I'm trying to find out ways to sabotage a silver mine. Subtle ways, not something like blowing up the entrance. I've looked and looked but I haven't been able to find anything useful. I did find out that silver a lot of times is found with sulfur and that sulfur powder is very explosive. But other than that I'm coming up empty. Any ideas on things I can look for or books I can read? Thanks!
Nobble the pump in the night–let it flood the mine, err introduce a plausibly natural contaminant to the area like beryllium or cinnabar and let the fact be known to the authorities/workers that the environment's dangerous. Or haunt it Scooby Doo style.
Thanks for the ideas. They help a lot. I actually need things that make it seem like the mine is haunted but that can be explained logically. So these help.
Kind of depends on when this mining is taking place. In the old days, worker safety wasn't exactly top priority, but nowadays, you could easily shut down a shaft for a few hours or days with a bit of malfunctioning safety gear. I worked at a nickle smelter for a summer and one section lost a days worth of work because an air tester wasn't working properly and we couldn't find the spare.
It would definitely be in the old days. No modern technology. In fact, the characters are animals and the mine workers are moles. So no air tester (probably) but maybe gears. We'll have to see.
You just reminded me of Brian Jacques! Literally my favourite book series when I was a kid. I used to actually live in a town that likes to call itself "The Silver Capital of Canada." It's a hole in both the literal and figurative sense, but it does, or at least did, have a really good museum on the whole process of mining at the turn of the century. If I remember correctly, the biggest dangers were equipment failures, like runaway rail cars and things exploding when were still too close to them; then there were collapses, both major (or bumps as they're generally referred to) and minor ( a random rock falling in a shaft or tunnel that hadn't been properly scaled and striking a worker; and suffocation (bad air was and still is a particularly bad problems in underground mines). Before industrialization mines generally stopped when they hit groundwater because it was generally less efficient to remove the water than start another mine nearby. Ventilation was generally achieved by cutting shafts straight up to make a kind of chimney that would draw bad air out and fresh air in through the work tunnels. A commonly over looked problem with silver mines is the ore is frequently found alongside or in both lead and arsenic ores. Mercury was also widely used in extracting the silver from the ore as well. None of these things are terribly healthy and a sickness scare could throw off some workers. Maybe rumours that the illnesses were a result of evil spirits depending on how superstitious your miners are.
Ya, I really like his books. I have almost all of them. I really like the moles with their mole-speak and wish I could steal the idea for my books. Wow! Thanks, that helps alot! I knew about silver commonly being found with other substances like arsenic or lead. But for some reason my brain never made the connection between lead, arsenic and illnesses. That would definitely work.
