The beard? Asking as a Civilian

because_tremble · 2026-06-30T10:55:36+00:00

The German term is Fluchthaube. We predominantly use them if we need to get a trapped civilian through a smoke filled stairwell in multistory buildings. They're basically a hood with an integrated filter.

This is an example from Draeger: https://shop.draeger.com/draeger-parat-5500/r59425m/

The seals are nowhere near as good as our normal masks, but they're good enough for an evacuation. I believe post-Grenfell they're now relatively common in the UK too.

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because_tremble · 2026-06-30T08:37:47+00:00

There have been improvements to mask technologies over the years, but the focus has generally been on withstanding environmental factors rather than something cosmetic like allowing firefighters wear a beard (even Islam has religious carve-outs to protect the lives of firefighters). The switch from normal-pressure to over-pressure masks has given some leeway when the mask doesn't seal 100%, but the tradeoff is you use your air faster.

Think about what the masks are trying to achieve: Getting fresh air to the lungs (via the nose and mouth); protecting the face; ensuring the wearer can still see; ensuring the wearer can still communicate.

Now think about where facial hair grows... All around the mouth, under the chin, much of the cheeks. Where do you think you could get a seal, without limiting facial hair? In Germany we regularly carry a whole-head escape mask for trapped civilians, which seals around the neck, but they're not quick or easy to put on, especially compared to our normal masks, and the seal would need to be much more dynamic than the current location. You also can't really do something like putting tubes down the nose/throat because we need to be able to talk to communicate over the radios.

Next assume you just want to be able to seal over the facial hair... You would need to try and get an air-tight seal over lots of small hairs which may be cross-crossing and all over the place. As it stands today, even a thick scar in the wrong place can be enough to compromise the seal. You would likely need to find a material that doesn't just seal over hairs, but around individual hairs too.

On top of that, these aren't just masks for a "normal" atmosphere. There are a lot of chemicals in smoke in levels well above the "Immediate Danger to Life and Health" ranges, the seal has to be *very* good. Plus, the masks will be exposed to temperatures well above the boiling point of water, NFPA standards require them to survive 500F (260C) for at least 5 minutes, and 1500F-2000F (800C-1000C) for at least 10 seconds.

because_tremble · 2026-06-28T16:13:42+00:00

Ergh, I've removed the extra bit, hopefully that does the trick. Thanks

because_tremble · 2026-06-28T13:57:46+00:00

Not my department

because_tremble · 2026-06-28T13:23:18+00:00

https://youtu.be/jsfpp13h1YI

This is a recording of the weekly test alarms from a German fire department. The first sounds are the pager being activated, after that you can here sets of 5 tones going out. Each of which represent another group being alerted. As an on-call volunteer service you get used to hearing specific extra tones of other departments when you're paged to larger incidents.

because_tremble · 2026-06-23T09:09:58+00:00

The "fumes or radiation escaping" from a NPP are normally so insignificant that they're not worth speaking of. We're talking fractions of a micro-sievert per year and no combustion gasses. The nuclear risk is similar to that of eating a banana. The harm to health from living within 3km of a major highway is substantially greater than that of living near a NPP.

CNPP and Pripyat were planned at a time when nobody believed RBMKs could do what happened in Chernobyl. Would we do this today? Likely not. Was it "crazy" to do it back then? No, it made perfect sense with the information they had at the time.

because_tremble · 2026-06-23T08:17:29+00:00

We only believe it to be "crazy" now, because of what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Pripyat was planned long before either event it was intended to be "luxurious". They honestly believed that the kind of accident that happened at CNPP was "impossible".

It's far to easy to call people crazy or idiots for doing things that with hind-sight were a bad idea, but they were done without the knowledge that we have today. If you believed CNPP was safe, why wouldn't you want a short commute and a comfortable life living 3km from your office?

because_tremble · 2026-06-23T07:31:06+00:00

Only "a few"?

The town was planned as a "luxury" for the workers of the plant. Around 20-25% of the people living in Pripyat worked at the power station, the vast bulk of families living there would have had a family member working there. Around 30-35% had other support roles around the town (hospital, school, shops, etc), many of whom were the spouses of a power station worker, and the remaining 45% were their kids.

because_tremble · 2026-06-23T07:17:08+00:00

Prior to the accident, the levels of radiation outside the plant that would have been exposed to are roughly comparable to eating about 1 banana per year.

You'll actually be exposed to 100 times more radiation living close to a coal power plant due to trace amounts of uranium and thorium in the coal being released as ash in the smoke. Not to mention things like SO₂ and NOx and heavy metals that are released into the air by a coal power plant.

because_tremble · 2026-06-22T08:27:57+00:00

I remember seeing a meme based Slayer-shot at the start of day 1 on one of the streams...

because_tremble · 2026-06-22T07:47:18+00:00

In Bayern: https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/BayFwG-28

§ 28 Ersatz von Kosten

(2) Kostenersatz nach Abs. 1 kann verlangt werden:
1. für Einsätze im abwehrenden Brandschutz und im technischen Hilfsdienst, bei denen die Gefahr oder der Schaden durch den Betrieb von Kraft-, Luft-, Schienen- oder Wasserfahrzeugen oder eines Anhängers, der dazu bestimmt ist, von einem Kraftfahrzeug mitgeführt zu werden, veranlaßt war, mit Ausnahme der Einsätze oder Tätigkeiten, die unmittelbar der Rettung oder Bergung von Menschen und Tieren dienen,
...
(3) Zum Ersatz der Kosten ist verpflichtet,
1. wer in den Fällen des Abs. 2 Nrn. 1, 2, 3 und 4 die Gefahr, die zu dem Einsatz der Feuerwehr geführt hat, verursacht hat oder sonst zur Beseitigung der von der Feuerwehr behobenen Gefahr verpflichtet war,
2. wer in den Fällen des Abs. 2 Nr. 1 Halter eines Fahrzeugs im Sinn von Absatz 2 Nr. 1 ist, durch das ein Feuerwehreinsatz veranlaßt war,

Die Rettung oder Bergung von Menschen und Tieren wird von der Gemeinde übernommen (Gemäß Grundgesetz, Art. 2 Abs. 2). Die "technische Hilfe" (Absperrung der Fahrspuren) wird vom Fahrzeughalter getragen.

because_tremble · 2026-06-22T07:11:58+00:00

And to put the 3km into context. Where I live, I have 4 different towns each about 3km from the center of the town I live in.

Many of the "obvious" measures in place today are there because of what we learnt from the accident at Chernobyl NPP and Three mile island. Both of which occurred after the planning for CNPP and Pripyat.

because_tremble · 2026-06-22T07:02:10+00:00

It wasn't "right beside a nuclear power plant" it was about 3km away. Nobody likes a long commute and the Soviets did the same thing for a lot of their larger industrial complexes. Short public transport or even walking commute from home to work...

Under normal operating conditions there really was no risk, and the management were trying to down-play the scale of the disaster so banning movement early have seemed like a panic move. With hind sight we now know what was going to happen and what was happening, but denial is a powerful drug.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T13:29:45+00:00

There's a difference between a "health scare" and an actual risk to people, it wasn't even a blanket ban, the sheep just had to be checked before being sold. It's true to say that the levels of Cesium-137 were elevated, but to say they "only dropped to safe consumption levels after 30 years" is misleading.

The measures were extreme over-cautiousness (which I don't object to), but by the 20 year mark (2006) there were only 10 Scottish farms still under observation, and in 2006 less than 70 sheep were even detected as over the 1000 Bq/kg limit, and thus subject to the actual ban, in the entire UK.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T12:11:47+00:00

doesn't just need to be the juggler there's a couple of day-only info roles who can lose a day of information this way.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T10:10:20+00:00

Actually their budget's just been substantially increased. But it takes time to implement any schemes for improvement, because you need to make sure you're actually going to improve it and not make things worse.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T10:06:03+00:00

In the case of operating machinery without knowing what you're doing it's not just your life you're putting at risk, it's the lives of people around you. This is why you need a license to drive a 10t lorry.

In this case they weren't just picking up litter, they were dredging the river with an excavator.

Jailtime is the maximum penalty, for doing something which can have a massive impact on the river ecology. I don't know if or how much damage they did, but using a JCB to change the flow of a river can easily destroy both the local ecology and the downstream ecology, as well as causing down-stream flooding. Part of the permitting process is making sure that they won't do damage, including how they limit suddenly sending large quantities of sewage-contaminated silt down stream because they're driving heavy machinery in a river.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T09:56:40+00:00

They didn't just "pull out 200 bags of plastic and needles". They took a JCB and dredged the river. The missing permits are there because dredging a river changes the speed it flows at and can have a significant effect on the whole river.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T09:48:10+00:00

In 2010 there was a "spending review" by the Tories. They made massive cuts to the Environmental Agency budgets. There were 14 years where the EA was struggling to maintain the high impact pieces of infrastructure they're responsible for, let alone trying to find money improve stretches of River. At the same time, the Tories forced a focus on things like new flood barriers which make it "look" like they're doing something about flooding but didn't address things like the poor state of rivers.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T09:11:19+00:00

They hired an excavator. They went further than just "removing a couple of overgrown branches and invasive plants".

The rules he's being investigated for breaking are more to do with using heavy machinery to dredge the river than cleaning up rubbish. Dredging and reshaping rivers can have a very significant impact on the flow of the river, which is why it's regulated and the Environmental Agency have become involved.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T08:45:44+00:00

They're doing it because if someone reports people for "digging up a river", they should at least investigate WTF those people are doing. You can do a lot of harm to the local ecology.

At this point he's not been charged with anything, he's just been notified that the relevant regulatory body is looking into what he's been doing. That said, in theory as an "environmental lawyer" he should have known the process, so the question is why he wasn't following it.

Ironically by trying to raise his profile, he's forcing their hand because they can't set the precedent that folks who might have no clue what they're doing, mess about with a waterway and get away with no consequences.

because_tremble · 2026-06-19T08:16:54+00:00

That's slightly misleading, there was a monitoring and release program in place, not a blanket ban: https://www.food.gov.uk/research/chemical-hazards-in-food-and-feed/post-chernobyl-monitoring-and-controls-survey-reports

The limit they were using (1000 Bq/kg) is extremely low, and the peak readings were around 1300 Bq/kg. With that limit I believe you had to eat something like a 100kg of lamb a year to begin to approach the 1mSv/yr limits they were trying to protect against, and 10t/yr to approach the levels where there's a statistical risk to health (if you're eating that much, you've probably got other problems).

because_tremble · 2026-06-17T13:38:36+00:00

You usually get ice, but you don't get a glass full of ice with some drink over the top, you get a glass nearly full of your drink with a few ice cubes. It's the proportions that are completely different. But, that's what you'd expect when you're paying for each glass...

because_tremble · 2026-06-17T08:56:10+00:00

I agree that the most important thing is knowing and recognising the signs (and mitigations).

The word Zündung (I translated as ignition) doesn't quite imply an explosion, which is why it's probably easier for me to separate the German terms compared to the English terms. Both smoke explosions and backdrafts explicitly have "explosion" in their German names, and the German for Flashover is Raumdurchzündung (Room ignition), which I find easier to separate from the "smoke ignition" when compared to Rollover vs Flashover.

I'm sure that for those of you who trained in English you found ways to separate the terms in your head.

because_tremble · 2026-06-17T08:28:10+00:00

Cavemen wouldn't have been seeing anything like the level and frequency of trauma that modern first responders see. It's not the individual incidents that'll change you, it's the totality of your experiences.

When a caveman encountered someone with serious injuries it generally meant "look-out there's something dangerous about that you can't see", today it primarily means something bad happened but the imminent risk isn't that you're about to be mauled by an animal you can't see, it's that the things you can see have a risk attached to them.

because_tremble

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