Of course, it's not mold, but it would definitely try to kill you if you got too close.

當然，它不是黴菌，但如果你靠得太近，它肯定會試圖殺死你。

Those white spots are arguably our nation's most polluted town—Picher, Oklahoma.

這些白點可以說是我們國家汙染最嚴重的城鎮——奧克拉荷馬州的皮徹。

No, Picher.

不是，是皮徹。

Picher.

皮徹。

Don't put a T in it.

不要把 T 寫進去。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Okay, enough.

好了，夠了。

We're doing a circle.

我們要用個圓圈。

Picher is a small town on the border with Kansas—or rather, it was a small town on the border with Kansas.

皮徹是與堪薩斯州交界的一個小鎮，或者說，它曾經是與堪薩斯州交界的一個小鎮。

Now it's a bunch of sinkholes, piles of toxic waste, shells of former buildings, leaden breezes, and one gorilla statue.

現在，這裡只剩下一堆天坑、成堆的有毒廢物、昔日建築的軀殼、鉛灰色的微風和一座大猩猩雕像。

So how exactly do you go from boomtown to biohazard in just a few decades?

那麼，如何在短短幾十年內從繁榮小鎮變成生物危害區呢？

And once you do, how do you get all the people out, and who deals with the poisoned paradise they leave behind?

一旦成為生物危害區，又是怎麼把所有的人都趕走，誰來處理他們留下的毒害天堂？

The first chapter of this story should come as no surprise—after all, when a town rises and falls faster than a child star with an inadequate support system, you can pretty safely assume mining was involved.

這個故事的第一章應該不足為奇，畢竟，當一個小鎮的興衰速度快於一個支持系統不完善的童星時，你就可以很有把握地認為這與採礦有關。

Picher sits atop a former gold mine of zinc and lead—or rather, a former zinc and lead mine of zinc and lead—and while the good people of Picher didn't invent getting rich off metal ores and falling to shambles, they did a spectacular job of it.

皮徹坐落在一個昔日的鋅鉛金礦之上（或者說，昔日的鋅鉛礦之上）雖然皮徹的好人們並沒有發明靠金屬礦石致富，也沒有是以而一蹶不振，但他們在這方面卻做得非常出色。

The town was incorporated in 1918, and was the most productive mining field in the whole tri-state lead and zinc district that spanned Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri.

該鎮於 1918 年成立，是橫跨奧克拉荷馬州、堪薩斯州和密蘇里州的三州鉛鋅礦區中產量最高的礦區。

At the peak of the mid-20s, they had a population of 14,000 permanent residents—that's bigger than Nauru!

在 1920 年代中期的高峰期，他們有 14000 名常住人口，比諾魯還大！

And around that time, they were sifting around 10 million pounds of ore a day.

大約在那個時候，他們每天要篩選大約 1000 萬磅礦石。

Over the course of its life, the Picher mining field cranked out 1.7 million tons of lead and 8.8 million tons of zinc, and processed 181 million tons of ore to do it.

在其生命週期中，皮徹礦區產出了 170 萬噸鉛和 880 萬噸鋅，並為此處理了 1.81 億噸礦石。

And all that metal went to work—a lot of it became bullets.

所有這些金屬都派上了用場，其中很多變成了子彈。

To be specific, 75% of all the bullets and bombshells the US used in both World War I and II.

具體來說，美國在第一次和第二次世界大戰中使用的所有子彈和炸彈中，有 75% 都是美國製造的。

It also became many of the materials that built up America's small towns post-war—pipes, delicious lead paint, roofing.

它還成為戰後美國小城鎮建設的許多材料——管道、美味的含鉛塗料、屋頂。

Yep, Picher was indirectly responsible for three of the 20th century's greatest human travesties—World War I, World War II, and the suburbs—but at least they made money.

沒錯，皮徹間接造成了 20 世紀人類三大悲劇：第一次世界大戰、第二次世界大戰和郊區化，但至少他們賺了錢。

The metal from Picher sold for a total of $202 million over the course of the mines' lives.

在這些礦井的整個生命週期中，皮徹礦井的金屬總售價達 2.02 億美元。

Here's the thing about mining lead and zinc—it's not like you just dig down until you reach the big lead ball that you pull out and sell.

鉛鋅礦的開採是這樣的：並不是挖到大鉛球就可以賣掉。

The lead and zinc are sort of laced into layers and layers of less valuable rock, and to get it out, they had to take out all the rock, smash it up, sort it out, smelt it down, and ta-da!

鉛和鋅層層疊疊地鑲嵌在價值較低的岩石中，為了把它們取出來，他們必須把所有的岩石都取出來，砸碎，分類，冶煉，然後就可以了！

That's the lead.

這就是鉛。

Everything that got sifted out is called chat—crushed limestone, dolomite, and other rock that just doesn't sell like zinc or lead does.

篩出的所有東西都被稱為鉛鋅廢料——碎石灰石、白雲石和其他不像鋅或鉛那樣好賣的岩石。

The valuable metals only made up about 12% of the rock they took out of the ground.

有價值的金屬只佔他們從地下開採出的岩石的 12%左右。

The rest was chat, and it had to go… somewhere.

剩下的都是鉛鋅廢料，它必須去......某個地方。

Now the government had previously forced the Quapaw Nation to move to the land that became Picher because they wanted the land they were living on in Arkansas,

現在政府之前強迫誇帕族搬到後來成為皮徹的土地，因為他們想要他們在阿肯色州居住的土地，

but when they found out there were some tasty metals in northeast Oklahoma, they displaced the Quapaw again so they could mine it.

但當他們發現奧克拉荷馬州東北部有一些美味的金屬時，他們又把誇帕族人趕了出來，以便開採這些金屬。

For whatever reason, in the process of the mining companies taking the land, the thoughtfully named Bureau of Indian Affairs made a rule that the companies had to dump the chat within the town instead of dumping it elsewhere, which was a cheaper process for the big business boys to pull off, and kept the mines and their consequences contained to one single place.

不管出於什麼原因，在礦業公司佔用土地的過程中，體貼的印第安人事務局規定，公司必須在城鎮內傾倒礦渣，而不是傾倒在其他地方，這對大企業來說是一個更便宜的過程，並將礦山及其後果控制在一個地方。

So all the chat had to go somewhere, and thanks to that rule, in Picher, somewhere was everywhere.

所有的籌碼都必須去到某個地方，而由於有了這條規則，在皮徹，某個地方就是無處不在。

Yep, all around town, they had piles and piles and piles of chat—up to 300 feet tall by some reports, and with a 7,000-acre ridgeline—enough space to house and poison 70 Winnie-the-Poohs and friends.

沒錯，在小鎮周圍，他們有成堆成堆的鉛鋅廢料，據說有的高達 300 英尺，有 7000 英畝的山脊線，足以容納和毒死 70 只小熊維尼和朋友們。

Chatoons that were such a big part of life that they had names—Sooner, Saint Joe, and Goldenrod 8.

鉛鋅廢料堆是生活的重要組成部分，它們有自己的名字：蘇納、聖喬和金絲楠木八號。

Kids would play in them after school like they were sandboxes, or ride up and down them on bikes—which is super fun, except that it slowly gave them lead poisoning.

孩子們放學後會像玩沙箱一樣在裡面玩耍，或者騎著自行車在上面跑來跑去，這些都是超級有趣的事情，只是慢慢地會讓他們鉛中毒。

Boo.

Boo。

Chat is a fine dust that contains, among other things, remnants of the lead that came out of it, so anytime the wind blows in Picher, lead and caddium emanate out of their many, many chat piles and into the air.

鎘是一種微塵，除其他成分外，還含有鉛的殘留物，所以只要皮徹市有風吹過，鉛和鎘就會從許許多多的鎘堆中散發出來，進入空氣中。

And chat's not even the only pollutant hanging around—there was so much heavy metal, as in lead, zinc, cadmium, arsenic, iron, manganese, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, that kind of thing, running into the Tar Creek River that it turned visibly orange and notably acidic.

而且，這還不是唯一的汙染物；大量的重金屬，如鉛、鋅、鎘、砷、鐵、錳、金屬樂、黑色安息日、猶大牧師等，流入塔爾克里克河，使河水變成明顯的橙色和酸性。

They might have been better off with a literal Tar Creek, which, now that I say it, is just a road.

他們可能會選擇一條真正的 Tar Creek（塔爾河），現在我說出來了，那只是一條路。

And if poison-arid rivers weren't enough, the kids also swam and played in poison ponds full of industrial waste.

如果有毒乾旱的河流還不夠，孩子們還在充滿工業廢料的毒池塘裡游泳和玩耍。

Unsurprisingly, health issues abounded in Picher—hypertension, respiratory disease, lead poisoning, test scores so bad you can blame them on the air and water instead of writing the kids off as dingbats.

不出所料，皮徹的健康問題比比皆是：高血壓、呼吸道疾病、鉛中毒，考試成績糟糕到你可以把原因歸咎於空氣和水，而不是把孩子們當作笨蛋。

In 2004, decades after the mines closed in 1970, the rate of this long-named lung disease in the area was 2,000% higher than the national average—it was bad, bad.

在 1970 年礦場關閉幾十年後的 2004 年，該地區這種久負盛名的肺病發病率比全國平均水平高出 2000%，情況非常糟糕。

And if the disease didn't get ya, there were still plenty of ways Picher might try to kill you.

如果你沒有染上這種病，皮徹還有很多辦法可以殺死你。

Between 1982 and 2006, 35 buildings caved in because they'd been literally undermined.

在 1982 年至 2006 年期間，有 35 座建築因遭到實際破壞而坍塌。

An Army Corps of Engineering study found 159 more buildings—nearly 90% of those still standing—could collapse at any moment.

美國陸軍工程兵部隊的一項研究發現，還有 159 座建築（其中近 90% 仍屹立不倒）隨時可能倒塌。

And if you managed to survive poison air, poison water, and the ever-increasing chance that the building you stood in would crumble around you, in 2008, a tornado came through town, flattening 20 blocks, killing 8 people, and injuring over 100 more.

2008 年，一場龍捲風襲擊了整個小鎮，20 個街區被夷為平地，造成 8 人死亡，100 多人受傷。

After the Army Corps study, the government pulled together a $60 million buyout program to pay off any family in Picher that would politely GTFO.

在陸軍兵團的研究之後，政府制定了一項 6000 萬美元的買斷計劃，以償還任何願意禮貌地離開皮徹的家庭。

Yes, at a rate of around $55 per square foot of your home, you could cash a great American check and move to, I don't know, Miami?

是的，以每平方英尺房屋 55 美元左右的價格，你可以兌現一張大額美國支票，然後搬到我不知道的邁阿密？

No, Miami.

不，邁阿密。

In the two years that followed, 800 or so families applied for buyouts, 300 offers were made, and 272 families accepted them and moved out.

在隨後的兩年裡，約有 800 個家庭申請買斷，300 個家庭接受了買斷，272 個家庭接受並搬離。

With the buyouts done and the population down below 800 in 2009, Picher officially called it.

2009 年，隨著買斷工作的完成和人口降至 800 人以下，皮徹正式宣佈退出。

They disbanded the police and dissolved the government.

他們解散了警察，解散了政府。

Picher Carden High School graduated their last class of students—there were only 11 of them.

皮徹卡登高中的最後一屆學生畢業了，他們只有 11 人。

By the 2010 census, there were just 10 people left in town, and in 2013, they dissolved the town charter, and Picher was officially no more.

到 2010 年人口普查時，鎮上只剩下 10 個人，2013 年，他們解散了小鎮章程，皮徹鎮正式不復存在。

Post-charter, few people suck it out, the town became something of a playground for ATV riders and scavengers, and a man named Gary kept a pharmacy running in town and was quoted in 2014 saying he expected a Picher resurgence, quote, "in time," but he proceeded to die the next year, so I'm not sure about that.

特許經營後，很少有人再去吸吮它，小鎮成了一些人的遊樂場。全地形車騎行者和拾荒者，還有一個叫加里的人在鎮上開了一家藥店，2014 年有人引述他的話說，他預計皮徹會重新崛起，但他第二年就去世了，所以我不確定這一點。

So what now?

現在怎麼辦？

Well, head down Route 69, and you can still see the Picher water tower, and the town gorilla statue, and many piles of chat.

沿著 69 號公路前行，你仍然可以看到皮徹水塔、鎮上的大猩猩雕像和許多哈拉堆。

The matter of cleaning it all up is a bit more complicated—the EPA has been doing their darnedest for decades, taking soil off the top of people's yards hoping the poison dust and water would come with it, carting chat off inches at a time,

數十年來，環保局一直在盡最大努力清理人們院子裡的泥土，希望毒塵和毒水能隨泥土一起被清理掉。

and the Quapaw Nation, who are stuck owning a lot of this poison land because for some reason the government buying the houses and demolishing them meant the land went back to the Guapaw, has worked to restore the land back to a semblance of what it was before the mining companies moved in.

夸帕族(Quapaw Nation) 被困在擁有大量有毒土地上，因為出於某種原因，政府購買房屋並拆除它們意味著土地又回到了夸帕人手中，他們一直在努力將土地恢復到原來的樣子。

In 2005, the government agreed to allow the Quapaw to sell the chat to asphalt companies because it stops being poison when it starts being road, but the government changed their mind about that in 2009.

2005 年，政府同意允許夸帕人將鉛鋅廢料賣給瀝青公司，因為當鉛鋅廢料開始用作公路時，它就不再是毒藥了，但 2009 年政府改變了主意。

In 2010, the Quapaw mentioned damming and flooding the land to return it into a wetlandQuapaw

2010 年，夸帕人提到要築壩淹沒這片土地，將其恢復成溼地。

Doesn't seem to have happened yet, but I've asked my editors to do a rendering.

似乎還沒有，但我已經讓我的編輯們做了渲染。

Lovely.

真可愛。

Today, across the Tar Creek site, they've gotten rid of over 7 million tons of chat and sold about 1.25 million tons, they've plugged a bunch of abandoned wells to keep the poison out of the drinking water, and they've completed a bunch of other remediation efforts.

如今，在整個塔爾克里克遺址，他們已經處理了超過 700 萬噸的鉛鋅廢料，並出售了約 125 萬噸，他們還堵住了許多廢棄的水井，以防止有毒物質進入飲用水，並完成了一系列其他修復工作。

And it's still going!

而且還在繼續！

The EPA, state government, Quapaw Nation, the University of Oklahoma, and others continue to work together to figure out just how toxic the land, air, and water in Picher is, and what exactly they can do to clean it up.

美國環保局、州政府、夸帕民族、奧克拉荷馬大學和其他機構將繼續合作，以弄清圖片中的土地、空氣和水究竟有多大毒性，以及他們究竟能做些什麼來淨化它。

So no, they're not just leaving this place to fester, but will it ever be a wetland?

所以，他們不是任由這個地方潰爛，但它還能成為溼地嗎？

Or even just an unpoisoned ghost town?

甚至只是一座未被毒化的鬼城？

Who's to say?

誰說得準？

But I hear the gorilla statue's in pretty good shape, so there's something.

但我聽說大猩猩雕像保存得很好，所以還是有一些東西的。

In short, it takes a lot of work and a lot of science to keep a place like Picher from being totally uninhabitable to being, well, anything else.

總之，要讓皮徹這樣的地方從完全不適合居住變成其他地方，需要大量的工作和科學。

And if you're interested in that kind of thing, but don't think of yourself as being a quote-unquote science person, I recommend you check out this video's sponsor, Brilliant.org.

如果你對這類事情感興趣，但又不認為自己是個科學達人，我建議你去看看本影片的贊助商 Brilliant.org。

They offer these fun, interactive, short lessons on all things science-y, math-y, and data-y.

他們提供這些有趣、互動、簡短的課程，內容涉及科學、數學和數據。

In chunks of just 15 minutes or less, you can get a handle on chemical reactions, statistical models, probability—all things that would help you figure out how to remediate a toxic waste site.

只需 15 分鐘或更短的時間，你就可以掌握化學反應、統計模型和概率，所有這些都有助於你瞭解如何修復有毒廢料場。

But if that's not your thing, you can also learn how to get the most value out of an electric car, or how search engines worked before AI ruined them, or how AI works.

但如果你不喜歡這個，你也可以學習如何讓電動汽車發揮最大價值，或者在 AI 毀掉搜索引擎之前，搜索引擎是如何運作的，或者 AI 是如何運作的。

Know thy enemy!

瞭解你的敵人！

The point is, Brilliant.org has taught me a lot of stuff, including that everyone, even you, even me, can wrap their head around these really technical subjects if you have the right teacher.

重點是，Brilliant.org 教會了我很多東西，包括每個人，即使是你，即使是我，只要有合適的老師，都能理解這些真正的技術性課題。

So, if you want to start learning in the chillest, most fun way possible, head on over to Brilliant.org/hai or click the link in the description, and you can try everything they have to offer for free for a full 30 days.

如果你想以最冷酷、最有趣的方式開始學習，請訪問 Brilliant.org/hai，或點說明欄中的連結，你可以在整整 30 天內免費試用他們提供的一切。

You'll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription, so go now!

你還可以享受年度高級訂閱八折優惠，現在就去吧！

Right now!

就是現在！