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Geologists always save the world.

SteveSS

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I'm watching a cheezy volcano movie called Behemoth. In these disaster movies geologists always saved the world. Closest I, as a geologist, ever got to saving everyone was when we hit a shalllow gas pocket drilling an oil well in Kansas. There wasn't supposed to be any shallow gas in that area. Major blowout. I just did what I learned in the John Wayne movie Hellfighters and had them turn everything off and leave before we ignited it. It blew rocks out of the hole for three days. Threw them 100 yards.

Once we hit a deadly gas pocket of H2S. One inhale would kill you, but we all escaped. Lots of other injuries. I had a roughneck that was adding 100 pounds of acid to the drilling mud. It flashed and exloded on him. I had him jump in the fresh water pit. That saved him. Lots of other stories. There's a million ways to die on an oil rig.
 
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On a rig there's literally thousands of pounds of iron above your head. Hardhats would be of no use. I was talking to the owner when I saw the whole draw works fall. That's a complex system of huge cables and blocks. I thought they were all going to be smashed but after running up there they all got out of the way somehow. A true miracle.

One wrong move and you're dead. I can tell you each step in this dance.

 
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I've heard it's good but that's all I know.

Roughnecking is always the job people bring up when they say women can do the same work as men. I've seen some smaller guys do it but you have to throw your total weight into it. The guy you're not seeing is the derrick hand. He's 30-60 feet above them wrangling the pipe from a tiny platform. They should wear a safety harnesses but they don't always do it. I've talked to guys that have fallen. Another big one is the lines carrying the mud. Such high pressure that if one leaked it could cut you in half.
 
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