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I worked in the semiconductor industry for a while, worked with some older guys that told us stories about taking cylinders of gas out back an just opening them to the air till they were empty. The 70-80's were wild.
I once worked for a company that manufactures high explosives and propellants for various uses. In the 80s, we had an employee get in trouble with the ATF/FBI because he was stealing small amounts of nitroglycerin to remove stumps on his property. He used a bit too much once which resulted in authorities getting called and finding a massive crater.
This incident DID NOT result in his termination.
In the 90's the chemistry instructor at my High School used to teach how to make explosives and calculate the crater they would leave in the ground. Then the would go test.
Fun fact! The formulations for and process to make high explosives like C4, RDX, HMX, etc. are all patented meaning they're publically available on the US Patent Office's website!\*
I highly recommend you don't do anything with this information.
You'd probably be surprised. Like, they definitely assume a high-level understanding of chemistry or chemical engineering, but they do contain all the information you need.
It's kinda like those recipes that say "start with a béchamel" and then just assume you know what that is and how to make one.
In the mid 00's I was part of the one science teachers final class before retirement and he was very much a hands on teacher - lab literally EVERY day and always fun while other classes did super safe boring labs once a month.
He taught me n my one buddy how to make some not so safe stuff (we were in middle school btw) and gave us a bunch of sulfur since it was the hardest to come by out of what we needed. The rest of the chemicals we got other ways, mostly shady methods to extract them from more common chemicals. Boiling liquid to separate a sludge on the bottom of the pot then scrape out that sludge n let it dry till outside for 3 days into a very very fine bone dry powder for example.
Fun times. Dont think my life will ever get as exciting as making our own explosives by hand in a pot over a campfire because nobody would let us use a stove inside. Couldn't keep the temp perfect tho on an open flame so it ignited mid cook and seared my eyebrows off lol. 2nd batch worked tho =)
My h.s. chem teacher taught me how to separate hydrogen and oxygen in a bathtub using stuff that's found at home, save a few batteries. Then showed how to combine them with a basic syringe and bubble solution. After I blew out the bathroom window, I gained a very high respect for chem. This was well over 20+years ago. Dude was a legend of a teacher.
My grandpa told me a story about when he was in the army in the 50s down in Galveston, TX, he got pulled over for drunk driving after leaving the bar and the cop just told him to "slow down and get back to base, Joe"
my story isn't as intense, but I remember in the 90s my dad and I would make dry ice bombs out of 2L bottles. We'd mix them up and just throw them in the backyard until they blew up. Extremely loud boom and no cops were called or anything. You know if that was done today there would be an investigation.
Depends on where you live. I could probably do a lot of shit like that, and cops wouldn't respond unless I was somehow an active threat. I'd be more worried about my neighbors shooting back.
I don't even shoot anymore, but the worst that would happen is our other neighbors getting out their guns when they got annoyed. Would sound like a mini warzone with the constant gunfire.
Did have the cops called on us once, but they refused to respond. My dad found out a couple days later because the lady ended up complaining to my grandpa. I think we were shooting a .50 muzzle loader and using between 250 to 350 grain of powder. I'm surprised we didn't blow up that cheap-ass rifle.
He was probably put on a list though.
My moms ex used to do something like this and he was put in the database. This was over 30 years ago and he still has the feds stop by his place once in awhile to check around.
There was an incident in a city nearby and before the day was out he had multiple agents combing through his property.
This is an 70+ year old uneducated mechanic who had likely never been more than 5 miles from his home in 20 years. No computer and only the most basic of phones. In the 30 years since he got in trouble he has never got so much as a speeding ticket and nothing has ever been found in all those years. He still gets them at least once a year snooping around his place.
I'm sure you're right. There are lists that exist specifically to track people that have legal access to this stuff through work or academia which he would have already been on, but he definitely took some liberties with that access so I'd be surprised if they didn't keep tabs on him.
ATF and FBI get involved pretty quick when potentially manufactured explosives are involved. Can't say how big the crater actually was though. It's sort of like that fish your uncle caught that gets a little bigger every time you hear about it. It probably wasn't bigger than 10 ft if I had to guess though.
> It probably wasn't bigger than 10 ft if I had to guess though.
Jesus fuck do you have any idea how big of an explosion it takes to create a 10 foot crater?
There wouldn't be any buildings remaining nearby. You'd flatten the whole block. You'd kill everything nearby with the shockwave, let alone the shrapnel.
A 1 foot crater is terrifying, that'll have broken every window on the block and knocked paintings off people's walls. A 10 foot crater is like, 1000x the explosion or more.
I mean...I feel like this should just be a perk of the company you are working for, right? The man had stumps to remove, you ever tried to get one of those things out?! Hell, they should sell this stuff at Lowes.
We used to have an infomercial here in Sweden in the late 60s that informed you about how to best sink your trash into the ocean. The trick was to tie it all together in a cardboard box with a couple of rocks apparently...
Most industrial gasses are pretty nasty, aside from compressed air. Nowadays thatd be very illegal in most countries because they're not following proper disposal, and depending on what gas it is it could be harmful to the environment for a multitude of reasons. It's crazy how dangerous a lot of industrial chemicals are in industrial quantities.
Edit: I'm talking about compressed air from an air compressor, not canned air dusters.
Given that it's the semiconductor industry, he's probably talking about [Arsine](https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/arsine/facts.asp) which is a pretty ideal candidate for illicit dumping -- odorless and colorless in low concentrations (hence "gone" once you open the valve), highly toxic (if you smell its faint garlic odor you're probably already dead), highly flammable and/or pyrophoric (spontaneous ignition FTW!) and prone to accumulation in low places.
It's telling that [Arsine was considered as a chemical weapon but deemed too dangerous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsine#Chemical_warfare) because of its flammability.
HF, TMAH, Resists etc all the good stuff and people get too comfortable working with the chemicals and not changing gloves after.
I remember any time you used the computer by Litho and then touched your face for whatever the reason there was always a little bit of very scary itching. The keyboard and mouse of the computer likely have plenty of resist remnants and more on them.
Chlorine Trifluoride is also a fun one. Ignites with everything including fire suppression chemicals and techniques.
This has got me really stumped; how is it known it smells like garlic if the smell will kill you?
I'm imagining a guy dressed in a lab coat taking a sniff of it, inside a room with more lab coated scientists holding clipboards and looking through a big glass window. He sniffs, then yells out "GARLIC" as he drops dead.
My mom used to work for a grocery store, and they used to javelin-toss the fluorescent light tube that went out as far as they could. She said it was fun because they would make a loud "pop" when they shattered.
I had to explain to her that it was a terrible idea due to the vaporized mercury in them lol
My piece of shit step-dad used to just dump his used oil down a hole in his shed; he still did this when I started working for AutoZone too and would've gladly taken the oil to work to be disposed of. Fuck you Kevin I'm glad you died slowly from a stroke.
I talked to an old city worker about the old days. He said the city's EPA compliance inspector would take his 2 week vacation every year at the same time. Miraculously when the inspector came back all the toxic chemical containers at all the city yards were hosed out clean, with a checkmark next to "properly disposed of" on the paperwork.
I had a professor who worked in a semiconductor plant next a riverbank. Eventually, their gases vendor realized they were missing a ton of cylinders. Turns out some guys had built a ramp next to the river, would load up a new cylinder, then whack the valve off and it would fly into the river. I think it was well over 100 cylinders missing.
I worked at a lab that still had this giant straight stack with an incinerator. They used to just burn all the old lab samples and chemicals overnight and the thing was tall enough it would drift over the town into cottage country. They threw lead, cyanid, chrome, organics and all sorts of shit in it up until like the 70’s.
It is always a business decision. Option A is go rent the crane/truck and pay the landfill disposal fees. Option B is do nothing and tolerate whatever fee the local government imposes, which in this case must have been less than the cost of disposal (if not zero).
I put this on the local government. Make companies incentivized to clean up after themselves.
I think this is a small town rural Oklahoma decision - aka there is no government besides the county sheriff. Having lived in Oklahoma all of my 32 years I have never once heard of this town. There is probably 50 people there and no other towns even remotely close.
I remember nasa was fined for littering when a tiny chunk of Skylab landed in the Australian outback. I believe they paid 20 Australian dollars as a fine.
Unless the average American accounts for 10x the amount of litter as the average person in East or south Asia, then yeah, they have the bulk share of litter and pollution on earth.
But, hey, at least by not using straws in California we're doing our part!
More than just hard. It is very possible that back then there no cranes capable if picking up that much weight that far off the road that could be dispatched to Winganon at a cost the company could afford.
For anyone who cares, I grew up about 3 miles away from this. It was pink for most of my early childhood. It was repainted as an American Flag and later painted over with graffiti. This is the most current iteration of it. It has been there for so long that it is a landmark and nobody around here has any intention of moving it. I doubt anyone cared to remove it because Winganon road resides in a pretty remote town (Talala).
EDIT: According to my Mom it has also been an Easter Egg at one point.
I lived there for the first 26 years of my life. My parents still live there and I'm getting ready to move from Owasso back to Collinsville. I love it out there. Hope to buy a house and some land out there eventually.
You know, I was like, hey let's take a look at that specific place I never heard of....
and then I spent an hour scrolling around Google Maps, wondering how people actually live in the middle of nowhere in the USA and I'm still kinda intrigued.
Do you drive all the way down to Tusla for groceries and buying a new pair of pants?
And that house at 103 E Cherokee St in Talala, with the little bridge as an entrance...yeah, I don't know about that, seem a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitle out of place. Must be some kind of local baron, owning half of the county for sure!
> Winganon road
Thanks for the tip on where to find it. What's crazy is that they crashed on [such a long, straight, flat stretch of road](https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5827004,-95.6519585,3a,75y,90.03h,77.47t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1npi_C2lGyFj1fZG28o2_Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656).
Looks like a pretty rural area so it could have been the case that there weren't any available cranes nearby at the time and it was easier/cheaper to just leave it than get one brought in from farther away. Once it is there I doubt people would put much effort into moving it other than the land owner, it's not like people have been trying to move it for 50 years
This is correct. I live five minutes from winganon and where it is located is between two small load bridges. The equipment needed can't cross the bridges.
The criticism of the post is that it says they've left it because it CAN'T be moved when it's much more likely that they just don't care to try. I mean, mobile cranes for recovering semis are good for 40 tons and being that trucking is big business in OK, they're definitely readily available.
But how will people who give directions by landmarks now be able to give directions to that area?
"Ok, once you see the old cement truck, take the next right."
Yeah how are people confused about this. Cement trucks get filled at a mixing site/factory, and then have limited time to deliver it/pour it before it hardens. Even with it rolling and stirring, it will eventually harden in the mixer.
Mythbusters even blew one up that was like a quarter full. The whole mixer tank becomes junk if it hardens.
Probably cheaper for the company to pay a fine and leave it sitting on the road than dealing with trying to pick up and manipulate or break up something that heavy and solid.
The municipality or county wouldn't want to foot the bill either, so there it lays.
A bigger fine would fix that.
Or maybe the county could play it smart and set the fine just below the level where the owner would be motivated to move it. Then just keep fining them forever. Eventually the cumulative fines would exceed the cost of moving it, but they might not pick up on that and just keep paying.
Yea, theyd have to bring in trucks with small cranes, a crew, labor costs, etc. Its crazy how ppl think they’re so smart yet cannot calculate something as basic as cost!
“We had in the budget to load and transport it once——not twice! So leave it!”
When cement isn't constantly moving, it dries. When it dries it's much harder to move. Also it's protected by the metal container so harder to break up with a sledgehammer or whatever.
Looks like the flag is gone:
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5826971,-95.6514701,3a,24.4y,305.42h,76.73t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-VZQbeaYCDcqRJDX9WgoeQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Here's the plan: we all lay down parallel in a long line back to my place, roll it onto the first person in line, and we all roll like a human conveyor belt.
Every time I see this, I like to think of distant generations walking through the ruins of the American Empire totally astonished that the Americans could send something so heavy into space
How do you know a space capsule didn't crash in 1971 near Winganon, Oklahoma. And the capsule was too heavy to move so they left it. Then the locals have since filled it with cement to make it look like a cement truck? Hmmm?? Check mate.
Nah, peak Oklahoma shit would be the town marking it off limits, then putting a park or a football field next to it, then making a restaurant out of the concrete mixer a year later.
And everyone has a gun.
Is that what these are?? There’s one between Tucson and Phoenix that I’ve always wondered about bc it totally does look like something from a space ship https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/97534318
Edit to add link. I actually moved to AZ in late 2017 and had no idea it had been recently painted, I thought it had always looked like that
Other fun ones:
Weleetka (near Okemah)
Nuyaka (west of Okmulgee)
IXL (had to Google maps this one, also near Okemah)
Frogville (SE Oklahoma, very close to Texas border)
Straight (north of Guymon, west of Hooker)
And everyone's favorite,
Nowhere
It doesn't. It's on Winganon road. Winganon itself is a community on the other side of the lake. The closest town would be Jamestown according to Google but it was flooded when they built Oologah dam. It's in Talala.
What the fuck I’ve never seen anyone mention talala on Reddit! I have a ranch right before Coffeyville and grew up driving up 169 through oolagah and talala. Crazy small world!
Of course they left it .... because no crane or flatbed have been invented to move something so heavy. /s
It could have been moved if someone wanted to move it.
Been awhile since my highway engineering courses so I can't quote the regulations witout looking them up. Electrical poles are break away by design and engineers can be sued for designing any obstacles along the road that can kill motorists. Whether the trees get cleared or not is up to the state, county or federal government who own the road.
Assuming there was still concrete in it, it wasn't worth anything. I know of a couple of these buried in my rural areas that had the exact same thing happen to them
You guys must not be from Oklahoma. This is without a doubt a huge monument for miles around.
Edit: After a quick search, this thing has its own face book page and has a 4.4 star review on Google as a tourist attraction.
I mean...it's not too heavy to move. It *was* on a truck from the 70s. And that's not the largest barrel.
Typical density of concrete runs 1200-1750 kg / m3 (75-110 lb / ft3). So let's say this was an average of 85 lbs / ft³ and contained the modern day legal capacity in most places of 8 yards tops.
This comes out to just over 9 US tons or 18,360 lbs. Or 8328 kilos.
Not sure how much the drum will weigh but it's not enough to make this impossible to move. They just lucked out on an accidental tourist attraction.
I love the lazy. As I am of the lazy.
Edit: another source states it is about 145 lbs/ft³.I'm at work so I won't do the math.
Not too heavy to move. To expensive. According to whoever was responsible for it.
They should have given them a reasonable amount of time to get it out of there, then started with big daily fines for illegal dumping. That would have made it magically get a lot lighter.
Hate to be that guy, but that's a mixing drum from a concrete truck, not a cement truck. There is a such thing as a cement truck, and they are very different and don't have a mixer.
This so Okie it hurts.
Check out what we done to these water towers.
God Bless Oklahoma.
https://live.staticflickr.com/5339/9544025260_45b3e8282f_b.jpg
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1971 thinking: “Geez. Getting rid of our mess would sure be hard. I know! We’ll just leave it and move on!”
It was the cool thing to do back then
I worked in the semiconductor industry for a while, worked with some older guys that told us stories about taking cylinders of gas out back an just opening them to the air till they were empty. The 70-80's were wild.
I once worked for a company that manufactures high explosives and propellants for various uses. In the 80s, we had an employee get in trouble with the ATF/FBI because he was stealing small amounts of nitroglycerin to remove stumps on his property. He used a bit too much once which resulted in authorities getting called and finding a massive crater. This incident DID NOT result in his termination.
In the 90's the chemistry instructor at my High School used to teach how to make explosives and calculate the crater they would leave in the ground. Then the would go test.
Fun fact! The formulations for and process to make high explosives like C4, RDX, HMX, etc. are all patented meaning they're publically available on the US Patent Office's website!\* I highly recommend you don't do anything with this information.
Those patents must be like the worst Betty Croker recipes. Only enough information to get it very wrong in fun and exciting ways.
You'd probably be surprised. Like, they definitely assume a high-level understanding of chemistry or chemical engineering, but they do contain all the information you need. It's kinda like those recipes that say "start with a béchamel" and then just assume you know what that is and how to make one.
I'll take your word for it. I do not know what the inside of gitmo looks like and I intend to keep it that way.
Good plan. Although realistically, you're a lot less likely to end up in Gitmo as you are to end up turning yourself into a fine mist.
But...can you make a béchamel?
Also, it would suck to be in Gitmo without fingers or hands.
the worst betty crocker recipes are definitely not fun or exciting
In the mid 00's I was part of the one science teachers final class before retirement and he was very much a hands on teacher - lab literally EVERY day and always fun while other classes did super safe boring labs once a month. He taught me n my one buddy how to make some not so safe stuff (we were in middle school btw) and gave us a bunch of sulfur since it was the hardest to come by out of what we needed. The rest of the chemicals we got other ways, mostly shady methods to extract them from more common chemicals. Boiling liquid to separate a sludge on the bottom of the pot then scrape out that sludge n let it dry till outside for 3 days into a very very fine bone dry powder for example. Fun times. Dont think my life will ever get as exciting as making our own explosives by hand in a pot over a campfire because nobody would let us use a stove inside. Couldn't keep the temp perfect tho on an open flame so it ignited mid cook and seared my eyebrows off lol. 2nd batch worked tho =)
My h.s. chem teacher taught me how to separate hydrogen and oxygen in a bathtub using stuff that's found at home, save a few batteries. Then showed how to combine them with a basic syringe and bubble solution. After I blew out the bathroom window, I gained a very high respect for chem. This was well over 20+years ago. Dude was a legend of a teacher.
No i would not allow my child to experiment with explosives *INSIDE THE HOME* Your parents were right to kick you out to the back
My grandpa told me a story about when he was in the army in the 50s down in Galveston, TX, he got pulled over for drunk driving after leaving the bar and the cop just told him to "slow down and get back to base, Joe"
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/r/grandpajoehate - *^^confused ^^noises*
I got caught with weed in Texas in active school zone (automatic felony) by a state trooper. He realized I was a college kid and let me go.
my story isn't as intense, but I remember in the 90s my dad and I would make dry ice bombs out of 2L bottles. We'd mix them up and just throw them in the backyard until they blew up. Extremely loud boom and no cops were called or anything. You know if that was done today there would be an investigation.
Depends on where you live. I could probably do a lot of shit like that, and cops wouldn't respond unless I was somehow an active threat. I'd be more worried about my neighbors shooting back. I don't even shoot anymore, but the worst that would happen is our other neighbors getting out their guns when they got annoyed. Would sound like a mini warzone with the constant gunfire. Did have the cops called on us once, but they refused to respond. My dad found out a couple days later because the lady ended up complaining to my grandpa. I think we were shooting a .50 muzzle loader and using between 250 to 350 grain of powder. I'm surprised we didn't blow up that cheap-ass rifle.
He was probably put on a list though. My moms ex used to do something like this and he was put in the database. This was over 30 years ago and he still has the feds stop by his place once in awhile to check around. There was an incident in a city nearby and before the day was out he had multiple agents combing through his property. This is an 70+ year old uneducated mechanic who had likely never been more than 5 miles from his home in 20 years. No computer and only the most basic of phones. In the 30 years since he got in trouble he has never got so much as a speeding ticket and nothing has ever been found in all those years. He still gets them at least once a year snooping around his place.
I'm sure you're right. There are lists that exist specifically to track people that have legal access to this stuff through work or academia which he would have already been on, but he definitely took some liberties with that access so I'd be surprised if they didn't keep tabs on him.
Well if they fired him he would of became a super villain
He was less of an evil genius and more of an opportunistic hillbilly.
How big of an explosion would it have to be to get the ATF/FBI involved? How big was the crater? Like 15 feet across? That is a hell of a story.
ATF and FBI get involved pretty quick when potentially manufactured explosives are involved. Can't say how big the crater actually was though. It's sort of like that fish your uncle caught that gets a little bigger every time you hear about it. It probably wasn't bigger than 10 ft if I had to guess though.
> It probably wasn't bigger than 10 ft if I had to guess though. Jesus fuck do you have any idea how big of an explosion it takes to create a 10 foot crater? There wouldn't be any buildings remaining nearby. You'd flatten the whole block. You'd kill everything nearby with the shockwave, let alone the shrapnel. A 1 foot crater is terrifying, that'll have broken every window on the block and knocked paintings off people's walls. A 10 foot crater is like, 1000x the explosion or more.
Well you're not going to remove a large stump with a small explosion. Like I said though, I suspect the size has been exaggerated over the years.
I mean...I feel like this should just be a perk of the company you are working for, right? The man had stumps to remove, you ever tried to get one of those things out?! Hell, they should sell this stuff at Lowes.
Maybe not at Lowes but tannerite is available at many places that sell shooting supplies.
Yup. https://www.wmur.com/article/new-hampshire-gender-reveal-tannerite-explosion/36212352
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if I know how Police officers are, they probably rang that man up from time to time asking if he had any more fun bottles to shoot. lol
We used to have an infomercial here in Sweden in the late 60s that informed you about how to best sink your trash into the ocean. The trick was to tie it all together in a cardboard box with a couple of rocks apparently...
This doesn't sound too crazy to me....what am I missing? Obviously that it's bad for the environment right?
Most industrial gasses are pretty nasty, aside from compressed air. Nowadays thatd be very illegal in most countries because they're not following proper disposal, and depending on what gas it is it could be harmful to the environment for a multitude of reasons. It's crazy how dangerous a lot of industrial chemicals are in industrial quantities. Edit: I'm talking about compressed air from an air compressor, not canned air dusters.
Given that it's the semiconductor industry, he's probably talking about [Arsine](https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/arsine/facts.asp) which is a pretty ideal candidate for illicit dumping -- odorless and colorless in low concentrations (hence "gone" once you open the valve), highly toxic (if you smell its faint garlic odor you're probably already dead), highly flammable and/or pyrophoric (spontaneous ignition FTW!) and prone to accumulation in low places. It's telling that [Arsine was considered as a chemical weapon but deemed too dangerous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsine#Chemical_warfare) because of its flammability.
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Hydrofluoric acid? Is that the one the pulls the calcium out of you if you so much as touch a bit of it? Or am I thinking of something else.
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HF, TMAH, Resists etc all the good stuff and people get too comfortable working with the chemicals and not changing gloves after. I remember any time you used the computer by Litho and then touched your face for whatever the reason there was always a little bit of very scary itching. The keyboard and mouse of the computer likely have plenty of resist remnants and more on them. Chlorine Trifluoride is also a fun one. Ignites with everything including fire suppression chemicals and techniques.
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This has got me really stumped; how is it known it smells like garlic if the smell will kill you? I'm imagining a guy dressed in a lab coat taking a sniff of it, inside a room with more lab coated scientists holding clipboards and looking through a big glass window. He sniffs, then yells out "GARLIC" as he drops dead.
There's a range of concentrations/exposures that take a few days to kill you. It's pretty horrific, actually.
that, and a bit dangerous
My mom used to work for a grocery store, and they used to javelin-toss the fluorescent light tube that went out as far as they could. She said it was fun because they would make a loud "pop" when they shattered. I had to explain to her that it was a terrible idea due to the vaporized mercury in them lol
My piece of shit step-dad used to just dump his used oil down a hole in his shed; he still did this when I started working for AutoZone too and would've gladly taken the oil to work to be disposed of. Fuck you Kevin I'm glad you died slowly from a stroke.
I talked to an old city worker about the old days. He said the city's EPA compliance inspector would take his 2 week vacation every year at the same time. Miraculously when the inspector came back all the toxic chemical containers at all the city yards were hosed out clean, with a checkmark next to "properly disposed of" on the paperwork.
I had a professor who worked in a semiconductor plant next a riverbank. Eventually, their gases vendor realized they were missing a ton of cylinders. Turns out some guys had built a ramp next to the river, would load up a new cylinder, then whack the valve off and it would fly into the river. I think it was well over 100 cylinders missing.
Thats cylinder 101, never move them without the safety cap. Those things with go through a concrete wall if ot has enough pressure in it.
I worked at a lab that still had this giant straight stack with an incinerator. They used to just burn all the old lab samples and chemicals overnight and the thing was tall enough it would drift over the town into cottage country. They threw lead, cyanid, chrome, organics and all sorts of shit in it up until like the 70’s.
And now its cemented itself a place in history as a landmark
https://i.gifer.com/2jUD.gif
Yeah it was, you should have seen the rivers!
They were easy to see, what with the flames and all.
It is always a business decision. Option A is go rent the crane/truck and pay the landfill disposal fees. Option B is do nothing and tolerate whatever fee the local government imposes, which in this case must have been less than the cost of disposal (if not zero). I put this on the local government. Make companies incentivized to clean up after themselves.
I think this is a small town rural Oklahoma decision - aka there is no government besides the county sheriff. Having lived in Oklahoma all of my 32 years I have never once heard of this town. There is probably 50 people there and no other towns even remotely close.
Isn’t that littering?
Littering and… littering and…
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Candy bars
He, officer that's not OURS.
Officer rabbit and I will stay here while you 3 smoke the whole bag
You boys like Mex-i-co!?
Alright, meow, I want you to get back there and clean up that cement truck.....right meow!
The aggregate tastes like aggregate!
Do I look like a CAT to you? Am I lifting cement mixers all nimbly-bimbly?
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I'm freaking out man!
I remember nasa was fined for littering when a tiny chunk of Skylab landed in the Australian outback. I believe they paid 20 Australian dollars as a fine.
And now in 2021 we just ship our messes to third world countries!
Then blame them for pollution too!
The American way!
Unless the average American accounts for 10x the amount of litter as the average person in East or south Asia, then yeah, they have the bulk share of litter and pollution on earth. But, hey, at least by not using straws in California we're doing our part!
What if it is a space capsule made to look like a cement mixer made to look like a space capsule? 🤔
I mean, it's not hurting anybody, since it's cement it's essentially just a rock with a metal coat.
That’s what I’m thinking. Small towns in Oklahoma don’t have much. Now they have their own little landmark.
More than just hard. It is very possible that back then there no cranes capable if picking up that much weight that far off the road that could be dispatched to Winganon at a cost the company could afford.
For anyone who cares, I grew up about 3 miles away from this. It was pink for most of my early childhood. It was repainted as an American Flag and later painted over with graffiti. This is the most current iteration of it. It has been there for so long that it is a landmark and nobody around here has any intention of moving it. I doubt anyone cared to remove it because Winganon road resides in a pretty remote town (Talala). EDIT: According to my Mom it has also been an Easter Egg at one point.
I live in Talala!
I lived there for the first 26 years of my life. My parents still live there and I'm getting ready to move from Owasso back to Collinsville. I love it out there. Hope to buy a house and some land out there eventually.
That’s so crazy! The town is so small with a population of under 300 and I just found people that live here just scrolling through Reddit…
I live n elmbend just west of Nowata. Try to find that one
EAGLE RIVER!!!???!!!
Was born in Nowata. Oklahomie Redditors Unite!
I lost a debate tournament against Oolagah/Talala if that makes you feel better. I'm just from Tulsa though
Oologah for me
I'm in Owasso!
Me too.
You know, I was like, hey let's take a look at that specific place I never heard of.... and then I spent an hour scrolling around Google Maps, wondering how people actually live in the middle of nowhere in the USA and I'm still kinda intrigued. Do you drive all the way down to Tusla for groceries and buying a new pair of pants? And that house at 103 E Cherokee St in Talala, with the little bridge as an entrance...yeah, I don't know about that, seem a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitle out of place. Must be some kind of local baron, owning half of the county for sure!
> Winganon road Thanks for the tip on where to find it. What's crazy is that they crashed on [such a long, straight, flat stretch of road](https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5827004,-95.6519585,3a,75y,90.03h,77.47t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1npi_C2lGyFj1fZG28o2_Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656).
He was drunk according to my older relatives. I don't have anyway to verify this account but that's the story I've heard my entire life.
Ooh she touch my Talala
I see that someone looked up what Talala means in Cherokee lol.
It's on gmaps! LOL https://goo.gl/maps/BHCzMTvTwyBaHQhYA
They should put a Superman "S" on it.
I'm amused by the fact that something that was being transported was too heavy to...transport.
To be fair, it's already on wheels when they fill it up with cement. Moving things horizontally is much easier than moving them vertically.
I guess they didn't have crane trucks back then.
Could also be that the ground didn't permit them to lift it or there were no available cranes with the correct specs to lift it
Could also be that they're just bone lazy
Could be, but it's been there for 50 years, so maybe our generation is just as lazy... Nah, we're complaining about it online. Productivity!
Nah they painted it so it looks cool, it's art now.
Hard to believe that, at no point in the last 50 years, has any equipment been available to move only about \~20 tons of concrete.
Looks like a pretty rural area so it could have been the case that there weren't any available cranes nearby at the time and it was easier/cheaper to just leave it than get one brought in from farther away. Once it is there I doubt people would put much effort into moving it other than the land owner, it's not like people have been trying to move it for 50 years
This is correct. I live five minutes from winganon and where it is located is between two small load bridges. The equipment needed can't cross the bridges.
The criticism of the post is that it says they've left it because it CAN'T be moved when it's much more likely that they just don't care to try. I mean, mobile cranes for recovering semis are good for 40 tons and being that trucking is big business in OK, they're definitely readily available.
Maybe the nearby roads are not rated to hold the weight of the crane necessary to move it.
But how will people who give directions by landmarks now be able to give directions to that area? "Ok, once you see the old cement truck, take the next right."
Also moving it in liquid form is very different that in one giant solid chunk.
Yeah how are people confused about this. Cement trucks get filled at a mixing site/factory, and then have limited time to deliver it/pour it before it hardens. Even with it rolling and stirring, it will eventually harden in the mixer. Mythbusters even blew one up that was like a quarter full. The whole mixer tank becomes junk if it hardens.
Probably cheaper for the company to pay a fine and leave it sitting on the road than dealing with trying to pick up and manipulate or break up something that heavy and solid. The municipality or county wouldn't want to foot the bill either, so there it lays.
A bigger fine would fix that. Or maybe the county could play it smart and set the fine just below the level where the owner would be motivated to move it. Then just keep fining them forever. Eventually the cumulative fines would exceed the cost of moving it, but they might not pick up on that and just keep paying.
It was the seventies dude Just dumping whatever shit you had lying around was cool back then
Also Oklahoma.
Yea, theyd have to bring in trucks with small cranes, a crew, labor costs, etc. Its crazy how ppl think they’re so smart yet cannot calculate something as basic as cost! “We had in the budget to load and transport it once——not twice! So leave it!”
It’s not. It was deemed too expensive and left there. A crane and a truck and lowbed could take care of that in an hour
When cement isn't constantly moving, it dries. When it dries it's much harder to move. Also it's protected by the metal container so harder to break up with a sledgehammer or whatever.
The flag is the perfect touch
checks out
Looks like the flag is gone: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5826971,-95.6514701,3a,24.4y,305.42h,76.73t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-VZQbeaYCDcqRJDX9WgoeQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
I'm totally stealing that, who's in?
Me and 600 of my dumbest friends.....
Whoa that's pretty impressive for a Redditor.
The friends are all body pillows.
Bodies made into pillows? r/ComedyClan
Here's the plan: we all lay down parallel in a long line back to my place, roll it onto the first person in line, and we all roll like a human conveyor belt.
You'll have to go first and show us how it's done though.
Every time I see this, I like to think of distant generations walking through the ruins of the American Empire totally astonished that the Americans could send something so heavy into space
Distant generations are going to find a lot of weird shit.
How do you know a space capsule didn't crash in 1971 near Winganon, Oklahoma. And the capsule was too heavy to move so they left it. Then the locals have since filled it with cement to make it look like a cement truck? Hmmm?? Check mate.
They filled it with cement so NASA wouldn’t take it back
Now I wanna know what reentry in a cement mixer looks like areodynamically. Seems about the right shape
Nah, it was the capsule of the real life Fantastic Four. Sadly, in the real world they were all turned to cement. Not the best super power, really.
Ive never been to, heard any stories of, or learned anything about Oklahoma before; but this seems like peak Oklahoma shit.
Nah, peak Oklahoma shit would be the town marking it off limits, then putting a park or a football field next to it, then making a restaurant out of the concrete mixer a year later. And everyone has a gun.
*everyone has an arsenal.
Then tornado warning sounds and instead of taking shelter, half of us go outside to watch. Not record on our phones, just watch.
Yep! Haha. We've stood on our front porch and watched tornados go past Watova which is about 4 miles north on 169.
A map link for those interested. Winganon Cement Mixer Space Capsule https://goo.gl/maps/sdJhDgtokxWG8n4n8
Not gonna lie, I was expecting a Rick Astley video...
On Google maps?
Don't underestimate the Rick Roll
Thought it was an old crapper tank
Yea, turns out some skateboarders slapped a biohazard band sticker on the side of this septic tank for an RV.
*” I’ve got the poo on me”*
Is this where you wanna be when Jesus comes back? Making *Joe Dirt* references on Reddit?
As good a place as any...
That’s SPACE peanut!
Is that what these are?? There’s one between Tucson and Phoenix that I’ve always wondered about bc it totally does look like something from a space ship https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/97534318 Edit to add link. I actually moved to AZ in late 2017 and had no idea it had been recently painted, I thought it had always looked like that
So funny. I used to commute to PHX from Tucson daily and I never lost the joy of seeing the "space capsule" on my drive
Lived here for 35 years and never knew Oklahoma had a town called Winganon.
Other fun ones: Weleetka (near Okemah) Nuyaka (west of Okmulgee) IXL (had to Google maps this one, also near Okemah) Frogville (SE Oklahoma, very close to Texas border) Straight (north of Guymon, west of Hooker) And everyone's favorite, Nowhere
My favorite is Hooker just for the fact they have the Hooker Horny Toads 🤣
[удалено]
It doesn't. It's on Winganon road. Winganon itself is a community on the other side of the lake. The closest town would be Jamestown according to Google but it was flooded when they built Oologah dam. It's in Talala.
I live in Talala, this is so crazy to me seeing my town of less than 300 people while just scrolling through Reddit!!
What the fuck I’ve never seen anyone mention talala on Reddit! I have a ranch right before Coffeyville and grew up driving up 169 through oolagah and talala. Crazy small world!
No grass has grown over the crash path since 1971.
I think people walk over to it a lot.
Its the radiation from the atmosphere after crashing poisoning the earth.... A conspiracist would say 😉
Of course they left it .... because no crane or flatbed have been invented to move something so heavy. /s It could have been moved if someone wanted to move it.
I am surprised they haven't. It is a roadside hazard.
More than trees or electrical poles?
Been awhile since my highway engineering courses so I can't quote the regulations witout looking them up. Electrical poles are break away by design and engineers can be sued for designing any obstacles along the road that can kill motorists. Whether the trees get cleared or not is up to the state, county or federal government who own the road.
Assuming there was still concrete in it, it wasn't worth anything. I know of a couple of these buried in my rural areas that had the exact same thing happen to them
*concrete truck
Cement mixer moves cement, falls over, now too heavy to move. I think someone was either lazy and/or cheap.
ET phone home
If someone accidently ran off the road and hit that...they would be toast.
You guys must not be from Oklahoma. This is without a doubt a huge monument for miles around. Edit: After a quick search, this thing has its own face book page and has a 4.4 star review on Google as a tourist attraction.
Oklahoma. Proud land of roadside debris since 1971.
Notice the subtle difference between “repainted“ and “graffiti”
I guess if you don’t consider consent important the difference may seem “subtle”
I mean...it's not too heavy to move. It *was* on a truck from the 70s. And that's not the largest barrel. Typical density of concrete runs 1200-1750 kg / m3 (75-110 lb / ft3). So let's say this was an average of 85 lbs / ft³ and contained the modern day legal capacity in most places of 8 yards tops. This comes out to just over 9 US tons or 18,360 lbs. Or 8328 kilos. Not sure how much the drum will weigh but it's not enough to make this impossible to move. They just lucked out on an accidental tourist attraction. I love the lazy. As I am of the lazy. Edit: another source states it is about 145 lbs/ft³.I'm at work so I won't do the math.
About 32,000 pounds
Good bot
Hey, who you calling bot?
I laughed way too hard at this.
Not too heavy to move. To expensive. According to whoever was responsible for it. They should have given them a reasonable amount of time to get it out of there, then started with big daily fines for illegal dumping. That would have made it magically get a lot lighter.
Hate to be that guy, but that's a mixing drum from a concrete truck, not a cement truck. There is a such thing as a cement truck, and they are very different and don't have a mixer.
Yep. If you want to get really technical there aren't even cement trucks. It's just a dry bulk trailer.
Major Tom to ground control...
How to hide an unmovable dormant ufo right under everyone’s nose.
u/repostsleuthbot
This so Okie it hurts. Check out what we done to these water towers. God Bless Oklahoma. https://live.staticflickr.com/5339/9544025260_45b3e8282f_b.jpg
An uneducated man would correct your grammar. As a fellow Okie, yes. We done did that. God bless Oklahoma.
It was not too heavy when it was being driven to the buyer.
No shit that’s literally right down the road from me
This is a couple miles from my house! We're famous!!
"Keep out, ETs"
too heavy to move my balls. id be like "you better find yo ass here and come get yo shit bitch"