What happens when they run out of salt? All the salt they put on the roads must end up back in the lakes but not in a way that is as easy to extract, right?
When that one mine runs out of salt? It will be closed. We as a humanity will not run out of salt, some places have the opposite problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Kali
"According to the Werra Potash Mining Museum in Heringen, Monte Kali has been in operation since 1976; as of August 2016, it covered 98 hectares (240 acres) and contained approximately 201 million tonnes of salt, with another 900 tonnes being added every hour and 7.2 million tonnes a year."
Out of many worries about this world and its future, running out of salt is really at the bottom of the list.
You can always extract it form the sea by mere evaporation like our ancestors did. Plus salt deposits in the ground all over the world are massive, we had salty seas for billions of years.
Salt mines in particular are of the safest kind in the whole world, they are super stable. It's a self supporting rock with enough plasticity that the whole thing doesn't crumble down.
If you ever have privileged info of a huge earthquake happening, going into a salt mine is probably not the worst idea.
Plus it rehabilitates your lungs to be in a salt mine for a long time.
The only earthquake that happened in the region I am living during my lifetime was caused by a collapsing salt mine, though. (Small magnitude. I only heard about it because I was working at a particle accelerator lab at the time and the machine crew observed some beam instability caused by the ground vibrations, so they talked about it.)
Reminds me of the Lake Peigneur disaster in 1980 in Louisiana when an oil drilling rig entered a salt mine located under the lake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcWRO2pyLA8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmHpNTYYWcM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_iZr2-Coqc
The largest salt mine in the world is under Lake Huron: https://www.compassminerals.com/who-we-are/locations/goderic...
What happens when they run out of salt? All the salt they put on the roads must end up back in the lakes but not in a way that is as easy to extract, right?
When that one mine runs out of salt? It will be closed. We as a humanity will not run out of salt, some places have the opposite problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Kali
"According to the Werra Potash Mining Museum in Heringen, Monte Kali has been in operation since 1976; as of August 2016, it covered 98 hectares (240 acres) and contained approximately 201 million tonnes of salt, with another 900 tonnes being added every hour and 7.2 million tonnes a year."
Evaporative ponds account for millions of tonnes per annum ... and that's just from two sites:
* https://www.riotinto.com/en/operations/anz/western-australia...
* https://australianminingreview.com.au/features/dampier-salt-...
Out of many worries about this world and its future, running out of salt is really at the bottom of the list.
You can always extract it form the sea by mere evaporation like our ancestors did. Plus salt deposits in the ground all over the world are massive, we had salty seas for billions of years.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. People shouldn't get punished for asking questions.
My initial reaction was fear.
But then I wondered if modern mining engineering is a solved problem? In that they mostly know how to make safe tunnels?
Then I looked up how deep Erie is and it’s pretty shallow, with an average depth of 62 ft!
Salt mines in particular are of the safest kind in the whole world, they are super stable. It's a self supporting rock with enough plasticity that the whole thing doesn't crumble down.
If you ever have privileged info of a huge earthquake happening, going into a salt mine is probably not the worst idea.
Plus it rehabilitates your lungs to be in a salt mine for a long time.
The only earthquake that happened in the region I am living during my lifetime was caused by a collapsing salt mine, though. (Small magnitude. I only heard about it because I was working at a particle accelerator lab at the time and the machine crew observed some beam instability caused by the ground vibrations, so they talked about it.)
> Plus it rehabilitates your lungs to be in a salt mine for a long time.
It what?
Halotherapy / speleotherapy, pseudo science. Not harmful but probably just placebo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halotherapy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speleotherapy
Like victorian doctors prescribed sea air for healing. When it didn't work they prescribed country air.
Would highly recommend the book "Salt" by Mark Kurlansky. I never realized how influential salt was to the course of human history.