer would have picked up on this. And if those welds weren't done right, if there was too much oxygen used or not enough gas used, or if the welding wire wasn't the right kind, or whatever, like the welds were just asking to fail. The bellows, right? They use the same bells that were used on the other connecting tanks in four tanks one through four. So the other ones they had the bellows that were for 28 inches, they just ported that over between tanks four and six. Because if it works for those guys, it's gotta work for this. The reason was that if it worked for those, then it should work for the repair. However, the bells used between tanks four and six were the ones responsible for nicking a 28-inch diameter pipe down to 20. So they kind of treated those bellows as like the adapter. So they kind of use like zip ties or whatever to really crimp that 28-inch end down to 20 inches. I have no idea what they used. My guess is they use public banding wire and just did like a twist tie from hell on it, just really try to tighten that thing down. So that means the rubber bellows would absorb a brunt of the pressure increase, not to mention the heat from tanks uh from tank four at 115 psi. You're asking a lot out of that rubber. Nope. Yep, that was way too much pipe for that rubber to handle. The two by four support structure. Uh, this one's self-explanatory. Wooden beams flex, and a lot of that's on purpose, right? One of the reasons why our houses are built from wood, other than it's a renewable resource and it's abundant and all that kind of stuff, is that wood flexes but still maintains strength. So that makes it so that a house can settle over time without like walls falling down or crumbling and whatnot. So if you ever look at an older home and you look at where like the wall connects to the ceiling and you see like a little crack up there or whatever, that is caused by the house settling into the ground. And like a brand new house will sink, I think it's something like four to six inches over like a couple of decades, and wood can absorb that, it can flex and absorb uh the torsion, stuff like that. Uh, however, though, when it's trying to hold up thousands of pounds of steel, not to mention uh all this heated fluid and everything. Sorry, you don't want that to flex too much because then that's gonna put too much stress on the bellows and on the welds and all that stuff. So, wood frame was a bad idea, but that's probably all that they had access to. Uh testing. There was no check of the repair prior to installing it. Granted, it would have been very difficult and expensive to do, but by today's standards, these sorts of repairs are tested to conditions far exceeding the parameters that the surrounding materials would have to deal with to begin. So, in other words, by today's standards, they would make this repair, but they would test it to make sure that it could actually handle more than what the prior existing materials could handle. That's the standard practice here in America. If the management had taken a week or two to test the repair properly, perhaps there would have been no catastrophic explosion. But I think there was a problem that superseded the above issues, and that is money. Like so many decisions resulting in dumpster fires in the past, the revenue stream is the ultimate determiner of how things are going to take place. In the case of the NIPRO plant going up, lost revenue and wages was ultimately the thing that prompted or promoted the temporary repair to a permit one, right? This was only supposed to be up for a short period of time for them to get a new tank in. But after a while, and they're like, oh hey, this isn't going down. This is going great. Cancel the order for the new tank. We're just going to keep this one going.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:20

We'll save some money.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:21

Save some money. Um, the repair job itself was actually pretty brilliant, all things considered, if it had remained as a temporary repair. So if management had used the bought time to replace tank number five altogether instead of relying on this temporary repair forever, it would have gone down as like a super, super epic repair. The fear of lost money forced everyone to make ill-advised decisions. And we see that with health insurance today. Doctors can't do the testing that they want to do. Uh, they can't prescribe certain medications because insurance won't allow it. Right. So, some accountant at an insurance company is determining the medical needs and practices of a doctor who's actually in front of the patient who can actually see what is going on and prescribe the best possible solution for the medical problem, but nope, that's too expensive, and insurance won't cover it. Not that I have an opinion about that issue or anything. Hey, we don't need that MRI, we can just wait for the person to die from a brain cancer. Cool. However, I think there was another issue, an even bigger one, and it has to do with an experience I had in California.

unknown 1:46:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:42

So a couple years ago.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:46

Yes, but the audience hasn't.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:48

That's fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:49

But um a couple years ago I was in California and I was actually fixing to buy a new phone. Why not? I've actually bought a lot of phones from California. It's weird. But I went to the T-Mobile store and they were closed like on a Wednesday midday. In fact, the whole strip mall, that whole side of it was closed. And it had to do with the fires that had destroyed a lot of the power lines and whatnot. And there wasn't enough electricity to go around. So certain locations had to alternate. So, like every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, these businesses would be open, right? And then every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, they would switch sides, and then these other businesses could be open, and they would flip-flop back and forth. Because if they had everybody drawing power from the the uh infrastructure, it would cause even more problems and cause things like hospitals to lose electricity and and and whatnot. So they had to alternate locations based on the day. During this time, 1974, in England, there was a coal miner strike, and there wasn't enough coal to go around. Coal is what fed the power plants. So a lot of companies were told, hey, you can only operate for so many days a week. Now you take this NIPRO facility, they're already behind on their quota. They are like at least 50% behind, and now they're down a tank. And now they're relying on this McGyver repair. Like, oh, and now we can only run for certain days out of the week, which means those days during the week we have to run like 10 times harder to make up for the days that we have to be shut down. Again, it all boils down to money. And in this case, uh, not enough coal is being produced to have enough power plants set up to run everything at once. If if they were able to operate, you know, seven days a week, they wouldn't have to run as hard. And it that repair may have lasted longer. But because they could only run so many days out of the week, they had to make up for the days that they had to be shut down and run even harder and push that repair way past his limits that was already dubious to begin with.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:22

So I think that is probably the thing that really sped up the disaster. And that's one of those things where it's completely out of the control of the crew, it's out of the control of management. It it all it all boils down to dumpster fires taking place because of weird factors like this that nobody could really do anything about. So that's my theory as to what really made this go get out of control. Um, money and more money and poor decisions as a result of money being the main deciding factor. Factor. Like, what is the number one cause of divorce? It's like the inability of the couple to negotiate finances.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:07

Something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:08

Yeah. So, yeah, it's this crazy the role of money in in a capitalistic society. Yeah. So let's wrap this up. Part eight. The aftermath. After weeks and months of sorting through the wreckage and making sure there were like no more bodies to be found, work began on constructing a new facility. That's right. They built a new one on top of the old one.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:32

I feel like that you're asking for like a haunted can.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:37

Maybe it is haunted. It wouldn't be the first building in England to be haunted.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:42

So yeah, I think every building in England is haunted.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:45

It's all they're all very old.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:47

Yes. Albeit, the new facility was built with way more attention to safety, reliability, and survivability in case of an issue. So like today, that whole Naipro region looks nothing like the original. It is like it doesn't even look like a factory or a chemical plant. So go go look it up sometime. It's completely different than what it was before. This also spurned uh their government, the British government, to create like a workslash uh environmental safety organization that would come in and make sure that things are operating within code. I can't remember exactly what it was called, but it that did get passed uh because of this event. And now, like, I mean, technically it's red tape, but it also makes things a lot safer. I always joke. What's that?

SPEAKER_04 1:51:42

There's always a reason the red tape is there.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:45

Yep, and I always joke because my wife works for uh environmental or environmental services for the state, and she's always gone on about how we have all this law in place or this rule in place, and you gotta have things set up this way, do it that way. And I'm like, this is horrifically inefficient, but there's a reason behind it. It makes it so that our air is breathable or that a miner can work in a mine in Arizona for a full 25 years and not die of lung cancer, right? There's a lot of red tape, but that's because well, we don't like it when chemical plants explode and kill 28 men and injure 36 more. Yeah, it's just it's just bad for business. So money, yeah, yeah, it costs you even more money, right? So while the chemical plant was being rebuilt, there was a major run of nylon made items. This is kind of funny. So, like pantyhose and everything, like just skyrocketed in in cost. Nice. Since all the capri lactam uh came from one location, there was no immediate recovery of nylon production. Yes, it's logistically cheaper and easier to locate all of the production of something in one spot. But if a devastating experience or experience, a devastating event like this takes place, there's no way to get production up and running quickly again because you have nowhere else to get the necessary chemical. Whereas, like in America, you could be like, Well, that place literally blew up, but we can order more from this other location for a slightly more price. Yeah. Now, in this case, I'm sure America was more than happy to step in and supply Britain with the amount of nylon that they needed for their purposes, but something tells me that they were not getting a cheap rate. I have a funny feeling American tycoons were like, oh, you need nylon? Here it is, 20 times the market value.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:45

So that's just how capitalism works, and England has done the same thing to America. Like, oh, you want tea? Fine. Here it is, 20 times the market rate. Um, and then we have like a revolutionary war, and yeah, it that's a whole different thing. That's a whole thing. Uh yes. I actually kind of want to do an episode on the American Revolutionary War from the perspective of the British because that was kind of like their Vietnam. But, anyways, I digress. So, shockingly, no one was blamed for the incident. There was all these hearings and all that stuff, but yeah, nobody was put to jail for it. Nobody was sued over it. I think NyPro did have to pay out some settlement stuff, which they should. Uh, but I think this was all tied to the fact that there were so many different entities involved in the designing, construction, and running the whole complex that it was impossible to pin it on any one person. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it beats a witch hunt along with years of expensive lawsuits between entities and innocent people going to jail and all that kind of stuff. As much as we want to see justice, a lot of times this gets way out of control and it causes a lot more heartache than what it needs to be. Like, let's just figure out a way to compensate the families that were affected by this and the region that was affected by this, and then let's move on and not be pointing fingers at everybody. In the end, even in these economic times, never rely on a band-aid repair to fix a permanent issue. Sometimes you need to bite the bullet to get something fixed correctly, because a little extra money now can save tenfold down the road. So that's kind of the moral of this story. And if you're trying to figure out a way to apply this to your life, yeah. Just uh sometimes just shell it to extra cash and do it right. And if you can't do that, live and learn. And then because I'm discovering that with my car, I thought I could do a lot of these repairs myself, and now I'm discovering that hey, me trying to save a buck, uh, it's it's now costing like$10,000 and wasted time and whatnot. So that if I would have known this when I first started working on the car, I would have just shelled out the money to have it done right the first time, and I would probably have a working car right now rather than now they've got to try to identify all my screw-ups and all my repairs. So that is the flix borough incident in all its glory.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:21

Nice. In all its glory. Very good. Sorry, I'm like into pictures.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:27

Oh, okay. I thought you were falling asleep there. Like, oh god. It's like yeah, you could if you look at those pictures, it isn't it like something you see from Mad Max.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:35

Like I could see that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:38

And you can see those tanks there chilling.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:41

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good time.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:43

And you can see where number five was supposed to be.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:46

Supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:48

It's like a it's like a and you can kind of see the pipe angling. It's like a yeah, it looks like a like a missing tooth. Well, but yeah. Yep, no, that is another one of Ed's uh disaster stories involving human engineering that went terribly sideways.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:07

Terribly wrong. I like it. It's good. Keep it up. Lots of uh plumbing jokes.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:14

Oh, and just a lot of everyone bathroom humor, and yeah, you gotta have that.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:19

Yeah, that's important.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:20

No mud, so that's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:22

No mud this time, lots of crack though.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:25

Oh, tons of crack. Yeah, yeah. You're gonna have to get a drug test after this. But yeah, uh do us a favor and um obviously hit the website. There you will find all of our archive episodes plus our show notes and our methodology in terms of how we take our notes and our sources and the thought processes between Kara and myself. So it's always fun to um investigate that. And then, yeah, be sure to uh tell a friend. I know we say it every time, but we're just gonna leave it at this, right? Just tell a friend, tell a family member, somebody that um is maybe made a mistake and or they tried to plan something out that didn't work out. Uh, this show is specifically geared towards people that have uh made mistakes or had a plan go terribly sideways, and yet you can figure this out, you can be okay, you just have to live and learn from it. Yep, tell a friend, get them on, and uh be sure to hit up that website. And uh what do you got coming up, Kara?

SPEAKER_04 1:58:45

Um, we're going to be doing something medieval Europe that also involves an open flame.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:58

So yeah, for some odd reason the medieval dumpster fires are more funny.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:04

Yes, we can laugh at those and not feel bad, which sounds horrible. I think it's just because of the time difference.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:10

The time and then the like the logic that goes into it. Like oh yeah, no, the this this whole castle burned to the ground because of God. Like we're all starving to death, not because of uh some fungus we let loose in a field, but because God willed it.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:32

There yes, and there were also a lot of sorry, I'm getting defensive. There were also a lot of uh like explanations that they would try to use that actually kind of make sense for the time. Um so I don't fault them for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:48

Well, yeah, because that's all they're gonna do.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:49

This particular go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:51

Oh, I was just gonna say, like that's all they they only had so much technology to draw conclusions with. Like in a way, like bloodletting does kind of make sense.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:05

You have the illness inside you, you have to get it out, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:00:08

Like that Yeah, especially if it's an infection.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:10

Yeah, like we know it doesn't drain, but well, like it can.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:16

Like if you have a super bad abscess or whatever, drain it.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:20

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:20

Uh but no, but if you're like if you've got like a really, really bad flu, bloodletting isn't gonna fix it. But I understand the logic behind it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:29

Exactly. That's why I view anyway. Uh yes. We're talking, I'm thinking medieval French party goes wrong. It's gonna be a fun time. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:44

Am I gonna have to do all the pronunciations for the French folks?

SPEAKER_04 2:00:47

Probably. Um I'm gonna do my best, but you all know that I'm not great at French pronunciations. At this point, if you've been listening to us for a while, you know I butcher it every time and I'm brave every time I try to do something French.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:59

Uh yeah, your American really comes out.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:03

It really does. And I try hard to fix it, but I'm better at Spanish.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:10

I just let you do it because it's just so funny.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:12

I'm better at Spanish. Trust me on that. But yes, that's what I've got going on. So uh yeah, stay tuned for the medieval frat party. I'm very excited about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:21

Okay. All right, cool deal. Well, everybody, you keep it a hot mess. Uh do not light really flammable substances on fire.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:29

Yeah, don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:30

Like it stay away from anything that has cyclo or hexane in it. Right. And uh you should be good. So until next time, take it easy. Bye. Uh methylodiamine and dodeca yeah, dodeca nebiotic acid. I thought I was being brave doing French history, but I can pronounce French way better than some of these. And I'm actually gonna dive into this after I pee because I do that now.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:16

I gotta pee too, it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:17

Cool. We'll go pee together. Nope. That sounds weird.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:20

Don't like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:21

Yeah, neither do I. Nope, I don't. It's gonna come up at any time. Option three was heralded as the best option, and planning and work immediately began to discontent. And that is your dumpster fire.