Let's go back to ancient warfare, shall we? We'll talk about all the things you can fill a clay pot with to throw at enemies—spikes, bees, boiling hot sand—use your imagination! Then, we will discuss the mysterious Byzantine weapon, Greek Fire. From a siphon, it could shoot white hot fire onto enemy ships, causing pain, devastation, and setting the water aflame.
Let's go back to ancient warfare, shall we? We'll talk about all the things you can fill a clay pot with to throw at enemies—spikes, bees, boiling hot sand—use your imagination!
Then, we will discuss the mysterious Byzantine weapon, Greek Fire. From a siphon, it could shoot white hot fire onto enemy ships, causing pain, devastation, and setting the water aflame.
How Greek Fire was Used to Target Enemy Ships - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPUgvYZ5UDk
The UnXplained: Greek Fire Is Every Sailor's Deadly NIGHTMARE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0CvNL4k140
What Do We Know about “Medieval Flame Throwers” Known as "Greek Fire"? -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQt9nBh3ceM
"Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World" by Adrienne Mayor
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Doomed to Fail brings you history's most notorious disasters and failures
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA096. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
>> Farz: And we are going to catch all the banter. But before we do that, something that we keep forgetting, we collectively keep forgetting, is our intro, so.
>> Taylor: Oh, I'll do it.
>> Farz: Would you? Okay.
>> Taylor: You want to do it?
>> Farz: No, no, I want you to do it.
>> Taylor: Okay. Hello. Welcome to Doomed to Fail. We bring you history's most notorious disasters and failures and fun stories. And I am Taylor, joined by fars.
>> Farz: Yes. I've been on the lake all day, and I'm recording this after a day in the sun and a little bit of beer.
>> Taylor: Good for you. Good for you.
Do you do a lot of bohemian Czech cuisine at your house
>> Farz: How's your weekend been? Tell me about it.
>> Taylor: Great. My mom came. We had a great time. She made chicken and paprikash, which is, like, her specialty meal. So we made that together. It's like. It's just like, chicken in, like, a ton of paprika. And then you make these, like, little dumplings, and then you make these, like, vinegary cucumbers, and you eat it all together. It's really good.
>> Farz: Is that a cultural thing or is that.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's like a thing that her grandma used to make. It's, like, bohemian, which we had to look up, but Bohemia used to be, like, the Czech Republic area, so it's, like, from that area of, like, Eastern Europe.
>> Farz: Okay. Fun.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Do you do a lot of, like, bohemian Czech cuisine at your house? No, it's just, what do you make.
>> Taylor: Like, for my family?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: That's such an interesting question. My daughter only eats dino nuggets and noodles, so I make her those, but Miles eats more stuff. I'll do, like. I do tacos a lot with, like, fake meat, so I do like fake meat with a can of refried beans as, like, the main part of it and, like, seasoning and then the other things to make that into a salad or tacos. Or I'll do, like, a pulled pork or a pulled chicken in the crock pot or.
>> Farz: Why fake meat tacos if you do pulled pork?
>> Taylor: I like the fake me better in. I like the fake ground beef better than regular ground beef because then you don't, like, accidentally get gross parts. Yeah, I guess when I'm cooking it. So I like that a lot. And then one night, also one. And I've been making steaks pretty often. I'll do that. I made steaks and mashed potatoes the other day.
>> Farz: It's really.
>> Taylor: Whatever I feel like I'm. I'm in charge of food, and it's whatever I feel like.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: I was like, I would love to have a private chef who just made me whatever they felt like making me. Cause that's what Juan has. He really has. No, he, like, just eats whatever I make.
>> Farz: Which I've always thought that, like, when you see celebrities and how they get super fit and super in shape or lose a ton of weight, it's like, it can't be that hard when you can afford your own private chef to, like, get in amazing shape.
>> Taylor: Yeah. 100 the. Remember when, like, Rob Mack from. All of a sudden, you got, like, really?
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: And he was like, it's super easy, you guys. All you have to do is work out six hours a day, have a private chef make your meals, and have Fox pay for it, you know, like.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's totally doable. Doable if, like, it's just when you have a life, it's less so.
>> Taylor: I know. It's hard to do anything. Yeah. That's usually about what we make around here. Florence loves noodles.
>> Farz: Fun.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Rachel has been the sole chef at this household because if it's up to me, I'll just, like, throw a steak on the skillet and then just.
>> Taylor: But you made that great brisket.
>> Farz: I mean. Yeah, but that was only because you guys were here. Because, like, who am I impressing? Why am I cooking for myself? Like, what's the point of making something nice for myself? Makes no sense.
>> Taylor: It's hard because, like. Well, because, like, Miles is just starting to eat, like, regular food. This is my biggest failing as a parent is how bad they are at eating. But, like, I don't know. I feel like my mom used to make, like. She'd make spaghetti, she'd make tacos, she'd make chicken dishes and do all these things. We would all eat them. So we'd have, like, a full dinner every night because she was home all day. And so we got home, there'd be dinner waiting, but there were seven people in the house, and we all ate it. And I don't know why my kids don't eat anything.
>> Farz: I don't. You know, it's the sound of the times. I think it's times. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Not that I know anything about kids, but still, that's okay.
>> Taylor: I always tell them they're very smart, considering. So imagine how smart they would be if they ate vegetables.
>> Farz: No kidding.
>> Taylor: No. Who knows?
>> Farz: Or fish. So I think today is a you day.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: And are we gonna do hints or am I never gonna guess it?
>> Taylor: You're never gonna guess it. I don't know. This is kind of all over the place.
I thought it would be better because I got a book on the subject
Okay.
>> Farz: Yeah, I think our listeners are used to that by now.
>> Taylor: I thought it would be better because I got a book on the subject, and, like, the. I read the. I listened to the whole thing, and then they only talked about the actual thing I wanted to talk about in the last, like, 20 minutes of the book. And I'm like, well, that was really unhelpful. And I spent the past two weeks reading this, waiting for it to happen. So I did.
This time we're going to talk about Greek fire, biological warfare
So I do have other research that I did, so I'm not going to make you guess, but I will share the book that I read and some YouTube videos that I watched about this because I was thinking about napalm and the firebombing of Tokyo, because that's what we did last time. Last time I did it, and I wanted to focus on, like, incendiary weapons from the ancient past. So I'm going to talk about a mysterious and deadly weapon called Greek fire. Have you heard of Greek fire?
>> Farz: Yeah, I think the Mythbusters did this.
>> Taylor: They probably did. Like, there's approximately 7,000 white dudes on YouTube who think that they did it as well.
>> Farz: Technically, I'm not white, so I don't count as part of that demographic. But, yes, I probably consume the same contents.
>> Taylor: You know who I'm talking about.
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: So they're all there. The book I read was called Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs. Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayer. It was good. Interesting, but, like, very little bit without Greek fire. And Greek fires are the biggest words on the COVID I'm like, I don't know. Call your graphic designer, because this book is about.
>> Farz: Did you see the Battle of Black Rock on the Game of Thrones episode?
>> Taylor: No, but that. But that. Yes, that's exactly right.
>> Farz: Okay, that.
>> Taylor: Green.
>> Farz: You know exactly where I'm going with this. Yep. Okay.
>> Taylor: That. That's. That's, like, the example in, like, they also did it in Pirates of the Caribbean. They had, like, a. A thing with it.
>> Farz: Yep, same page.
>> Taylor: So we saw napalm in the firebombing of Tokyo and a lot of, like, the other wars that happened in Asia, like Vietnam and Korea. There's that picture that is really famous of the little girl who is, like, running away and burned. Her name is Fan Ty Kimbu. I said that wrong, but she's still alive. She's only 62, so she's you know, not that old. And the video, the images of her kind of running away naked because all of her clothes have been burned off, and she has terrible scars, and we're just, like, burning villages of people. So fire has always been, like, a really dangerous weapon because you can't fix yourself even now, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah, it's horrible.
>> Taylor: It's horrible. So if we go further back into myth and into the Byzantine Empire, which is where we'll talk about Greek fire the most, there's some things that have a little bit of truth to them, a little bit of myth. And so I'm going to tell you a little bit about different kinds of, like, biological warfare and, like, surprise warfare and, like, trying to create weapons with, like, ancient technologies. And then I'll talk about the Greek fire. One thing to mention is, while you're making all these things, you can totally die by accident. You know, like, if you are making something that is so incredibly flammable that it kills people immediately, you're probably going to have a couple of those guys, like, blow themselves up, you know, I.
>> Farz: Think that's, like, why they thought that Timothy McVeigh had accomplices, because they're like, nobody could make something this powerful without, like, a ton of support. Like, it seems like it's a big project, right?
>> Taylor: You need, like, one person stirring a pot and one person chopping chicken. You know what I mean? Like, if you're cooking, like, you can't just do by yourself.
>> Farz: So the anarchist playbook. Except, like, it's about chicken frequency.
>> Taylor: Exactly, Exactly.
We talked about how bombing civilians and bombing cities is terror warfare
So also, this type of warfare, so we talked about last time, I think we talked about, like, how bombing civilians and bombing cities is like terror warfare, because you are trying to get the civilians to be like, I don't want to do this anymore.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And how in most of warfare, it's probably like, most of this is just people being like, I just want to live my life with my goats. Like, please let me just live my life. Like, I don't want to be part of your f****** war, but you have to, like, put the pot on your head like we've talked about a bunch of times, and, like, get your b*** out there, because you have to do y. So they. So there was that. And then this stuff started to happen where you had these, like, ways to, like, do these bombs are really bombs. And I'm gonna tell you what they are. But the. But people thought it was kind of cheating. They're like, if warfare up until this point had been like, I'm gonna stab you in the face. You stab me in the face. Like, really like Roman legions hitting each other. Then, like, ways to injure someone from afar was like, new and maybe cheating or. But we could definitely say that. Now, obviously, if it's like, if we're just gonna have drones, kill each, kill ourselves, kill everybody, you know, that's where we're headed. But the idea of, like, shooting an arrow or throwing a grenade or having a flamethrower, you know, was a little bit of a, like a. Oh, you're not gonna come up and stab me into my face.
>> Farz: Yeah, that's what they used to say about snipers, I think, in World War I or 2. I forgot it was like, around that time line of, like, they were considered, like, the cowards of the group.
>> Taylor: And I imagine because, like, whenever I. Whenever I see a sniper in the news, which is like, almost never, but those guys are like, oh, I killed 500 people. And you're like, you know, like, it.
>> Farz: Is interesting how that became, like, badass, because I do get the sentiment of, like, it is much harder to kill someone face to face.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Like, we wouldn't do it, really.
>> Farz: Like, there's something to, like. Like, it takes a different brain power to, like, be like, I gotta account for wind and the gravitational force, the sun, this hour of the day, it is crazy, like, what they do. But, yeah, I understand the sentiment on both sides, too.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And I feel like it's like something that will continue as we, like, get other, like, robots to fight our wars for us. So some of these are, like, kind of encased in myth, and some of them aren't. But like, for example, Hercules, like the. The Greek God, he died because of a poison cloak. So there's a lot of, like, poison that happened in, like, the ancient world. People were afraid of it. Things that, like, I don't understand, but I feel like the word like, hemlock is.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, that's poison. You know, and so people would take, like, little bits of it to make themselves. Not to make themselves, like, immune, which is like, similar to, like, you know, just take a little bit at a time trying to get your body used to it, things like that.
>> Farz: So vaccine.
>> Taylor: Like a vaccine. Exactly. So there's definitely lots of poisons. They could really hurt you. And then also, like, I feel like the food could just kill you at any time. Up until, like, very recently. Yeah, of course, you know, for, like, other reasons as well. So there's that to be worried about.
>> Farz: Is that why they only drink alcohol? Is because those only safe version of A liquid you could have because you knew the bacteria would be killed.
>> Taylor: So it's like that. I think. I mean, I think that that's like oversimplifying it, but I also think. Yes. So there's things that, like during the temperance movement in America, one of the things that came out of that was water fountains. Because there was no way to get water like you. It was really hard. There was like. No, you wouldn't have like, running water in your tenement and you wouldn't go out, like, buy a bottle of water. So you would just like, you know. Yeah. Like have beer and like, have alcohol because it was distilled and like, potentially safer than like, whatever water you could just like, find. So made like public drinking fountains. You could go and get your own water. So you had some. Had another option even, you know, it's kind of fun.
>> Farz: You only feed your kids beer sometimes.
>> Taylor: You know, you're just like, you're Bud Light. Thirsty. I'm so thirsty. I just want to drink a Bud Light.
>> Farz: I'm more of a Coors guy. I'm. I've never been into the Budweiser family.
>> Taylor: Interesting.
>> Farz: Anyways, sorry, it's been a long day on the lake.
>> Taylor: No, this is weird. Again, excellent.
>> Farz: I'm in lake banter with you.
>> Taylor: Lake talk.
In ancient warfare, there'd be animals. There'd be, like, bears and elephants
Okay, so a couple other examples before we get to the fire, which I will explain in detail. One way that kind of combines the poisons and the Harding. Someone from far away is obviously an arrow and also a poison tipped arrow. So, like a lot of the gods in Greek myth would like, dip their arrowheads in poison. The word toxin, it's from the Greek word toxin, which means bow for your bow and arrow. Because poison arrows were so popular. Some cultures even, like in parts of like, rural Africa now and like, places they will roast like poison frogs and like poison snakes and all of the oil that comes out of the roasting pan they'll put onto the tips of their arrows. But it's one of those things like those. Or like even like in South America, the kind of frogs that like, if you touch it, you will die. So you have to like, spear it into the ground and like, get its essence onto your arrow without dying. And then never touch that arrow and then shoot someone with it.
>> Farz: Yeah, it seems kind of hard.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Obviously you could do that with snakes as well and with the hemlock on your arrows. Then this is like biological warfare before they even, like, knew it. But there's like, you know, obviously, like throwing like dead cows over fortified walls that were full of the plague and, you know, putting your dead bodies in a pile to, like, make sure that people got sick. So different ways. Like, people without understanding the actual science behind it, they're figuring out ways to make people get sick.
>> Farz: Wait, why did you say, like, hemlock? Hemlock's. That's. That's a plant. Yeah.
>> Taylor: But you could also put that on your arrow.
>> Farz: Okay. Okay.
>> Taylor: The other. It's like another thing. Use a poison. Your arrow. Did you know that this. The United States has. Is trying to. This has been around for a while, but, like, think of weapons to, like, calm people down and like, like, sounds and like, things like, make you feel like you're on fire, but you're not on fire. The department is called the Department of Defense Non Lethal weapons Program. And I, like, believe that. Zero.
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah. I almost did an episode on this, actually.
>> Taylor: Did you? Oh, it's interesting.
>> Farz: So it wasn't on that Department of. Had to do their Cuban thing where a bunch of sound waves caused, like, hemorrhaging in, like, US of mass. I'm absolutely. The fact that we, like, fly B2 bombers over our adversaries. Everybody knows what that is. Means that, like, there's stuff that's, like, beyond our comprehension, that is actually within use.
>> Taylor: I think we said that before. This is, like, just like a whole secret stash of.
>> Farz: Yeah, of course.
>> Taylor: Things we've never seen. So. Another thing. In ancient warfare, there'd be animals. There'd be, like, bears and elephants, which is exciting. There were also grenades. And I'm talking, like, when I say I'm talking, like, the year, like, 100 A.D. it's like the year 100, there were things like grenades, but you would get, like, a clay pot and fill it with, like, either Greek fire, which I'm promising to talk about, or things like bees and scorpions. And you would capture poison scorpions and throw them at other groups. And then the clay pot would shatter, and then the scorpions would just, like, be everywhere.
>> Farz: It was funny. Even when I've, like, hated someone, I've never gotten creative about how I want them to die.
>> Taylor: It's real creative.
>> Farz: Like, I've never gotten that far with it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, they would fill the grenades with and say grenade, but you know what I mean? Like, to fill, like, the pot with shrapnel like we do now. Like, people do that, like, all the time, but fill it with, like, hot, hot nails and things like that. They were also, at one time, some army versus Alexander the Great's army. They filled grenades with sand. That was so Hot. It was like red and molten. And they threw it onto the enemies. It would break and then the hot sand would go into their armor and they would, you know, just be useless and be terrible.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, people are terrible.
There is Greek fire mentioned in the Battle of Syracuse in 212 BC
>> Taylor: You know another one that I learned about another before, they talk about Greek fire. There is in the Battle of Syracuse in 212 BC and also in the latest Indiana Jones movie. Did you see that one? No, I loved it. I don't. I don't know what the popular.
>> Farz: What's the latest? Like, is that when Harrison Ford was 78?
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: Okay. No, I.
>> Taylor: So anyway, the Battle of Syracuse is mentioned in it and Archimedes is there and he's like a philosopher, whatever. But what he did that probably worked in that battle is he had a bunch of mirrors going from like mirror to mirror to sun to sun and caught the boats on fire. In 1973, some Greek scientists attempted to recreate it and it worked. They had 70 different mirrors, like all over, but they caught a boat on fire in like seconds.
>> Farz: That is the thing that MythBusters did. That is what I was thinking about.
>> Taylor: Did it work?
>> Farz: Yeah, it did.
>> Taylor: Yeah. That's really cool.
>> Farz: Like, it's really brilliant.
>> Taylor: Like pretty brilliant. And you, like. And you wouldn't know what the f*** was happening. Like all of a sudden your boat is on fire.
>> Farz: D***. It's cool.
>> Taylor: Coming like the sun.
>> Farz: Metal.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So cool. So, yeah, so that is something that works.
Greek fire is basically a flamethrower from boat to another boat
And so that leads us into Greek fire because we're talking about a boat catching on fire and how f****** dangerous that is. Because if you're on a boat and it catches on fire, your boat is gone and you are going to drown or whatever, be trapped in the fire, like burned to death on a boat. Sounds awful. So Greek fire itself is. It's a mystery what it is actually made of, but essentially it's like a flamethrower from a boat to another boat. And it wasn't like. It wasn't gunpowder. They didn't have that. But it was a flammable liquid gas that would be. You would be able to control how it shoots out of like a. I'll tell you about the mechanism, but she's out of like a tube and catches other boats on fire. And it catches the water on fire. So everything is on fire. It doesn't get doused by water. It is a. It is somehow like petroleum based thing. There's a thing called nafta that is like camp fuel that could have been used in it. That's like very, very, very, very hard to put out. You need, like, vinegar or sand.
>> Farz: Which house sound like the battle like rock. Because I'm pretty sure that that also. Dragon's fire. I think they called it that.
>> Taylor: Also green.
>> Farz: Yeah, that also would work on water.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. So the flamethrower from boat to boat probably made by. There's, like, an engineer who perfected it. I'll tell you about him. But made by, like, you know, it's made in, like, a cool, secret ancient basement by, like, a guy, you know, like when. When. And you're in a movie. Like maybe like in Game of Thrones where you're in, like, a thing and you go to the basement to, like, see your witch or your.
>> Farz: It's literally Game of Thrones. Like, you're living.
>> Taylor: Nero had a witch. Yes, exactly. Like, you go into the basement and there's a guy there and he's like, I got it. And he's, like, kind of burned and, like, kind of smoky. Like, that's. That's exactly what it is. Like, that all happened. We don't know the recipe because it is such a good job of keeping it a secret. So, like, Mythbusters and other people have tried to do it, but we'll never know exactly what it was. Constantine the Great told his family that it was a gift from heaven. He was the first Christian emperor, and he said that an angel told him how to do it. There's other examples of, like, incendiary devices from China and Asia as well. But this is like, the big one. They think that the actual components of whatever Greek fire was, was made of, like, pine SAP from different trees and like the resin and then sulfur and like maybe that Nalpha petroleum based stuff just like other things. And then it catches on fire. Like, as soon as you put a flame to it, it's just like, goes like a lighter and a can of hairspray.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: In movies, so I literally did that.
>> Farz: To a wasp's a** once.
>> Taylor: Did you? Oh, my God. I was thinking the other day how when we were at your house, you and Rachel were trying to secretly kill wasps. And it was really funny because we could see you and you were, like, trying to kill him is normal. So this makes it really difficult to have, like, a sea battle because the water is going to be on fire because whatever it's made out of sits on top of the water and just like a gasoline would. And it's definitely petroleum based. And, like, because they had the natural resources to. To do it, they. It was mostly Used in like, between, like the year 600 and 1500. Which means that the good news is, is that in Greece and in that area, they got to use it against the Crusaders, which I'm all for. I'm all for that. But someone who said one of the descriptions from the seventh Crusade says, quote, the tale of fire that trailed behind it was as big as a great spear and it made such a noise as it came. It sounded like the thunder of heaven. It looked like a dragon flying through the air. Such bright light did it cast that one could see all over the camp as though it were day. By reason of the great mass of fire and the brilliance of light that it shed, it's like a thousand degrees. So in this case, like they, they shot it at a camp, but like, you know, it's a thousand degree whoosh of fire coming at you. It was used in the first Arab siege of Constantinople in 677. So the Greeks being the Byzantine Empire, and in this case the Arabs were the Umayyad, the Umayyad Caliphate. And they burned all of the ships. The Byzantine Emperor Empire just like burned all of the ships for it. Because an engineer named Kalinikos, that's very Greek, he perfected it probably in a dungeon, you know, like you would do.
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: And then they were able to like start using it. So I wish, I feel like, I wish there was like a ton more. But like, the fact is that it's a mystery, which is super exciting. In 1109, they were saying that it was made from again, pine resin sulfur. It burned on water. It. The part of the mystery is that there was like thunder and much smoke which people made. People think that potentially there was gunpowder involved, but gunpowder was not invented yet, so it definitely isn't that. But I think fire itself is just really loud. You know, I don't think that you remember how that fire has like a loud roar until you are, like, in it.
>> Farz: I mean, I think about like the. I keep wanting to say event horizon because we've been texting about event horizon. What is it called? The horizon, the BP guys, the oil well horizon, whatever it's called horizon that was all flames on ocean water. This isn't an inconceivable concept. Can we not. I mean, here's the thing. If you discovered oil, but well oil had no utility right outside of this point, then nobody gives a s*** about it until it finds a commercial value with like internal combustion engines. Like, I don't know, they could discover foil. I mean, this was the Middle east, like they probably.
It takes a couple guys to do it. Okay, here's how it works. So it looks like. Right? So, okay, so
>> Taylor: No, exactly. That's why they. We don't think that there are things like this more north because it didn't have the natural resources to be able to create it.
>> Farz: There you go.
>> Taylor: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Right? So, okay, so it's a liquid. Okay, here's how it works. I'm just gonna tell you. There's a siphon. You're in the boat. It takes a couple guys to do it. One guy. So it looks like. And I'll share a picture with the thing, but it looks like there's a big tub of the actual, like, liquid itself, and it's being heated. So the cauldron being heated below it with, like, a fire. And there's a guy whose job is to stoke the fire with, like, the blowing thing, you know?
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: And then another guy's job is to pump it. So kind of like it looks like a bicycle pump, but, like, that idea. So one guy's pumping, like, air through. Through the. Through the cauldron to push the liquid into another pipe where someone else. So I think it's like three people controls a valve to see how much of the fire goes out. And then there's that match, like a. Of a flame, and then the liquid goes through that flame, and then it fires, and they can move it back and forth. So even Emperor Alexios the first, his siphon nozzles, he had them be lion heads. It's like a lion was spitting fire at you.
>> Farz: So cool.
>> Taylor: Which is kind of cool. And you could aim it and control it fast. It goes like. It's not a perfect weapon because you have to be within 10 meters of the other boat. But once you got them, you got them, you know, like, there's no way to put it out. And then the wind just, like, continues to. To make it. To make it worse. And then later, by the 10th century, Emperor Leo VI, he had, like, overseen the invention of a handheld version of it. So you could literally. It was just like a flamethrower now is just like, gasoline coming out of the thing and the liquid coming out, and you do it. So it's almost exactly like that. And so now we. They say that they use it for, like, you know, clearing vegetation and other things. But I'm like, why would you ever actually need a flamethrower? But if you're really going to go in and, like, burn down a village, like, that's how to do it, you know? And so that was, you know, in the 900s, they were doing that, and then just to kind of like, just to like finish it out. So it kind of went out of fashion and like, you know, that's actually a mystery like exactly what, what it was. But I do think that, you know your boat is on fire. It is sinking. You are on fire. The water is on fire. Like thinking of like all of the people who died that way in the bottom of the ocean. Burning.
>> Farz: Yeah. You know what's sad is made me think about like the fires in Maui and how people ran into the ocean. The ocean was also boiling hot.
>> Taylor: Yeah, that happens in fires all the time. That happened in the fire valley of Tokyo. People went into pools and they're boiled stuff. You know, you like assume that water will be helpful, but it isn't if the water is like hot enough or also on fire because you have that like layer of some sort of petroleum based whatever that is that is like continuing on fire. And then with like the, the napalm which was a step further is that's actually sticky. So what they were doing in Tokyo is like a bomb would go like a bomb would drop and then it would shoot like arrows of napalm everywhere and it would just like splatter over a building and just be fire. Because also examples of other types of fire that just self ignites. So you're like, you have no, you have no chance of getting away from it.
>> Farz: We've done a lot of like explosive episodes. Remember the Devil's Venom?
>> Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: We got into this quite a bit also. What this made me think of is like how we're modern, like you and I and our listeners are modern humans for the most part. And if you were to put us in like the, like if you were to put us with our current knowledge in like the 800s, I couldn't invent this.
>> Taylor: Oh no, no. I think we've talked about this before. I do think we could invent the printing press. That's the only one I think we could invent.
>> Farz: Could you at scale? Could you honestly? Could you?
>> Taylor: I think I could suggest it enough and work with other people to make like. I couldn't explain.
>> Farz: I'm the ideas guy. I'm the ideas guy. You figure out how to make it work. I'm telling you we can do this.
>> Taylor: Telling you this is possible and it's.
>> Farz: Going to change every jobs.
>> Taylor: It's going to change everything. Because I don't, Yeah, I don't think I could like, you know, invent a telephone, but I think I could with a group of people.
>> Farz: Could you invent a flamethrower?
>> Taylor: I Think I could now.
>> Farz: Really? Really, really.
>> Taylor: I think if a couple. A couple tubes and some. Some.
Taylor: I don't know how to create a clock. I have literally no idea how time works
Some really flammable liquid, I think I could do it. I think I could. I think I would start by, like, taking a fire, like a candle, and, like, throwing something.
>> Farz: If you put a gun to my head and said, create a pen, here's all the materials. I couldn't f****** do it. I don't think I could do that. Like, how do I get the fluid, the ink in the tube for one. How do I do that? And then how do I make the ink only release when there's pressure applied?
>> Taylor: I think it has to do with pressure, is how you get it in and out.
>> Farz: I hope that in this hypothetical, I'm stuck with you, Taylor.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God. Someone put us back in time into a dungeon and we'll make weird s***. And even if we don't know what it is, we'll be like, this is a poison. Give it to an enemy.
>> Farz: Like a clock. Would you be able to create a clock?
>> Taylor: Absolutely not. I have literally no idea how time works.
>> Farz: I don't know how it works. We're useless. Useless.
>> Taylor: Absolute. Yeah, that's it. That's all I.
>> Farz: That is fun. It took me way back to the battle of Blackrock. And is it called Blackrock?
>> Taylor: I don't know. I feel like it's. I had a Castle Rock. Everything mentions it because it's like the thing in Game of Thrones, but I haven't. I haven't watched that much Game of Thrones, but I do think that's.
>> Farz: But it sounds like it. I. I do remember the Archimedes thing. That was the one that I watched on.
>> Taylor: Oh, it's in. It says, in Game of Thrones, wildfire is stored in ceramic pots and used in a pivotal naval battle at Blackwater Bay.
>> Farz: Blackwater. Seeing black. Isn't Blackrock an investment group?
>> Taylor: It is. I think they're. They use it in Pirates of the Caribbean. On Stranger Tides, the pirate Blackbeard had a Greek fire. And then it's in some. It's an Assassin's Creed. There's a segment in Constantinople where the player uses Greek fire hand siphon on Ottoman ship.
>> Farz: I will say, like, my general perspective is, like, there's truths. There's truth in myths. Like, a lot of times, like, there's a logic behind why the myth exists. And, like, I don't know. Like, now that you're talking about, we. Like, that makes sense to me. Like, if you found. If you discovered oil. But, like, it's like, what am I gonna do with this? Like, who gives a s***? Like, who cares about oil? It doesn't matter. There's no use.
>> Taylor: Right. We'll just figure it out.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And like, what? Oh, like some dude found it and tripped over it with a candle and he died.
>> Farz: Yeah, exactly. It makes sense to me. Like, I don't.
Taylor: I love creative means of killing people
In my mind, I'm like, it's not a huge mystery. It's not like a weird combination of pine nuts and this and that. It's like somebody just discovered oil because they're in that part of the world anyways.
>> Taylor: And then pine made it sticky.
>> Farz: Maybe, maybe that.
>> Taylor: But yes, but yeah. No, I think yes. You're like, what do I do with this thing then? You're right. I can't. It's not worth what it is worth now for what we use it for now. But I know that I can do it. And like, of course, with everything, you're like, how can we use it to kill each other?
>> Farz: Yeah, that's the first. That's literally where every.
>> Taylor: Defend yourself. But to kill people and, like, do all those things. Exactly.
>> Farz: That's fun. I do love that, that there's always somebody out there thinking about, how can I kill people with this? It's like. Like, with no goals in mind, how do I manipulate this to kill somebody?
>> Taylor: How do I give these scorpions to someone faster and more violently?
>> Farz: It's. It reminds me, Taylor, of, like, that one death penalty they had in ancient days where they would, like, take the condemned and put them in a big old bag, like a potato sack, with, like, a viper, a monkey, a dog, leopard. It's like, who. Who got these animals? Like, how many people died?
>> Taylor: Exactly. Part of it, too. Like, getting the poison off a poison frog is not easy, you know, like.
>> Farz: You killed 20 people to be able to kill this one guy in this insane way.
>> Taylor: Remember in Hook when they put the guy in the boo box and it's full of scorpions?
>> Farz: Yeah, it's stuff like that. It's like, anyways, yeah, that is fun.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Farz: I love. I love creative means of killing people.
>> Taylor: And I love every time we're like, oh, George R.R. martin, just, like, read a bunch of history books, dude.
>> Farz: Which kudos to him. Like that. Like, I didn't know you said it. Like, it's like. It's like, no, totally like, yeah, take all that and repackage it and be creative and come with a really good story.
>> Taylor: Olga of Kev had the red funeral.
>> Farz: Wait, what did Olga.
>> Taylor: Olga of Kiev, when she killed all those people at her husband's funeral. And they called it the Red Funeral.
>> Farz: Oh, my God.
>> Taylor: Remember?
>> Farz: Oh, my God. That's a true story. Wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah. History repeats. Very fun. Very fun.
Just out of curiosity, how did you come up with this topic
Just out of curiosity, how did you come up with this topic?
>> Taylor: I think it was because I was thinking about just like the firebombing, but also I feel like I've heard of Greek Fire and how it was like a mystery. I just was like, is there enough that I can, like, learn more, you know?
>> Farz: That's fair. Yeah. I'll tell you. I'll tell you, like, my topic has nothing to do with this, but I went down an insane web around the Ark of the Covenant.
>> Taylor: Okay. They mentioned the Ark of the Covenant in this Greek Fire book and how, like, there might, like, it did. It did kill people somehow.
>> Farz: Read that for.
>> Taylor: But not like Indiana Jones, but, like, it's potential. That. That was like a toxin in it that, like, makes it hard to be around.
>> Farz: My whole thing was like. It was like, is this real or is it not real? And like, it was like, nobody knows. Like, it could be just totally made up and it could be real and nobody knows. And there's some place in Ethiopia.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: That like thinks they have it or they said they have it. Like, nobody knows. It's fascinating. It's like this old history stuff, which is like, if y' all knew how much we would dwell on this stuff, you probably wouldn't have destroyed it or like, you would have written it down.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I think there's so many things, I feel like in like, Dan Carlin stuff where he's like. It's frustrating because the people writing about these ancient battles skip over a lot because they just assume that you know it.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, like. Oh, like he was dressed, you know, like a. Like a Roman Legion. Great. And then you're like, but what does that mean?
>> Farz: Yeah, I want.
>> Taylor: I want so many more details than that, but there, like, aren't. There aren't any because they assume that you would know. Or it was something that was like accompanied. Like read out loud and accompanied. Like an actor wearing the thing, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So you would. You would have that visual that we. That we're missing.
>> Farz: So. Right. People write. Write stuff down. You know, what we are. The historical metric of this time period. Hi, Miles. You can't hear me, but I'm going to wave. There you go. There we go. It's a wave.
>> Taylor: Pulled out his tooth.
>> Farz: Did he. Did he get anything for that?
>> Taylor: He did. Oh, yeah. The tooth fairy came.
>> Farz: Tooth fairy came.
>> Taylor: Yeah. 10 bucks. Can you believe that? Inflation. Thanks, Obama. 10 bucks from the tooth fairy.
>> Farz: I got, like, maybe one of those, like, horrible Werther's candies for that.
>> Taylor: That's funny. Those are good. Like, one at a time.
The Green Dot is my new favorite YouTube channel for air disasters
Cool. Well, I have. I do have some mail, so I just wanted to tell you that Ben, who I talked about my friend Ben from the Pilot. Pilot. He said. He was like, taylor, call me if you have any plane questions. Because I definitely, like, in my plane crash episode intro the other day, I was like, just talking about it. So he's like, call me if you need anything. There's so much stuff that's happened after Tenerife, like, everything's fine. And then he suggested some shows that I feel like you've probably watched, but Mayday. Air disasters or air crash investigations.
>> Farz: Every single one, both the UK and the American, I've seen.
>> Taylor: I figured. I figured. But I'll watch them. I didn't also want to tell you that we watched no Way up last night with the shark. With the plane crash that turned into the shark attack.
>> Farz: Was that fun?
>> Taylor: It was fun. Everyone. Every character. I was like, but, like. But it was a fun idea.
>> Farz: It was so stupid and so impossible, but, like, I don't know, it was kind of fun.
>> Taylor: I know, like, what. What a day. You're playing your plane crashes and then you get eaten by a shark when.
>> Farz: The scuba divers outside waving at them. And it's like. It's like in the short, it's.
>> Taylor: It's so this is like the scuba divers leg just like, floats past the window and they're like, in the f****** fuselage.
>> Farz: It's very. It's very fun.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: For a free movie. It's great.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly.
>> Farz: Thank you, Ben. Thank you for writing in. I will. The Green Dot is my new favorite YouTube channel for air disasters. Mostly because, like, they actually. They don't do this thing that, like, Mayday does, which is like, they tell you everything that happens. And then they tell you the why. They tell you the why. As the sequence of events were unlocking. Like, every other. Every other plane show is like, this plane took off with this many pastures on a holiday to whatever. And then it crashed. And this, that. And then. Did you know they use this metric. The Green dot doesn't do that. Green dot starts like. Yeah, they loaded the plane up and they used a different measure of unit. Unit of measurement for fuel capacity and the plane took off. And at this point, like, it just tells you sequentially what's actually happening instead of just like paying a Story.
>> Taylor: Cool. I subscribed.
>> Farz: It's awesome. And also the fact that like it's one guy doing it in the production values as good as it is, it's incredible.
Taylor: I love ancient history stuff. I'm also reading a lot of like romantic fantasy books
So anyways, is that it for the Sir Mail?
>> Taylor: Yeah, well, I have another one, but I'm going to do another episode. I only have two.
>> Farz: Well, thank you for sharing, Taylor. I love ancient history stuff, so. And you brought a lot of memories back of Black Castle Rock, whatever it's called. So thank you.
>> Taylor: I'm also reading a lot of like romantic fantasy books these days and it also is all like medieval warfare kind of. You know what I mean? Like ancient warfare, but also there's magic and sometimes dragons and everyone is in.
>> Farz: Love, which is dope because like, if you think about fiction, a lot of those people who are like super well learned when they write fiction, like they're pulling on historical stuff, right? Yeah. You learn something, they're making up like the events and stuff. Like the, the fundamentals are probably being pulled from real reality. So.
>> Taylor: From somewhere. Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: Sweet.
>> Taylor: Cool. Cool. If you do have more plane crash calming words, we're at jim to philpodmail.com we have a Patreon doom to failpod and all socials at jim to failpod.
>> Farz: Green dot on YouTube. Right. To us. For the love of God. If you're listening to this, I'm your.
>> Taylor: I'm looking at like the, the. What is it called? Like the, like the images for the YouTube videos. Just like the still images and one of them just has like a plain nose down to the ocean. It says. My God. So cool. Excited to get into that.
>> Farz: They know how to get you to click. But I'm telling you, like, fundamentally from someone who's watched a lot of this stuff, it is great content support.
>> Taylor: I guess. Five days ago was the 40th anniversary of the JPL 123. You did that one, right?
>> Farz: JPL. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Seriously? It's been that long?
>> Taylor: Yeah. So let's see. Well, if you want to learn about that one. I don't know how I got here, but if you want to learn about the Japan.
>> Farz: Yeah. That's when the, the stabilizer wing got blown off because. Oh, you know what? I'm spoiling it. Never mind.
>> Taylor: Yep. That is episode 205, so not the longer.
>> Farz: June.
>> Taylor: Cool. Thanks everyone. Thanks.
>> Farz: Sweet. We'll go ahead and cut off there.