Why Steel from Before 1945 is Weirdly Expensive
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
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Video written by Adam Chase
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The real question is what about bricks from before 1945??????
Yes! Quit ducking the elephant in the room Sam!
@@daviddougherty5714 😊😊😊😊😊
BRICS could not have formed before 1945
In Savannah Georgia there is are actually special gray bricks they are both old and extremely strong. They sell for at a minimum $4 a brick
@@brokeindio5072False, the practice of throwing insubordinate sailors into the brig has existed since the age of sail.
So, brigs certainly did exist in 1945.
😉
Ok, I thought the bad news was going to be that there might suddenly be a spike in radioactivity in the world, but luckily followed by a reduced need for low-radioactive metals
I also thought the same, considering north korea did nuclear tests in recent years
@you know this report 'you know this' for unwanted commercial activity or spam
@@Technae I don't understand how these bots survive. They literally post the exact same vague clickbait everywhere. _I_ could write a script that filters and bans them.
@@mysticondeflamme and, y'know, the whole current situation where some madman in a country called Russia is threatening to blow everyone up, you might have heard of him, his name is Putin or something? :P
@@mysticondeflamme all their tests are underground, so there is very minimal (if at all) radioactive leakage.
Kodak found out before the bomb was detonated, one of their paper mills for making packaging was downstream from a fissile material enrichment plant. So their new, freshly packaged film was somehow being exposed in small spots
Veritasium has a long video on how Kodak discovered the radioactive fallout...
@@rayoflight62 he made Zeze too 🔥🔥🔥
John W. Campbell also knew, and in a rather amusing way: a story was published in Astounding Stories basically describing the atomic bomb in 1944, and the FBI freaked out. Turns out it was just a case of sci-fi writer Cleve Cartmill being good at his job and predicting near-future societal dilemmas, but during the investigation Campbell revealed he'd known that *something* was being done in the Santa Fe area because a huge number of subscriptions had suddenly moved there.
Kodak caught the radioactive stuff in 4K
Wasn't it Germany found out about the nuclear program because a bunch of scientific journals were pulled from publication based around nuclear physics, etc. and it's like "Hang on a tic... those scientists stopped publishing. They might be working on a secret nuclear project!"
"What's wrong, Dave?"
"Now call me crazy, Gary. But I've got a suspicioun our government is testing radioactive superweapons nearby."
"Why do you think that, Dave?"
"I don't know but these pictures just aint right, doesn't make sense"
That’s pretty much how it happened, the Kodak scientist that researched it also had worked on the Manhattan Project
@@RockyCraftin That's just a whole other plane of funny to me
Raccoons need HUGS
Pretty much how Chernobyl was found out too, except with various European nuclear power plant workers and not people working at Kodak.
Crazy dave 💀
"you wouldn't have clicked on a video called "Why steel- making is sometimes done with pure oxygen in a clean room environment."
Sir you're talking to the fanbase that demanded a brick video.
Right?
You can make interesting educational videos without resorting to click bait and awkward jokes
@@cymond Yeah. HAI should really learn from other educational video makers, like Wendover and Extremities.
ROFL!
@@cymond It's getting pretty annoying to be honest. I clicked this already with an understanding of the topic, but was hoping I'd learn more from it, instead of wasting six minutes listening to bad jokes.
demands, present tense not past
I would totally watch a video titled why steel is sometimes made with purified oxygen in a clean room environment
I would too but I would be suspicious if it was an HAI title. That's too off-brand of a title for an HAI video...
I would just click on the HAI video without processing what the title says.
We were the kids that were excited when they wheeled in the TV at school 😂😂
So would I
I wouldn't
If you were to melt this pre-1945 steel using oxygen to melt and reuse it, aren't you still incorporating Co-60 or other radioactive elements into the steel?
Steel is already steel. You could just melt it into another shape. Its impure iron to turn into steel that needs air.
If it's just oxygen then no, it's only when it's air that it's a problem. Also see reply above.
You don't pump nearly as much air into steel when you're remelting it.
Also pure O2 would have bypassed most of the radioactive stuff.
trick question. I have never and will never do this.
Induction furnace time
I didn't think there was a need for low background steel anymore because there are new processes in place during the manufacture of new steel that basically eliminates the existence of radioactive material.
He literally said that!!!!! Lmfao omfg you literally repeated what he said!!!
But you wouldn't have clicked on a video titled "Why steel made before 1945 used to sell for 143x more, but now there are new processes in place during the manufacture of new steel which removed that demand".
report 'you know this' for unwanted commercial activity or spam
@@CrystalMaidenFeetLover86 Yeah well I know that now! I commented before the video started. Guess I learned my lesson, huh?
@@CrystalMaidenFeetLover86 Then he shouldn't have made the video
Part of the issue in the past was that a lot of the wrecks that were salvaged had casualties. People weren't happy when they found out that unscrupulous individuals were robbing war graves. Ships that sunk without casualties are easier to accept people cutting up for profit.
@VaderxG This is like saying it's ok to take headstones from a graveyard cause they're just rocks. The ships aren't simply the place these people died but also their final resting place. HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales sank with almost all hands but have been completely destroyed by salvagers. The UK has said these ships are not to be disturbed but the wrecks aren't in international water and the local government just doesn't care. The only reason similar things didn't happen to USS Arizona and HMS Hood is because Hood is too deep and the US decided Arizona wasn't worth the trouble to raise until after the war at which point public opinion wanted a memorial to Pearl Harbor.
@@Ebolson1019 the line between archeology and grave robbing is a fine one, but certainly anything that sank after 1850 is definitely off limits for explotation if its also a grave. (Most sunken ships are also graves)
Your best argument to touch them would be an environmental one of wanting to remove it from the water and place it in a museum of some kind. (And make a memorial/tomb for the deceased) But the argument of "economic benefits for an individual" is definitely just grave robbing with extra steps.
@@jasonreed7522 and all the ships I listed sank in ww2
The Scapa flow wrecks are prized for the fact that they are 1. All together and 2. Not Graves, as they were scuttled by their crews so no one died.
3) relatively shallow water.
@@davidbryden7904 4: boats
5. German Engineering
6) Not haunted
@@joeybuddy96 refer to item 2.
If WW1 is like Shrek and WW2 is like Shrek 2, I'm scared to see how bad WW3 will be...
damn how did I miss this! 😂
Shrek 2 took everything good about Shrek 1 and turned it up to 11. Two badass movies
We are allready experiencing ww3,,, and its the movie Idiocracy ,, George Orwell 1984 ,,,,was the news reel before the show
Don't worry, you will only see it very briefly.
World War the third
“Or beams that can’t be melted by jet fuel” whole heartedly can’t believe you just slipped that in there
20 years is the cutoff, it’s officially ok to joke about 9/11
@@Matt-xc6sp where were you when aids was finally funny? Such a glorious day for mankind!!
@@Manhandle730 it’s been funny
@@Manhandle730 I liked the Rent AIDS parody in Team America over a decade ago.
The beams start to lose some of their weight bearing ability way before their quote unquote melting point.
anyone gonna mention in the thumbnail that in the left pile of steel, the top layer is floating above the bottom layer because of the orientation of the beams?
@you know this report 'you know this' for unwanted commercial activity or spam
They’re oriented to he H shaped on the left and I shaped on the right for Half As Interesting
That's why it costs more
Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on low-background steel mentions old railroad rolling stock as another source. Makes me wonder about pre-ww2 cars, is the metal too thin or are they simply worth more intact.
Most likely neither. All pre ww2 cars have either already been scrapped and melted down for parts, or are sitting in a land fill under 80 years worth of garbage, making them not worth digging out.
@@Tommy50377 so basically any pre ww2 car that is actually accessible is definitely worth more as a collector's item than as scrap steel for use as low background steel. Especially considering the dropping demand for specialty pre ww2 steel as background atmospheric radiation is dropping to more "normal" levels.
@@jasonreed7522 any pre WWII car that isn't rusted to death is absolutely worth more than its weight in materials 👍
Coldwarmotors?
I own a pre ww2 car. They’re actually pretty easy to come by if you’re looking for one. They’re still worth more than scrap value even in bad shape but unless it’s something super rare or iconic prices are pretty reasonable compared to later model collector cars.
Speaking of nuclear bombs you should do a video on fracking with Nukes. This occured most famously in Colorado at Rulison.
The story of the Germans scuttling their own Navy in a British port after surrendering so that the British wouldnt get their ships is a really interesting story but it gets completely swamped by the all the snarkiness in this video. May I suggest a video on this topic in the future?
And it's important in this qestion as it was a planned scuttling after hostilities had defacto ended. So no-one went down with those ships and thus they are not classified as sailors' graves. So they can be legaly salvaged.
And it happened at _Scapa Flow,_ not whatever the hell he said..
The British actually were quite happy they scuttled it. The alternative was that the ships got split up around the allies. The Royal navy was already far ahead in naval size, so they could only lose from the German grand fleet being given to others.
My wife's lab had a big sheet of battleship steel from a WWII battleship. The professor who owned it loved it and would point it out on tours. Nobody realized why. Then he retired and they couldn't give it away... because it didn't fit through the door. Whoops!
Wow if only cutting torches were invented. Or if there were specialized people that could break down a door and walls. Hmmmm. 🧐
@@theenzoferrari458 ha!! What are you even talking about?! Like those things exist!! Someone is reading too many comic books!
The trouble with that is they were trying to fit it through a door. That's almost never going to work. Pesky things are usually solid, maybe have little holes in them. What they needed to be doing was opening the door then fitting it through the doorway. Much easier.
@@igrim4777 You are a genius! At first I thought I couldn't get out of my house because I was an introvert, now I know it's because I'm an idiot!
Man, these nose bleeds sure do make a lot more sense now!
Wait - So are you saying they built the lab around this dude's giant piece of sheet steel? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Used to work at a site which had a room shielded by steel taken from a named sunken ship. It's difficult to figure out how radioactive something is when the room containing it is already radioactive.
I'm sure there's a reason and I'm genuinely curious... Why can't you just take a baseline measurement of the room before you put the subject in it?
@@schwig44 You can, and that's usually what's done. Now, I'm no professional, but my guess is that subtracting the average background count rate isn't good enough if you want to be extremely precise, or if the amount of radiation you're trying to detect is so small that it's impossible to tell apart from natural variation in background radiation.
@@schwig44 Seb135 has it right. Radiation is not a constant thing. Each emission is entirely random, and even if the average emission rate is low, you want to be able to tell that apart from the background. In nuclear facilities, for example, you want the emissions from a person to be at normal, background level. That means not having your detectors swamped by the room's walls. Good operators can tell how many bananas a person has eaten recently - they are naturally radioactive.
It’s plutonium 239, not 139
Well, it could also be Pu-238, Pu-240, Pu-241, or Pu-242 :P
Can't wait to see this in the next HAI corrections video!
In the Philippines, illegal salvage of famous WWII shipwrecks is a problem for this reason. These shipwrecks are considered war graves, and of national importance to their country of origin. The UK conducted an operation to retrieve the bell of the HMS Prince of Wales, which was involved in the sinking of the Bismarck. They knew the ship was being illegally salvaged, and wished to save the bell. There are reports of piles of human bones littering the shore where they break down and process the metal.
Man I already knew the answer to this. Dang nukes causing problems!
Sam promotes his Nebula series so much that I almost watched the entire thing trough his ad segments.
I don't know why Nebula is a thing. I give him a cent or two by watching videos on RUclips. I don't give him squat by not signing up for Nebula. He's turning away income by not putting videos on RUclips. At least post them in both places.
1:48 Damn that's actually a pretty smart joke. The setup was magnificent. And the dry delivery.
Extremely funny, not smart tho
"You can know if a person was born before 1945 by simply asking them how old they are" got me actually ROLLING, I was not expecting that at all 😂
this video was 143x more interesting than expected.
Jeremiah WWI would be touched to hear you say that.
so it's 71.5x as interesting?
For the record, the trinity test was north of Alamogordo, not in Timberon. And it's SCAPA Flow not SCARPA Flow.
Actually, he call is "Scarpa Bay" which as near as I can figure using Google search is a place the doesn't exist. After 3 major errors in the first 3 minutes I gave up watching and came down to the comments to join the roasting...
I would 1000% click on a video titled "Why steel-making is sometimes done with pure oxygen in a clean room environment."
I would have clicked on that title.
2:28 hornet's nest was kicked subtly, who else noticed? lol
Scapa Flow isn't so much a bay as a stretch of water with a group of islands around it.
And some ships at the bottom. Albeit less than there used to be.
Let's hope that we can get atmospheric radiation down even further, so that one day we can preserve the past instead of stripping it for parts.
But that’s the fun part
I don't think the ocean is going to do a great job of preserving the past.
Hey HAI, please make a video on the village of Vulcan (in West Virginia) who wanted a bridge in the 1970s, but because their state government had ignored them, they asked the Soviet Union for help; when the Soviets promised to fund a bridge and sent journalists there, the state government inmediatly agreed to build a bridge, and it was major news at the time; seriously, search it up, it's quite an interesting story.
There's a ton of steel at the bottom of the ocean? That doesn't seem like very much tbh
A ton is roughly 2,000 lbs or 1,00 Kg depending on where you're from.
Ship & Submarine hulls ... are pretty thick, there are LITERALLY tons of steel in the sea
@@jordankull4295 you missed a joke and one 0 by 1000 kg
2:24 beams that can't be burned by jet fuel? A nod to "planely difficult"?
3:27 i admire that ONE guy that's running in a different direction. do your own thing, amigo!
Likely a messenger, WWI radios were primitive, bulky and short ranged; frontline messages had to be relayed by runners.
Unfortunately, the value of this steel has created a sort of "black market" and illegal salvage ops have disturbed the "final resting place" of sailors. Some wrecks are now missing from the sea floor, their crews remains having disappeared with them. 🙏 RIP
It may be sad that they're removing the graves, but removing the ships from the ocean is actually really good for the environment. Lead in these hulls can cause increased heavy metal in marine organisms, and the iron can make invasive corals take over healthy reefs. So while it sucks that these graves are disturbed, it's overall a good thing that the ships are being removed.
@@aliciacardella9526 with the coral reefs, and thus the marine life that relies on them, being fucked over, don't we kinda need invasive corals in the world?
@VaderxG pretty sure even the skeletons are gone after this long. It's unreal the kind of pointless stuff people decide to get worked up about! Everybody who died in WWI have been dead for 100 years, and even their grandkids are almost certainly dead too. If they have spent 100 years in Heaven now, they certainly aren't going to be upset that someone moved some metal around near where their dead bodies settled 100 years ago. And if they just don't exist, they also won't care.
@@dgpsf my great great grandfather served in ww1 and his grandson, my grandfather, is still alive
There is no letter r in Scapa or letters b, a, or y in Flow. That is, it's called Scapa Flow, not Scarpa Bay.
For a guy who lived in Scotland for at least a couple years, I'm a bit disappointed in Sam's pronounciation
"How old are you?"
"I'm two Cesium-137 half-lives old"
Yo, this made me really appreciate the work being put into proper headlines. Nice sidebar!
Also I thought I was not interested in the Crime Spree series, but it was super fun. Also really loved the Colorado documentary. I can not find the St Helena one though… the search on Nebula is, let’s say not as great as the content on it.
Wondering how many people caught the “beams that can’t be melted by jet fuel”…
wow he's dropping big knowledge but coding it for us super geniuses in the know
9 1 1 ?
i caught that immediately...
@@blinking_dodo same
@WiZZard for everyone making that joke i would have some loose change
1:55 First bricks, now steel. What's next Half as Interesting, wood?
I really enjoy this channel,I know you probably hear this often,but you make the boring stuff very,well, interesting!
Its only boring if your teacher is doing it poorly.
Not only that, but now I can ask the wine steward about the cesium-137 concentration in my wine!@# 😂
@you know this report 'you know this' for unwanted commercial activity or spam
@@Technae Kk, swat the bots.
wat did u destroy:(
I know this one. It's the lack of any radiocucleotides after the first nuclear weapons test, needed to various instruments.
My favorite building material being discussed on HAI, except for, of course, those red hard rectangular things called BRICKS.
Before clicking on this, I guessed why pre-1945 steel was prized I also knew about the German fleet scuppered at Scarpa.
Bonus fact: To scarper is Cockney rhyming slang. Scarpa Flow - go.
Half as Interesting makes videos on random topics so interesting. Appreciate the hard work. 👍👍👍
👍
This video was like 50 % jokes and 50% actual information.
Ah yes, the Bessemer process, what makes boxes of knives...
3:00 you underestimate the kind of people who watch this channel. Of course we'd click it.
Did anyone else notice the subtlety that the steel beams in the left were oriented to be an H and the ones on the right were oriented to be a capital I, as in H(alf) as I(nteresting)
If that was intentional, then that was simultaneously clever and horribly vague
I didn't understand what World War I was until I learned that it was like Shrek 1 and not Shrek 2. Thanks, Half as Interesting!
This video has a lot of the same energy I have when I’m making up a lesson plan for a class that starts in 10 minutes. It’s a compliment, I promise
Finally I know how to tell whether a person was born before 1945, really learned something in this video, thank you!
"Why steel- making is sometimes done with pure oxygen in a clean room environment" sounds like an interesting video especially if the details of the process are discussed.
Calling it Scarpa Bay really turns that bit of Cockney rhyming slang on its head. From Scarpa Flow - go, to Scarpa Bay - stay.
Anyway, I’m in a rush, I need to Scarpa
That WWI joke at 3:01 is the funniest thing I've seen all week
This is wild to think about. I’m a train conductor and each piece of rail they use is dated. I found a piece of rail dated all the way back in 1919 that is still in use today. Crazy to think that rail was made 20 years before any nukes were ever detonated and it’s in use today.
There's still some stadiums standing that are pre 1945. Wrigley. Fenway. Rose Bowl. Michigan Stadium. Franklin Field. They would also have this special steel in places.
We have a station roof made out of early 20th century steel. Crazy how long this things can last.
"I mixed lead into my paint because safety first..."😂
Did anyone notice that the steel on the left forms an H and on the right forms and I, Half as Interesting??
Adam Chase! Thank you, the writing is hilarious.
I thougth for the bad news you were gonna talk about how this demand for low background steal lead to a lot a people disturbing and destroying old shipwrecks which for civilian ships the final resting place of her crew and military ships are war graves under international law and are protected sites. Force Z (HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales) have been almost completely destroyed due to the shallow water they sank in.
I don’t think I would have understood the concept of WWII without the Shrek comparison.
I do love me some Helen Mirren. She still a fox too.
Also don't tell me that I wouldn't click on a video titled "Why steel-making is sometimes done with pure oxygen in a clean room environment". You don't know me.
Beams that can be melted by jet fuel😳
Damn. I have like 6000lbs of train track from the late-1800s laying around and I got really excited that I had a payday stacked behind my shed. Then you had to go a kill my brand new dream.
@2:30.... you Sir are a legend for being awake.
"Jeremiah World War I" is such a dumb joke that still makes me laugh
Did HAI just reference 9/11???
Without watching the video, I'd guess it's because it's missing the trace levels of radioactive content in the modern era when trace levels of radiation make a difference to sensitive equipment. Am I right? Or should I watch the video?
The part you might have mentioned is that the pre-boom steel is so valuable that breakers have been disassembling ships marked as war graves. Most of the ships from Scoppa Bouy had already been recycled.
i had no idea there was actually like a seperate market for pre-1945 steel and even other metals
this is some timeline-shift level weirdness shit rn
This is one I learned from Citation Needed. Thanks Tom!
Ah yes when you know basically the entire story but still watch the video for the witty jokes.
2:27 that reference almost flew over my head😅
i saw this video already but its so good i had to revisit it a couple months later
4:05 computer ships
0:58 One more thing to put to your yearly mistakes video.
Plutonum
This video felt like going down a 50 ft tall steel zigzag slide, slamming between informative content and oversimplified absurdity. Honestly, I enjoyed it
That pronunciation of Scapa flow physically hurt me
It's called Scapa Flow, not Scarpa Bay
this was, at the very least, 3/4 as interesting. it reminds me of an incident in Mexico involving radioactive equipment being dismantled at a junkyard by unqualified workers, the "Cobalt-60" incident - there's plenty of information if you're interested.
ruclips.net/video/L_-vf8RBzuc/видео.html
And this video from another channel.
I was wondering why companies were mercilessly scavenging WW2 shipwrecks (gravesites) in the Pacific. This is why. Astounding that I am mid-40s and never knew this.
Do one on why RUclips videos change their titles. This video had the title “why steel made before 1945 sells for 143x more” before i clicked on it and now it says “why steel from before 1945 is weirdly expensive”
for one of the first times ever I actually know where this one is going (spoilers)
Its for geiger counters and other things that need steel that isn't radioactively contaminated
I knew what this awesome video was about as soon as I saw the title cause I used this as my history essay in high school and I still find this stuff so fascinating.
makes you wonder what else we've done before realizing we've fucked a lot of shit up on accident
Can't wait to see mistake at 1:00 "Plutonum" for "Plutonium" on the next HAI Mistakes Video!
2:30 That hits too close to home, lol. I was trying to date a girl and it came up that she thought 9/11 was an inside job and the steel beams wouldn't melt and stuff. So that clip brought back a now funny memory (not at the time, though)
She's a keeper
@@hmmm3210 Yeah no, she's crazy
Marry her, she's a keeper.
well she's right, jet fuel doesn't even get close to the temperatures needed to soften steel, the twin towers were actually build with plane attacks in mind and would be able to resist them, the most likely scenario is that thermite bombs were used for which there are indications on footage but we'll never know what really happened excapt for the fact that the planes alone weren't the ones who destroyed the towers and that something else helpt with that
Sooo... if you don't want her, can I have her number?
You could say steel today is a steal. 😜
This one was definitely Half As Fascinating. Epic ad read too. Five Half Stars!
The amount of sarcasm in this video is on par with the levels of cesium-137 and cobalt-60 in the atmosphere before 1963. Understandable
i mean, germany wasnt really solely responsible for WW1, also, it was called the great war. how bad could it possibly have been?
Millions died
@@boxinabox6608 they followed “smarter” “noble” men into a wall of hot steel so the rich can get richer. All they had to do was aim at their officers. Fuck the troops, they serve in profit conflicts and shouldn’t be glorified
@@boxinabox6608 influenza >
@@hampshire2821 It doesn't make it any less of a tragedy
Congrats, you successfully talked about steel for a total of 2:28 before the inevitable everyone knew it was coming “Jet Fuel Can’t melt steel beams” joke.
1:48 excellent deadpan delivery
If you were going for interesting and entertaining, you freaking nailed it.
How do you even come up with a topic like this? Brilliant. Bravo.
WTF is happening at 0:24 ??
Scapa Flow, not Scapa Bay!
This is the funniest video that you’ve ever made - love it!!
I really apricate the H and I beams in the videos thumbnail, great polish :)
Plutonium 139 would be incredibly interesting, in that something that proton-heavy would have a half life somewhere around a picosecond. Your team needs to fact check a bit more, as the same typo got past the writer, editor, animator, and presenter.