SCP-3352 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-3352.

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<insert tasteless 'jet fuel can't melt steel beams' joke here>

The Great Hippo 20 Oct 2020 03:48

PUSH: To keep the dark from coming.
FEEL: The weight of what we owe.
THIS: The song of sons and daughters.
HIDE: The heart of who we are.

Making peace to build a future,
Strong united, working till we fall.

And we all lift...

—We All Lift Together (Keith Power)

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A story about everything that could go wrong, going wrong — except the one thing that refused.

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SOURCES:

• Link here. All other images are mine; I release them under CC 3.0.
• Inspired by real events surrounding a real steel I-beam.

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I don't expect this to be a popular one. It's one of those things I just had to write out for myself, to get it out of my head — me posting it is more a formality than anything else.

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Like the article? Click here for more of The Great Hippo's Skippos!

Last edited on 14 Sep 2021 01:16 by The Great Hippo Show more

50+!

The Great Hippo 21 Oct 2020 14:55

This already did way better than I expected it to, so I figured I'd explain a couple of things for anyone curious:

AUTHOR'S NOTES

• The story is semi-real (based off an actual I-beam that held up a line when it had every reason to fail). The only real difference are the stakes — if the I-beam had fallen, it would have killed everyone on the unit (not everyone in the city).
• Hydrofluoric alkylation units are very real, and they are very terrifying.
• The only reason Jefferson Reeds says hydrofluoric acid wouldn't make number 1 in 'Worst Chemicals to Work With' is because things like dimethylmercury exist. If you're curious to read more about horrifying chemistry, here's a great blog on that very subject (thanks to Jekeled for reminding me that it exists).
• This is also based off the explosion in the Philadelphia Refinery in 2019 — which, yes, happened in an HF unit — and yes, they had an emergency shutdown system (which, thank God, worked precisely as intended).
• In the story, Daniel Ruhl refuses to open the hydrant-line because ice on a hydrant in July means something is very wrong. He just hadn't figured out what, yet.
• As for backing liquid propane into your fire-suppression system… yes, it can happen (and yes, it has happened). Ice on your hydrants is one of the big warning signs.
• It's cheesy as fuck, but I wrote this story in a fugue state after hearing We All Lift Together — specifically, the line: Feel the weight of what we owe. When you build a refinery in the heart of a city, you're putting the people of that city directly in the line of fire. Something is owed. The stakeholders, owners, and supervisors might not feel the weight of that debt — but someone has to.
• When Tanya Sullivan says 'we'd be damned if we let this place take anyone else with it', she's thinking literally: the steel beam didn't just save the city; it spared the workers the guilt of having killed an entire city's worth of people. In her mind, and in the mind of Matthew Watkins, that beam saved their souls.
• Ultimately, the only real anomaly here… is that this refinery did not kill the city.

Last edited on 21 Oct 2020 15:11 by The Great Hippo Show more

weizhong 20 Oct 2020 04:05

The writing plays out like a well-crafted documentary, making a seemingly impenetrable subject come across clearly. Combined with the tight mystery and just the right amount of spookiness makes it a great read.

Cerastes 20 Oct 2020 04:10

Unfortunately, I didn't find this one appealing. The vast majority of the article is taken up by the description of a meltdown at the refinery, which while I suppose would be horrific, keeps you wondering through the article how this is supposed to be anomalous or linked to the Foundation. We finally learn about it at the end, but it doesn't really come soon enough for the article, at least for me.

notgull 20 Oct 2020 04:14

Despite this incident, no anomalous properties have been observed.

In my opinion, this is a bad stinger. The "no structural damage" line ends the SCP much better. That being said, this is a great exercise in prose that I enjoyed.

+1

The Great Hippo 20 Oct 2020 04:16

I'd been going back and forth on this for a while, but you've tipped me over to thinking that yeah, just letting it end on 'no structural damage' is the best choice (it's already stated that there's nothing remarkable about the I-beam).

Captain Kirby 20 Oct 2020 04:18

This very much feels like the kind of incident that turns a man religious. Just the image of someone standing there, betting their life on a steel beam, and then being rewarded for it is very visceral. A+ work.

Ellie3 20 Oct 2020 05:29

This is so great, I love how the entire story doesn't really feel anomalous, its just a dreadful story of how everything goes wrong. But then the end hit me. Really interesting overall, especially loved the "outta nowhere, its day again." Practically knew i was gonna be upvoting when i read that line. +1

ValidClay 20 Oct 2020 05:37

I can just see the sweeping, panning zooms, smooth rendered environments, little hard-hatted blank figures and cross-section cutaways in my head when I read. And you got me empathizing with a steel beam. If I hadn't watched tons of USCSB videos I guess I wouldn't appreciate it as much, but combined with the visual evocativitiy, the fact that it almost feels like a story I'd read on an ill-reputed strange phenomena youtube channel and still find myself believing is.

Impressive.

easy +1 ofc

Taffeta 20 Oct 2020 05:49

Echoing the sentiment re: this reading like an extended USCSB video. Hell, I'm pretty sure I remember bits of this from various videos: propane in place of water, ice on the hydrants…

A Random Day 20 Oct 2020 16:03

The action becomes difficult to follow and visualize around the midway point of the article, but the frisson of the climax still hits like a truck.

Last edited on 20 Oct 2020 16:04 by A Random Day Show more

The Great Hippo 20 Oct 2020 20:09

I made a few changes to address this (and also hammer home one of the central themes of the piece I was aiming for). Hopefully, the changes help.

Cloud 13 20 Oct 2020 20:44

I love the way you set this up. I’m reading about an industrial disaster, carnage, and human error, wondering, what’s the catch? What’s weird? And at the very end you nail it down! Or I beam it I suppose. So simple, but great story surrounding a rather unremarkable anomaly in and of itself and made it a center of importance to the piece!

+1

The Great Hippo 20 Oct 2020 20:50

Thank you! Also, something to consider (and part of what I was aiming to achieve):

Ultimately, the real anomaly is that this horrible industrial disaster did NOT kill ten thousand people.

Jekeled 20 Oct 2020 21:34

This is a wonderful piece of storytelling. There is enough exposition to make the mechanics and stakes clear to a layman reader without getting tripped up in pedantry. I wasn't sure about the decision to not start with a description of the anomaly, but it was the right one: the ending doesn't just show what the anomaly is, it shows what it means. +1.

Last edited on 16 Jan 2021 07:27 by Jekeled Show more

The Great Hippo 20 Oct 2020 22:07

Thank you! The decision to not explain what the anomaly was until the very end was probably the riskiest part of this — but also the first thing I recognized the article needed to do.

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