Comments on: Man, that sucks.

Man, that sucks.

punkfloyd — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:50:05 -0800

Early in the morning on November 21, 1980, twelve men abandonded their oil rig on Lake Peigneur in Louisiana, suspecting that something was wrong. Little did they know they created a SWIRLING VORTEX OF DOOM!

By: wfrgms

wfrgms — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:57:24 -0800

Cool story punkfloyd! Thanks!

By: jrb223

jrb223 — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:59:12 -0800

Gotta check this out the next time I'm visiting my uncle down there. Also in New Iberia: the best factory tour ever.

By: Baby_Balrog

Baby_Balrog — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:59:30 -0800

That is amazing. I've always wondered about this sort of thing - what if someone mined under a lake? Absolutely fantastic post.

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:59:34 -0800

A saw a show about this on the History Channel (smooshed between WWII docs). Spectacular stuff.

By: rand

rand — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:00:36 -0800

This is what happens when you drill for oil above a salt mine. Was anyone else not suprised by the drilling team going into the mine? Interesting story regardless.

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:01:42 -0800

jrb223 writes "Also in New Iberia: the best factory tour ever." Amen to that. Plus they have cidar jugs of Tabasco in the gift shop.

By: DragonBoy

DragonBoy — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:04:07 -0800

Interestingly enough, sometimes when I initiate the SWIRLING VORTEX OF DOOM in my restroom "barges" pop back up the the surface when the water refils. Perhaps there's a salt dome down there.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:06:35 -0800

Doh!

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:06:43 -0800

Incredible story. Wonder if there is video of that somewhere. This is what happens when you drill for oil above a salt mine Apparently there was a miscalculation or communication error, they did not intend to drill above the mine.

By: punkfloyd

punkfloyd — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:06:49 -0800

DragonBoy...try eating less cheese.

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:09:41 -0800

I wonder how many times somebody said "Whoops" watching that.

By: Zinger

Zinger — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:10:38 -0800

Cool story. Great link!

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:10:47 -0800

Salt is a fascinating book, and touches on these salt mines, where beasts of burden were lowered down to work and never brought back out, living their lives down there. Also talks about the nearby invention of Tabasco.

By: ooga_booga

ooga_booga — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:11:47 -0800

Lake Peigneur on Google Maps, for those who were going to look. Cool story, thanks punkfloyd.

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:12:18 -0800

Does nothing good come of oil?

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:14:49 -0800

Very cool story, and boy would I love to have seen it in person. Except down in that mine, which must've been scary as hell.

By: Mid

Mid — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:19:27 -0800

There was a similar event in Russia or ex-USSR recently -- a whole lake disappeared overnight.

By: Mid

Mid — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:20:23 -0800

Here it is.

By: timsteil

timsteil — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:21:15 -0800

Damn thats a great story....there's another site I'm going to get sucked into for a quite a while

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:23:26 -0800

That site certainly earns its moniker.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:25:28 -0800

Okay. I'm from Louisiana, and I was alive when that happened, but I've never heard this story before. Excellent stuff. And I'll be reading more on this.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:40:24 -0800

My photos from Avery Island.

By: Ridx

Ridx — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:40:33 -0800

What I would pay to be a fly on the wall when this was reported to the corporate bigwigs. The best thing about this is that nobody died and an oil company lost a lot of money! I challenge anyone to find a cooler engineering disaster.

By: rkent

rkent — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:40:53 -0800

From the same site: The Six-Stroke Engine. I was originally gonna post a "5 blade razor" wisecrack, but after reading the whole thing, it looks... well, damn interesting.

By: mystyk

mystyk — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:42:21 -0800

MetaMonkey: "Apparently there was a miscalculation or communication error, they did not intend to drill above the mine." Well, technically they specifically intended to drill above the mine. They didn't intend to drill into one of the shafts. Given the complex 3D geometry of mines and caves, my money's initially on miscalculation, but since oil drilling needs the same 3D knowledge, I'm gonna switch to commo.

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:50:16 -0800

Why I'm always skeptical of the words "we know what we're doing".

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:51:19 -0800

rkent: That's an amazing idea. I also browsed the site a bit after reading the linked article but missed that. Considering how much energy is discarded as waste heat from internal combustion engines (more than is actually used to produce work), that's simply one of the smartest damn things I've ever seen.

By: rush

rush — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:59:20 -0800

"Does nothing good come of oil?" - sourwookie I think metafilter's kinda neat. So, that's one thing.

By: drstein

drstein — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:04:49 -0800

This has to be one of the biggest "Dude, WTF?!" moments in US lake drilling history.

By: CRM114

CRM114 — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:13:21 -0800

Or perhaps a "ZOMG saltdome is ghey!1!!" moment.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:27:44 -0800

Oopsy. Reminds me of the story of the copper mines near my house. They were down about three hundred feet, hit an underground river and the mine filled up overnight. There are supposed to be trucks still down at the bottom.

By: melt away

melt away — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:52:02 -0800

Via...... ? (saw this elsewhere yesterday)

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:54:38 -0800

Sounds like they stumbled onto the Nexus of all Realities!

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:54:59 -0800

sourwookie writes "Does nothing good come of oil?" Salad dressing?

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:00:19 -0800

Another vote for "Salt." It amazing how damned interesting the history of salt is.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:00:42 -0800

Damn interesting, sorry.

By: bitter-girl.com

bitter-girl.com — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:06:40 -0800

There's a salt mine under Lake Erie...if this happened here, it would only be a matter of time until the Cleveland "mistake on the lake" jokes got hauled out...

By: lunalaguna

lunalaguna — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:15:39 -0800

via digg.com yesterday.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:28:23 -0800

"From the same site: The Six-Stroke Engine. I was originally gonna post a "5 blade razor" wisecrack, but after reading the whole thing, it looks... well, damn interesting." Crower is a smart, smart man when it comes to the internal combustion engine. I've used his camshafts in several engines I've built.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:32:39 -0800

"via digg.com yesterday" Or not.

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:07:55 -0800

That site utterly rocks. It's like that carrrazzee Reader's Digest big book of anomalies and mysteries from when I was a kid, but online, and with fresh content, and, like, free!

By: LooseFilter

LooseFilter — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:38:16 -0800

I've been to Jefferson Island, and seen the site of this particular disaster (grew up in south Louisiana). There's a little museum with a ton of photographs--it took a while for the whole disaster to unfold, so people were able to get a good, long look at it. There was an internationally-renowned botanical garden swallowed whole, along with lots of other stuff. There's still a chimney and part of a wall sticking up out of the water, among other things. Neat place to visit.

By: lunalaguna

lunalaguna — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:40:40 -0800

That was a reply to melt away's question. It wasn't intended to be a link. The confusion proves we need to be able to reply to one another's comments...like on digg.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:25:19 -0800

This incident was clearly a partial inspiration for A View to a Kill. See also Russian villagers baffled by missing lake. (They blame Bush.)

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:39:20 -0800

Via...... ? (saw this elsewhere yesterday) posted by melt away at 6:52 PM EST on March 28 [!] Who cares? That site utterly rocks. It's like that carrrazzee Reader's Digest big book of anomalies and mysteries from when I was a kid, but online, and with fresh content, and, like, free! posted by mwhybark at 8:07 PM EST on March 28 [!] Agreed, and it has been a rich source of posts to MeFi in the past few months. Where do they get all this good stuff?

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:36:34 -0800

Six strokes are really old. My great uncle had a 2 cylinder tractor that alternated between desiel and steam on each cylinder. The tractor was made before WWII.

By: grimcity

grimcity — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 20:02:19 -0800

I'm surprised that it was even possible to dig a mine that deep in New Iberia without having it flood... lake or no lake.

By: malthas

malthas — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:17:48 -0800

See also. That was the first thing I thought of when I read this post. Is it bad that I can remember things from July of last year with no difficulty, but easily forget what I had for dinner last night?

By: Opposite George

Opposite George — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:26:20 -0800

Something similar happened on Jan. 22, 1959, when coal miners dug too close to the Susquehanna River in Port Griffith, Pennsylvania. Twelve men were killed in the Knox Mine Disaster when the river broke through. An estimated 10 billion gallons of water flooded the mine, and authorities dumped entire railroad cars into the hole in an attempt to plug it. Ultimately, this disaster finished deep mining in the Wyoming valley.

By: greycap

greycap — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:09:35 -0800

This is an absolutely fascinating thread - thanks to all who have added stories, it's really intriguing.

By: JekPorkins

JekPorkins — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:24:53 -0800

There was a swirling mass of water that lived in a quiet pond. It asked permission from its master to visit the lands beyond. And its master allowed it to fly. So the wind swept the whirlpool across the sky.

By: rhymer

rhymer — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 04:19:40 -0800

What a gripping story - great post.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 05:22:54 -0800

Holy shit! That's no ~~salty dog~~shaggy dog story!

By: Sk4n

Sk4n — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 06:17:33 -0800

From the Google Maps link - I love the way the field boundaries around the lake make it look like they were arranged by a larger whirlpool effect. Or is it just me?

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 07:57:10 -0800

I don't quite get how a 50 foot waterfall was created as the lake refilled, given that it was only 11 feet deep to start with.

By: crawl

crawl — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:27:55 -0800

smackfu, I think the 50 foot waterfall was into the hole they drilled in the middle of the lake, falling into the mine below.

By: nomisxid

nomisxid — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:37:11 -0800

crawl, the 50ft waterfall refers to water flowing from the gulf of mexico backwards down the barge channel. It got so high because the entire lakebed eroded as the water sucked down into the mine. I've got the video somewhere, but just finished moving at home and dunno where it'd be, or I'd put it up for all to watch.

By: davejay

davejay — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 16:20:53 -0800

About that six-stroke engine -- if you're burning hydrogen, isn't water the byproduct? And so couldn't that water be reclaimed, to extend the distance you could drive before you'd need to refill the water jug, as it were?

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:38:57 -0800

You could, but you'd need a helliously big radiator and reclaimation system. Water is so cheap it is easier to just throw the steam away.