A quick tour of the 'worst place on earth' aka, BaoGang Steel Mill 

Well, hearing "It's a Small World" playing in a steel mill is the most nightmarishly dystopian thing I've experienced in a while.

The only place where cigarete smoke might be actually healthier than the air

”Why do These damn aliens hate my factory so much?” My factorio base:

I used to make deliveries to steel mills in Detroit in the '70s, they pretty much looked the same as the one in this video only darker inside You can't imagine how hot those crucibles are even from a distance. They melt the steel with electricity and to check the molten steel a guy dressed in an fire retardant suit would open a small door on the gigantic furnace and take out a ladle full of the steel. There would be steel particles floating all over the outside, at times it looked like snow. The cars were covered with it and it would rust from the humidity in the air from the Detroit river leaving the cars looking like trash in just a few years. That place scared the hell out of me.

POV: your industrial district in Cities Skylines

Clear shots of their faces might not have been the best way to thank them for sneaking you in.

I visited the old Carrie blast furnaces in Pittsburgh, and the tour guide was someone who used to work at the plant. He told us about all sorts of terrible conditions the workers had to endure in the early days; constant ashfall, dark environments, lack of decent insulation, reckless dumping of slag, all sorts of things like that. People were dying there every week. Then he explained how, through regulation, technological advances, and the work of unions and smart management, the plant became significantly safer and a better place to work. This steel plant, in contrast, is frozen in the 1890’s.

Fun assumed factoid: it's a small world playing as the "shift bell/warning tone" not only gives a pseudo happy feel to an otherwise hellish environment, but is likely used to cover a wide range of audible frequencies to help assure it is noticed as many of the workers are likely deaf to many different frequencies .

After a day or two of listening to "it's a small world" jumping into a vat of molten steel would seem like a viable option.

Just clocking in to work the live leak logo flashes above your head constantly

I've delivered tools to places like this and the first time you go it is pretty mindboggling. Amazing in their sheer scale, honesty would be cool to do tours of. It's always an interesting feeling when you see miles of shipping containers or mountains of material. Like a monument that would take forever to build, but you realize there are thousands of them all over the world.

We are entitled to think this is hell. This is life for a lot of people

This really just the geonosian droid factory

I worked at a nickel and stainless steel foundry that was just as bad. They gave us protection to wear but it could only protect us from the little splashes or sparks. The alloys we made required two times the amount of heat compared to carbon steel (around 3200°f) for a good melt in and enough heat to transfer to molds(ingots and slugs). We had 30 to 40k pounds of it floating over head on outdated cranes that'd get stuck while we walked through ankle deep ash, and slag as sharp as glass. Our face shields warped and started melting while we used oxygen lances to stir the bottoms of the furnace or poured the metal. In the morning we took turns in the furnace to clean them because we could only stay in for a couple minutes before the heat came up through the souls of our boots and forced us to get out. We ran huge fans all night to cool them down but by 3am when we got back in while they would be easily over 200°f standing on bits of cooled slag. You could smell the rubber melting from our boots constantly. In less than a minute we would be drenched in sweat and it soaked through the layers of our "protective" suits. We dealt with lots of toxic carcinogens and after 4yrs I had to move on because I kept developing respiratory infections and a cough that only recently has subsided 5 yrs later. I now work in an air conditioned building doing half the work and get paid 3 times as much. I realize me and all my friends/coworkers from that place were treated poorly and paid just a few bucks over minimum wage to suffer and now we all will probably develop some type of cancer later down the road. But I feel blessed not to be one of the guys who got seriously burned. In my 4 yrs there 3 guys were burned reallybad and one guy pretty much lost his face. There were other pretty serious injuries that occurred there but the burns were the worst. The worst injury I had was being knocked out by a giant chain with links the size of my leg. I got hit in the temple and the lights went out for a sec. Anyway just thought I'd share. Remember kids don't work in foundries it's not worth it.

Honestly, that was an insanely dangerous place to be. I’ve never worked around steel, but I did work in an aluminium reduction plant, so I have more than a passing familiarity with hot metal. The safety in this plant is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

I worked at a steel mill like this in Canada as a cleaner while paying for University. Probably the filthiest job you could imagine, especially in the rain. The soot gets disgusting when rained on. Would blow my nose and black soot would come out. But as a kid it was good money. Ended up getting let go when I was injured on the job.

For all those talking about the health of the workers, don't worry, they'll probably all die of an accident before they get cancer...

the small world ride at disneyland has really turned dark since the last remodel.

This is every mill around the world. Watching this gave me flashbacks of working at Glenbrook sm in new zealand. I’d contract to run aircon units for when the teams would have to clean the slag out of the furnaces. And while we were waiting on other operations to stop we’d go wandering and just be in awe of the magnitude of it all. We’d watch from four stories up as the slag buckets would go off to be dumped, the heat from them as they traveled by was intense. Hard place for sure.

I worked in a steel mill, you never ever ever hang around anywhere near an elevated ladle. If it spills, the ground is suddenly covered in a racing flood of liquid fire. Everybody in the vicinity dies horribly. It’s the most rudimentary form of safety: before something insanely dangerous happens, do you mind evacuating the area first, please?

WoW. This color or air probably a hint at what England looked like as the industrial revolution was up and going. That air is so dirty I’ll bet one can crunch grit between ones teeth.

Can you imagine this steelworker going on holiday in Disney land USA. and then hear this tune. Physical flinch.

What blows my mind more is how the human body can breath in all that pollution and steel and keep on going for many years it’s all really horrifically beautiful

Once worked in the heat treatment part of Caterpillar in the US. The smell of ash, carcinogenic fumes, and heat so hot that you couldn't ever imagine it is brought right back to memory. While most of the heat was contained within fiberglass insulated blast furnaces for carburization of transmission parts; the parts still had to reach upwards of 2000F to be glowing hot, then, pulled out by operators running hydraulic assist lifts to immediately quench them in oil or water once the process was complete. The smell of immediate release of sulfur and other off gases will be imprisoned in the mind forever. The invention of man is a hunger that reaches into the depths of Hell to obtain. Imagine how many honest, hardworking folk venture into these types of operations and risk their lives daily in order to produce the structural steel that nearly every building you see relies on. If you're reading this just remember we are all ONE and that being close to real danger likely united mankind far better than any politician or government handout ever could.

I like how the siren sounded after it already started to pour... Also, I’m convinced there are 5 employees running the whole operation.

"I'ma go get some fresh air" *Stands in closet and smokes cuban cigar*

I worked 5 days at the US Fairless Steel plant. By the third day I handed in my notice. It took two days to exit interview out of that hell hole. I had a high tech job in the electronics group. The tools they handed me a plumber might use. It took me two years and some inside pull to get the job. One hour on site and I knew it wasn’t for me. Yeah the money was tops but your life meant nothing to the company. Three years after that experience the company folded up and left town. Id say I made a very bright decision after making my stupidest mistake.

man those exterior shots where the smog makes the factory seem as if it goes on forever are magnificent (in a dystopian kind of way)

The people here chain smoke when they need some fresh air

Imagine the amount of Live Leak logos these people see.

I currently work at an integrated steel mill in the US (~15 years) and worked at an EAF mill for a few years. At an integrated mill, first a 'blast furnace' converts primarily iron ore and coke into liquid "iron" -- in quotes because the iron at this stage is very impure with 4-5% carbon and roughly 0.5% silicon. This is then transported by torpedo / submarine shaped containers (composed of steel shells lined by brick) onto the actual "steelmaking" process. The 'steelmaking' processes at an an integrated plant is basically either the very old "open hearth" process (low capital but labor intensive and poor quality) or the more modern basic-oxygen-furnace (BOF) process (basic referring to the basic vs acidic nature of the brick chemistry i.e. MgO), both of which simply rely on exothermic chemical reactions. The oxidation reactions are done using high-speed oxygen gas (just like a big Bunsen burner), to generate heat and remove most the non-iron elements via oxidation. My guess from the video is that we are seeing liquid iron, seen being poured into vats / channels that are feeding into an open hearth process -- since it appears to be poured into open 'ground' as far as I can tell rather than a BOF vessel, which would be instead be appear as a large pear-shaped container that swivels 360 deg in a vertical plane. For those who've witnessed electricity to melt, that would be an 'electric arc furnace' (EAF) process, which is melting scrap steel via a large "lightning bolt" created using very high energy carbon electrodes. The input to this process is basically just already-produced steel or iron, and is therefore dependent on the supply of steel scrap. One reason steel can't yet really go completely "green" is because there's not enough steel scrap already produced in the world to meet that supply requirement -- last I checked the estimated time frame of having roughly enough steel scrap and have greener (higher tech) alternatives is roughly 50 years, way too late of course since we're already beyond the point of no return (not just steel-caused obviously). A good time to mention that steel (Fe / iron) is the most recyclable material on earth, being advantageously right in the middle of the periodic table ( i.e. easily reduced into a metallic form compared to other metals, and is also extremely alloy-able and is therefore generally the best material option for most use cases). The air-quality impact (to separate from greenhouse gas) has greatly improved in recent decades (e.g. the US 70s) -- at least in countries that have adopted the now-obvious environmental safeguards (as we have in the US). This is due to the use of baghouses that basically convert air pollution into calcium/lime-absorbent solid waste. This waste is still very dangerous, containing cadmium and such, so it still needs to be disposed of in a way it doesn't eventually leach into water sources. Separately, many mills also produce their own burnt lime, and this can fall over cars and basically form hard scale (just like a coffee maker does due to the hard / "basic" minerals in water). This can be removed via a weak acid such as vinegar.

This video has fascinated me over the years, I keep coming back to it. The entire aesthetic of the place is something so distinct, and I wish I could find more content like this. The filming style and lack of added music are a big piece of the appeal.

As soon as i heard the small world music it felt like a scene from Silent Hill. Creepy as fuck

This looked like a living hell hole, amazing this footage was ever shot and made it out

The fact you're allowed to walk under the bucket of molten metal is crazy

Legend has it that every OSHA inspector who watches this video dies in mysterious circumstances precisely one week later.

I actually lived in this area for 4 years, whilst working as an English teacher. The steel work alone employs over 20 thousand people. Rare earth and coal is mined near here. The city is called Baotou. It is situated in Inner Mongolia - China. The 2015 movie 'BEHEMOTH' gives a vivid insight into the full scale of the industry and the side effects of the waste produced by it. The scale of the ground pollution is vast, making the area one of the most polluted places on the planet.

If you want to understand what makes this 'the worst place on earth,' I urge you to read the article linked in the description. It isn't just the steel mill, it's Bao Tou in general. The scale of pollution is, in a word, horrifying.

I find the scale terrifying. Just the sheer weight of those buckets, it's hard to imagine how much force they would exert on you if they fell.

I feel bad because he seemed excited to show you how it worked and then you did him dirty on the title

Glad my energy saving lightbulbs and bag for life are making a difference

I’ve worked on various bits of hydraulic equipment in steel mills, paper mills and power stations. They (especially the steel mills) are so huge that I always thought if I died here I probably wouldn’t be found for weeks. Amazing places but they make you feel incredibly small!

I currently am interning at a steel mill and ours looks amazingly clean bc it’s new and it’s incredibly safe now. Depends on the company but safety and environmental sustainability r now put 1st before production sadly not every company is like that and many have died due to horrid conditions.

They would save a lot more money if they hired children. That's just poor management.

My Great Great grandfather fell into a vat of molten steel in Pittsburgh during its 'prime,' when it was a steel production powerhouse. He died instantly. All the plant could offer his family was a job for my Great grandfather when he turned 16. Spooky stuff. Makes me wonder how many people might have the misfortune of passing stories like this down, stemming from places like this.

Reminds me of the Ruhr valley in the 80s. the smell of sulfur was everywhere and all the smog made the cities look like Midgar from Final Fantasy. Now most of the steel mills are closed and shipped to China or became tourist attractions reclaimed by nature.

Has anyone ever thought what it actually takes to build a steel company like this? The size and amount of steel it takes to accomplish this is mind boggling.

*A study about the cancer rates among workers after 5 years working there.* "Results: Yes"

That song will now haunt me , like seeing that tune played with this has totally changed my way of hearing that song , I’ll never be able to get over it lol wow , so creepy and odd feeling

Things werent really all that much better back here in the states back in the day. My grandfather worked for Allegheny steel up in new york from the 1960s to the early 1980s. He was a crane operator and his job was to X-ray the steel for imperfections. Day in day out for 20 or so years with no shielding. I dont remember what exactly he died of (some lung infection) but the doctors suspected it was a complication due to all the radiation exposure and loose metal in the air. He looked 80 by the time he was 50. Before he died the mill was taken over by AlTech (i belive was the company's name) and they almost immediately laid off all the workers and cut all their pensions which had been agreed upon for a quarter century at that point. Really screwed over everyone who worked there. Screw altech and their shitty practices. Just goes to show that things are better in developed countries because we can afford to shove them all in places like this. I really wish the best for everyone who works here.

The guys who led you in there and put their jobs at risk were extremely friendly and they put a lot on the line for you.

The funny part is, for all that, their steel quality still fucking sucks.

Being born and raised near Pittsburgh, PA USA, this was a common sight and where most people worked. The mills are almost all gone now but just think of where we would all be without the steel they produced.

In the opening you see footage of the coke batteries (basically just ovens used to bake coal dust) and I am truly shocked how clean those batteries look. I worked at one in pa owned by USS and there was always piled coal dust bloody everywhere. The pusher cars would have just piles of it underneath them. If it rained, it would be a slush pit.

This music actually plays at most factories where something like a train / other large vehicle may not be heard when it’s moving. This includes the US. The song is public domain and the melody is not exclusive to “it’s a small world”. However, I’ve met many a machinist and production line worker who cannot remove the tune from their head after only a short while on a production floor. Ps- while there seems to be a distinct lack of ISO safety protocol, this mill is extremely similar to any you would find in the USA. There are only so many ways to perform this process while meeting the “demand” that a 1st world country draws.

Don’t know about you, but I would NOT want to be standing near giant crucibles full of molten steel...

Something incredibly eerie about this video, so many reasons why.

That place is huge, the machines as well. Very impressive.

I worked in a steel mill for 20 years. This is what they are all like! So appreciate anything you use made from steel!!

Worked in the mills all my life. There's a certain horror and beauty to them. You're around materials that can burn you, give you all sorts of medical issues, steep falls, immense electrical hazards, and machines that can maim you in an instant. But you appreciate all these dangers and work as efficiently as safety allows, all while looking out for your fellow workers. There are some fine people in the industry working in hellish conditions for a fair wage. Steelworkers have a short shelf life. Remember that if you ever see them fighting for something in your local news.

It's oddly beautiful. I'd love to photograph the imposing architecture.

That looks incredibly cool and beautiful

I’ve worked as a commissioning engineer for steam turbines in countless power plants around the world, nuclear, coal fired and combined cycle with natural gas turbines. Something about large industrial plants with very few people around gives me such a pleasant, yet haunting feeling. Especially at night, these places have a certain beauty to them. And that tune just tickles my sweet spot. Thanks for sharing.

My father worked in a steel mill, and his father before him. They were closing them all by the time I graduated or I prolly would have as well. But we all visited the steel plants as youngsters. Watching that pour, I could feel the air pulsating and smell the odors burning my nostrils again. As kids, we could see the blast furnaces light up the night sky over the entire valley before the air filled with smoke and sulpher fumes, like the gates of hell had been opened. But that is where the Middle Class was born, and where it died, right there on that dirt floor. That's where the majority of the infrastructure we depend on was built including the Golden Gate bridge and the skyscrapers that made the US famous. Now it's China's turn. All you have to do is give up your life to cancer, LOLZ. All my relatives died from it in one form or another. Everything comes with a cost.

Remember that most of our grandparents grew up, worked, and died for and in places like this.

God, my throat closed up just watching this video... The sheer scale doesn't hit you until the train ride at the end of the video... That place looks like hell, a corpse of a landscape and a lifeless sky.

It's the smelters yard from Thomas and Friends.

I know it’s probably different than here in America but I’ve worked in many industrial settings and the people you work with are always the biggest factor for your enjoyment. If it’s hot and loud but you have good buddies with you, you suffer together and it forms a bond. Even if you have even a nicer environment and coworkers you hate, your job becomes your personal hell.

"The old world will burn in the fires of industry..." -Saruman

🎶 Come with me....and you’ll see........in a world of OSHA violations 🎶 😆

My great uncle worked at the gm steel foundry in Detroit and would talk for hours about how awful that place was i cant even imagine this

It reminds me very much of the photography scenery Peter Lindbergh. He was growing up next to such industrial areas in Germany.

My grandfather was a farm boy who moved to the city to work in a foundry. He was severely injured in his late 40s when a massive steel chain fell on him. He ended up in a circumferential cast. A few years later he passed away from clots which were a result of his previous injuries. My father told me that when he visited his dad at work it was like stepping through the gates of hell. The heat and the flames were unbearable. Men who worked at foundries were exempted from the draft during WW2, which was the case with my grandfather. They needed them here to work those jobs, for obvious reasons. Either way, both came with their own risks.

I used to work in a steel mill. It makes me so nervous how close they’re standing to all of this. I’ve seen too many accidents

I don't know why but I find massive industrialized factories like these to be fascinating, almost in a dystopian way

Reminds me of Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City. Giant, terrifying, dangerous and pitiful to look at. But once you realise the human capabilities required to create it, you can't help but brcome fascinated. The Kowloon Walled City has a Good Article status in Wikipedia, and there's even a song about it. Labyrinth in Kowloon Walled World -Camellia.

Bro that music and the fog ..... like something out of a horror movie.

There’s a spot underneath a massive, concrete-and-lead shed in Ukraine that I’m pretty sure could easily give this place a run for its money.

The award for most understated in a documentary goes to: "Let's go, we should go back to the train." (Left unsaid was: "..because this area will soon be showered with flying molten steel...")

I haul a lot of steel out various mills across America. And happy to say things have improved vastly here. They are still dirty, but much cleaner than this , and much safer.

That song. Had it stuck in my head for months when I was addicted to heroin and out on the streets.

For God’s sake, just throw in the ring and get out of there!

Its fitting that "The worst place on earth" has the 'it's a small world after all' tune play there.

This is probably the Place where most of Live Leak‘s content comes from

The fact that Britain can no longer produce steel from scratch is the scariest dystopian thing.

Got rid of comment because apparently it’s too much for people today

8:42 the trees aren't looking too healthy

With the exception of ‘Its a small World’, that place was awesome…to look at and admire the design and function. To work at, probably not so much. Fascinating all the same Odd seeing a steering wheel in a train. (Never been in the engineer’s cab)

Looks like a run-down but still active steel mill. Nothing more, nothing less. The BBC report refers to how the area its built on has been reformed.

This made me scream internally. Walking around between the train cars and underneath the ladles of molten steel is so risky. At the steel mill I work at, one of the cranes malfunctioned and ended up pouring something like 20 tonnes of molten steel onto the ground. Anyone standing where these guys were would have been incinerated in seconds. And that kind of accident wasn't considered out of the ordinary. I hope safety in China has come a long way since this was filmed in 2011.

I worked with a guy who worked in an American steel mill and he said it was like being in hell, this video helps me visualize what it is like in a steel mill.

And I thought the air in American mills was bad. I'll remember this next time I get sent to one and count my blessings...

Not a single female worker in sight. This must be the patriarchy that people say men are so privileged under.

I've never seen such high quality footage of an adeptus mechanicus forge world before.

It must be because I’m an engineer but that place looks pretty badass.

The music, is '' Its a small world '' ; at the beginning of video. Good Choice, Mr. McThirsties !!

“Yeah we’re going undercover;” “Where ?” “Mordor”

I've worked in this mill before in 2003 and again in 2007, as well as a half dozen others across China. The worst by far was in AnShan where steel flakes were snowing down on the city 24/7. I wouldn't stand so close to the trains being loaded with molten steel... A story I heard in AnShan was one of those reservoirs tipped over emptying its load across the tracks. The flood continued through a wall where it fried a meeting full of middle management. Dangerous place to be. Steel mills in the United States and Easter Europe are much cleaner and safer. In India however, its slighly worse than in China.. especially the bathrooms. Avoid those and visit the administrative offices instead. The more interesting parts of the mill to watch are the straightners used to make H-beams and rails. Hot iron taking shape is something to see. Despite it being much cooler than the molten state, it still radiates heat like crazy.

My mom talks a lot about going to visit her grandparents in Pittsburgh in the 60’s-70’s, her grandma used to have to regularly go and scrub soot off the walls in her house And even though my mom and her mom didn’t live in Pittsburgh anymore her mom would still have her and her siblings scrub the walls

I work in flood control, and one of the box culverts of an estuary I was working on was situated within the lot of a steel mill. It was nowhere this bad. Sure, everything was an OSHA violation, with scrap rebars being brought around in forklifts with all the sharp ends sticking out, and other OSHA horros that would make an auditor pass out, but it was never this polluted. I could actually see the sky, as I was piloting a drone to track down the inlet of the estuary from a different river. The city officials lost track of the estuary after decades of squatter settlement blocked visual access and water flow. It was still very hot inside the mill. I finished two bottles of Pocari Sweat and my piss was still orange after that. Steel mills are intense.