Actually, I’ve seen this scenario numerous times: Two guys are fighting to the death in the vast hold of a ship. They’re in a grain shipment. One of them appears to be done in, then he rises out of the grain, and is shot dead. The question is: would they legally have to jettison the whole grain shipment?
Is grain shipped loose in the hold of a cargo ship? I would expect it to be shipped in containers of some sort. So my guess is that your scenario is something that Hollywood thinks looks cool, but probably has no basis in reality.
Jettison for…what? For the grain being contaminated with blood, etc.?
All manner of grains can be shipped in bulk - its known as dry bulk freight, and the ships as bulk carriers.
And I’m sure I’ve seen the same gunfight happen in a grain silo and some sort of food factory as well.
You know, you don’t always have to ride in the grain hold. . . They do have cruise ships which are much more fun.
Tripler
. . . and a lot less gun-fighty on NCL.
Once the ship reaches port, it will be quarantined as a crime scene. A crane will probably eventually be used to remove a large amount of the grain surrounding where the body was, and samples will be taken from other areas in the hold. The grain will be offloaded into silo(s) and held in mitigation until the sample testing shows that the shipment can be considered safe (most likely) or not.
That’s my guess anyway, from what I know of bulk shipping.
Grain is very commonly shipped loose in cargo holds of ships.
People die in grain bins, they are like quicksand. You would not want to hide in a bin full of grain unless you were in a movie.
Between the quicksand effect (and they’re worse) and the possible almost instantly toxic gases, this is very good advice. Those are very dangerous to go into unless you know exactly what you’re doing, and are not all that safe even if you do.
In compartments, though, right? A big hold with freely flowing material would be vulnerable to the free surface effect, which is bad for ships.
In The Witness, Harrison Ford kills a bad guy by dumping a silo full of grain on him, battering and asphyxiating him to death. The scene traumatized me for a while as a child. It’s still pretty brutal.
A friend’s brother did that back when I was in 5th or 6th grade.
From reading up on it, it’s like movie quicksand, and really does “suck people down”. Not to mention sometimes forming unstable voids that immediately collapse under the weight of a person.
Once entrapment begins, it happens very quickly due to the suction-like action of the grain.[4] Researchers in Germany found that an average person who has sunk into grain once it has stopped flowing can get out only as long as it has not reached knee level; at waist level assistance is required. Once the grain has reached the chest a formal rescue effort must be undertaken.[8]
Half of all entrapment victims eventually become engulfed.[5] A human body in grain takes seconds to sink, minutes to suffocate, and hours to locate and recover. Recovered bodies have shown signs of blunt force trauma from the impact of the grain; one victim was found to have a dislocated jaw.
As long as the ratio of blood and gore is below a certain threshold set by the FDA, you’re okay. For example, every 100 grams of chocolate may contain up to 60 insect fragments, one rodent hair, and a few micrograms of Tommy Smothers.
I also knew a guy who died that way in a farm silo.
I was really silent on the way home after watching Witness in a theatre when it came out. My buddy eventually asked me what was up. I told him. He just said “Oh” and we were both quiet for a while.
Very large ones:
Although there is sort of a service that can hook passengers up with transit in freighters that have a couple ‘passenger’ cabins. Cheaper than traditional cruises - you eat the same chow the crew does, nothing particular offered other than the cabin and passage.
Earlier this year the Dope did some research on the “passenger on a freighter” thing for another thread. As of then the availability worldwide had been exactly zero for a number of years; more or less since COVID, if not before. The whole industry “just said no” to passengers on their freight ships, period.
I now see the pax on freighters thing has since picked up from zero to teeny. See Cargo Ship Voyages for more.
Thanks!
There’s a bulk freighter in Cleveland that’s been turned into a floating museum, the Mather. It had a few passenger rooms, but the passengers ate with the officers, from a fairly fancy menu, in a nice dining room, not in the galley that resembled a school cafeteria with the crew. The biggest problem with the accommodations would be that the passenger quarters were on the opposite end of the ship from the dining room, with the only way to get from end to end being the exposed top deck, and the Great Lakes often get unpleasant weather.
And yes, grain was one of the cargoes that the Mather often carried, along with iron ore or coal.