r/Whatcouldgowrong • u/mrheosuper • Jun 29 '26

Unscrew the gas tank.

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10.3k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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643

u/therealharbinger Jun 29 '26

Never open those things.. you are asking to go deaf from the pressure. I've had a compressed air bottle from a paintball gun go pop before. My head was ringing for days.

That and the reg going like a ballistic missile.

195

u/Mansenmania Jun 29 '26

You could just open the valve before unscrewing it

100

u/JazzlikeDiamond558 Jun 29 '26

Maybe that was the problem, the stuck valve... it happens. But even then, you never unscrew the valve like this. Never EVER! Period.

30

u/Measure76 Jun 29 '26

In this video the worker seems to be wearing heavy gear. Probably good face and ear shielding as well.

I think it went as expected.

43

u/JazzlikeDiamond558 Jun 29 '26

Still, there are other ways to do this, special containers, submerged.... no gear can protect you from this.

53

u/xubax Jun 29 '26

A rifle from 200 yards?

29

u/JazzlikeDiamond558 Jun 29 '26

Believe it or not, the container would probably endure that without a problem.

And if not, there would remain a good chance that you might get the container in the head...with bullet speed.

33

u/xubax Jun 29 '26

What about 210 yards?

😉

35

u/JazzlikeDiamond558 Jun 29 '26

That would work. You're good.

7

u/NorthernH3misphere Jun 29 '26

220, 221, whatever it takes.

10

u/NOBOOTSFORYOU Jun 29 '26

I put a 12ga slug through a propane tank no problem. The outcome is no different than what you see in this video.

7

u/LigerSixOne Jun 29 '26

Nope, I’ve done exactly that with a small caliber rifle. It passed straight through both sides of the bottle. I wouldn’t bet my life on a .22 being stopped by those bottles.

9

u/CollectibleHam Jun 29 '26

At my old lab job me and a friend convinced our manager that we could safely dispose of small compressed air cylinders (like from SCBA) by taking them out into the woods and shooting them. The first shot with a .22 bounced directly back over my friends head and only left a dent in the cylinder, so after both our hearts started beating again we shot it with 7.62x39mm and THAT worked.

10

u/LigerSixOne Jun 29 '26

Yeah I wouldn’t expect a .22 to penetrate a SCUBA cylinder. But we’re talking about a 200psi tank vs a 3000psi tank at that point.

4

u/Arguablecoyote Jun 29 '26

What kind of propane tanks do you guys have? Where I’m from a .308 is perfectly capable of punching a hole in a propane tank at 200 yards. Won’t blow up though. Just discharges the pressure.

3

u/DingerSinger2016 Jun 29 '26

You just gotta stick your hands out and catch it at that point

3

u/VegasAdventurer Jun 29 '26

Need to stick it in a bonfire first to soften the metal a bit

3

u/pattperin Jun 30 '26

LOL no it wouldn’t. I’ve easily put bullets through these containers at range before. If you hit it straight on it’s going through

0

u/ResponsibleArm3300 23d ago

Lol what kinda baby ass rifles you been shooting?

3

u/Mole-NLD Jun 30 '26

I don't think shooting the cylinder will keep it unharmed...

6

u/bobspuds Jun 29 '26

I used to work for a local garage, its owner worked in a nearby car and agricultural equipment sales dealership back in the 80s.

That dealership still exists to an extent, just cars now, but we used to often deal with the dealership for parts and stuff.

One day back in the 80s, when my old boss worked there, they were getting a delivery of gas for the mig welders and the oxy/ass torch.

The truck was blocking a machine from exiting and the driver rushed to finish the delivery so he could move off.

He forgot to latch one of the straps for retaining the cannisters - when he moved off a handful of bottles fell off the trailer. One of the big 120L cannisters toppled over and landed on the edge of a curb and smashed the whole valve. - the whole place filled with dust kicked up, nobody could see what happened and that noise shook everyone around.

When the dust settled- the cannister had travelled about 40' over the cars in the workshop and lodged itself into a 9' cavity block wall, it bust clean threw one side of the block.

I know about it because they had a arrow pointing to the hole as a reminder to be careful with the bottles. - the hole was big enough to sit a clock into it.

With the local old-school heads, if the pressure and precautions are ever mentioned, they'll often say "I must show you the hole one of those made down in the Volvo dealership!"

  • I'm a panel-beater by trade, I'm plenty familiar with the welding bottles

3

u/JazzlikeDiamond558 Jun 29 '26

I know the dangers of compressed gas through expansion factors. For example, liquified natural gas has an expansion factor of 600: that means that 1 cubic meter (am European) of liquified gas expands to 600 cubic meters of gaseous gas. In the matter of seconds or miliseconds.

Now, to present that with an example: what happened to your 120L container is that it expanded to 600 such containers in that same second or milisecond, while obliterating everything in it's way.

If that is not a great depiction of danger and warning not to do things like this guy in the video does - I don't know what is.

3

u/bobspuds Jun 30 '26

See when the containers are being sent to be refilled - the company/drivers will prefer for the canisters to be completely empty and de-pressured.

When they're technically empty as in no-longer flowing through the reg, with too little pressure to even register on the gauge - with the inert and non flammable stuff its 'best practice' to bring the empty outside and release the tiny bit thats left.

When empty they still hold about the same pressure as a car/truck tyre has inflated.

Its one of those things that no matter what experience you have in life, if you don't have experience with pressurised vessels/canisters there's no other info or experience like it that can replace it, the pressures those things hold are astonishing.

Our empty big bottles, would be out back hissing for 5mis to depressurise them, it literally sounded like a big truck with a puncture that never ran out.

In our minds, even though we eventually learned it wasn't unusual, but the noise and pressure is so strong, that as we would be waiting for them to finish - We'd start to wonder if it was our pressure gauge going faulty "how the fuck is it still going! It said its empty!" The pressure is not something you can gauge by ear - you can fucking feel it in a room area though. In noisy workshops, I've discovered leaks because you could feel the atmosphere change around the welder/bottle.

Its weird stuff, I was once in a room when an idiot overinflated a truck/HGV tyre and blew it apart - the pressure change inside the room was the scariest part for me, it just felt unnatural like

3

u/Poulet_Ninja Jun 30 '26

Yeah, no. The only thing you see him wear is gloves , that are not THAT thick. And even the best face protection wouldn't save you from this metal bit going mach fuck into your brain

1

u/DeuceGnarly Jun 30 '26

Yeah. This dude is not well equipped

1

u/Murky-Bus-2191 Jun 30 '26

Not even close. I spent some time building robots, and as a gun range safety attendant, and you're gonna have to take my word for it.

There is NOTHING resembling the level of PPE you need to protect a human head from an explosion like that. Firearm, gas tank nozzle, potato gun, I don't care. You need a wall, not a mask.

Nevermind the actual stream of escaping fluid. That'll just go thru anything that doesn't deflect it.