Mining under Twilight

[Mohoender]

It must be my yearly Thread generating frenzy but I was watching a report, two days ago, about Kivu (DRC) and tin mines there.

These mines are in very remote areas only reached after long and harrassing walks. Miners there are ransomed daily by legal forces and rebels alike. Their work looks exactly as if it was the result of indenture service and they are almost working with bare hands. Some of the mines go down 300 meters and the miners only use hand tools and strengthen the mines with wood.

I think that it would exactly be the conditions of mining under T2K. In regions such as Silesia, Southern Germany or parts of England (where some sort of legal government has been established/surviving), by 2000, several mines would probably remain in activity and older ones could be put back in activity.

Work in these would be close to hell and the quality/quantity of extracted minerals would be low but existing nonetheless. As in the mines in Kivu, a team of two men could probably extract 20-30 kg daily.

Their equipments would be made of ropes, hand tools, bags and some sort of light source (probably alcohol generated light). Pay could be better and food more readily available to miners but life expectency would be very short. Working in these mines would be dnagerous to put it mildly.

I know, we already discussed that but it's the first time I run into something depicting a situation that could compare to that of T2K.

[Legbreaker]

I tend to agree this would be the case with new mines, however in established mines the conditions may be more like we see in China where they're using equipment which in other countries was outdated 40 years ago and working conditions outlawed around the early 20th Century. The equipment would probably have been brought back into service as the newer high tech gear and machines failed due to lack of parts, or more likely lack of fuel.
Slaves, criminals and POWs would for the most part form the workforce with free men acting as supervisors and guards. In some of the more organised areas we might see the prewar workforce still hard at it, but again mostly in supervisory roles as the experienced workers die off from disease, starvation, accidents, radiation, etc. In these more organised areas the workers might be paid, but conditions are still likely to be atrocious.

[manunancy]

Note : on the plus side, any mining equipment that isn't connected to an outer power line will survive the EMp without any problem. Being down in a mine makes a rather effective EMP shielding.

Things like ventilators and pumps aren't exactly sensitive equipment either - the computerized control will probably go down the drain, but odsd are the heavy-duty parts will survive. Jury-rigg soem controls and you're probably good.

The main risk is in my opinon that if the power can't be brought back soon enough, you'll end up with a flooded mine.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by manunancy

...you'll end up with a flooded mine.

And flooded equipment too in about 99% of cases.
My understanding is that virtually every mine has water issues - some will fill with water in just days without active pumping, others may take much longer. All can be pumped out given enough time and the proper equipment, but the best solution for a flooded mine is simply to not let it fill up in the first place.

[Mohoender]

This is an issue in shaft mines but less in drift mines and slope mines. Do you really think that in Kivu, the miners have any type of pumping material?.

According to what you could see, they used drift mining at first and, then, after going several yards into the mountain, they switched to shaft mining.

No water pumps, no system to bring air, a high level of instability...

The temperature on the exterior is around 40°C and higher within the mine themselves. Miners can't stand up and there is only enough room for a single man. In fact, these mines looked exactly as the escape tunnels depicted in many movies.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

One of the first things I ever saw on The Discovery Channel (gawd, nearly two decades ago) was about diamond mining in South Africa and how those mines operate. It's incredible - they have full trauma wards the size of a walk-in closet down the mineshaft because there's just not enough time to get some dudes out who've been badly injured.

Part of the PT for going in to the mine is spending 20 minutes doing calisthenics in a steam room that's 120F. You fall out, you're not going down the mine. The president/boss/whomever (not a foreman, I mean the mine's CEO or whathaveyou) was no slouch; he was down there every day, moving around among the men, staying out of the way when necessary but absolutely hands on (well, at least so we were shown).