BLOWUPS HAPPEN

A passing tribute to a wonderful writer, Robert Heinlein. I was struck by a silly question while watching the second video here about a Roman Bakery in the long lost Port of Ostia. As he talked about the slaves toiling away in the dust from 10 millstones churning out enough flour to feed thousands of people every day I wondered if the Romans ever suffered from dust initiated explosions in their flour mills. Their ventilation systems were pretty primitive.

Washburn A Mill exploding in 1878 because of dust. (Stereo view works oddly enough)

Flour dust was once a real passing concern of mine because height of eye is important to the success of some ventures. While the operators assured me that it was safe, one can never be sure about a thing like that. Wired.com reports that between 1994 and 2003 there were 115 dust explosions in the food and agriculture sector, most of them in grain elevators.

You can see the grain elevators and flour mill that concerned me in the picture below. They are the largest objects to the right of the bent submarine. When people assure me that accidents such as dust explosions or smashed submarines are fantastically rare, I take it with a large grain of salt. It's the only way to be sure. One never hears of salt explosions but better safe than sorry.

A badly damaged submarine heads into port. It was run over. In a very rare accident.