michael_nielsen

Interesting/macabre to contemplate industrial accidents during construction. The exact number of fatalities seems to be somewhat difficult to track down, but the record here (broken down quite a bit) suggests the number was about 100 or so: https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/history/essays/fat1935.html …

That's an extraordinary (& incredibly tragic) number - one hundred or so people who died due to falls, machinery accidents, in blasts, heat etc. Heat prostration alone was 13(!) people.

I wonder at how many more were injured, perhaps permanently disabled? Seems likely to have been many hundreds with major injuries.

Would be great to understand the trend over time. Many more than that died building the transcontinental railroad in the US (although that was a bigger project). Thousands died building the Panama Canal (mostly from improperly handled dynamite, as I recall).

In fact, *tens* of thousands died *failing* to build the Canal, in a previous, abandoned effort by a French private company in the late 1800s (before the US Army stepped in to build it in the 20th century). A lot of those were from the tropical diseases of malaria & yellow fever

brings this @cyantist thread to mind re China being willing to accept casualties in exchange for progress and the US not being willing to make the same trade:https://twitter.com/cyantist/status/1184867697051361280?s=20 …

Certain kinds of progress. I went to an event with the same person she quotes. And I asked something like: "Many people believe that the values of openness and decentralized control aren't just good for individuals, but also offer a competitive collective edge....

Isn't this a big disadvantage for China compared to the US, Europe, and other more open societies?" My memory is that he didn't really have a decisive counterargument. Doesn't mean he's wrong, just that there are many different forces at play.