A quick tour of the 'worst place on earth' aka, BaoGang Steel Mill
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2018
- I was lucky to be able to spend an hour or so wandering around BaoGang steel mill in Baotou, Inner Mongolia in 2011
My friend Lucy used to work there so had some contacts inside. BaoGang is considered to be the 'worst place on earth' by the BBC.
www.bbc.com/future/story/20150...
Well, hearing "It's a Small World" playing in a steel mill is the most nightmarishly dystopian thing I've experienced in a while.
Couldn’t have said it better tbh
I'd probably end up offing myself in that environment day in and day out
The heavy machines like presses cranes trolleys play these sounds when moving to alert people. It's like that in honda factories here in the US. It gets quite annoying working 60 hours a week.
It's a bit weird in this dismal-looking environment, but theres a lot of machinery and equipment that sing songs to let you know they're in operation, they're finished what they're doing, or they have a fault and need attention. I worked in a factory with a bunch of japanese equipment, and there were 3 machines in one area that each had a different tune. I thought it was pretty cheery and nifty, but that might just be me.
Granted, the ones I worked with were stationary and only played a tune if they had a fault. Which wasnt uncommon because they were quite old, but not frequent enough to get annoying
Agreed. Immediately turned to philosophical thoughts, how different some places are but stil same planet, the existence these folks experience and their possible perspectives, et cetera.
The only place where cigarete smoke might be actually healthier than the air
At least it grts filtered
It feels like I can smell the pollution. 😬
@Uncle Ho I suppose, but the only steel mill in my country is no where near this foggy/smoked up. I guess the scale is bigger but still this is insane air pollution
Nope, there are much worse places, search for collecting sulfur from a volcano.
The iron factory in my town (In canada) look just like this. Every house near it is covered with slag dust. White is now brown.
And I live in one of the richest country in the world..
This just look like every steel and iron factory.
But yeah, it sucks.
I used to make deliveries to steel mills in Detroit in the '70s, they pretty much looked the same as the one in this video only darker inside You can't imagine how hot those crucibles are even from a distance. They melt the steel with electricity and to check the molten steel a guy dressed in an fire retardant suit would open a small door on the gigantic furnace and take out a ladle full of the steel. There would be steel particles floating all over the outside, at times it looked like snow. The cars were covered with it and it would rust from the humidity in the air from the Detroit river leaving the cars looking like trash in just a few years. That place scared the hell out of me.
Extremely interesting experjence
I had a grandfather at Rouge steel and another at the refinery down there. Said Noone in the plants drove a new car to work, the air would erode paint and rust vehicles from the top inside three or four years in the 70s and 80s.
Makes me thankful the industry collapsed
and now you’re watching the result of that on UA-cam. People being paid less to work in worse conditions for worse quality steel when modern steel milling technology could do the opposite if Detroit’s labor didn’t get exported
@@Lorin-GabrielLeaua-fm1lw Trust me, people care about each other and they have since the beginning of time. Highly alienated work places are the result of specific economic factors in the 18th century that gutted community and made profit the sole motivator for most people's careers. We don't have to accept that
”Why do These damn aliens hate my factory so much?”
My factorio base:
LOL, ya know maybe we are the villians of factorio...
@@wonderbread6100 maybe? :D
i read "factorio" and i started seizing and foaming at the mouth
@@wonderbread6100 I don`t know, but what I know is factory must grow
Just clocking in to work the live leak logo flashes above your head constantly
@2 demons attached u know the drill
Lol
When you see that LIVE LEAK logo coming towards you - RUNNNNNNNN
@2 demons attached it redirects to liveleak now
@2 demons attached If you're lucky some links maybe saved in internet archive
Clear shots of their faces might not have been the best way to thank them for sneaking you in.
Yeaaah.....
Is it illegal to record in these places? I always wondered
lol ok racist. were they killed for being part of a video?
@@luciencron6655 whoa, unwarranted racism callout
Its okay they dont have youtube in China
I visited the old Carrie blast furnaces in Pittsburgh, and the tour guide was someone who used to work at the plant. He told us about all sorts of terrible conditions the workers had to endure in the early days; constant ashfall, dark environments, lack of decent insulation, reckless dumping of slag, all sorts of things like that. People were dying there every week. Then he explained how, through regulation, technological advances, and the work of unions and smart management, the plant became significantly safer and a better place to work.
This steel plant, in contrast, is frozen in the 1890’s.
Edgar Thompson, Irvin works and clariton works in Pittsburgh all look like this plant in the video to this day. I’m in and out of the plants working all the time. Parts of ET were built in 1875 and there still there now
And this is why your plants don't produce anything, unrealistic regulations and greedy politicians outsourcing everything to China
You see, when the state owns both the unions and the steel plant, and basically all of capitalism in the country, not much tends to get done unless the CCP wants it to
Your tour guide is heavily misguided. The reason conditions have improved for US steel workers is because much of the more dangerous and cheaper labor was moved to places like China. Regulation managed to protect the few plant workers still around, but thousands more suffer similar or even worse environments to produce cheap steel.
Cost of steel went through the roof when regulations kicked in and now it's just too expensive to make steel here. @@MegaSimmaster
I've delivered tools to places like this and the first time you go it is pretty mindboggling. Amazing in their sheer scale, honesty would be cool to do tours of. It's always an interesting feeling when you see miles of shipping containers or mountains of material. Like a monument that would take forever to build, but you realize there are thousands of them all over the world.
Taking forever to build might not actually be far off from the truth. I've worked construction and some projects can be pretty big; the bigger they are, the more people they require. In the US, with the standard 40 hour work week, it can build up. If, and I'm completely making up the numbers here, 100 guys take 30 weeks to make a building, then that's 40×30×100=120,000 man hours. 120,000÷24=5,000 days, and 5,000÷365=13.7 years collectively.
This doesn't factor in all the time, effort, and money put into making the tools, machinery, and building materials. Cranes, excavators, drills, hammers, screwdrivers, plumbing pipes, electrical wire, all has to be made elsewhere, shipped to a store, purchased or rented, shipped out to job sites, and then packed up & brought somewhere else afterwards.
I can only imagine how long it would take to build a fully completed and functional steel mill.
@@tiagodecastro2929 and then you probably get to double whatever manhours you calculated, because you still need to bring everything to life. I mean a single furnace can take a month to fully boot up.
I worked at a nickel and stainless steel foundry that was just as bad. They gave us protection to wear but it could only protect us from the little splashes or sparks. The alloys we made required two times the amount of heat compared to carbon steel (around 3200°f) for a good melt in and enough heat to transfer to molds(ingots and slugs). We had 30 to 40k pounds of it floating over head on outdated cranes that'd get stuck while we walked through ankle deep ash, and slag as sharp as glass. Our face shields warped and started melting while we used oxygen lances to stir the bottoms of the furnace or poured the metal. In the morning we took turns in the furnace to clean them because we could only stay in for a couple minutes before the heat came up through the souls of our boots and forced us to get out. We ran huge fans all night to cool them down but by 3am when we got back in while they would be easily over 200°f standing on bits of cooled slag. You could smell the rubber melting from our boots constantly. In less than a minute we would be drenched in sweat and it soaked through the layers of our "protective" suits. We dealt with lots of toxic carcinogens and after 4yrs I had to move on because I kept developing respiratory infections and a cough that only recently has subsided 5 yrs later. I now work in an air conditioned building doing half the work and get paid 3 times as much. I realize me and all my friends/coworkers from that place were treated poorly and paid just a few bucks over minimum wage to suffer and now we all will probably develop some type of cancer later down the road. But I feel blessed not to be one of the guys who got seriously burned. In my 4 yrs there 3 guys were burned reallybad and one guy pretty much lost his face. There were other pretty serious injuries that occurred there but the burns were the worst. The worst injury I had was being knocked out by a giant chain with links the size of my leg. I got hit in the temple and the lights went out for a sec. Anyway just thought I'd share. Remember kids don't work in foundries it's not worth it.
Yeeaaaa...f*ck that shit, I make boxes 😂😂😂😂
Jesus
What country are you from?
What crucible can hold those Chromium Nickle alloys without melting?
You have to write a book of those years. Wery interesting.
POV: your industrial district in Cities Skylines
Lmao
More like Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic.
@@Destragond Both great games
Cities:Skyline? More like China:Simulator
I see no overcrowded streets with trucks backed up into the highway.
This looked like a living hell hole, amazing this footage was ever shot and made it out
That's just a normal steel mill anywhere in the world will look like. Pittsburgh in its hey days are a lot more dangerous than these modern machinery.
….and what did they NOT allow us to see….???
@@GORT70i mean it's a steel mill lmao what are you expecting satanic rituals? grow up
@@ThePainkiller9995 China has about the worst working conditions in the world. There used to be a video of workers doing what robots should do in a stamping die. It says a good 10 ft wide by over 15 ft long, used to stamp pots. 4 guys as I remember. The guys were INSIDE the stamping die as it worked. If something got caught while the die worked, you lost it. I do engineering for a living. I have ZERO tolerance for unnecessary human risk, unless there is no other way for someone to make a living-and that’s where I put the cobalt mines in Africa at. They have NOTHING else. And since china is completely anti religion at all, they really don’t do satanic temples……
@@ThePainkiller9995 they are looking for the warehouse where they store the bodies of the 7 thousand billion victims of communism. They do it to distract themselves from the fact that the remains and graves of the victims of capitalism and imperial conquest litter and scar the earth everywhere, and that they are likely contaminated by microplastics.
What blows my mind more is how the human body can breath in all that pollution and steel and keep on going for many years it’s all really horrifically beautiful
I read a lot of stupid comments on this video but yours was extra noteworthy!!
@@emil5884 thanks bruv remember the name
@@Sbeve_OneThe kindest comeback on the planet
@@emil5884I read a lot of stupid comments of this video but yours was extra noteworthy!!
"many years" but not too many...
After a day or two of listening to "it's a small world" jumping into a vat of molten steel would seem like a viable option.
LOL! Yeah, right? 😂
‘I cannot self-terminate, you’ll have to lower me into the steel.’
I like that song, to a point. Fond memories with the wife and kids at the Happiest Place on Earth.
@W W had to read it till end, couldn't stop.
I work in a car factory in the US and they do a similar thing with London Bridge is Falling Down lol
This really just the geonosian droid factory
TheUkranianPeasant this has a lot less likes than it should
China would be part of the Trade Federation lol
Nice
Time to blow it up!
Poop snatch
This is every mill around the world. Watching this gave me flashbacks of working at Glenbrook sm in new zealand. I’d contract to run aircon units for when the teams would have to clean the slag out of the furnaces. And while we were waiting on other operations to stop we’d go wandering and just be in awe of the magnitude of it all. We’d watch from four stories up as the slag buckets would go off to be dumped, the heat from them as they traveled by was intense. Hard place for sure.
This video has fascinated me over the years, I keep coming back to it. The entire aesthetic of the place is something so distinct, and I wish I could find more content like this. The filming style and lack of added music are a big piece of the appeal.
the small world ride at disneyland has really turned dark since the last remodel.
They can turn it off as far as I’m concerned, geez that song will make you want to kill yourself after about a thousand times a day listening to it.
That song is played by every street washing truck in the country.
This is how we get steel to build those rides.
That's what happens when BLM gets their hands on shit.
@@jscott893 **facepalm**
Can you imagine this steelworker going on holiday in Disney land USA. and then hear this tune. Physical flinch.
I just hope that he makes enough money for that to simply be a possibility, but i think we all know the sad answer to that.
He'd have to work for 60 years to afford this hypothetical trip.
@@Kraken9911 hahaha i was gonna say that
Copyright, man!
Steelworker! Disneyland!!!! Im American with 2 jobs and still can't afford it! 🤣🤣🤣
I worked in a steel mill, you never ever ever hang around anywhere near an elevated ladle. If it spills, the ground is suddenly covered in a racing flood of liquid fire. Everybody in the vicinity dies horribly.
It’s the most rudimentary form of safety: before something insanely dangerous happens, do you mind evacuating the area first, please?
I worked at a steel mill like this in Canada as a cleaner while paying for University. Probably the filthiest job you could imagine, especially in the rain. The soot gets disgusting when rained on. Would blow my nose and black soot would come out. But as a kid it was good money. Ended up getting let go when I was injured on the job.
WoW. This color or air probably a hint at what England looked like as the industrial revolution was up and going. That air is so dirty I’ll bet one can crunch grit between ones teeth.
Yeah, you can definitely taste the coal in the air.
There are pictures of Pittsburgh back in the heyday of the Homestead works where it looks like it's nighttime out but was actually a sunny day in the early afternoon. That's how bad it used to be.
whats teeth?
That’s how it looked in the industrial centers of Europe even past 1950 - the Ruhr and later the steel mills of Śląsk in Poland had similar local pollution, just the scale of things wasn’t as big as shown here.
Yeah, it’s that way in American steel mills, so I’m sure it’s as bad or worse in completely unregulated Chinese ones.
I like how the siren sounded after it already started to pour...
Also, I’m convinced there are 5 employees running the whole operation.
To be honest, behind the brutal facade, there are quite probably only about 5 people running the thing.
@Michael A yeah, probably had do for the EU's climate change agreement
@@nellhikk8542 I lol'd
7
Fun assumed factoid: it's a small world playing as the "shift bell/warning tone" not only gives a pseudo happy feel to an otherwise hellish environment, but is likely used to cover a wide range of audible frequencies to help assure it is noticed as many of the workers are likely deaf to many different frequencies .
"assumed factoid" so you made it up?
@@Saghetti so far 95 people agree with me, one has not.
But not really, factories use multi tone warnings for this very reason everywhere, not to mention directionality. Why you think sirens change tone? I'm assuming THIS particular factory uses it for that reason but is a fact that multi tone is used for said reason , so only a contrarian that must always be right would disagree really.
I worked 5 days at the US Fairless Steel plant. By the third day I handed in my notice. It took two days to exit interview out of that hell hole. I had a high tech job in the electronics group. The tools they handed me a plumber might use. It took me two years and some inside pull to get the job. One hour on site and I knew it wasn’t for me. Yeah the money was tops but your life meant nothing to the company. Three years after that experience the company folded up and left town. Id say I made a very bright decision after making my stupidest mistake.
For all those talking about the health of the workers, don't worry, they'll probably all die of an accident before they get cancer...
Considering that cancer doesnt necessarily kill quick, that implies an almost stellar work safety record, all things considered!
6:01
Like anywhere hear lots about the accidents and safety nothing about repository or cancer.
You can tell it's unhealthy and when you are young and starting to work and you see someone else you want a better car are you going to let them do it or are you going to do your share.
Now i would suggest do your share and leave quick.
Reuse don't recycle when possible steel can last for many generations
before recycling.
The climate of the air outside the mill is getting to be everywhere.
@@chandlerthoma9173 You don't work in a Chinese mill do you?
Imagine the amount of Live Leak logos these people see.
Liveleak is dead
@@ViezePoeperd so are some of the people in their videos
@@springydingy1 BRUH
@albert einstien yea it's literally dead now
@albert einstien who the fuck downloads them???
Once worked in the heat treatment part of Caterpillar in the US. The smell of ash, carcinogenic fumes, and heat so hot that you couldn't ever imagine it is brought right back to memory. While most of the heat was contained within fiberglass insulated blast furnaces for carburization of transmission parts; the parts still had to reach upwards of 2000F to be glowing hot, then, pulled out by operators running hydraulic assist lifts to immediately quench them in oil or water once the process was complete. The smell of immediate release of sulfur and other off gases will be imprisoned in the mind forever.
The invention of man is a hunger that reaches into the depths of Hell to obtain. Imagine how many honest, hardworking folk venture into these types of operations and risk their lives daily in order to produce the structural steel that nearly every building you see relies on.
If you're reading this just remember we are all ONE and that being close to real danger likely united mankind far better than any politician or government handout ever could.
Carburizing furnaces are lined with refractory brick not fiberglass. And they are not Bessemer furnaces. Bessemer furnaces used coke and oxygen to refine ore into steel. And I’ve never smelled sulfur off a quench tank. I’ve with three large heavy iron vehicle manufacturers with in house heat treatment, including Cat, and visited many suppliers that had heat treat facilities.
government handouts divide. Hardships unite
How much did you get paid for that?
@@sakesaurus1706 Isn't the supposition here that we should never provide eachother nice things, but only provoke trauma?
Direct your anger at the fat cat bureaucrats, not at the needy poor. Division is not caused by meagre government stipends, its caused by alienation.
The point of welfare isn't to unite people, strictly, its to make sure those who aren't able bodied can also survive.
Judging by the fact that ancient hunter gatherer took care of the disabled, I'd suggest its an ancient and noble tradition, one which is a sign of people united. In that sense, it is the cart that follows the horse, not the horse that moves the cart.
The underclasses should have solidarity with eachother, be they the working class scraping by in hellhole jobs, the disabled class barely scraping by on meagre government stipends, the desperate poor locked up for crimes committed to make ends meet, the dissidents snd the revolutionaries --- we can only stand against the oppressor if we work together. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
man those exterior shots where the smog makes the factory seem as if it goes on forever are magnificent
(in a dystopian kind of way)
I actually lived in this area for 4 years, whilst working as an English teacher. The steel work alone employs over 20 thousand people. Rare earth and coal is mined near here. The city is called Baotou. It is situated in Inner Mongolia - China. The 2015 movie 'BEHEMOTH' gives a vivid insight into the full scale of the industry and the side effects of the waste produced by it. The scale of the ground pollution is vast, making the area one of the most polluted places on the planet.
I lived there for 3 years from 2004 to 2007. When did you live there?
Atleast they figured out how to make steel this time
I lived in Baotou too but only for about 5 months. I was a flight instructor there in 2007 before getting transferred further west to Wuhai
@@n118nw hey cool! How did you like Baotou? I really loved that city. Wish I could go back to visit.
@@TheMcThirstyBrothers I quite liked it. There were a lot of parks to visit, and being deeper in China, away from the typical tourist destinations, I found it was more friendly and less polluted than where I was when I first got to China, which was Shijiazhuang (I can't believe I still know how to spell and pronounce it). Out of the 3 cities I lived in, I liked Baotou the best.
As soon as i heard the small world music it felt like a scene from Silent Hill. Creepy as fuck
You could almost smell the smoldering of the bodies.
@@ITigweld Hitler would like to know your location
@@ZoMTDU china, not germany
@@Simon-xi7lb Nazi Germany vs Modern Day China:
-Both like red flags
-Both very industrial
-Both have a one-party system
-Both claim to be socialist/communist while being fascist
-Both like censorship
-Both commit genocide
I'm seeing a lot of similarities here.
Agreed
I currently work at an integrated steel mill in the US (~15 years) and worked at an EAF mill for a few years. At an integrated mill, first a 'blast furnace' converts primarily iron ore and coke into liquid "iron" -- in quotes because the iron at this stage is very impure with 4-5% carbon and roughly 0.5% silicon. This is then transported by torpedo / submarine shaped containers (composed of steel shells lined by brick) onto the actual "steelmaking" process.
The 'steelmaking' processes at an an integrated plant is basically either the very old "open hearth" process (low capital but labor intensive and poor quality) or the more modern basic-oxygen-furnace (BOF) process (basic referring to the basic vs acidic nature of the brick chemistry i.e. MgO), both of which simply rely on exothermic chemical reactions. The oxidation reactions are done using high-speed oxygen gas (just like a big Bunsen burner), to generate heat and remove most the non-iron elements via oxidation.
My guess from the video is that we are seeing liquid iron, seen being poured into vats / channels that are feeding into an open hearth process -- since it appears to be poured into open 'ground' as far as I can tell rather than a BOF vessel, which would be instead be appear as a large pear-shaped container that swivels 360 deg in a vertical plane.
For those who've witnessed electricity to melt, that would be an 'electric arc furnace' (EAF) process, which is melting scrap steel via a large "lightning bolt" created using very high energy carbon electrodes. The input to this process is basically just already-produced steel or iron, and is therefore dependent on the supply of steel scrap. One reason steel can't yet really go completely "green" is because there's not enough steel scrap already produced in the world to meet that supply requirement -- last I checked the estimated time frame of having roughly enough steel scrap and have greener (higher tech) alternatives is roughly 50 years, way too late of course since we're already beyond the point of no return (not just steel-caused obviously). A good time to mention that steel (Fe / iron) is the most recyclable material on earth, being advantageously right in the middle of the periodic table ( i.e. easily reduced into a metallic form compared to other metals, and is also extremely alloy-able and is therefore generally the best material option for most use cases).
The air-quality impact (to separate from greenhouse gas) has greatly improved in recent decades (e.g. the US 70s) -- at least in countries that have adopted the now-obvious environmental safeguards (as we have in the US). This is due to the use of baghouses that basically convert air pollution into calcium/lime-absorbent solid waste. This waste is still very dangerous, containing cadmium and such, so it still needs to be disposed of in a way it doesn't eventually leach into water sources. Separately, many mills also produce their own burnt lime, and this can fall over cars and basically form hard scale (just like a coffee maker does due to the hard / "basic" minerals in water). This can be removed via a weak acid such as vinegar.
I wouldn't use the US as an example of safety, like ever.
I'd put the US pretty damn far down the list, only a couple spots higher than China in how well it treats its workers...
I live in Denmark and just right of the bat, you can't even legally use the open hearth or the more modern BOF. Why? Cause there are serious health consequences to the workers that technology hasn't solved... So we just don't.
Any country where you can get fired in a heart beat, where you don't get told on your second day "Hey, this is the union almost all of us are in you should join" and anywhere your boss holds any sort of power over you and your time outside of when your getting paid. Should NEVER be used as the benchmark for how safety/workers rights SHOULD be handled, it's like arguing a rotten apple is delicious and what farmers should strive for.... YOU DESERVE BETTER, no not just better. You as a human fucking being deserve to be treated WELL by your employer.
@@akselbering291dude shut the fuck up. The United States has some of the best occupational safety measures in place these days. You don't know because you live in Denmark. Also, your country doesn't make shit. Our GDP is 1000 times yours. Denmark isn't even in the discussion on the world scale
@@akselbering291 only the federal goverment in america can solve that problem but unfortunately because of US shitty voting system they have 0 incentive to do so
Thank you for explaining how it works to someone who has no understanding of it like me. 👍
The fact you're allowed to walk under the bucket of molten metal is crazy
The people here chain smoke when they need some fresh air
Knockoff eric johnson?
@@itsliketryingtofitapowerst1860 the guitarist?
@@erikjohnsen807 ye hahaha
@@itsliketryingtofitapowerst1860 no, that’s just the proper spelling of the name
It is thru a filter at least.
"I'ma go get some fresh air"
*Stands in closet and smokes cuban cigar*
Thats some fresher air than outside for sure
I do that all the time.
That's some fine air right there
Bahahaha!!!!
Dude very rarely do I type lol while actually laughing. This is one.
does anyone else occasionally come back to this video while stoned and just watch in awe
when im high i just cant help but be thankful for these people that work here and their sacrifice, but sad that they dont have proper ppe to stay healthy. ): what an extraordinary place though. the guys there seem genuinely interested in their work. thank you to those who work in the worst place on earth.
We are entitled to think this is hell. This is life for a lot of people
My Great Great grandfather fell into a vat of molten steel in Pittsburgh during its 'prime,' when it was a steel production powerhouse. He died instantly. All the plant could offer his family was a job for my Great grandfather when he turned 16. Spooky stuff. Makes me wonder how many people might have the misfortune of passing stories like this down, stemming from places like this.
That's bad for the hydrogen content of the steel 😅
@@matthiasdarrington3271 not to mention the Phosphorus from his bones and the sulphur from his proteins! not good!
@@matthiasdarrington3271just a mild manufacturer variation 😂
I'm from Pittsburgh PA.
Do you know what steel mill he worked in?
It probably wasn't exactly instant but close enough maybe?
If you want to understand what makes this 'the worst place on earth,' I urge you to read the article linked in the description. It isn't just the steel mill, it's Bao Tou in general. The scale of pollution is, in a word, horrifying.
I find the scale terrifying. Just the sheer weight of those buckets, it's hard to imagine how much force they would exert on you if they fell.
Glad my energy saving lightbulbs and bag for life are making a difference
Third world countries ramp up their carbon output at about the same rate first world is lowering theirs...
But no only blame China and not the idiots in Africa and such
@@TeemoQuinton those 1st world already gone the ramping up emission stage hundred years ago. Its a rite of passage for any nation trying to get out of poverty before they can afford clean energy. 1st world nations are lecturing 3rd world on this shit, while at the same time blocking any effort of others trying to get nuclear power plant while they can do theirs. Fcking western nation and their brainwashed people.
@@backpackpepelon3867 it's mostly nations with terrorist sympathies that we try to stop from going nuclear. No one cares about South Korea having nuke plants.
@@TeemoQuinton China and India are the two worst offenders right now, what do you mean Africa?
@@Synergy7Studios per capita africa has it worst i belive
This music actually plays at most factories where something like a train / other large vehicle may not be heard when it’s moving. This includes the US. The song is public domain and the melody is not exclusive to “it’s a small world”. However, I’ve met many a machinist and production line worker who cannot remove the tune from their head after only a short while on a production floor.
Ps- while there seems to be a distinct lack of ISO safety protocol, this mill is extremely similar to any you would find in the USA. There are only so many ways to perform this process while meeting the “demand” that a 1st world country draws.
That’s what I was thinking. Other than picking up loads off of moving rail cars and people standing NEXT TO THE FUCKING POUR it all looks pretty normal to me. Atleast halfway through the video.
Actually the song is under copyright until 2048. But I ain't no Rat!
@@stanleyrucci21 I do see that to be the case, but I think though that the copyright is for the lyrics and not the melody, but I’m pretty sure is used by more than one song. If I find where I read that I’ll come back and link it🤔
@@stanleyrucci21 when did China ever give a rat's ass about copyright infringement?
Other than being bigger than the mill I worked in it doesn't seem any worse... Actually, worryingly the air quality actually looked a little better in this video than what I remember at the mill I worked in.
I’ve worked on various bits of hydraulic equipment in steel mills, paper mills and power stations. They (especially the steel mills) are so huge that I always thought if I died here I probably wouldn’t be found for weeks. Amazing places but they make you feel incredibly small!
That looks incredibly cool and beautiful
I’ve worked as a commissioning engineer for steam turbines in countless power plants around the world, nuclear, coal fired and combined cycle with natural gas turbines. Something about large industrial plants with very few people around gives me such a pleasant, yet haunting feeling. Especially at night, these places have a certain beauty to them. And that tune just tickles my sweet spot. Thanks for sharing.
I thought it was cool too (ignoring the obvious lower safety and environmental considerations). It's basically just heavy industry. You would think it was the gates of hell from some of the commentary.
Pleasant yet haunting? How’s that work?
@@louistaylor3656 i work in a cement plant, and I think what he means is that sometimes--on skeleton crew night shifts especially--these plants are huge, towering fire-breathing dragons that just kind of keep going. The roar of kilns and huge motors, the mills crushing up material--it's overwhelming and beautiful. And as for the small world song, i saw mention earlier in the comments that machinery often times have start-up alarms to warn workers near by. A few pieces of equipment in my plant will play "Three Blind Mice" prior to starting. It's startling because all hell may soon break loose, but it's pleasant at the same time. People that don't work in heavy industry could probably never understand, but I'm fine with keeping it my little secret!
So many mens men in this lol.
I think the sentiments you're referencing are called liminal spaces.
I feel bad because he seemed excited to show you how it worked and then you did him dirty on the title
Yeah, apparently the person wasn't familiar with how steel is made 🙄
But to be fair this is in China so the guy in the video won’t be watching UA-cam anytime soon
@@suprememax4948 mongolia
A lot of people love negativity
@@suprememax4948 UA-cam is all over china and most use vpns anyway lol
That place is huge, the machines as well. Very impressive.
Things werent really all that much better back here in the states back in the day. My grandfather worked for Allegheny steel up in new york from the 1960s to the early 1980s. He was a crane operator and his job was to X-ray the steel for imperfections. Day in day out for 20 or so years with no shielding. I dont remember what exactly he died of (some lung infection) but the doctors suspected it was a complication due to all the radiation exposure and loose metal in the air. He looked 80 by the time he was 50. Before he died the mill was taken over by AlTech (i belive was the company's name) and they almost immediately laid off all the workers and cut all their pensions which had been agreed upon for a quarter century at that point. Really screwed over everyone who worked there. Screw altech and their shitty practices.
Just goes to show that things are better in developed countries because we can afford to shove them all in places like this. I really wish the best for everyone who works here.
The guys who led you in there and put their jobs at risk were extremely friendly and they put a lot on the line for you.
I was looking for this. Amazing they can put on a friendly face while working there.
I guess it was a normal thing for them, just not normal for us. I think everything there is normal for them
They were never seen again...
I’m hoping that the person taking the video was smart and sat on the footage for a number of years. Long enough for any workers involved to have been worked to death or arrested for other reasons.
@@aneubeck4053 the description says it was filmed in 2011, and uploaded in 2018. 7 years seems long enough, but I would've blurred their faces just in case
Has anyone ever thought what it actually takes to build a steel company like this? The size and amount of steel it takes to accomplish this is mind boggling.
Takes slave labor
I know the CCP ransacked foreign nations paying for outdated steel making plants.
Shipping entire facilities to China for immediate assembly and operation. Corning
Glass dismantled their domestic industrial plant and shipped it over to China also.
Never thinking s day would come when a hostile Communism became too awful.
This one probably got deconstructed somewhere else and build up again im China. In the 90s they bought entire old steel factories in germany
@@klaatii this
@@giantgrowth4204 The labor gets paid. It might not pay good but it puts food on the table. The first industries generally got paid for by grains Britain or Germany might have been the ones to send over the first machines in exchange for said grains back in the 1880's.
Something incredibly eerie about this video, so many reasons why.
That song will now haunt me , like seeing that tune played with this has totally changed my way of hearing that song , I’ll never be able to get over it lol wow , so creepy and odd feeling
And did you notice it always starting from the beginning everytime it stops and starts back again ?
Would be much less irritating if it carried on where it stopped.
Don't know it that makes sense though.
Worked in the mills all my life. There's a certain horror and beauty to them. You're around materials that can burn you, give you all sorts of medical issues, steep falls, immense electrical hazards, and machines that can maim you in an instant. But you appreciate all these dangers and work as efficiently as safety allows, all while looking out for your fellow workers. There are some fine people in the industry working in hellish conditions for a fair wage.
Steelworkers have a short shelf life. Remember that if you ever see them fighting for something in your local news.
It definitely provokes the survival parts of the brain, which I can see as a somewhat engaging adrenaline-rush type job... I would never do it just for that though
@@TheOneAndOnlyZeno1889 being a commercial fisherman is the same I spose, the rush you get from near death is amazing
Fair wage? Your definitely just an account used for propaganda not even a real person
I would only wish this place on convicted killers and r*pests.
@@HooLeePhucingSheet r*pists* ..if for some reason that was 'pest' pun, my apologies and please disregard.
My father worked in a steel mill, and his father before him. They were closing them all by the time I graduated or I prolly would have as well. But we all visited the steel plants as youngsters. Watching that pour, I could feel the air pulsating and smell the odors burning my nostrils again. As kids, we could see the blast furnaces light up the night sky over the entire valley before the air filled with smoke and sulpher fumes, like the gates of hell had been opened. But that is where the Middle Class was born, and where it died, right there on that dirt floor. That's where the majority of the infrastructure we depend on was built including the Golden Gate bridge and the skyscrapers that made the US famous. Now it's China's turn. All you have to do is give up your life to cancer, LOLZ. All my relatives died from it in one form or another. Everything comes with a cost.
@@FutureBoyWonder Anywhere in the upper midwest really circa 1981-1988
We could have had OSHA equivalence in China much earlier, but EFFICIENCY
premium quality comment right there
@@thelaffingllama Inner Mongolia is a state in China. This is not the independent nation of Mongolia.
@@vikingstrong5772 aha whoops, comment deleted
My grandfather was a farm boy who moved to the city to work in a foundry. He was severely injured in his late 40s when a massive steel chain fell on him. He ended up in a circumferential cast. A few years later he passed away from clots which were a result of his previous injuries. My father told me that when he visited his dad at work it was like stepping through the gates of hell. The heat and the flames were unbearable. Men who worked at foundries were exempted from the draft during WW2, which was the case with my grandfather. They needed them here to work those jobs, for obvious reasons. Either way, both came with their own risks.
I currently am interning at a steel mill and ours looks amazingly clean bc it’s new and it’s incredibly safe now. Depends on the company but safety and environmental sustainability r now put 1st before production sadly not every company is like that and many have died due to horrid conditions.
Legend has it that every OSHA inspector who watches this video dies in mysterious circumstances precisely one week later.
It’s in China not the US
@@sixstringedthing ignore him, this man does not have our great sense of humour.
@@theepicjoey3215 well, he missed the reference at least. I deleted my over-the-top reply. cheers
It all could have been prevented if they had safety glasses on while watching this video
@@proteus3034 r/wooooosh
I don't know why but I find massive industrialized factories like these to be fascinating, almost in a dystopian way
Because they absolutely are. They make up the backbone of the dystopian societies that need them.
@@Elohim100 Dude, there's 8 billion people on this planet, that factory makes a tiny fraction of the required resources for all of them. It isn't, "dystopian societies," that need factories, every society that wants a quality of life greater than the stone age needs them. These factories aren't even dystopian either, it's literally just a bunch of machines and smoke; the only reason that's "dystopian," to you is because you've got a persecution boner or want to pretend like you're in a movie about an _actual_ oppressive environment, when you're not.
They're bigger than most cathedrals ever will be.
Yeah fascinating as long as you are watching it through screen...
@@megapet777 useless, lowly comment
Reminds me of the Ruhr valley in the 80s. the smell of sulfur was everywhere and all the smog made the cities look like Midgar from Final Fantasy. Now most of the steel mills are closed and shipped to China or became tourist attractions reclaimed by nature.
Beautiful!
Don’t know about you, but I would NOT want to be standing near giant crucibles full of molten steel...
On the bright side though, it'll be quick and hardly feel the pain.
That accident type is not unheard of either. See Qinghe Special Steel Corporation. A giant ladle of molten steel broke loose and spilled on ~40 workers.
relax....its been four days without a fatal accident
@@woodrow_mayes 😅
The really scary thing is that this is where a lot of the world’s steel comes from
I know it’s probably different than here in America but I’ve worked in many industrial settings and the people you work with are always the biggest factor for your enjoyment. If it’s hot and loud but you have good buddies with you, you suffer together and it forms a bond. Even if you have even a nicer environment and coworkers you hate, your job becomes your personal hell.
There is truth in your words. I've worked before in comfortable (air-conditioned, well-lit, etc) office environments which were ruined by insufferable people.
That is the truest statement I've ever read!
SO glad I finally escaped that bullshit. NEVER AGAIN.
True. I do commercial electrical work and I've had better time working in ditches in freezing mud/blistering heat than when I was in an air conditioned office changing light fixtures (but the culture was toxic).
That’s as true as it gets, hey we’re all here suffering let’s make the best out of it and get on with it!
It's oddly beautiful. I'd love to photograph the imposing architecture.
Being born and raised near Pittsburgh, PA USA, this was a common sight and where most people worked. The mills are almost all gone now but just think of where we would all be without the steel they produced.
My great uncle worked at the gm steel foundry in Detroit and would talk for hours about how awful that place was i cant even imagine this
Vulcan Iron works?
Or was that ford?
Celine talked about it in his great book "Journey to the End of the Night".
Chevy Detroit Forge was an impressive place! Definitely Vulcans workshop!
@Dave Smith probably paid well
@Dave Smith can’t teach a old dog new tricks
*A study about the cancer rates among workers after 5 years working there.*
"Results: Yes"
its actually no because they dont live long enough to get cancer
cancer+shit joke= unfunny
@@mobythelion3882 Thanks for the input, now go be a buzzkill elsewhere.
@@bobbyspivey3721 dude I've seen this joke about 100+ times and it's never changed
@@mobythelion3882 Ok, and that qualifies you to insert your negative opinion inti my life? Shoo, scuttle away on to boringsville.
God, my throat closed up just watching this video... The sheer scale doesn't hit you until the train ride at the end of the video... That place looks like hell, a corpse of a landscape and a lifeless sky.
extremely beautiful
I worked in a steel mill for 20 years. This is what they are all like! So appreciate anything you use made from steel!!
Not just steel, pretty much any product you buy nowadays has some hard ass work put into it for minimal pay. It's only cheap cause of economies of scale.
Respect to you, hope you're in good health.
People complain about this but society still depends on it
I do. And I also hope your health holds up!
Omg! And you survived, glad to read, friend!
I certainly do, just got a viking helmet from points gained at loves truck stop. Roadwarrior!
I used to work in a steel mill. It makes me so nervous how close they’re standing to all of this. I’ve seen too many accidents
did you hate working there? looks terrible
@@alen-commentnazi8774 not at all. I ran the overhead cranes. It was actually a really fun job. Just extremely hot
I’ve never worked in a steel mill, but I’ve also seen the accidents lol
@@radioheadisamazing my dad works at a steel mill and he works a similar job
Its china bro. They got replacements.
In the opening you see footage of the coke batteries (basically just ovens used to bake coal dust) and I am truly shocked how clean those batteries look. I worked at one in pa owned by USS and there was always piled coal dust bloody everywhere. The pusher cars would have just piles of it underneath them. If it rained, it would be a slush pit.
yeah, it's not that bad.
Remember that most of our grandparents grew up, worked, and died for and in places like this.
It's the smelters yard from Thomas and Friends.
Oh my God I was thinking the same thing
Lmao
Sodor Ironworks :)
Best comment here..
Thomas had seen it all. Now it's time for his journey to end.
They would save a lot more money if they hired children. That's just poor management.
They’re all over at the Apple assembly plant. Less pay but cleaner conditions
@@kge420 lol
Lol, they've got plenty of slaves they could put to better use besides organ "donors"
@@richardlamm4826 Im guessing under communism they were "re-educated"
@@richardlamm4826 harvested for donor organs to sell. Or working in underground mines, no respirators
The Kowloon Walled City was once a place on Earth which was considered the densest city ever made. Cramped and high altitudes, it was a housing for most Hong Kong residents back then. Diseases and illegal activities were committed, as well as numerous other things. Despite this, it holds a meaning on how society can adapt and live, even in the worst circumstances.
This steel mill however, holds no meaning. Earthmovers designed to work, as the only colours you'll see here are the looming air and machines of grey, the fiery workings of orange, and the skin of other people. A comment once said, "The only place where cigarete smoke might actually be healthier than the air" [sic].
There’s a spot underneath a massive, concrete-and-lead shed in Ukraine that I’m pretty sure could easily give this place a run for its money.
Pretty sure more people have died here tbh.
That core is still running and radiating.
@@posteniuzgajivacovaca8048 Radioactive yes but it’s long since cooled
Shed? You mean a massive building? 😂
@@lunapetunia3778 I may or may not have been employing lethal amounts of sarcasm in my original post.
This made me scream internally. Walking around between the train cars and underneath the ladles of molten steel is so risky. At the steel mill I work at, one of the cranes malfunctioned and ended up pouring something like 20 tonnes of molten steel onto the ground. Anyone standing where these guys were would have been incinerated in seconds. And that kind of accident wasn't considered out of the ordinary.
I hope safety in China has come a long way since this was filmed in 2011.
Brother, born in Gary, steel hauler. You think i don't see this shit!
Spoiler alert: it hasn't.
Its only gotten worse
I've been above one of those standing in a control pulpit when they poured molten steel on top of snow covered scrap steel. The explosion knocked me down. All I could see out of the windows in the pulpit was black. The pulpit operater screamed there's people down there!
Oh don't be foolish, that wouldn't have incinerated anyone. They would be instantly crushed flat and their smeared corpse chunks would have been incinerated.
The fact that Britain can no longer produce steel from scratch is the scariest dystopian thing.
🎶 Come with me....and you’ll see........in a world of OSHA violations 🎶 😆
Tik Tok LMFAO
Except there weren't any real egregious safety violations exhibited in this video at all. This video is a serious waste of time
@Daniel Walter A little advice, just stick with the one pun.
Which Netflix documentary
You can’t violate rules that don’t exist.
As dystopian as it seems its truly fascinating the engineering and hard work that goes into constructing our reality.
Why do people call it dystopian? It's industrial and therefore beautiful!
Yes. The toxic rivers and the extremely high cancer rates are so beautiful. Theres ways to produce steel without destroying the environment. China is just lazy and takes no preventative measures and thats why they are the world's top polluters.
@@acesaylor204 You are a racist.
@@acesaylor204 Well, maybe if the entire world wasn't outsourcing to them it would be different. It's our own fault. We created this monster.
@@jakubukleja2553 quit voting for liberals
Very nice footage.
Honestly, I thought this was some type of analog horror at first. It’s incredible that people work there.
Its fitting that "The worst place on earth" has the 'it's a small world after all' tune play there.
The award for most understated in a documentary goes to:
"Let's go, we should go back to the train."
(Left unsaid was: "..because this area will soon be showered with flying molten steel...")
Oh I got the impression that the subtext was "because someone is coming and if they find out I've snuck you in I'll end up in a prison or worse for the rest of my life."
I thought it was just because he had a quota to meet. 3 explanations, which one is it?
Could just be lunch time.
or 5
the tram does not stop
o bonde nao para
@@WellBasicallyClub Possibly all 3
"The old world will burn in the fires of industry..." -Saruman
How is this "the worst place on earth"? It is literally an engineering marvel, another testament to human creativity.
Some people literally cannot fathom that there are people that don't work in an office job and that some jobs have hard physical labor, everyday. From farming, to manufacturing, to construction...
I've worked in this mill before in 2003 and again in 2007, as well as a half dozen others across China. The worst by far was in AnShan where steel flakes were snowing down on the city 24/7. I wouldn't stand so close to the trains being loaded with molten steel... A story I heard in AnShan was one of those reservoirs tipped over emptying its load across the tracks. The flood continued through a wall where it fried a meeting full of middle management. Dangerous place to be.
Steel mills in the United States and Easter Europe are much cleaner and safer. In India however, its slighly worse than in China.. especially the bathrooms. Avoid those and visit the administrative offices instead.
The more interesting parts of the mill to watch are the straightners used to make H-beams and rails. Hot iron taking shape is something to see. Despite it being much cooler than the molten state, it still radiates heat like crazy.
I didn't think this mill looked that terrible compared to what I've seen of others in developing countries. Are the mills in Russia of comparable cleanliness and safety to the US? It's so interesting because this video really remind me of the old US mills abandoned in the 80s, which I'm guessing operated in a similar fashion until the unions came along.
@@basicguy99 I seriously doubt that working conditions in Russian factories (and in the CIS as a whole) are anywhere near as good as unionized factories in North America and Western Europe
Now you have to tell us about the forbidden Indiana steel mill bathrooms.
ya there's no way anyone could be anywhere near something like that under OSHA rules. you're not even allowed to stand underneath anything heavy being lifted in most cases, much less if it's full of molten steel.
I worked railroad construction and just the way they were jumping around the train cars would get you serious fines in the USA. some trains can supposedly jump on their own, something to do with the brakes or something I guess. I've never seen it. but they make you go six feet around train cars and never in between cars, and never jump on or off moving cars. there's special cases where you can, but that's only when necessary, like when you're working on the car itself.
2007 is 15 years ago, a lot has happened since then where the GDP literally quintupled. In the same metric, saying 2007 China is the same as it now would be saying USA was the same as it was in 1986 (where it's GDP was 20% of now).
I worked with a guy who worked in an American steel mill and he said it was like being in hell, this video helps me visualize what it is like in a steel mill.
I work in a steelworks on the uk not as bad as this!
Melt shops are dirtier and hotter than the rest of steel mills, but they are not like they used to be, unless you’re in communist china, then they are close to hell
Steel mills really aren’t that bad. This mill is the worst I’ve seen but only because they have people standing UNDER THE FUCKING HOPPER which is nuts. They’d be deep fried once the molten steel hit the ground or rail car and shot everywhere.
@@jonquinn11 One place dirtier than the meltshop - the mill I worked in injected steel into sand molds. The corner of the mill where we shook the pieces clean was the dirtiest. The sand was so thick in the air it would clog your respirator in a second - you could actually breath better with that crap filling your lungs than you could wearing your gear... That was hell. Have to use a qtip and soap every night just to hear properly after a day at work - that sand was so fine it'd get through everything.
It’s probably worse here considering that there is also a rare earth metal processing plant here.
Bro that music and the fog ..... like something out of a horror movie.
That song. Had it stuck in my head for months when I was addicted to heroin and out on the streets.
It may be dystopian and dangerous, but there’s a sense of awe and appreciation for humanity being able to construct such a Goliath.
And now we're a slave to it.
@@Ohn Nah, the Chinese are. We now have these pesky labour laws and minimum wage.
@@MerlinJuergens not to mention the allowed right to keep those standards of living via force
@@MerlinJuergens “pesky” 😭
@@MerlinJuergens We also have much more refined manufacturing methods now that are a fair bit safer. But a society has to go through this phase first to build the materials for more advanced and modern forges, unfortunately. Or if the CCP stopped trying to isolate itself and just join the democratic world they could have simply bought more modern tooling...
It must be because I’m an engineer but that place looks pretty badass.
True
Look, they've made my Factorio save into a real place!
@@Gahanun daaaaaamn hahahaha
found the engineer
It does. But I couldn't imagine working in a place like it.
It reminds me very much of the photography scenery Peter Lindbergh. He was growing up next to such industrial areas in Germany.
Amazing
For God’s sake, just throw in the ring and get out of there!
Drop it Frodo 😂
My precious
Cast it into the fire!
😭😭
This is what I've always imagined the forge worlds in 40k are like. But imagine it being the entire planet and the machines being significantly larger
I was thinking exactly this. It looks like damn forge world
Thinking the same thing
I have just forwarded it to a gaming pal for this very reason.
Nah man... Forge worlds have way more respect for health and safety than a mongolian steel mill lol
There's a distinct lack of servitors and tech priests. No purity seals on dodgy equipment either.
This is probably the Place where most of Live Leak‘s content comes from
The funny part is, for all that, their steel quality still fucking sucks.
I am a welder fabricator and you are absolutely right lol
@@chevyvet69 I do gunsmithing, every so often I'll realise the steel I got on the lathe or mill is waaaaay too soft and go "wait a minute... this isn't 4140 tool steel!"
"MADE IN CHINA" sticker somewhere on it, every goddamned time.
Hell ya And the size of the material is not consistent either It's always a hair under Like they are trying to cheat you
I do also I make receivers and parts
@@chevyvet69 Ditto! I'm definiteley not john moses browning, but I make some fun shit. And yeah, thats cuz they ARE trying to cheat you. Its always either not to grade, or not to size.
I've never seen such high quality footage of an adeptus mechanicus forge world before.
40K 🤘
Ah yes. The Mongolian Mechanicus.
I haul a lot of steel out various mills across America. And happy to say things have improved vastly here. They are still dirty, but much cleaner than this , and much safer.
My father worked at an aluminum refinery. He still carries the scars and burns form his 25+ years of service.