Crude oil refineries are essentially forests of steel, with tall distillation columns, catalytic crackers, extensive piping, and storage vessels. Finally, I must note how steel saves lives in hospitals (from centrifuges and diagnostic machines to stainless-steel scalpels, surgical hooks, and retractors), and how it also kills: armies and fleets with their vast arrays of weapons are nothing but enormous repositories of steel dedicated to destruction.[64]
