#liquid petroleum gas

[grapeagata]

Alrighty the boiler is working nowwW!!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't want to outright copy an existing design, but I did take some notes from the designs I saw, such as the preheating of the crude oil and the vacuum, to use the heat more efficiently, and the heat injector to control how much heat is actually transfered.

I also have a cooling system (using petroleum as a coolant so it doesn't evaporate), both so the pump doesn't overheat, and to cool the petroleum, since I wasn't much of a fan of pumping 330°C petroleum into my machines.

Also since I'm current not using all of the petreum this thing makes (since it's actually absurd how much it makes), I added a hydro sensor and a liquid shut off to stop the machine from clogging up, since the crude oil would just sit there in the heat, and that would break the pipes.

Now yes, the vulcano did go dormant, and the magma did solidfy, which Isn't stopping the boiler from working since it's still 1300°C, however, I fear that the rock that formed there will stop the vulcano from erupting. It doesn't say that it's buried or that it's overpressured, but maybe that's just because the vulcano is dormant or something. I guess using a robo-miner could fix this? Or maybe more geotuners (I already have one) to further increase the heat? Idk

I also thought of using the second minor vulcano I found, but that's WAY far away and my boiler is on the edge of the map.

Anyway, for now it's working, I will probably have to fix a bunch of stuff still.

[ltwilliammowett]

“I’ll put the kettle on” This domestic, cozy expression means it’s time to don the gas mask. Today, the Swedish spring weather is nice and dry, giving us a chance to pitch the newly caulked seams. This is the second layer. We heat our pitch in a large tea kettle. As it turns out, the issue of how to shape a vessel for easy pouring of a very hot liquid (first layer 300 degrees Celsius, second only 150) has already been solved.  The pitch goes in the seams, on top of the oakum. The gap on top is supposed to be as deep as it is wide – the hardened pitch, if it could be pulled out whole, should be square in cross-section. It would look like the world’s longest piece of liquorice. Pitch is indeed pitch black. It is the end result of the slow burning and distillation of organic materials. Historically, it was made by boiling off all the water in pine tar, but these days it’s impossible to get anything but petroleum pitch. It smells like boiling asphalt (when hot and liquid) and looks like black shiny volcano glass (when room temperature and solid).  The dark colour is so striking that the deepest possible black is named for pitch in Swedish too.

Writen by Karl a crewmember of the Götheborg of Sweden

Caulking is used to seal the joints and make them watertight.

[billy-cockblock]

SWTD Theory

Still Wakes the Deep has been a huge brainworm for me the past few weeks, so I wanted to make a post with one of my takes. Someone’s probably thought of this already, but I can’t find anything about it, so here I go. 

I’m gonna take this time to shout out a little sub theory of mine that plays a bit of a part in my main point. 

For a little background, in populations of organisms, there are limiting factors on their growth and spread. Think of it as a series of funnels of different sizes: the rate of liquid that can flow through is going to be determined by the narrowest funnel. For example. if there’s a population that has ample food, space, and whatever else it needs, but has a restricted access to water, that water is going to limit how large that population could grow.

Before the Shape was dug up by the drill, it was probably dormant in the sea bed, doing its best to survive, the same as any other organism. Down where it was dark, wet, and cold, I think it had one main limiting factor: oxygen.

I don’t think the Shape can efficiently exchange gas underwater. Most of the untouched bodies Caz sees are only underwater, where an organism that thrives in air would struggle to access. Once it gets dug up and brought to air with plenty of organic matter to consume and grow with, its population explodes. When a limiting factor is removed, there’s nothing holding the population back any more until they hit a new limit. The Shape’s old limiting factor was removed, and it would only stop reproducing by running out of space to grow on the rig, running out of organic matter to use, or being killed (like, say, in a giant fiery explosion).

(I could go on and on about how the Shape potentially works, please feel free to ask me about it)

Now, I’ll get to my main theory:

I think Caz was dead the whole time.

Now, I don’t mean that in a “the whole game is in his head, none of it was real” way; I mean it in a “this man got Ethan Winters’ed” way. 

So, I started to do a little research into how tall oil rigs are to know how far Caz would have fallen off the helipad. I quickly learned there are many types of oil rigs and not every oil rig of the same type is the same size. I’m studying marine biology, not petroleum engineering like my brother, so I got tired of trying to guesstimate how tall the Bierra D’s helipad would be and attacked the problem with some simple math. 

Watching a video, I saw he fell for between 4-5 seconds; the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8m/s^2. Plugging that in a calculator while not accounting for air resistance to solve for distance gets me ~80-120m, depending on if I used the 4 or 5 second count, so I’ll guess around 100m. I’ve found many conflicting sources on what the tallest heights you can safely fall into water are, but I can safely tell you that 100m is much higher than any of them. 

Now, maybe the devs weren’t going with the mathematical exact timing it would take for a guy to fall off an oil rig, and didn’t mean for it to be implied that he fell from THAT high. Still, we can agree he fell from very high up, high enough to have likely ended in injury. Maybe he’d just fall on and break a leg? Maybe an arm or some ribs?

After falling off the rig, the last frame before Caz blacks out shows the water at the top of the screen, meaning he hits the water head-first. He may be wearing a hard hat (that somehow stays on his head through the whole ordeal since he clips his flashlight to it), but he still should have cracked his skull open or broken his neck. 

When they pull him out of the water, he’s cold and not breathing, which wouldn’t be unusual for a drowning victim in the North Sea in the dead of winter, but it would usually be a death sentence. They never explain how they dragged Caz out of the water, but it would presumably have taken a long time to get him out, and time is key when dealing with someone who isn’t breathing. The fact that he’s able to cough up water and start breathing on his own is a miracle, since it doesn’t sound like Brodie or Douglas do CPR when they bring him inside.

So, fall damage, head and/or spine injury, drowning, and hypothermia. By several different factors, Caz should be a very, very dead man. So why isn’t he?

My theory is that, somehow, somewhy, the infection from The Shape healed and brought him back to life. We know for a fact it has amazing generative properties, basically able to double, triple, quadruple the amount of tissue and organic matter in the crew’s bodies with no regard for conservation of mass, so what’s just a little regeneration of damaged tissues in a single body? Once Caz’s body gets someplace with better conditions suited to life (inside where it’s warm and there’s air), it just jumpstarts his body functions. The Shape’s presumably been dormant in the seafloor for a long time, so it could be able to go dormant and kinda “come back to life” as conditions change, similar to a tardigrade, and potentially pass this ability onto its hosts.

And Caz mentions how his head hurts a lot, especially when he gets close to the Shape. 

Now, this might seem like baseless conjecture, and y’all might say “That’s a good headcanon, but there’s no evidence that The Shape could bring people back to life!” to which I would say “Oh, but there might be!"

After the helicopter on the starboard side, we get a call from Bruce, who is actively drowning. Through his gasps, he tells us that O’Connor hurt his leg and couldn’t swim, presumably drowning. And guess who we see still kicking as we’re passing through the pontoon? My thought is that O’Connor couldn’t swim, drowned, and drifted to the bottom, landing on a part of the shape. Once Caz and Brodie start working in the legs and they drain, it exposes him to air and allows the shape to start growing again, assimilating him and bringing him back to life. 

Obviously, he’s not doing as well as Caz is. My thought was that, if Caz died as he was infected, the infection would’ve had to put a lot of its energy into bringing him back, not leaving much for itself to begin assimilating him into the Shape. Since O’Connor was in direct contact with the Shape, it could hook him up to its network to help supplement that loss. Caz, meanwhile, stays as far away from the stuff as he can and doesn’t even get anything to eat all day; guy's running on empty. He has small things where the Shape affects him, like the colors at the edge of his vision, but most of his hallucinations only happen after the Shape attacks him through O’Connor. Before, I’m pretty sure the largest incident (other than when he’s blacked out) is when we can barely hear Suze’s voice over the speakers when moving through the pontoon. It’s really only after getting attacked that he starts to hear her when he’s awake, near the Shape, or over phone calls. He only hears her clearly over the speakers in administration after he runs into the shape many times when he gets swept away in the flooding.

With my main evidence out of the way, I’ll also mention that Caz sees the “light at the end of the tunnel” from the end of the game in the oil flashes when he blacks out.

But hey, that’s just a theory. 

A GAME TH- I have received a cease and desist.

Man, this became a long read. Thanks for getting this far, and I hope you enjoyed!

[pyrrhiccomedy]

I have a physics question off of the "what is energy" post.

So is hot is small fast, that means cold has to be big slow right? (Possibly wrong idk)

What is the....fastness...and hotness....of...objects? Like pillows and books. A pillow would technically be room temperature. But it's made of particles. And I know that it's temperature doesn't dictate it's state of matter, but if you heated it up, it could catch fire and make smoke. So DOES temperature determine if it's a regular old object or not? Is there a fastness for pillows?

I may be thinking of this wrong.

[Anon sent a follow-up:

I asked the fastness of a pillow question and I think I got it.

It isn't hotness and fastness that makes the pillow. The hot and fast makes the molecules that make the oil that the (plastic synthetic fibers=oil so yeah) pillow is made from. But if you apply the small fastness to the pillow you may make it into a different state. I think.]

You're asking a lot of different questions here but I think you're fundamentally falsely conflating matter and energy. Things are matter. Matter has energy.

Let me try to break this out.

What do you mean when you say that hot is "fast but small?"

Heat is just a measurement of the motion of all of the atoms and molecules in a medium. Atoms are constantly vibrating. The faster they vibrate, the more friction they give off as they bump into each other. That friction converts the movement of the atom into heat energy.

2. If that's what hot is, then what is cold?

Nothing. Cold doesn't exist. Cold is just an absence of heat. If all of the atoms in a medium completely stopped vibrating, they would reach "absolute zero" temperature.

3. Does temperature dictate an object's state of matter?

Yes, of course. Every element can exist as a gas, liquid, or solid, and the easiest way of moving them from one state to the other is by changing their temperature. If you heat up a molecule, its atoms start vibrating faster, and the bonds between them start to break apart. Think of it like a room full of kindergartners all holding hands and jumping up and down. The harder they jump, the harder it is for them to keep holding hands.

4. Why does high temperature cause some things to burn?

Oxygen, for reasons which I think are probably too complex to get into here, is not particularly stable. It wants two more electrons than it has, and it will rip other molecules apart in order to get them. Low key it's doing that all the time. And the more energy you give oxygen (say, by raising the air temperature in a room, causing its atoms to vibrate faster), the more strength it has to do the ripping.

Mostly it rips apart hydrogen and carbon, with which it can form very stable molecules of carbon dioxide and water. (Molecules like to be stable.) Things are actually considered flammable if they have hydrogen and carbon atoms to give to oxygen. All organic matter has both: including cotton, linen, feathers, all petroleum-based products, and whatever else most pillows are made of. Ever heard life on earth described as "carbon-based?" Yeah. You're full of carbon, so you're flammable.

The fire you experience is just the heat and light given off by the electrons in the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon atoms in the system jumping and dropping to higher and lower energy states, as molecular bonds are broken and new molecular bonds are formed.

All of which is to say: I think you're confusing yourself by bringing combustion into this. That's in the 102 course.

5. What energy does a pillow have?

Plenty. It has the chemical energy binding its molecules together (which can be unleashed in a combustion reaction); it has the nuclear energy binding its atoms' nuclei together; it has the heat energy from the standard amount of atomic vibration you'd get in an ordinary room; and it has potential energy from its position in the universe (if you removed all of the obstructions in its way, the pillow would start falling towards the black hole at the center of our galaxy. That motion energy is being 'stored' as potential energy).

All of that energy originated in the Big Bang.

[sickmachete]

HEY !! HERE ARE SOME RANDOM FIRE SAFETY TIPS !!

AVOID HILLS. seriously. the radiant heat coming off the flames pre-heats nearby grasses/fuels located above (heat rises!) which is what cause fires to "run" up hills lighting up long strips in the blink of an eye. you cannot outrun a fire that's chasing you up hill.

EVEN IF you are standing below the fire all it takes is one stray ember blown in the wind to start a fire below YOU and then you're really screwed. if you're caught on a hill, run to the side and (if possible) try to get to any charred/burnt zones behind the fire.

charred/already burnt black areas are safe zones. they will not easily re-burn and can become refuges to retreat to (but still be mindful of smoke inhalation).

healthy green grass lawns can also be temporary safe zones. the moisture held in lush grass makes it a lot more difficult to catch fire and can work as a temporary refuge in the case of a house fire. however, TO BE CLEAR: this does NOT apply to tall forest meadow-type grasses. when i say healthy grass im talkin like suburban manicured lawns okay? if your lawn is looking crusty dry brown then thats not gonna be a good place to run to.

most mild carbon monoxide poisoning (aka smoke inhalation) can be cured by simply taking in fresh air. severe smoke inhalation may require further medical treatment though.

fire needs FUEL + OXYGEN + HEAT in order to burn. if you removed ANY of these 3 things, the fire will go out. this is known as the fire triangle. the reason why water works against fire is mainly because it's cold, however it also helps by "drowning" the fire, depriving it of oxygen.

on this note!! if you're cooking and your food catches on fire inside the pan, DO NOT! pour water onto it!!!! that will only make it splash. what you're gonna wanna do is grab a pot/pan lid and gently slide it onto the pan. this will cut off its oxygen and put the fire out. DO NOT! slam the lid onto the pan!! this rush of wind/air could blow the fire right out of the pan and directly onto you/nearby furniture!

CHECK YOUR FIRE EXTINGUISHERS!!! please!! not all fire extinguishers are meant to be used on the same fire!!! while it can vary (and you should definitely look up the ratings for your own location/extinguishers) many of them will have specific class ratings written along the label. here in the USA, those ratings are in letter form (ie: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D, and Class K). sometimes these ratings are combined (ie: Class ABC), meaning that a Class ABC fire extinguisher can be used on a Class A, B, or C fire.

FIRE EXTINGUISHERS AND THEIR ASSIGNED FIRES

CLASS A: these extinguishers should be used on wood/paper/plastic (ie: your basic trash fire).

CLASS B: these extinguishers should be used on flammable liquids (ie: alcohol, gas, petroleum, greasing oils <- not food oils though!!).

CLASS C: these extinguishers should be used on electrical fires (ie: sparking cables, your computer spontaneously combusted and is on fire, etc).

CLASS D: these extinguishers should be used on combustible metals (ie: magnesium, titanium, potassium, sodium, etc. if that metal shit in your garage is burning, use Class D).

CLASS K: these extinguishers should be used on flammable cooking oils/greases (ie: your stove is on fire, your barbecue's on fire, etc).

CLASS ABC: these extinguishers can be used on any of the Class A, B, or C material fires.

DO NOT USE THE WRONG EXTINGUISHER. they are labeled differently for a reason!!! a Class ABC extinguisher (for example) will make a Class K fire splash! you will cause that big old greasy fire to splash right back onto you!! Class K extinguishers are specifically designed to safely put out fires without disturbing the liquids/oils so please please please check the labels of your extinguishers.

AND REMEMBER TO "PASS" !!!

HOW TO USE A FIRE EXTINGUISHER — P.A.S.S.

PULL the pin in the handle.

AIM the nozzle at the base of the fire.

SQUEEZE the lever slowly.

SWEEP (across the base of the fire) from side to side.

[simon-says-shush]

You know, if you think about it.

The Mad Max anthology is the most realistic portrayal of a post-apocalyptic world that I've ever seen. They have petroleum distilleries to keep their cars running. Fucking Joel is out there siphoning 20 year old gas like it would even be liquid enough to get sucked through a rubber tube, let alone flammable enough to run a car.

[beardedmrbean]

DEER PARK, Texas (AP) — A towering flame gradually subsided Tuesday morning in the aftermath of a massive pipeline explosion after a vehicle drove through a fence and struck an above-ground valve, officials said.

Deer Park officials said police and local FBI agents initiated investigations and found no preliminary reports that would suggest a coordinated or “terrorist” attack and that “this appears to be an isolated incident.”

The investigation included efforts to learn more about the driver of a vehicle that was incinerated by the pipeline explosion as flames scorched the ground across a wide radius, severed adjacent power transmission lines and ignited homes at a distance. Police did not provide any information about the person's condition.

An evacuation area included nearly 1,000 homes and initial shelter orders included schools.

Operators shut off the flow of natural gas liquids in the pipeline, but so much remained in the miles of tubing that firefighters could do nothing but watch and hose down adjacent homes.

Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr. described intense heat from a fire that endured for more than 12 hours as ladder trucks showered houses from above.

"A lot of the house structures that are adjacent to that are still catching on fire even though we’re putting a lot of water on them,” Mouton said at an afternoon news conference. A spewing flame still lit up the sky at sunset Monday.

Firefighters initially were dispatched at 9:55 a.m., after an explosion at a valve station in Deer Park, adjacent to La Porte, rattled homes and businesses, including a Walmart. Deer Park officials said an SUV drove into the valve after going through a fence on the side of the Walmart parking lot.

At the news conference, officials said only one person, a firefighter, sustained a minor injury. Later, Deer Park spokesperson Kaitlyn Bluejacket said four people were injured. She didn’t provide details about the severity of the injuries.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement that 20 miles (32 kilometers) of pipeline between the two closed valves had to burn off before the fire would stop.

Anna Lewis, who was walking into the nearby Walmart when the explosion happened, said it sounded “like a bomb went off.” She said everyone inside was rushed to the back of the store and then taken across the street to a grocery store before being bussed to a community center.

“It scared me,” she said. “You really don’t know what to do when it’s happening.”

Geselle Melina Guerra said she and her boyfriend heard the explosion as they were having breakfast in their mobile home.

“All of a sudden we hear this loud bang and then I see something bright, like orange, coming from our back door that’s outside,” said Guerra, who lives within the evacuation area.

Guerra’s boyfriend, Jairo Sanchez, said they’re used to evacuations because they live close to other plants near the highway, but he hadn’t seen an explosion before in his 10 years living there.

“We just drove as far as we could because we didn’t know what was happening,” Sanchez said.

Houston, Texas’ largest city, is the nation’s petrochemical heartland and is home to a cluster of refineries and plants and thousands of miles of pipelines. Explosions and fires are a familiar sight in the area, including some that have been deadly, raising recurring questions about the adequacy of industry efforts to protect the public and the environment.

Letting the fire burn out is better, from an environmental perspective, than trying to attack the flames with some kind of suppressing foam or liquid, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of Houston.

“Otherwise it’s going to release a lot of volatile organics into the environment,” he said.

Still, there will undoubtedly be negative environmental consequences, including a release of soot, carbons and organic material, he said.

The pipeline’s owner, Dallas-based Energy Transfer, said air monitoring equipment was being set up near the plume of fire and smoke, which could be seen from at least 10 miles (16 kilometers) away at one point.

A statement from Harris County Pollution Control on Monday afternoon said no volatile organic compounds had been detected. The statement said particulate matter from the smoke was moderate and not an immediate risk to healthy people, although “sensitive populations may want to take precautions.” The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said it was also monitoring the air.

Natural gas liquids are used primarily in the manufacturing of plastics and basic and intermediate chemicals, Krishnamoorti said.

The fire burned through nearby power lines, and the website PowerOutage.us said several thousand customers were without power at one point in Harris County.

Krishnamoorti said the area’s extensive pipeline infrastructure will have to be closely inspected for damage beyond the explosion site, though the fire “won’t be a major disrupter of supply chains.”

The Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas in the state, said its safety inspectors were investigating.

Margaret Newman, who lives on the edge of the evacuation zone, said that when she heard the explosion she went out into her yard and could see the flame shooting above the trees. She lost electricity but has a generator to keep her home cool and planned to stay put.

[tumbl-census]

This question is about your household.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

In 1971, scientists gathered at a symposium to examine the practice of getting rid of oil and gas wastewater by injecting it into porous rock formations deep underground. Called injection wells, they are now widely used by the industry to dispose of the liquid byproducts when an oil or gas well is drilled, which can contain salts, metals and radioactive elements. At the conference, experts speculated about the long-term consequences for the earth and human health.

“Where will the waste reside 100 years from now?” one petroleum geologist asked. “We may just be opening up a Pandora’s box. Like ripples in a pond, the great question is how does man stop the process he has begun?”

This moment is described in journalist Justin Nobel’s new book, “Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It,” an in-depth look at the environmental and public health challenges of oil and gas waste disposal in the United States. The geologist’s question lies at the heart of Nobel’s investigation. 

What to do with the toxic and often radioactive waste created by drilling is a problem so large and untenable that one of Nobel’s sources calls it “the secret of the century.” Despite the scale of the problem—the American Petroleum Institute has estimated that the industry generates 18 billion barrels of waste fluids every year—it’s an issue that has escaped public scrutiny for decades. 

And because oil and gas waste is exempted from hazardous waste regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, it has also largely escaped regulatory scrutiny. (Another source in the book refers to the waste disposal situation in Pennsylvania as “the wild west” because of the lack of oversight.) 

Injection wells, once seen as a flawed short-term solution, now account for 96 percent of the oil and gas industry’s wastewater disposal, Nobel said. “If you kept out all the injection wells,” he said, “you would actually shut this industry down because they couldn’t operate without them.”

Nobel spoke with Inside Climate News about his experiences interviewing workers, scientists, advocates and residents about oil and gas waste; the methods for disposal that have been used historically and those that are still being used now; and how the industry is changing the way it deals with waste. 

[nathysillygirl]

finally finished the frameworks on how to create the molecules used in the creation of desalinization membranes

the production of those membranes are usually reserved to big industrial complexes due to the use of petroleum products, like butadiene

happens that currently one of those said big industrial complexes are partaking into a genocide

and I ain't trusting a genocidal industry with one of the most important needs for human life

when you unite TMC (in a THF liquid) and MPD (in water), the middle of it will produce a gooey plastic you can pull until you make a very thin membrane, which you can then use as a seawater filter

during the source checking of some of those processes, I also found out we can create Diphenyl from Benzoic Acid, which will definitely help in the making of Ethidium Bromide for DNA Modification in order to obtain HRT Medication producing bacteria

it means I won't be using chlorine gas to produce this little guy, so the next steps are cut from the final production

have fun ya folks, the Commune builds up 🩷

[grapeagata]

Okay so today in Oxygen N🚫T Included I've been having some power problem ever since I got my ooling system working

My first thought was to make a solar farm but i dunno, those meteors seem kinda hard to deal with... like, either I make a shit ton of steel to make bunker tiles and doors to RESIST them, and then I still have to do all the logic to open and close the door the right time, and I also need the thingies to dected the meteors and I need something to get rid of the regolith. Or I make those explosive things to shot them down, but I dunno what kinds of resources those take to make, plus it's still going to tke duplicant time to do so it decided against it.

I will make natural gas generators and petroleum generators instead (at least, for now), I was lucky and found two natural gas geysers so those are now captured, and I'll need the petroleum anyway to why not. Now to actually MAKE the petroleum, well, I noticed that on the ingame database it said that heating crude oil to 400C turned it into petroleum, so I'll pump some magma from the near by vulcano to a pool of oil and get tons of flamable liquid...

Or at least that's the plan, I have hope

[rainbow-scarab]

The Ancient Sea of Hallownest: Part 4

The Origins of the Void

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

<Theory Masterpost>

Void is a substance associated with death and regret.

Hunter’s Journal on the Shade: Echo of a previous life. Defeat it to retake its power and become whole. / Each of us leaves an imprint of something when we die. A stain on the world. I don't know how much longer this kingdom can bear the weight of so many past lives...

Several characters call the kingdom dark. Many call it dead, a corpse. And Hornet calls a certain vessel a Ghost. Jiji says:

First encounter: You see, sometimes we leave our regrets behind in the world, like black stains. If we don't deal with these regrets, hope starts to drain from us. Do you have regrets of your own, little one? Let me peer into you for a moment...

dreamnail: How long I must have slept. This land is so much darker now, so thick with the stains of regret. Even the air is murkier. If I sleep again, will the darkness creep in here and swallow me whole?

I’m not really intending to get too deep into it, mostly taking it as a given for this theory. I’m more concerned with the consequences of it coming from death.

Hallownest has seen much death. From the infection, from the many many children of the king and queen. The long histories of many peoples in the land. And the fact that almost every inch of it is covered in the shells of ancient creatures making up the very rock.

I think the void is very ancient—from before the rocks existed that make up Hallownest, from before there were fossils, from before it was land. I think it was there in the ocean itself.

Mossbag, in the same video linked in a previous part, points out that a basin is a geographical feature where water drains into (at 13:04). He wonders if void was being drained into the Abyss, either passively or actively (due to the structure as you descend into it possibly being like a well). As I do think the void is more ancient than the caves themselves, I think it was already there. However, void seems to be a fundamental product of life, just as living creatures produce dream essence and leave behind spirits. The caves have seen life and death in the time since they were formed so there must have been void formed in that time as well. Void may continually drain into the Basin and continue into the Abyss.

Abyss too is a word associated not just with darkness but with water. A word to describe the deep ocean, dark and fathomless, mysterious depths that may swallow you up from which you will never return.

Sea, basin, abyss. I think the void is as ancient as the ocean Hallownest used to be, but these words alone aren’t enough to say so. The void itself sits in liquid form in the Abyss, similar to a body of water. That alone may be enough to justify such phrasing. But with everything else, the fossilized marine life, the lighthouse imagery…to me it seems like a more real association and not just metaphor.

Now for something slightly silly, but that I hope illustrates something thematically.

In real life, ancient life may turn into rock, as I was speaking of previously. It also turns into oil. –Now, the void is…clearly not oil. It being oil was, admittedly, first just a joke I made to myself before I made this theory. But again all the random facts of high documentary consumption were swirling around in my head. From National Geographic:

Millions of years ago, algae and plants lived in shallow seas. After dying and sinking to the seafloor, the organic material mixed with other sediments and was buried. Over millions of years under high pressure and high temperature, the remains of these organisms transformed into what we know today as fossil fuels. Coal, natural gas, and petroleum are all fossil fuels that formed under similar conditions. Today, petroleum is found in vast underground reservoirs where ancient seas were located.

I find this process to be similar thematically. Both void and oil being the products of death. The rock itself in Hallownest is so chock full of the dead in the form of fossils.

The void is still not real oil (for instance, it lacks a smell). But I do wonder if the thoughts of real life oil formation could have influenced Team Cherry. They too may be casual documentary watchers or readers of random science articles. Or perhaps of more purposefully sought out info to find inspiration for the game. It’s not true to science, but again, it doesn’t have to be for inspiration.

(The fact that it's called...fossil fuel?????? --I'll be seeing myself out now)

I assume void is created instantaneously on death (or perhaps it is there in the creatures, and released on death, just as they contain dreams both when alive and dead). Jiji mentions the kingdom having grown darker in her sleep. We don’t know how long she slept, but it surely wasn’t on a geological timescale of millions of years.

Still, I wonder what happened to any void created by those creatures who became fossils. Did the void stay in place, and just sit in the rock? (Until perhaps being squeeze out like oil??? XD Okay I’m done with oil don’t worry). In game, there are commonly little black particles floating in the air. Could the void hang in the air like water vapor until it precipitates out like rain or condensation?

Long ago, could void have been there when an ocean environment was still thriving? Accumulating in the depths, perfect image of everything that Abyss means.

I’d like to change gears a bit. I am speaking about innumerable sea creatures dying and creating void, the start of the void sea. I’ve tried to show the evidence of the existence of the ocean life, and how that could have created void so long ago. But how about in reverse?

In other words, is there anything about the void that can suggest an origin from such ocean creatures? Beyond just words that suggest an ocean theme?

In its most raw form, you might say void is gaseous particles, or a liquid similar to water. We also have seen it manipulated into various forms, like the architecture of the Ancient Civilization, void gates, and constructs created by the Pale King.

But we do see it in other contexts. The void tendrils form all on their own, reacting to Ghost’s presence. And as Ghost becomes more powerful, attuning themself to the void, their form also changes.

If void has any form, it seems to have a tendency towards these tendrils (as well as having many eyes). Indeed, the most ancient evidence of the void is a large imprint of such a tendril.

Such form is in line with common imagery in fiction of ancient eldritch beings. And a very common source of imagery for eldritch beings is the deep sea, a dark and dangerous unknown full of monsters with writhing tentacles.

The Abyss is full of ammonite-like fossils. These ancient creatures were a type of cephalopod, like modern squid, octopi, cuttlefish, and nautiluses. Shelled creatures full of tentacles.

Artist renditions of ammonites:

It’s possible other cephalopods (similar to modern species) were alive in those ancient times too, though as squids and octopi lack those big shells, they are less likely to leave behind fossils.

The void seems to naturally take on cephalopod traits as far as I can tell. It doesn’t look exactly like cephalopods, no. But the void has very little you can call features in the first place, besides these tendrils. The vessels perhaps do have a distinct form, but that is influenced by their parentage, and their shades mostly take on the same form as their shells.

The Shade Lord’s form is certainly something. Its head does not look too much like the vessels’ anymore. This may be natively related to void, or it may still retain influence from the horns that Ghost and other vessels have; it’s hard to say.

(I have to wonder about the heads with horn's like Ghost's that are at the hot springs, or the horns coming up in the dream realm. But that's another topic)

All this to say, what seems most distinctly “void” is those tendrils and perhaps many eyes, other features a bit less certain due to influence from wyrm and root. And those tendrils do make me think of cephalopod tentacles.

I have to wonder if these ancient cephalopods were the predominant influence on the form the void takes. And possibly, if the void was around for a very long time in the ocean, the life there grew to live alongside it.

The Ancient Civilization worshipped void, and were adept in using it. I wonder if, perhaps, the ocean life went beyond that, with lifeforms made at least in part of void. Just as the snails seem to be in modern Hallownest.

Snails are another type of mollusk, after all, cousins to cephalopods. Snails may have been alive long ago, or changed form over the millennia to be what they are now. The snails as we see them have shells, even if in a bit different shape. And they look…not quite like real life snails, lacking things like eyestalks (and of course being more humanoid), but instead have simple black bodies similar to the vessels. That may not mean anything, as some like Lurien and Hornet have similarly simple black bodies, but still. We know, at least, two of the snails turn into void to be absorbed by Ghost. And they have those glowing white eyes…

And I have to wonder if perhaps that’s why the Ancient Civilization could shape those fossils into roads and buildings so easily. If those ancient shelled creatures were already in tune with void, perhaps the remains of their bodies would similarly be molded by those who can manipulate void.

If the ocean had void writhing around in it, the imprint of a giant void tendril may have been made long long ago, to be buried under fossils.

The snails may have lived all this time since such ancient days, or evolved into their current form from different, more aquatic mollusks.

And that’s it!

As Mask Maker says:

Truth in Hallownest is always buried deep. How many layers will it pry through?

Hallownest has existed for a very very long time. From ocean to land, from before the Ancient Civilization to the Pale King and beyond. Innumerable creatures living and dying, creating the void and living alongside it.

Thank you for reading 💖

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

<Theory Masterpost>

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.

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(What’s this? A meme reference to the event Twitch Plays Pokémon Red from 2014 to close us out? A game in which the participants came to call the helix fossil as a god? The fossil that could be revived into the so-called “Spiral Pokémon” Omanyte (like ammonite)? In a game that concerns itself with “evolution”? On a Hollow Knight theory post?

It’s more likely than you think!)

[collapsedsquid]

It was just after 7 p.m. when residents of Satartia, Mississippi, started smelling rotten eggs. Then a greenish cloud rolled across Route 433 and settled into the valley surrounding the little town. Within minutes, people were inside the cloud, gasping for air, nauseated and dazed. Some two dozen individuals were overcome within a few minutes, collapsing in their homes; at a fishing camp on the nearby Yazoo River; in their vehicles. Cars just shut off, since they need oxygen to burn fuel. Drivers scrambled out of their paralyzed vehicles, but were so disoriented that they just wandered around in the dark. The first call to Yazoo County Emergency Management Agency came at 7:13 p.m. on February 22, 2020. “CALLER ADVISED A FOUL SMELL AND GREEN FOG ACROSS THE HIGHWAY,” read the message that dispatchers sent to cell phones and radios of all county emergency personnel two minutes later. First responders mobilized almost immediately, even though they still weren't sure exactly what the emergency was. Maybe it was a leak from one of several nearby natural gas pipelines, or chlorine from the water tank. The first thought, however, was not the carbon dioxide pipeline that runs through the hills above town, less than half a mile away. Denbury Inc, then known as Denbury Resources, operates a network of CO2 pipelines in the Gulf Coast area that inject the gas into oil fields to force out more petroleum. While ambient CO2 is odorless, colorless and heavier than air, the industrial CO2 in Denbury’s pipeline has been compressed into a liquid, which is pumped through pipelines under high pressure. A rupture in this kind of pipeline sends CO2 gushing out in a dense, powdery white cloud that sinks to the ground and is cold enough to make steel so brittle it can be smashed with a sledgehammer.

Fucking B-movie-ass disaster

[greatwyrmgold]

Last time, I complained about how resource-intensive early nuclear power would be. However, more experienced Factorio users pointed out that I never cancelled out a crucial "200 seconds" figure in the calculations, which meant my estimates of uranium ore needed were orders of magnitude off.

Also, hooking up a consistent power plant mostly fixed my power problems. But since I want to scale up production soon, I decided to set up nuclear power anyways, so this won't happen again.

Nuclear reactors take a ton of resources, but they're all resources I had in buffer chests at various points. Most of them were in the starter base, but concrete is over in the stone base and sufficient amounts of copper (~1330 plates, by my calculations) are only found in the copper outpost.

I had a lot of time running around; when not running around, I ordered the bot network to set up new rails to connect the coal mines to the starter base's power plant. Which took way more debugging than it should have, given how long it took me to realize the roboports' construction range was like three tiles short of the last bits of rail I needed to actually connect the coal mine to the rails leading to it...which was literally the only problem with the path...glad I understand rail signals at least...

In related news, I realize heavy oil cracking was nonfunctional due to one (1) missing pipe and it's backed up starter base oil production. But tonight isn't all stupid mistakes. I mined some uranium!

...emphasis on some.

Uranium is unique. It gets mined half as fast as other ores, you see, and mining it consumes sulfuric acid. In the lower right-hand corner, you can see a couple of chemical plants, one making sulfur and the other turning it into acid. This requires three ingredients: Water, petroleum gas, and iron. Luckily, they're all available just a bit to the southeast.

Water is easy; I just needed an offshore pump and a bunch of underground pipes. Also a fair number of aboveground pipes for corners and such.

A month ago, I set up a little oil processing station by my stone/rails/concrete outpost, which accidentally doubles as a defensive chokepoint. Back then, I mentioned that the petroleum gas would be used somewhere else in the factory, though at the time I thought that meant "in plastic production or something," but it's conveniently available to deal with a random resource requirement in this corner of the base.

That leaves iron, which is not a liquid. There are a few ways to get iron to the assembler; I considered several options before settling for a basic belt. Once I belted in the iron, I had basically everything I needed to set up Baby's First Nuclear Power Plant:

Straightforward enough, I think. Processing, sorting, and assembly turn uranium into fuel cells; the reactor turns cells into heat; the heat exchangers turn heat and water into high-temperature steam; the steam turbines turn steam into power.

The storage tank is a way to deal with an edge-case weakness of nuclear power. Basically, nuclear reactors (unlike coal boilers) keep burning their fuel no matter how much or little power is needed. Steam storage tanks mitigate this in two ways. First, they let the nuclear reactor "store" excess energy; the single tank can hold about a minute of unused power production. Second, with a little circuit network know-how, they can be used to estimate whether the nuclear reactor actually needs to run.

As far as I can tell, this design is only missing two things. First, it needs an inserter to remove expended fuel cells; I just forgot to set that up before taking the screenshot above. Second, it needs an inserter to put fresh cells in. That, I left out on purpose.

Somehow, setting up an extra coal plant, fixing coal supply, and leaving the factory mostly alone for a while fixed power. The steam engines and limited solar are providing more than enough power for the factory as it stands, which is a pleasant surprise!

That doesn't mean this was a waste, of course. I'm going to need more power once the main bus is running. But until then, I'm happy to let the centrifuges run. When I quit the game tonight, I had 74 U-238 and zero U-235. I'm happy to leave the machines alone to produce a few 235 before turning the reactor on.

Hopefully, the factory will grow soon.

[agp]

hey if youre on turtle island or still tuesday and feel like trying a quick silly browser game you should check out tradle. (i think it updates at midnight based on time zones?) todays is real fun i prommy.

you get five guesses to figure out a country from its export data, and after each guess they tell you how far away you are and what direction the county youre looking for is. i know it sounds like a ridiculous challenge but this one has a bunch of easy hints and giveaways that are accessible to your average westerner

if its wednesday by now or you want to see the data presented differently check out this silly economy under the cut (bolded 'spoilers' ig)

total export value: 371b (usd)

gold: 86.7b (23%}

packaged meds: 48.5b (13%)

vaccines, blood, cultures, etc: 40.3b (11%)

base metal watches: 15.2b (4%)

nitrogen heterocyclic compounds: 14.2b (4%)

jewlery: 9.35b (2.5%)

precious metal watches: 8.97b (2.5%)

orthopedic appliances: 7.02b (2%)

hormones: 3.38b

coffee: 3.36b

electricity: 3.19b

medical instruments: 3.09b

machinery w indv functions: 3.04b

platinum: 2.54b

chemical analysis instruments: 2.27b

nucleic acids: 2.17b

valves: 2.17b

silver: 2.01b

electric motors: 1.78b

scented mixtures: 1.72b

sulfonamides: 1.71b

diamonds: 1.64b

planes, helicopters, and spacecraft: 1.63b

beauty products: 1.58b

other heating machinery: 1.43b

flavored water: 1.43b

gas turbines: 1.38b

low voltage protection eq: 1.34b

gas and liquid flow measuring inst: 1.3b

carboxyamide compounds: 1.26b

other measuring instruments: 1.24b

air pumps: 1.16b

motor vehicles, parts, and acc: 1.14b

petroleum gas: 1.12b

electrical transformers: 1.11b

aluminum plating: 1.07b

other plastic products: 1.01b

metal working machine parts: 988m

vitamins: 965m

polyamides: 963m

washing and bottling machines: 925m

chocolate: 887m

oxygen amino compounds: 885m

integrated circuits: 884m

iron fasteners: 881m

paintings: 873m

transmissions: 855m

special pharmaceuticals: 837m

insulated wire: 828m

electrical power accessories: 826m

plastic lids: 818m

cheese: 800m

antibiotics: 797m

liquid pumps: 797m

cars: 789m

ink: 752m

non mechanical removal machinery: 737m

trunks and cases: 734m

centrifuges: 730m

interchangeable tool parts: 728m

high voltage protection eq: 705m

hand saws: 693m

other edible preparations: 680m

electric heaters: 679m

electrical control boards: 672m

polyacetals: 664m

plastic pipes: 636m

electric soldering equipment: 616m

precious metal compounds: 608m

industrial fatty acids, oils, and alcohols: 608m

hot rolled iron bars: 590m

self propelled rail transport: 582m

refined petroleum: 577m

hydrazine or hydroxylamine derivatives: 565m

precious stones: 563m

rubber working machinery: 561m

unpackaged meds: 557m

other iron products: 553m

precious metal scraps 550m

computers: 545m

surveying equipment: 523m

other plastic sheetings: 519m

metal finishing machines: 516m

scrap copper: 514m

semiconductor devices: 511m

raw plastic sheeting: 494m

documents or title and stamps: 490m

rolled tobacco: 487m

malt extract: 469m

other electrical machinery: 467m

other paper machinery: 450m

oxygen heterocyclic compounds: 441m

non knit mens suits: 441m

synthetic coloring matter: 436m

locomotive parts: 432m

non knit womens suits: 428m

iron structures: 424m

leather footwear: 421m

industrial printers: 415m

lifting machinery: 415m

scrap iron: 412m

therapeutic appliances: 410m

office machine parts: 410m

other clocks and watches: 405m

metal molds: 403m

other furniture: 403m

glaziers putty: 377m

liquid dispersing machines: 376m

knitting machine accessories: 370m

other small iron pipes: 369m

broadcasting equipment: 367m

aircraft parts: 363m

industrial food prep machinery: 362m

glues: 357m

pesticides: 349m

oscilloscopes: 344m

raw aluminum: 344m

knit sweaters: 339m

optical fibers and bundles: 334m

excavation machinery: 332m

non iron/steel slag ash and residue: 319m

carboxylic acids: 315m

xray equipment: 315m

electric motor parts: 315m

watch straps: 313m

tanks and armoured vehicles: 310m

forging machines: 309m

cleaning products: 306m

metalworking transfer machines: 298m

animal food: 294m

combustion engines: 282m

engine parts: 271m

electric generating sets: 254m

scrap aluminum: 249m

laboratory reagents: 249m

perfumes: 244m

other rubber products: 241m

photo lab equipment: 240m

wheat: 236m

lubricating products: 234m

printed circuit boards: 233m

aluminum bars: 230m

explosive ammunition: 230m

brooms: 224m

lcds: 223m

refrigerators: 223m

motorcycles and cycles: 221m

large construction vehicles: 221m

coal briquettes: 221m

corn: 220m

aluminum cans: 219m

textile footwear: 217m

thermostats: 207m

coffee and tea extracts: 206m

other aluminum products: 204m

ball bearings: 203m

knives: 199m

machines for additive mnf: 195m

raw iron bars: 187m

delivery trucks: 185m

milling stones: 176m

aluminum foil: 170m

collectors items: 169m

soybean oil: 169m

wood fiberboard: 166m

other stainless steel bars: 164m

sculptures: 160m

cutting blades: 159m

baked goods: 150m

navigation equipment: 146m

hydrometers: 137m

watch cases and parts: 134m

laboratory ceramic wear: 134m

wood carpentry: 124m

mirrors and lenses: 117m

[ausetkmt]

It Could Cost $21 Billion to Clean Up California’s Oil Sites, Study Finds

For well over a century, the oil and gas industry has drilled holes across California in search of black gold and a lucrative payday. But with production falling steadily, the time has come to clean up many of the nearly quarter-million wells scattered from downtown Los Angeles to western Kern County and across the state.

The bill for that work, however, will vastly exceed all the industry’s future profits in the state, according to a first-of-its-kind study published Thursday and shared with ProPublica.

“This major issue has sneaked up on us,” said Dwayne Purvis, a Texas-based petroleum reservoir engineer who analyzed profits and cleanup costs for the report. “Policymakers haven’t recognized it. Industry hasn’t recognized it, or, if they have, they haven’t talked about it and acted on it.”

The analysis, which was commissioned by Carbon Tracker Initiative, a financial think tank that studies how the transition away from fossil fuels impacts markets and the economy, used California regulators’ draft methodology for calculating the costs associated with plugging oil and gas wells and decommissioning them along with related infrastructure. The methodology was developed with feedback from the industry.

The report broke down the costs into several categories. Plugging wells, dismantling surface infrastructure and decontaminating polluted drill sites would cost at least $13.2 billion, based on publicly available data. Adding in factors with slightly more uncertainty, like inflation rates and the price of decommissioning miles of pipeline, could bring the total cleanup bill for California’s onshore oil and gas industry to $21.5 billion.

Meanwhile, California oil and gas production will earn about $6.3 billion in future profits over the remaining course of operations, Purvis estimated.

Compounding the problem, the industry has set aside only about $106 million that state regulators can use for cleanup when a company liquidates or otherwise walks away from its responsibilities, according to state data. That amount equals less than 1% of the estimated cost.

Taxpayers will likely have to cover much of the difference to ensure wells are plugged and not left to leak brine, toxic chemicals and climate-warming methane.

“These findings detail why the state must ensure this cost is not passed along to the California taxpayer,” state Sen. Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat who has written legislation regulating oil, said in a statement. “It is important that the state collect funding to plug and abandon wells in a timely and expeditious manner.”

Representatives of the state’s oil regulatory agency, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment on the report’s findings.

Rock Zierman, CEO of the California Independent Petroleum Association, an industry trade group, said in a statement that companies spent more than $400 million last year to plug and clean up thousands of oil and gas wells in the state. “This demonstrates their dedication to fulfilling their obligations and mitigating the environmental impact of their operations,” he said.

Fees on current oil and gas production will offset some of the liabilities, but they’re nowhere near enough to address the shortfall quantified by the new report.

“It really scares me,” Kyle Ferrar, Western program coordinator with environmental and data transparency group FracTracker Alliance, said of the report’s findings. “It’s a lot for the state, even a state as big as California.”

Industry in Decline

High oil prices have translated to huge profits for the industry in recent years, but Carbon Tracker’s report found that’s likely to be short-lived. Only two drilling rigs were operating in the state at one point this year, meaning few new wells will be coming online, and more than a third of all unplugged wells are idle.

Judson Boomhower, an environmental economist and assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego who has studied California’s oil industry, said there are inherent uncertainties in estimating future oil revenues. For example, one variable is how quickly the country shifts from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric. But, he said, Carbon Tracker’s estimates for environmental liabilities track with his research.

“It’s a state in the twilight of its production period, and that means big liabilities,” Boomhower said. He added that now is the time for regulators to prevent companies from offloading their wells to “thinly capitalized firms” unable to shoulder the cleanup.

As ProPublica reported last year, the major oil companies that long dominated in California and have the deep pockets necessary to pay for environmental cleanup are selling their wells and leaving the state, handing the task to smaller and less well-financed companies.

Roughly half of the wells drilled in California have changed hands through sales and bankruptcies since 2010, according to data Ferrar analyzed.

Smaller companies are often one bankruptcy away from their wells being orphaned, meaning they’re left to taxpayers as companies dissolve. The Biden administration recently committed $4.7 billion in taxpayer funds to plug orphan wells.

And the industry’s environmental liabilities in California are far bigger than Carbon Tracker’s report quantifies.

Purvis only included environmental liabilities associated with onshore oil and gas production. Billions of dollars more will be needed to plug offshore wells, remove rigs and reclaim artificial islands used for drilling off the coast of Long Beach, Ventura and Santa Barbara.

Additionally, the report did not quantify the emerging risk of “zombie wells,” which were plugged years ago to weaker standards and are likely to leak if they aren’t replugged. That’s an expensive endeavor, as the average cost to plug one well in California — to say nothing of cleaning up surface contamination — is $69,000, according to Purvis’ research. But some California wells have already begun failing, including in neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

“They’re Not Going to Have Money to Do It Later”

Time is running out to rectify the funding shortfall, for example by increasing the money companies must set aside for well plugging.

Carbon Tracker’s report — using state production data and financial futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange — estimated that as production declines, 58% of all future profits from drilling oil and gas in the state are likely to come over the next two years.

“We have our backs up against the wall in California right now,” Ferrar said. “If companies don’t put money towards it now, they’re not going to have money to do it later.”

Environmental policies could accelerate the industry’s decline. California voters will decide on a ballot initiative in 2024 that would reinstate large buffer zones between communities and oil wells, limiting drilling.

Purvis said acting quickly to plug wells would also “stimulate economic activity” and help smooth the transition for oil and gas workers who stand to lose well-paying jobs in the shift away from climate-warming fossil fuels. Spending large sums to plug old wells would create short-term employment for oil field workers.

As California faces the consequences of its failure to quickly clean up aging oil and gas infrastructure, there are likely several million more wells around the country that are either low-producing or already orphaned and will soon need to be decommissioned.

“California’s going to be a test case or the leading edge of this,” Boomhower said. “This same problem is eventually going to manifest everywhere.”