2018-06-18

[public] 1.25M views, 55.6K likes, 267 dislikes audio only

Tom Scott

Giant Mine sits near Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Once it was a productive gold mine, but after the gold ran out, the mining company went bankrupt and left the government to clean up the mess: enough arsenic trioxide dust to kill everyone on Earth. The solution: freezing it, at least for now.

Thanks to all the team at the Giant Mine Remediation Project! More about them: http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100027364/1100100027365

There's an error in this video: I say "200,000 tonnes of gold", but that's actually 200,000kg. The 200,000 tonne figure is for arsenic dust. You can see all corrections for this channel at https://www.tomscott.com/corrections/

The history of Giant Mine and the local First Nation people, a story I'm not qualified to tell: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/canada-150-betsina-family-nwt-1.4180681

Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin)

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