• RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          I know you are joking but I can’t sleep so I will share.

          I have seen two huge gasoline explosions and the aftermath of a gas pump explosion.

          One was from a cigarette. I didn’t actually see that, but I was sitting in social studies class when the shockwave hit us. It felt like the ceiling pressed down on us. It blew out all the pane glass windows in downtown. This was in the early’80s. Someone who was cleaning a gasoline barge lit a cigarette out of habit. It was like a fuel air bomb going off.

          I was a little kid in the early ‘70s when a gasoline truck driver accidentally set his truck on fire by the static from his nylon jacket. It was at night and the explosion woke me up. You could see the fire from everywhere in town.

          In the late ‘70s these three dumbasses were stealing gasoline from the filling station where they worked. They were filling 55 gallon drums in a van. It was dark so one of these genuses lit his lighter.

          The burned out van was still there in the middle town in the morning. Everyone in the small town drove by to look.

          Every annoying safety rule has multiple stories like this behind them.

          • village604@adultswim.fan
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            19 hours ago

            Smoking a cigarette won’t cause a fire at a gas station.

            Lighting a cigarette, on the other hand, can absolutely cause one.

            • BanMe@lemmy.world
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              18 hours ago

              Yep a cigarette cherry is not hot enough to ignite gasoline.

              Which is how the human race survived for a long time, I very much remember smoking at gas pumps being a norm in the 80s.

              • village604@adultswim.fan
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                18 hours ago

                No, it definitely is. It’s just that gasoline is relatively hard to ignite and the right air/fuel mixture won’t reach the hotter part of the ember.

            • marcos@lemmy.world
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              16 hours ago

              It’s hard to cause a large gas explosion by carrying a flame. Gas tends to diffuse, so you get small explosions that dissipate the problem before you reach the large concentrations.

              That said, “hard” does not mean “impossible”. History is full of counterexamples. But it is much easier to make trouble by igniting the flame after you are inside.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        23 hours ago

        I’ve read that the most fires at gas stations (related to refueling) happen when somebody enters the car while fueling. I don’t know if it’s true, but it has a point.

        The potential static electricity from getting into the seat and the dilution of the gas in the air at that position is a more ignitable combination than holding a lit cigarette right at the nozzle. The draft from opening the door will make different dilutions, so it’s pretty sure that it is ignitable at some point around that position.

        The risk of explosion is quite low at the pump. It’s actually worse if they step away to smoke, because depending on wind there will be a position somewhere in the vicinity of the pump where the gas is easier to ignite. Firing up a lighter there could be bad.

        Anyway. There’s plenty of other good reasons not to smoke at a gas station.

      • Destide@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        If you’re pumping diesel unless there’s something to whick it can get that trucker life

  • m4xie@lemmy.ca
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    24 hours ago

    Some people say beating your kids doesn’t work.

    I’m like, “What!? Am I the only one that didn’t get a force field?”.

  • ulterno@programming.dev
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    23 hours ago

    So how do they manage it when I run up the stairs faster than what an elevator could?
    Do they just have waste an expensive stasis charge for every floor and that is why they don’t like me using the stairs?

    • EldenLord@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Staircases are still real of course. So when you take the stairs to the 3rd floor it actually is a different floor than when you take the elevator to the 3rd. These two different floors still appear to be the same because off…quantum entanglement or something idk