We're back on Volcanoes! Join us for the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelée on the Caribbean Island of Martinique. An "important" mayoral election is scheduled in St. Pierre ("The Paris of the West Indies") for May 11th, and the Government wants it to go off without a hitch. Unfortunately, Mt. Pelée has other ideas. Starting on April 23rd, ash starts falling from the sky. Over the next few days, boiling mud barrels down the mountainside, along with giant centipedes, snakes, and ants. The election never happens, as almost every one of the 30,000 people in St. Pierre will die by 8:02 am on May 8th. This is actually the eruption that helped scientists understand pyroclastic flow - before this, we didn't really know what had happened in places like Pompeii and Herculaneum. It's beyond horrible. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
We're back on Volcanoes! Join us for the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelée on the Caribbean Island of Martinique. An "important" mayoral election is scheduled in St. Pierre ("The Paris of the West Indies") for May 11th, and the Government wants it to go off without a hitch. Unfortunately, Mt. Pelée has other ideas. Starting on April 23rd, ash starts falling from the sky. Over the next few days, boiling mud barrels down the mountainside, along with giant centipedes, snakes, and ants. The election never happens, as almost every one of the 30,000 people in St. Pierre will die by 8:02 am on May 8th.
This is actually the eruption that helped scientists understand pyroclastic flow - before this, we didn't really know what had happened in places like Pompeii and Herculaneum. It's beyond horrible.
The Day the World Ended: Thomas, Gordon, Morgan-Witts, Max: 9780812885101: Amazon.com: Books
Geology Scene Investigation: Death by Volcanic Fire - Scientific American Blog Network
The volcano that destroyed St. Pierre 1902 - Doyle Guides
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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
[Music] in a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow
americ and not we'll go ahead and kick things off
welcome to doomed to fail the podcast where we cover a historic and or True Crime episode about two things that were
brought together that were doomed to fail although format of this show tends to Pivot and change based on the whims
that Taylor and I have but we're glad you're here and we're very Whimsical uh so I'm far
joined here by Taylor we're recording kind of late on a Sunday because I've been gallivanting around the town and
Taylor's been working on her outline how you doing Taylor good I am good I am um tired
yesterday was a big day it was Florence's birthday she turned nine and we had a big party so it was super fun
but it was a lot of work and uh but nice to see all of her cute little friends
and they had a great time nine years ago I came to your apartment on in Los fiz
with Adam Stone it was right when you came home with Flo and I had just gotten
back from my Australia trip oh so you give her that little kiwi yeah actually
it wasn't when y'all just gotten when yall just gotten FL y'all been you had flow back for like a couple weeks I forgot that trip to Australia was like
six seven weeks long and so I was kind of like the last one to see her but that's crazy nine years ago wild yes
it's bananas um wild I apparently have
adopted a geriatric texed me what happened so I've
been texting with Blair so I like about five six days ago I was driving home and
I saw this dog and it looked like an old Chihuahua that was having a hard go of it and it ran across the street and I
saw my car but my windows were down and Luna was in the car and I was going to try and coax the dog towards you and I figure out if they had a tag or whatever
else and Luna started barking and scared the [ __ ] out of the dog and sent her running and so I was like well so so
whatever I I took a picture of her and posted to all the socials and was like whoever is missing a dog I found it here
I don't have it so on and so forth yesterday I was driving the exact same route home and the dog ran across the
street I was without Luna so I got out and got the dog and so I messaged with Taylor's
sister Blair who works for awesome Pets Alive which is an amazing nonprofit that takes care of animals a no kill shelter
an adoption agency and I was like what do I do with this
dog and she basically recommended I just poster wherever I can and also you know
to to to hopefully try and find the owner I got a text this morning from someone saying that five weeks ago their
dog went missing it looks just like this one and then the more I looked at the markings on I was like and I ran by
Blair and she was like this isn't the same dog like they look very similar but it's clear that like there's like parts are marking that are off I was like okay
and she was also like 5 weeks a dog like that isn't going to survive for five weeks so on its own yeah so yeah um so I
don't know I have it I went and got it groomed today because it smelled awful and this thing's been glued to me all
day long so that's where I'm at well that's nice of you so yeah we'll see
we'll see what happens do you want a dog it had I absolutely do not want a dog no
okay Blair Blair does enough animal stuff for my family and so I feel like
that cancels out my like E I definitely like got mad at work this week because people were talking about like jokingly
having cats in the office and I was like that's dumb and also having dogs in the office is gross and people hate when I
come up with that that hot take but like it's gross you're going to let a dog walk outside in Culver City and then in
the office and then in your home e there's um besides the fact that I'm to
them not every opinion has to be shared like there are thought like I don't
share every opinion I have I know um but I just I feel
sometimes that I need to share it because people just like assume that you'll be like super excited to have a dog in the office and I'm like no that's
gross and I need to know because I'm gonna get sick if I'm in the office with a dog you know okay the allergy thing is real the allergy thing I wouldn't take
Luna to the office not because I think there's anything wrong with taking your dog into the office I wouldn't take Luna to the office because Luna's a [ __ ]
huge monstrous freak who would just cause Mayhem and would distract everyone
from work so oh my God and then there's like sometimes like more than one dog and they bar each other I'm just like
what are we doing it's thing should we're grown up so you should leave leave your pets at home anyway it is a thing
um hot takes by Taylor dogs are terrible apparently but that's how I feel about
it but you know whatever but my sister you know and takes care of dogs yeah Blair
does enough for this the entire Clan so exactly let's go ahead and Dive Right In
um I think you go first this time Taylor so I'm going to right what you do go
first I didn't hear you what did you say I do go first yeah yeah yeah okay okay so my drink is obalon obalon obalon
obalon which is the most popular beer in
Ukraine which is where my story takes place cool but I'm actually drinking a voodo rang right now because I don't I
don't I'm not in Ukraine I know it looks like I'm in Ukraine but I'm actually yeah cool cool cool cool um I
want to wa I want to open up my canned water first what kind of canned water is that I have it's from T Jo it's not that
good is it flavored no this one's just plain um I'm actually physically
drinking some Honey whiskey because my claim to fame as at Florence's birthday party cuz her birthday is in October and
last year it was freezing we we tried to watch a movie outside for her party and like we couldn't do it it was so cold
and this year it was hot like I got kind of sunburned like hot you I have a little bit of a tan like hot as balls um
but either way both years I made spiced apple cider for the grown-ups and they [ __ ] people love it and it's just like
really fun so we drank it even though it was hot yesterday and so I'm drinking some honey um whiskey that I have left
over from that um recipe um but for the sake of my
story we're going to the French colony of martinque in the early 1900s so I
looked up a martinque CO cocktail and nobody can agree what is in it but let's just like drink rum and say it's rum and
it's also like that RAM on fire because we're returning to the ring of fire for volcanoes part five
whoa exciting I don't know this one I don't know what what I mean you're you're getting out out of my zone of
knowledge on volcano at this point I know and oh my God so I also so I I know
that it's Hall Halloween and I was going for spooky things so I did start doing the research for an episode on Shirley
Jackson and her husband Stanley because I think it's really fascinating I don't know if it's spooky I can't really
figure out how to talk about it yet so I'm putting that on the back burner and just went to this one because this one
is creepy we're talking about the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelle in martinque it
killed 29,000 people in St Pierre which was at the time the Paris of the West
Indies and it's creepy because there's a lot of politics involved which is actually the doomed part there's the
politicians doomed these people to death and there are bugs there's a lot of bugs
like terrifying bugs so we're going to get to that but politics and bugs are my creepy things for spooky season sweet
sound good I'm in okay so let's recap our volcanoes if anyone's just like picking it up here um I'm inexplicably
doing a seven-part series on volcanoes and we've learned so much and so to of recap the volcanoes that we've gone
through um part one was Mount Toba that erupted 70,000 years ago it had a Volcan
volcanic explosivity index of eight which is Ultra plinian Mega
colossal the world was destroyed so that's the whole yeah the whole point of that one is only like a handful of
humans survived and we're all from those humans that's where we learned a lot about human evolution then we learned a lot about
the Roman Empire because we went to vvus in 79 ad um that was a vei of five which
is a plinian cataclysmic and as we know about like 3,000 people died in the city
of Pompei more in herculanum um and because they were covered in the Ash and
preserved we get to see a lot of color of the Roman Empire so we actually get a lot of really cool things from that from that disaster then we went to mount
Tambora in 1815 that was a vei of seven an ultra plenum Ultra colossal and that
one was A Year Without a summer where um the Mary sh there was yeah Mary shell
wrote Frankenstein there was no sun the next summer the whole world saw it I me didn't know it was happening because
they didn't have any way to communicate so just like the sky was red in places and it was weird like they didn't really
know why and that kind of affected art and the way people lived lives next we had katoa in 1883 that was a vii6 which
is a plinian SL Ultra plinian colossal like very similar words but whatever but
that one was really big as well and affected the weather and a lot of people died in that one from like residual effects like tsunamis um and not being
able to to grow crops that was also something with Tambora as well so this
one we're actually all over the VII index which is very exciting this one is a vii4 Mount Pelle erupted in 1902 and
it was a plinian subplinian catastrophic so that's what we're going to talk about today so it's not the one
that can like destroy the Earth like the like Toba and it didn't affect the weather all over the world that Kato TOA
or Tambora but it did obviously kill a [ __ ] ton of people on this island it's recent it's kind of
recent yeah it's kind of recent so Mount Pelle is in on the Caribbean
island of martinque and I when I was first I listened to oh my my main source
I listened to is a book called the day the world ended and um by Gordon Thomas
and Max Morgan witz and also a couple articles that I'll share but when they
first talk about it this part of the Ring of Fire which is the ring of volcanoes that kind of goes um around
from like Australia Indonesia up Asia around Alaska down to the bottom of
South America you know what I mean like this side of the Earth right and um and
it ends with Mount Terror and in Antarctica crazy just everything that I
do is connected so that's cool right Jesus the end of this line is Mount Tera
we talked about last week I know the H yeah yeah so in 1902 Marique was a
French Colony France was in the midst of the French third Republic which was from 1870 to 1940 in 1902 the president of
the French Republic was Emil Lu and the Prime Minister was Emil K doesn't really matter but like just they were kind of
there being Colonial and that was what was happening in France there were huge racial racial divides in martinque
obviously and they were still pretty strictly governed by France obviously like slavery had been abolished you know
50 years before this but what there was no equality obviously you know right
that's whole thing most people on my Island are very religious they're Catholic and a little bit of like
African religions that that came over during um during the slave trade so some people are like what we would call creel
you know they're like black people who speak French they're a little voodoi they're also like kind of Catholic so
kind of all of those mixtures of of religions and superstitions are like mixed into what the people are like going through at this time
so yeah just to say like some of the other volcanoes that we've talked about and all volcanoes of all of history that
we don't know about and the future be a lot of praying and a lot of like trying to make the bad things stop happening um
oh I meant to say I want to look it up but I think Pelle is the Hawaiian God of volcanoes he's also like a really fam
player I know I'm really having a hard time not saying Pele but I'm pretty sure it's Pelle he just died didn't he um
Pelle God of oh yeah it's SP differently than Pelle yeah uh Pelle is the Hawaiian
goddess of volcanoes and fire she created the the Hawaiian island so that's that's where it gets the name and
that's a pretty like standard volcano um you know person that people
think about so any Martin Martin neek looks like absolute
Paradise I mean yeah all Caribbean islands are so beautiful yeah so nice
wow yeah so pretty so oh also I was just going to say that before this before the
French got there the people were the carobs which we should probably talk about someday because I don't know anything about them like I don't
anything about the people the indigenous people of the Caribbean but maybe we'll get there someday but those people
remembered that um Mount Pelle had erupted in the past like ancient past
that was like in their in their storytelling but the people who lived there in 1902 also knew that there had
been minor earthquakes in 1792 and in 1851 so it had like kind of rumbled
before and like potentially a little min eruptions like stuff had happened in the past um like recent past but they
weren't expecting it to like erupt erupt anytime soon and this was this was at the point when that one guy that you
already covered had not talked about tectonic plates having being a thing right okay so nobody knew was we didn't
know about yeah no one knew what was happening we don't know anything about tanic plates officially until like the 1960s so we're like we're pretty before
this um yes so the book I read had some really good stories I think they might be a little bit out of order but they're
like fun little anecdotes that I'm going to get to the eruption technically started in on April
23rd 1902 and didn't actually stop until 1905 so there were like Rumblings in the
volcano for like two years so it was like a whole thing but the really really really bad thing happened on May 8th
1902 so before we get there on April 23rd 1902 it started to Ash and the ash
smells like sulfur so you know like it's scary Ash coming from from coming from the sky like 2 years ago when there were
all of those really really bad fires in California and like the sky by Me was like bright red and we thought we might
have to leave it rained Ash here like very lightly but it was weird it's like weird snow but it's like ash yeah and
that was happening a lot coming from the volcano it starts to choke people the first things to die are animals because
they're around outside all the time you know and they're not really protected from the elements so the first living creature to die from this eruption was a
horse like have that so poor thing the government doesn't worry yet they're
like you know it's a volcano it's going to like spit up some ash sometime it's probably fine and they don't do anything
they do eventually send people up there on the 27th and they went they kind of go up to the top and they're like you know we hear this bubbling it sounds
like boiling water and it smells terrible up here like yeah dude it's a volcano you should leave but they don't
they're like it's probably fine and they leave Ash continues to fall more steadily there are some Villages that
are like closer to the volcano and then there's a big city the city of St Pierre a little bit further away but like The
Villages are like covered in Ash like a light white powder kind of all over everything and it's hard to breathe for
everyone all animals and all people Taylor what would you what would
you think about an office policy where you don't you're not allowed to bring dogs but you are allowed to bring
miniature ponies I don't know can you put stuff on the ponies like Selzer water carts could
they pull out like a Selzer water cart on the office yeah hey were you the who told me about the wedding they went to
where they had like donkeys walking around and they had like like tequila shots on the Saddles would they that
wasn't me but I love that no but I think that's great yeah okay so we're pro so
maybe that also maybe we can make dog do that so then then I would feel maybe that they were a little more more tarian
than tarian I think utilitarian is a word you're utilitarian you were so
close so close then then then maybe yes I like it I like that idea I get
somewhere yeah thank God we sreed that away cool me too so we're g to stop the
timeline for a second and talk about politics so like why didn't people just start leaving like first it's like yes
it'd be hard to totally evacuate a city there's 30 30,000 people there you know it be hard to totally evacuate but the
governor of martinque specifically wanted people to stay so the governor's name was Louie Mo
motet m o u t t mot probably he was a leftwing progressive basically he was a
white dude from France and what that really meant at the time was that he wanted to maintain the status quo like he wanted France to continue to like be
in charge of martinque and he wanted to really keep that happening Lial that's what they were
called at the time and then the radicals were the people who wanted like the um
the the black population to have more rights things like that so that's the way they were called at just at this
time um and there was an election on May 11th it was to be for the the um like
the technically the mayor of St Pierre and it was a runoff election there were there was a threeway three three-way
race that ended up with two people so there was two plantation owners running
for running for mayor there was a man named Amad Knight he was a black PL
Plantation owner and he was the first black man to hold those kind of posts and he was the one who was like more of
like the radical quote unquote like trying to get more power for like the largely um like black and mixed
population and then there's also Ferdinand Clerk and clerk was a member of the Progressive Party and that um
progressiveness means like more France he was a rich white
owner um a very proper man church member Wikipedia I think or ar red said he's
like really straight laced you know so there's these two men kind of different but it's a really important election and
that's why the governor Martinique doesn't Evacuate the city because he needs the election to happen it's really stupid it's a really
really you can you can you can call emergency elections like it's not
impossible to [Music] do yeah and so the governor also told
the newspaper that was called L Colones um that everything was fine and so they were printing articles that were like we
don't need to leave everything's fine you know like there's no there's no vulcanologist there's no scientists who are actually like there's no
volcanologist at all at this time in existence but also like there's no scientists being consulted the governor
is just like it's probably fine and we've really need people to stated to do this so some people did leave and they
did they did manage to get out because they were worried but those were the people who like had the means to be able to do that you know and the the the
foresight and like weren't afraid and or were afraid enough to leave you know and weren't afraid to get in trouble for
leaving all that and um they sometime in some cases they physically stopped
voters from leaving with like armed guards they wouldn't let people leave until the election on May 11th we don't and the city does not survive to May
11th like there is no election the governor goes to um St Pierre with his wife just to prove how certain he is
that nothing bad is going to happen and their bodies are never found like they don't make it like no one makes it so it
was just terrible terrible decisions but before we even get to May 8th which is like the really bad day there's some
stuff that's happening the rivers that are coming from the top of like the volcanic Mountain are boiling and
bubbling over and there are Boulders and dead animals and like carcasses of
humans as well just like flowing down from the mountain from the top of the mountain there's a woman watches how
early before the explosion was this a couple days see you remember that whole thing that
you and Juan agreed to where it's like Juan there were human teeth falling in the kitchen we need to leave it's like
this is like one of those things where it's like you don't have to understand you don't need to be a volcanologist it's like dude the water we drink is
boiling and like there's corpses everywhere like I don't know what's happening and I don't really need to know I need to get the [ __ ] out of here
yeah I know it's just like really really bad so people did start leaving those there were like little Villages that were closer to the top and they they
left they went to St Pierre as a big town for help talk about that in a second like what that what that looks like so um one woman reported watching
her father try to like get the horses to Safety in their Village and then her
father and the hores just get swept away in this like boiling Wood River and she never sees them again so just like
horrible like just like just little Villages being totally destroyed while the refugees from those places are
headed to St Pierre which is like the big The Big Town there's a story of a young couple planning their engagement
party and she's like very Posh and she won't leave because there's supposed to be a big Governor's Ball on May 7th and
she really wants to go to it and so she's like he's like we need to leave and she's like no I'm not going to leave
like and if you loved me you would take me to this Governor's Ball and her parents are like telling him that he has
to stay and he's like I can't like I have to go he and he leaves like they're not um it's like a weird engagement time
where she's like thinks that the engagement is called off and she's being super dramatic and all these things and
he leaves and and eventually he gets off the island he's like one of the only
people to leave like before it happens and he never sees her her family again like they obviously die and he remained
a bachelor until he died in the 1940s that's S I was I was actually hoping that he ended up marrying someone much
smarter than his fiance him and his fiance should have had the conversation you and Juan had yeah totally so um there's also a
funeral procession for a man this is a couple days before when the rivers are overflowing and boiling a and as the
funeral procession is carrying the casket over a bridge the bridge gets washed washed away and 40 people
disappear including the casket so 40 people die in that at a funeral which is
terrible and so these things are happening all over and like it's not
really being necessarily communicated with everyone in the island that this is happening but the people who are seeing it are walking like the miles over to St
Pierre keep in mind there's a man in a jail cell awaiting execution he can hear
and smell that things are aren't quite right and he can hear the Gallows being constructed we'll get back to him but
think but there's a man in jail um around May 5th the heat at the top of
the mountains is getting so intense that um the like the animals and the life at
the top of the volcano need to escape and guess what comes with
that bird droppings no it's bugs it's so many bugs so what
kind of bugs are you talking about I'm going to tell you it's terrible okay so there's a there's a
sugar company a Sugar Factory and then some stuff I've read said it was a rum Factory it's probably a little bit of both um called the Garen sugar works had
a family living there and all of their servants and then the people who were working at the Sugar Factory it was like
a little bit up the mountain there's some internal stuff going on on the morning of May 5th there's the men are
about to go on strike because they don't like they're not sure if they should be working because there's like ash falling from the the sky it's like that thing
that we're talking about before last week with the terror like if you're at work and a disaster happens you like
don't know what to do but like you should leave you know who cares if you're in trouble at work like you should go but people aren't sure what to
do um there's servants kind of running around there's about 150 people there so
first the bugs come millions of ants huge and mean ants come streaming down
the hill and this had actually happened in 1851 with like the little tiny eruption that happened before and people
reported huge balls of ants just like barreling down the mountain they had like all congregated together and they
were like rolling down the mountain back in 1851 they literally ate babies like the ants would like get into people's
houses and like eat their babies as they're trying to escape the mountain so it's these same ants coming down they're in the Sugar Sugar Factory they're in
the main house and then with the ants come footlong centipedes okay now you
got me and they're poisonous yep you got they're a foot long they're black they're poisonous
they're running in they're terrifyingly creepy weird centipede way all over they're in the house they're running up
people's clothes they're hiding in beds they're in the closets so the the the servants in the house are like hitting
it with pans in the Sugar Factory they're pouring pouring boiling sugar on them they're you know putting oil all
over the ground trying to like get them to slip around they are everywhere so they're just anything anything they get
their hands on they're they're fighting back eventually the bugs you know the
bugs keep going and the the bug problem dissipates and I think it's the owner of
the sugar plant leaves or like someone leaves which is how we know this happened but as soon as they leave then
the boiling mud comes so these people who just fought off these like horrendous horrendous bugs are now
fully covered in boiling hot mud 120 feet of mud cover the whole Factory the
only thing that's left is a little bit of the chimney poing out of the top so you can only hope that those people died instantly cuz 150 people died there on
the worst day [ __ ] ever yeah it's awful uh those centipedes are Terri
looking I'm not gonna look at them I hate my my kids know I don't like centipede so my son will like throw this
like fake centipede at me sometimes and I hate it it's a I hate to in in when we live in Queens we had
house centipedes which have like really long legs everywhere and like oh my God they like run so fast and I just hate everything about them I can't even
imagine those are scary looking but they're not going to hurt you the the giant desert ones or the ones that are
Martinique that I saw Pi so those are the ones that'll they'll ruin your month like some people can die it's like yeah
it's terrible so yeah imagine you just fought those off and then you get killed with a bunch of like boiling mud like 5
seconds later just absolutely the worst um in the meantime there's also a shock
wave the shock wave that comes from like I don't know the internal stuff happening underground kills a ton of
fish so dead fish are like coming up on the shores they don't really know why that's happening yet and the shock wave
also breaks their underwater cable do you know how we talked about the underwater cable yeah do you think
during this time someone's doing voter registrations door Todo yeah yes I do the whole time cuz
they they're printing out they're printing out um like flyers that say
everything is fine don't forget the election is on the 11th like they're literally doing that like the newspaper is printing out things like on behalf of
the governor so yes someone is doing that W um so yeah so they're underground
cable braks so they're cut off for most of the world because of this um and
because we talked about the underwater cables last time like that was how we knew about katoa so that's how we would
have known more about this we didn't because the cables broke so
now some of the villages that are are the people who are like closer who are seeing these boiling
mud slides who are you know seeing these bugs seeing these terrible things it's covered in Ash the animals are all dying
some of the people leave some of them don't so there's like one town where or a couple towns that got like the the
Avalanche of the boiling mud and they went on a rescue mission to go find them and the people were so badly burned but
they were still alive they were just like goo in the corner of their houses you know like people were just like absolutely destroyed um homes were burnt
to the ground people and animals were just like dead and dying everywhere in these small villages and everybody who
was able to escape went to St Pierre so more people are going to like the big town but like all the villages that are
close to it have all been destroyed and the people have been like burned to death lovely yeah so now St Pierre is overrun
with people like there's too many people the town so because thousands of people have come from The Villages which totally makes sense they're trying to
find safety somewhere else so the government does like bring in food carts and like try to get people food but they
don't have enough food to survive for like much for like the long term like this and people are like sleeping on the streets they're like more than people
are overcrowding hotels and houses and stuff they're just trying to find somewhere to go because they can't go to their Villages anymore um the
infrastructure is like about to crack there's a story of like a bull got free so a bull was like charging around the
middle of the town and then someone finally shot it and got it to stop and as soon as they shot it like people just
like swarmed it and hacked it up and took the meat away like really fast because everybody was starving because like they didn't have any food you know
so that's happening in in the midst of the Ash and the sulfur and these boiling mud slides that you know are coming um
and then guess what else comes from the mountain uh lava
snakes Jesus this doesn't stop does it there's no there's a snake called a fur delance
it's it's venomous and it's everywhere they're pit vipers and they um normally
give off 100 I like read this and then I stopped reading it and I lost where I was reading it but they give out like
150 pieces of poison like milliliters or whatever of poison um with each bite and
it only takes 50 to kill you so while this is happening people are getting are dying because of the snakes because
they're getting bit by all the these snakes are coming down from the mountains yeah this is a scary looking
snake and there so these snakes are invading the city and then guess who
comes to the rescue chrisopher Columbus Elon cats no cats cat of course
of course cats so cat then there's all these battles between cats and snakes and the cats would like pretend to be
dead and the snake would come over and then the snack would be like the cat would be like and like grab it did you
see I saw I saw yeah exactly I saw an insta
video of cats [ __ ] with snakes because apparently the reflexes of a cat
are like it's crazy it's like point one is like 0.1 second it can react the other's
0. n and so cats [ __ ] with stinks because they know they'll never catch them because a stin lunging at it and
trying to bite it will it'll always be able to react faster than that is that crazy wow that's crazy what
fun yeah so yeah so the snakes were killed by the cats which is horrifying
um this been like just like just horrifying can't imagine that what that looks like but um so that's happening in
town overcrowded all these crazy things are happening and in the meantime there are some ships in the harbor trying to
figure out what to do so they're like telegraphing like you know France in in ways that kind of through America um
someone telegraphed Teddy Roosevelt he's a president of the US and is like we think something weird is happening um but in France they're like not doing
anything about it they're like let's just see what happens it's probably probably going to be fine but like for absolutely no reason and yeah but what
are you supposed to do about it it's well you're supposed to get everybody out that's what you're supposed to do I know can they go to the
island you're supposed to be like um the ships yeah can anybody actually go yeah
you at this point yes it's like May 5th and 6th like people could have technically gotten some people out and
some people do so like all the steam MERS ships that were in there like they were all totally full like the people
who had the means and opportunity were able to leave same thing in Pompei you know same thing with like all disasters
if you if you have somewhere to go you can go but most people didn't leave like
because they you know we told it was okay because like at some point like I said like people wouldn't let voters
leave you know so things like that but some people did get to go but not enough but they should have tried to get
everybody out but they didn't and that would have been really hard but they could have at least tried now they didn't do um there's a little bit of
water like mini tsunamis and like waves happening unfortunately there's like an orphanage that was in the path of like
another big water and all the kids drowned like super sad like a bunch of um things like that happen um in the
meantime the governor and his wife they come to St Pierre on May 7th and they're like everything's fine they plan to have a Governor's Ball um on the night of the
May 7th but they finally canceled it because things were so crazy in town but they should have just had it they should have just like had a banger cuz no one
lived in till the next day you know that was your last night on Earth you should have had the ball you should have spent all the money done all the things so
that's May 7th a lot of people in town a lot of people have died so far Ash
everywhere there's rumbling all the things and then the big thing happens on May 8th and what's the big thing that
kills people oh it's it's it's the ash falling
down and burning everyone to death yep it's pyroclassic flow day that's the day
that everyone died and this eruption is the reason that we
know what a pyroclastic flow is we didn't know what they were until this because no one had actually seen it
before and like written it down so they knew that Pompei was there and they had
been Excavating it since 1700s but they didn't know what had happened like they
didn't know about the the hot ash they didn't know that the people were burns the way they were burned like they didn't know any of these things um until
um m p erupted like there were bodies and Bones in Pape but we didn't know what had happened because of this we know and it
is awful just absolutely [ __ ] hell
awful um so it's May 8th 1902 it's Ascension Day and many people are at
church it's just before 8:00 a.m. and mount P erupts the pyroclastic flow
comes barreling down the mountain at 100 miles hour It sped down toward the city
of St Pierre black heavy glowing hot it had super heated steam volcanic gases
and dust the temperatures exceeded over a th000 degrees and under a minute it covered the city and instantly
everything that could be on fire was on fire and everyone who was alive was either dead immediately or horrifically
burned there were some ships in the harbor that watched this happen at
802 uh a ship sent a telegraph um like offsite to whoever
would listen that said St Pierre destroyed by Pelle eruption send all assistance so in 2 minutes the city's
gone and everybody in it is gone um some of the ships that were in the harbor
immediately sunk because they didn't stop when it hit the water you know it kept going so the ships caught on fire sunk immediately everybody died others
have stories where they were like on their boats and they were so badly burned they couldn't recognize each other one guy was down in the hall he
had like kind of covered himself with like blankets and like tried to hide from it but the heat was so intense that everything that wasn't covered with like
clothing was burned so it's all the skin on his hands were burned off and he had to steer the boat out of the harbor
using his elbows because like he could and there was and he was the person who could do the most because everybody was
just so badly burned when sailor saw someone he couldn't recognize realized it was his captain went to get help and
never saw the captain again he presumes the captain just jumped overboard because his Burns were so intense like you couldn't any going into salt waterer
[ __ ] with your skin peeling off nope I would just I would just myself to
drown I would literally just breathe water immediately yeah the city was enveloped
in fire the city of St Pierre there was hot mud raining from raining from the air there's Ash and smoke everywhere
because there's also tons of fires after the after the flow when Rescuers did get there people were so badly burned and
people that were still alive they had like no eyes no tongues no hair no
clothes everything was burned off and their skin was just like abs abolutely as burned as humanly possible um a lot
of people were like moaning and screaming for water but they couldn't drink water because their throats were burned closed so they could like kind of
like make noises and like breathe out of their nose with like their they couldn't drink anything and so they would put
they like would bring brought like ice chips from some ship and would put ice chips in people's mouths until they died
because they couldn't help them and nothing that they could do but they were like moaning and like desperate for water or anything um in and in total
anywhere from 28,000 to 30,000 people died so that was mostly everybody in in
the town a couple people that they talked to who like they were like what happened what do you remember they were like I felt a wall of heat and then
that's all they remember and then they would die like they just like didn't that that that that was it it was just like the heat just like incinerated
everyone so fast um it was so awful um there was a Survivor do you
remember the dude that was in jail I talked about oh yeah he was about he was the GS were getting built uh yep so he
on May 7th the night before for this he had gotten into a fight at the at a bar and was in jail and all through May 7th
they were trying to figure out whether or not they wanted to execute him because it was like would affect the election in one way or the another
probably because he was like a black guy who had stabbed someone allegedly and you know all this tension because the
election and also the volcano is erupting so they had him in jail in like a subterranian jail cell he had like a
um so he didn't have any windows or anything he heard the boom Oh his name was ludgar silaris and he heard the boom
he saw the smoke he stuffed his took off his clothes and stuffed them under the door and this is super super smart he
peed on them to try to make sure the ash didn't get through so he like made them wet which is what you're supposed to do
put wet towels underneath the door if you're like in a place from the windows you know I think that was smart but he
still got really badly burned like it's still the heat itself like it's not even the fires just like the heat like still
burned his body they found him 4 days later he was like yelling under the rubble and he was like the only person
that they found he ended up um he ended up
becoming a a celebrity and traveling around the world with Barnum and Bailey and he lived the rest of his life in
that like he would his job was to be in a cell that looked just like the cell he was in in martinque and tell people what
happened he was known as the man who lived through doomsday and he said the rest of his life as like a circus bore
which is wild the best so the best thing that ever that he ever did for himself was stab that man in the
bar yep go nuts guys Follow Follow Your Passion that saved his life yeah so the
city of St Pierre was gone um the there's another city that is now the the
capital of martinque and um they did a little bit of rebuilding but you know that City itself was never never rebuilt
um you know and really like that's it and I think it's a doomed story of
people wanting to keep up appearances to like go through with like work stuff you
know like the election and I'm sure people were like I can't take the day off like things like that that I feel like are such human at things that
you're like what if this person's mad at me if I leave town and you're like literally who cares just leave but it's hard to do that like in the moment you
know so yeah um and all caps don't stay don't stay at work when terrible things
happen but it's one of the one of the most devastating ones directly from the
volcano explosion itself cuz like the other ones a lot of people died from like climate change um and like not being able to make enough food and
tsunamis but this one was just that that flow that hot ash the volcano um
destroying the city eventually like it it was kind of erupting for two years and it erupted kind of up so now it has
like a spike coming out of the top of it somehow from like the way that the that the lava like um like kind of dried and
froze at the top because there was like a little bit of lava but mostly it's like that heat and that Ash from these like it's not going to like go 100 miles
and hit into the air and hit the trade winds and and you know be seen in other places but um if you're close enough to
it like you're GNA die an absolutely horrible death I mean at least it's quick that's it that's that's that's
where I'm ending that at the very least it's fast at the
very least like you're not suffering through it for ages for some people I mean some of those people that like were still alive like like it's kind of what
you hear after like the atomic bombs you know where there's people who are like just like their skin is melted off you
know and they're like they don't know what to do and they're like walking around like Dazed And Afraid you know and then they die eventually but like in
the meantime yeah all those like it's so terrible so um yeah that's a big one and
I hadn't really I hadn't heard about that one and I guess in my pre volcanologist life I hadn't heard about
that one and now now we know um I have two more volcanoes I'm going to do mounted Helens in from the 1980s and
then um I'm going to do a real intense one on what will happen when you finally erupts oh that's one I think the world
ends most excited for that'll be awesome so I'll finish it before the end of the year before the end of the year but I
figured we could fold this into into October because um of the bugs of the big centipedes and the snakes giant
snakes giant centipedes they count for a lot uh I in the middle of your well
researched discussion about this volcano was looking up the foods in
martinque and man they look good they look good I bet yeah it's like it's very
like it's very like sauce based rice based it is a little Louisiana viby but
with like a tropical flare given all the seafood exess oh yeah yeah yeah
right I'm a fan um in 2017 martinque was cited as the
safest destination in the Caribbean and makes sense what else do I
need to know I'm looking up the travel guide yeah I'm sure I mean it looks beautiful um it's all most of these
volcanoes are in these like beautiful tropical places um I mean and yeah it's
like the price you pay right like I mean La is awesome but the price you pay is
earthquakes and I guess now more consistently it's wildfires which really sucks but still that's true yeah yeah um
yeah so that's it I'm yeah that was very educational we learned a little about
politics we learned a little about Island life we learned about volcanoes and we learned about snaks I really can't believe that that
this is that we didn't know really what had happened in Pompei until this happened but like that may make sense when I think about it because like how
would you know what caused people like everything to be covered in that you know pumm Stone and all that unless you
like knew like who KN like I don't know what they thought it was they didn't know that there was like a 100 mile per hour cloud of Ash and and I couldn't
figure out if anyone for the volcanologist listening can you please tell me why Pompei was like buried in
the Ash and St Pierre wasn't I feel like might have to do with like the density
and like the speed or something but I just I think St Pierre as as I am seeing
it was like burned and like destroyed but not like buried the way that pompe
was and I don't I can't figure out why I couldn't figure out the right phrase to Google that and to figure it out from like the things that I was reading I
found like one like thing that compared how hot it was in both of them and that didn't really answer my question either
so if anyone knows I'd love to understand that a little bit more but it sounds like pompe local vocalist yeah
fora please it sounds like Pompei though was um was just neglected and forgotten about so like it might not have been all
Ash that very it could have been like time that's true that's true but I'm not
volcanologist can you can can you go to remote school to be a volcanologist just
remote degree in volcanology I'm going to look I'm going
to do some research on this oh University of Arizona online um I probably have to do a little bit of
science best online volcano CS of programs anyway
um you need a PhD God just just start over in life to get there I'm too old to
start to become volcanologist like yeah I'm I'm I'm good with my Sans PhD life
uh awesome J well thank you for sharing the volcano ones are always really really exciting for me because like I'm like really into like I don't know what
the word is geology no geography Geo the earth I me into the
Earth and like knowing where things are or like what it's made of because that's what those two are okay I'm into Earth
Sciences let's put it that way so like tectonic plates tsunami
all that it's just very I think that's what we're learning about it's cool I love learning we should go to
museum we should I love it I love it fantastic fantastic do we have
anys or emails or anything like that um nope
no I feel like I had something but if I remember it for next time I'll add to the next one but no but thank you um all
of our new Instagram followers and our new listeners we super appreciate you all and if you ever you have any ideas
or suggestions or feedback please let us know um oh I did oh I did post we to get
an Apple review from someone that says I talk too fast um which I thought was funny because I know that but also they
said that that wasn't a reason to remove a star that our St was fascinating so awesome I love it thank you I think it
was on Apple yeah thank you Donna we we actually if you write us we literally
like we love getting those and reading those so please tell us good B ugly like
even like fars fars is being too funny it's distracting me like let us know so
we can improve we've actually gotten gotten several of those that's true yeah yeah it'sing jpod Gmail and jel P at all
the socials yes awesome cool Taylor well thank you I'm g go ahead and cut this off and we will rejoin youall on
Wednesday bye [Music]