I just finished watching the glorious series Justified based on Elmore Leonard‘s Raylan Givens stories. Raylan Givens is a U.S. Marshal who is reassigned from Miami to the tough coal mining towns of his childhood in Kentucky. His nemesis is the local criminal and former fellow coal miner Boyd Crowder. In Season 6 episode 5 of Justified, Boyd Crowder and his accomplices are planning to blow up a vault. In the discussion about this, Boyd Crowder discovers a route through an old mine shaft in Blanton and gives a characteristically articulate description of the effects of Black Damp on the lungs.
“Carl: …..we need to get in that vault sooner than later. What do you got?
Boyd: Well, according to the easily suggestible clerk at the Kentucky D.M.S., there’s an adit that dead-ends right… here.
Carl: Well, that’s only, what, 200 yards?
Boyd: 187 yards, to be exact.
Carl: You’re not thinking about …
Boyd: Oh, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.
Carl: Is that gonna be dangerous? Exposed chutes, collapses. Black damp, white damp. Over 40 years of neglect. Blanton’s one of the most dangerous there is. We’re gonna need help.
The Pig: Bringing on another guy?
Boyd: You know what black damp is?
The Pig: Carbon dioxide, no oxygen.
Boyd: Well, technically, it’s carbon dioxide and nitrogen, taking out the oxygen. How did you know that?
The Pig: I did a couple summers of room and pillar mining up near Mt. Sterling.
Boyd: Well, you’re my kind of man.
Carl: So it is gonna be dangerous.
Boyd: Imagine all the air being sucked out of your lungs. You’re choking, like you’re drowning, But ain’t nary a drop of water in sight.
Carl: This someone we can trust?
Boyd: [chuckles] Well, I don’t know that trust is an issue. Last time I saw this man, he said he was gonna fill me full of buckshot.”
Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org