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Hydrogen is not the recommended gas to fill a balloon with, for reasons made historically clear by the Hindenburg disaster. Over in China, pine nut pickers didn’t get that memo. They also don’t have the sort of OSHA regulations which keep workers safe on the job. The good news is that Mr. Hu didn’t explode. He didn’t even catch fire. He did end up 186 miles away from home though. That’s how far away he was two days later, when he landed hungry and cold.
Harvesting nuts by balloon
The worker who only gave his surname, “Hu,” was with his picking partner in a bucket, suspended from a really risky hydrogen filled balloon.
It’s just another day on the job of harvesting pine nuts in Hailin county, which is part of Heilongjiang province. On Sunday, September 4, when they lost control of their lighter than air craft, his buddy bailed. “Hu missed his chance and drifted away.”
The rescue team traced Hu’s cell phone while a posse “made up of more than 500 people from the local police and fire departments” beat the bushes for him.
Around 9 a.m. local time on Tuesday the search crew spotted his balloon stuck in a tree. “I almost gave up,” Hu told reporters. “Thanks to the rescuers, otherwise, I wouldn’t be alive.”
Hu told his rescuers that he “had been cold and hungry during the ordeal.” Thankfully, “he was largely unharmed, suffering what were described as only minor injuries to his waist.”
Locals say hydrogen and helium balloons have been used around there for as long as they can remember to harvest pine nuts. Helium is preferred but it’s in scarce supply and the price is going through the roof. Hydrogen is everywhere there is water but it’s not real user friendly to work with. The big balloon problem for them isn’t the flammability aspect.
Getting carried away
The biggest hazard to pine nut pickers is being swept up, up and away by their beautiful balloon. Hu set a record though. They usually don’t get that far away.
In 2019, “two men picking pine cones in China’s Changbai mountains reportedly lost control of their balloon and drifted 10 kilometers (6 miles) before landing safely” They were quickly arrested for breaking aviation regulations. There goes a week’s pay for the fine with a day’s pay for the joyride.
In another case, in 2017, a nut picker went missing near the North Korea border after his balloon became untethered. That’s the number one reason there aren’t any pine trees anywhere north of the border. A South Korean may blow in but no North Korean is going to be allowed to float right out.
They say the job of harvesting pine nuts is even more dangerous without using the hydrogen filled death machines. “pickers wearing spiked shoes climb the trees.” A 65 foot fall can be fatal and that happens a lot more often than drifting off on the breeze, with worse chances of survival.
One thing anyone needs to know about playing with hydrogen is don’t try this at home. Sure it’s easy to break water into hydrogen and oxygen and just as easy to fill a balloon with it.
You’ll quickly learn that the lifting ability of hydrogen is even better than helium. It’s not at all obvious that what you just came up with is also a sudden explosion just waiting to happen. A single carpet shock could blast you into the afterlife.
