Quote: "Supposedly you have to plan your route through a room to make sure you dont attract objects and make them fly across the room at you "
Heh, I did work experience at an Aluminium factory when at college (was the same time as the 1st Iraq "war"). They used absolutely *tonnes* of leccy, that basically went in a loop around all the smelter pot thingies were they created the Aluminium (from the Alumina dust or somesuch; was a long time ago). Anyway, the current was so powerful that you were told not to carry around metal objects. On the first day I had some keys in my pocket, and I could feel them pulling a bit, and I was outside the building!!! A friend of mine's dad worked there for years, and forgot about his keys in his pocket. He was working on one of the pots and the pull of the keys was enough to put him off balance when he was leaning over for something. He then half fell into the pot (co-workers grabbed him) but his leg brushed the liquid metal (is like a huge, erm, metal pot thingy full of like lava looking stuff). Totally lost most of his skin etc. Got a pretty good payout though. Luckily he didn't fall in further.
Also the magnetic field was so strong that colour computer screens all around the site would have a sort of plasma effect in the background. You know, like one of those fractals. Not the mandlebrot efforts, but the colour depth ones. Damn, can't remember their names now.... Anyhow, just like that
Aha. Looked it up. Heh, they are plasma fractals. They looked just like this:-
On the non-colour screens they used to pull in the direction of the magnetic force. So the screen would bend. Don't know why different to colour screens. But they had to put big lead boxes around the screens so it didn't effect it so much. And it still did quite badly.
Every month the workers get tested to see if they are getting effected by the polution etc (mainly from the chimney) as they can go sterile/ die etc. If you fail the test then you stay home (fully paid) for a month. If you fail three times then you get a *massive* pay off and are made redundant. But you probably won't have kids. Or might die pretty soon
Cheers
Ps. Oh yeah, and I remember they told me that if I put my foot on a pot, then put the other (or used a very very long pole as it was about 50 foot away) outside the building then I would instantly fry, and probably won't be anything left, it was so strong. Hmmm. Also they had two huge (I mean 20 stories high huge) round containers that stored like some explosive gas or other. They reckoned if they blew up then it would take like half the island (about the size of the *whole* of London - not just the centre - ie. about 10 million people) up with it. Not just kill everyone (like the Nuclear power station on the other side), but literally would have lots of water left. Dangerous place. I'm guessing they may have been upping things in front of the 16 year old, but was still pretty worrying. Apparently they only use them to store water now (for safety obviously).
Cheers
I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
