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Comment by donalhunt | Hacker News Reader

Most datacenters are fairly boring to be honest. The most exciting thing likely to happen is some sheet metal ripping your hand open because you didn't wear gloves.

Still have my "my other datacenter is made of razorblades and hate" sticker. \o/

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They do commonly have poisonous gas though.

Not sure if you’re joking but a relatively small datacenter I’m familiar with has reduced oxygen in it to prevent fires. If you were to break in unannounced you would faint or maybe worse (?).

Not quite - while you can reduce oxygen levels, they have to be kept within 4pp so at worst, will make you light headed. Many athletes train at the same levels though so it’s easy to overcome.

That'd make for a decent heist comedy - a bunch of former professional athletes get hired to break in to a low-oxygen data center, but the plan goes wrong and they have to use their sports skills in improbable ways to pull it off.

And lasers come to think of it

No FM200 isn't poisonous.

tell that to my dead uncle jack :)

Halon was used back in the day for fire suppression but I thought it was only dangerous at high enough concentrations to suffocate you by displacing oxygen.

To be of any use, it also has to suffocate a fire.

Halon doesn't work that way, by displacing oxygen.

Flame chemistry is weird. Halogenated fire suppression agents work by making Hydrogen (!) out of free radicals.

https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/el/fire_research...

I had a summer job at a hospital one year in the data center when an electrician managed to trigger the halon system and we all had to evacuate and wait for the process to finish and the gas to vent. The four firetrucks and station master who shoved up was both annoyed and relieved it was not real.

there are datacentres not made of razorblades and hate?

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