Posted by Historian124 I started documenting the mines in 2010. |
Not to nitpick or argue, but I need to start asking some credential questions since you have strongly doubled-down on what now comes across as a daddy threatening a son. I don't know you. Maybe that wasn't your intention. "You've been warned - happy exploring" is not only oxymoronic, but comes across as snide and trying to put the fear of god into us.
The govt database shows the Folly Mountain region (Acadia district) to have been last visited in the 1994-1998 timeframe. These activities in 2010 that you mention... were these personal, or official documentings? If official, then why isn't the data in the 2013 dump of the database?
Just trying to get the scope / purpose of your experiences there.
Posted by Historian124Ive been to some mines in the Acadia Iron Mine District and upon inspecting and documenting their location, had a rock fall happen a few hundred feet in front of me in the mine. Scary stuff. |
Maybe the way you describe this is ambigious, but are you saying that you had a rock fall happen in "some mines"... like more than once? You say "some" and "their" meaning more than one. Or did a rock fall happen in only one of the "some" ?? I'm assuming the latter.
Look, as far as I'm concerned, you could park a lawn chair at the entrance of any mine, lay a sensor strip the whole length of the mine, and sit and wait... and you'd be decades waiting for a collapse. Hell, most of these mines are already 100 years old. As I've mentioned in other posts, mines don't think. The odds of being in one and a collapse happening during the one hour (out of hundreds of thousands of hours) that you happen to be in there... well, it's a common mistake of human thinking. That feeling that when you're standing in there, that something has changed... it knows you're there... and it's waiting to trap you... it's simply not true. The myth of "inward pressure" is also not true. A mountain with a drift through it is like a cinderblock of concrete the size of an 18-wheeler, with a 1-inch hole drilled through it. The load forces are 99.9999% carried by the surrounding rock. It's what made mines possible. It's not the same as deep ocean forces - as water is liquid. Mountains are a solid structure, and behave like a giant load-bearing chunk. It's why your house's walls aren't being forced inward/downward and won't collapse in on you. Timbering in mines was to assist in crumbling ceilings - not holding the ceiling UP. If timbering was to support the ceiling (weight) of the mountain above, they would have been futile. You can't put an 8x8 beam under 1,000,000 tons. Which is precisely why timbering was never that.
So this rock fall... was it a collapse / seal-off of the tunnel ? Or did some of the ceiling crumble? Big difference. Even still, with the "waiting on a lawn chair" scenario... I still believe (well.. I know) that you'd be waiting months, if not years, just for a crumble-fall. To be standing under one, in the precise spot, when it happens... lottery winner. (or technically loser I guess).
Posted by Historian124But im not trying to scare you im just trying to better educate you. |
Could've fooled me. Your words are freaking scary. Like they'd spook most people to run away from a mine screaming. I do believe that is your intention. To freak me out to the point I just don't go back. It's the safe position, and I appreciate that. Nothing bad can come from your position.
Absolute safety is not doing any exploration, period. UE dead. For everybody.
What I'm trying to garner, and what I'd like to hear, is pro-exploration discussions for mines, with the unlikely-but-present risks acknowledged, but maximization of the success of returning home happy and safely.
In other words, pooping on the parade is just coming across as negative. While I hear you loud and clear, it's nothing I've not heard or read a million times while exploring the possibility of NS mine hunting, for months in advance before actually going out to do it. I've weighed every bit of logic & reasoning, the doom-sayers and the "nothing to worry about" crowds.
All I know is guys do very well, for hours, miles of walking, sometimes 7 levels deep (700+ feet down inclined shafts), in scraggy sandy-rocked desert-based mines where the walls crumble when you grab them.
Nova Scotian rock is solid, granite-like consistency. Especially in those mountains. It was partially why they were so rich in iron ore.
Posted by Historian124If you want to walk into a mine you go right ahead but be warned if something does go wrong and a cave-in does occur and you are not killed in the process the chances of you surviving or being rescued is slim. |
I don't know how to respond to this except "no shit, sherlock" and it would sound awfully rude in saying so. But that's why I'm trying to implore that I am aware of all the spooks and risks you mention... how do I express this better...
I'm going to be exploring DESPITE those risks. Does that make sense?
Of course "I've been warned" and "if something does go wrong" then yes.. it's all on my head. I'll be a dead duck, of my own making. But that is the risk tradeoff I am willing to make. The same risk tradeoff we make when boarding an aircraft, or getting in our car every day, or whatever. One may say the chance of getting in a car crash is higher than being in a mine that happens to collapse, or has a trait that successfully kills you. Life is odds.
I'm just not going to preach people away from crumbling buildings, or any degree of UE, because we all know the risks we are taking on.
My position is mines pose no more/less risk than other UE. You likely disagree.
Posted by Historian124Take a oxygen sensor with you so u can measure the oxygen level but if u are anything like most people you will say "ahh i don need an oxygen sensor everything will be fine" |
This oxygen sensor thing is thrown around thousands of times it seems in comments I read everywhere. It screams of layman jargon. Why? Because if you knew what you were recommending, you'd know what an oxygen sensor is and how it works.
You do realize a sensor system of such type is thousands of dollars, right? But the sticking point is their sensor itself - which has to be changed almost monthly (at hundreds of dollars a pop) and kept calibrated by a well-trained technician. They are not something any UE would own, or could maintain. They aren't around for open rental (and if they were, could you count on their calibration and sensor freshness?). It's one of those things that's a nice (almost automatically assumed) sentiment... but reality is a whole different thing.
No mine explorer is going to have oxygen sense equipment. It's out of reach. Even the "pro" mine explorers that walk hundreds of mines and have hundreds of miles underground on their belts... have not had the luxury of such equipment.
Yes, the thinking it's not needed MAY get me killed. MAY. But again, it's lottery odds. Russian roulette with a revolver that holds 100,000 bullets, but only one bullet is inserted... spin that chamber... I WOULD pull the trigger. That's what I'm trying to tell you.
Your position is to simply not play that roulette at all.
So be it. We disagree.
I appreciate the concern and the cautions. I'm not a silly teenager looking for kicks, but a 40+ year old with a fairly tuned brain. Your view isn't unlike probably 99% of my own friends... but that's what differentiates the UE, in my opinion. None of them see a stitch of beauty, intrigue, or adventure in ANYTHING we would discuss on here. Mines or otherwise. So if I come across as defiant to strict warnings, it's not that I don't respect you as a fellow UE... it's more that I just don't need my hand held. If that makes sense. I don't think your feedback is out of line. It has it's place on here. We all want to be safe and live. But I have to tell you I will not be spooked out of continuing with the mines. In fact, I have a ton of sites left, with others on here connecting with me interested on trying out some scouting.
You have to concede that dying on the highway on the WAY to the scouting sites is hundreds of times (if not thousands of times) more likely than dying in a mine drift.
Not that I'm trying to "win" some kind of argument. Just trying to keep it logical.