Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to go
Speaker 2: into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: We are continuing the re air of our series Fire
Speaker 2: from the Rocks, originally published in April and May of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. This is part three and this episode
Speaker 2: came out on May fifth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 2: today we're back with part three of our series on
Speaker 2: naturally fueled flames and the smolderings and burnings that come
Speaker 2: from the earth itself or from the rocks. So in
Speaker 2: the last episode of the series, we talked talked about
Speaker 2: the Burning Mountain or Mount WinGen in Australia done in
Speaker 2: New South Wales, which is an example of a naturally
Speaker 2: fueled type of fire called a coal seam fire, a
Speaker 2: place where coal formations underground are set on fire and
Speaker 2: then continue to burn as long as they can, as
Speaker 2: long as they have access to oxygen, probably and while
Speaker 2: there's no way to know for sure, Mount WinGen has
Speaker 2: been proposed as potentially the longest burning fire on earth. Though.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because today, as we discussed last time, there's
Speaker 2: no fire that you can see at the surface. There's
Speaker 2: only this large patch of bleached and baked soil which
Speaker 2: can be hot to the touch, and or at least
Speaker 2: parts of it can, and it's a devoid of plant
Speaker 2: life within this patch. And then of course all around
Speaker 2: it there are these interesting sort of there's like a
Speaker 2: war for survival at the border of this burned region,
Speaker 2: so you'll see, like you know, grasses trying to survive,
Speaker 2: and then these bleach tree trunks that are long dead
Speaker 2: but still standing. And then also around this area you
Speaker 2: find these deep cracks or crevices in the earth, out
Speaker 2: of which poor smoke and sulfurous fumes. So the fire
Speaker 2: is burning, but it's burning in the deep. It's burning
Speaker 2: out of sight down inside the mountain, fed by oxygen
Speaker 2: from the surface. And nobody knows how the fire inside
Speaker 2: Mount Engine got started, but it's presumed to be a
Speaker 2: result of some form of natural ignition. Maybe the coal
Speaker 2: at the surface underwent a chemical reaction leading to spontaneous
Speaker 2: combustion or autoignition as it's called, or maybe it was
Speaker 2: struck by lightning or by brush fire, but we don't
Speaker 2: really know. However, there are many other coal seam fires
Speaker 2: that have mostly in one way or another, been created
Speaker 2: by human behavior, and a big example here is coal
Speaker 2: mine fires, my fires that fires in a coal seam
Speaker 2: that get started one way or another because of mining there,
Speaker 2: and they are actually a number of these that are
Speaker 2: that are still burning throughout the world today.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember if I know any coal mining
Speaker 1: songs about coal mine fires. There's some really good, like
Speaker 1: mining town folk songs and whatnot, but I can't remember
Speaker 1: any offhand that mentioned fires.
Speaker 2: The real good coal mining folk songs I know were
Speaker 2: like union songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same yeah, high Sheriff of hazard and so forth.
Speaker 2: Which side are you on?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, those are great songs, but I don't know
Speaker 2: of any of them that mention a coal seam fire. However,
Speaker 2: I did actually find a poem that mentions a coal
Speaker 2: seam fire, and not just any coal seam fire, but
Speaker 2: the one that I was specifically about to talk about.
Speaker 2: Because so there's a very famous example in the United
Speaker 2: States of a coal seam fire that's been burning for
Speaker 2: decades and it is situated underneath the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: The poem I found was one by a poet named
Speaker 2: Leonard Cress called the Centralia Mine Fire, and I thought
Speaker 2: it was really pretty great. It talks about the town
Speaker 2: being the shrine of the Holy Order of Anthracite, and
Speaker 2: the last four lines of the poem read, though odors
Speaker 2: of bottom damp and methane no longer reek into the
Speaker 2: streets and ignite, the underground tunnels burn, and each vein
Speaker 2: of coal potential fuse leads to another domain.
Speaker 1: Oh nice. This is a contemporary poet by the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a website Leonardcress dot com.
Speaker 2: So the town of Centralia is in eastern Pennsylvania. It
Speaker 2: was settled in the mid eighteen hundreds and being situated
Speaker 2: over a large coal formation, I think for most of
Speaker 2: its history it was a town where the local economy
Speaker 2: was based around a coal mine, which would not be
Speaker 2: uncommon in places like Pennsylvania or West Virginia, places in
Speaker 2: the US where there's a lot of coal and settlements
Speaker 2: can grow up around the extraction industry based on that coal.
Speaker 2: It was never a huge city. I think in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen sixties the town had some a little over
Speaker 2: two thousand residents, I believe, But things started changing in
Speaker 2: the year nineteen sixty two when part of the coal
Speaker 2: seam that formed the town's industrial base caught fire. Now
Speaker 2: there's still apparently disagreement about exactly how it caught fire.
Speaker 2: One idea I read is that it happened to because
Speaker 2: of a pre existing coal seam fire from a neighboring
Speaker 2: region that spread slowly over several decades until it made
Speaker 2: contact with the Centralia sem and then just burned on
Speaker 2: from there. But I think that's a minority position. The
Speaker 2: more commonly cited explanations involve a garbage stump, and so
Speaker 2: the idea is that the coal caught fire either when
Speaker 2: a scheduled trash burn at a local landfill penetrated the
Speaker 2: mine tunnels and managed to ignite the coal, or possibly
Speaker 2: when some kind of hot ash or coal was dumped
Speaker 2: directly into the pit and set the coal burning. Either way,
Speaker 2: it's a good example to think about how if you've
Speaker 2: got open deposits of coal that are exposed to the atmosphere,
Speaker 2: you really don't want to be burning stuff near that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, trying to imagine the sort of the apocalyptic
Speaker 1: scenario where your garbage fires meet your coal mine tunnels.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And so apparently the locals knew there was
Speaker 2: a fire in the mines beginning in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 2: but didn't quite realize what a problem it was until
Speaker 2: years later, around the late seventies and early eighties. And
Speaker 2: there were a few touch points here. One story from
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine that I've seen in multiple sources is
Speaker 2: that there was a local gas station owner named John Coddington,
Speaker 2: who was also the mayor of the town, who one
Speaker 2: day went out to check the levels in his underground
Speaker 2: storage tank. So when you go to a gas station,
Speaker 2: you know, you get out the pump the gases being
Speaker 2: pumped up from these big tanks under the ground that's
Speaker 2: where the gas lives. And something seemed off, I guess
Speaker 2: when he was checking the levels in the tanks. So
Speaker 2: he ended up checking the temperature in the storage tanks
Speaker 2: and found that the gasoline was one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: two degrees fahrenheit. Whoa, yeah, yikes, And this did make
Speaker 2: me wonder I was like, wait, what is the autoignition
Speaker 2: temperature of gasoline? Because I might have guessed that if
Speaker 2: you heat gasoline up to one seventy two degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 2: in the presence of oxygen, that would be close to
Speaker 2: it automatically igniting on its own. But I checked, and no,
Speaker 2: my intuition was way off. I see some pretty different numbers,
Speaker 2: but they're all much higher than this. A website called
Speaker 2: engineering toolbox dot com suggests that the autoignition temperature of
Speaker 2: gasoline is more like four to seventy five to five
Speaker 2: thirty six degrees fahrenheit or two forty six to two
Speaker 2: eighty celsius. So it wasn't gonna catch fire on its own,
Speaker 2: but that's still freaky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And quick disclaimer out there, please do not try
Speaker 1: and eat up gasolene.
Speaker 2: Oh no, don't test out these numbers. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: not an experiment to perform in your kitchen. In fact,
Speaker 2: just don't ever take gasoline inside your house. Yeah. But
Speaker 2: so that was seventy nine. But then a real turning
Speaker 2: point seemed to come in nineteen eighty one, when a
Speaker 2: local boy who was twelve years old was nearly swallowed
Speaker 2: up and killed. He managed to survive, but he was
Speaker 2: nearly swallowed by the sudden collapse of a sinkhole created
Speaker 2: by the Coalseum fire. And so for a contemporary report
Speaker 2: on this, I found an AP article published on February twentieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one called Pennsylvania Fearful fire rages for nineteen years.
Speaker 1: This is a good This is a I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a serious story, don't get me wrong. But also the
Speaker 1: writing in this little news piece is it really drives
Speaker 1: home the dread.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. So it starts off talking about opinions
Speaker 2: of locals about you know, being exposed to the fumes
Speaker 2: coming out of this mine and stuff. And maybe I
Speaker 2: can come back to that in a minute, but first
Speaker 2: I want to tell the story of this what happened
Speaker 2: to this twelve year old boy. So the article reads quote,
Speaker 2: townspeople said an accident Saturdays heightened their fears, leading to
Speaker 2: a new flurry of government interest. Todd Domboski, twelve, was
Speaker 2: playing in his grandmother's backyard a few houses from his home.
Speaker 2: When he went to investigate a tiny whiff of smoke.
Speaker 2: The ground beneath him collapsed instantly. The youth was engulfed
Speaker 2: in a hot stinking tangle of dirt and tree roots escaping.
Speaker 2: When his older cousin pulled him out, Todd fell about
Speaker 2: six feet before grabbing the roots. Florence Domboski, Todd's mother,
Speaker 2: praised her fourteen year old nephew, Eric Wolfgang, who was
Speaker 2: swift and strong enough to reach into the hole, grab
Speaker 2: Todd's arm and pull him to safety. A temperature of
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty degrees was recorded in the hole.
Speaker 2: Its depth was not known, and I did look it up.
Speaker 2: More recent articles mentioned that the same coal was later
Speaker 2: measured and it was one hundred and fifty feet deep
Speaker 2: or about forty five meters, and choked with carbon monoxide throughout.
Speaker 2: So if you can imagine this, you're just standing on
Speaker 2: what you believe to be solid ground, and the ground
Speaker 2: beneath you just collapses, It just opens up, and you're
Speaker 2: grabbing at tree roots that are protruding from the dirt,
Speaker 2: and you managed to get a hold of it, but
Speaker 2: down below you is just a pit into nothingness with
Speaker 2: fumes of hell coughing out.
Speaker 1: Absolutely biblical. There's another great paragraph in this ap story
Speaker 1: that reads, quote feeding on timbers, coal and gas in
Speaker 1: a maze of abandoned anthracide tunnels that date back to
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. The creeping inferno is believed to have
Speaker 1: spread beneath forty acres despite repeated attempts to curb it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this article, part of what it's reporting on
Speaker 2: is attempts to put out the mind fire that have failed.
Speaker 2: I think at the time this was written, already more
Speaker 2: than three and a half million dollars had been spent
Speaker 2: on trying to fight the fire, and to no avail.
Speaker 2: It just didn't work. And so another thing this article
Speaker 2: cites is quotes from local townspeople talking about their fears
Speaker 2: about the mind fire, Like one says that it's kind
Speaker 2: of scary going to sleep at night and not knowing
Speaker 2: if you'll wake up in the morning because you've been
Speaker 2: poisoned in your sleep by fumes from the mine. And
Speaker 2: it quotes a local teacher named Bob Goadinsky who says,
Speaker 2: we feel like rats in a laboratory. No one knows
Speaker 2: what the effect of the carbon monoxide is going to
Speaker 2: be in the future, the children, what will be the
Speaker 2: effect on them.
Speaker 1: All of this, I mean, all this sounds like something
Speaker 1: you'd encounter in a horror movie, except it is real life.
Speaker 1: It's a real life, horrible situation. Concern for the children,
Speaker 1: the creeping darkness beneath the earth, eruptions preying on the innocent.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another quote it gives is from a resident named
Speaker 2: Sally Sulik, who says, my nose burns, my eyes tear,
Speaker 2: I'm like a zombie, feel like going to sleep all
Speaker 2: the time. If they don't soon do something for us,
Speaker 2: they'll drive us crazy. So in the years since, the
Speaker 2: population of Centralia has been steeply declining. It basically I
Speaker 2: think between nineteen eighty and two thousand it declined to
Speaker 2: almost nothing as the residents moved away. The local homeowners
Speaker 2: were offered buyouts from the government to relocate, and then
Speaker 2: at some point the government essentially condemned all of the
Speaker 2: property in town by way of imminent domain. There were
Speaker 2: a few residents left who didn't want to leave, but
Speaker 2: most of the recent articles I read mentioned only like
Speaker 2: a handful of people still living in the area, fewer
Speaker 2: than ten. And apparently nobody is going to be allowed
Speaker 2: to move to the area, So it's just those people
Speaker 2: there as long as they stay or until their deaths.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Another thing that struck me about the story is. I
Speaker 2: was reading an article in Atlas Obscura by a freelance
Speaker 2: writer based out of Pennsylvania named Jim Cheney, who was
Speaker 2: writing up the history the Centralia fire but also had
Speaker 2: been there and taken a bunch of pictures on the scene,
Speaker 2: and there was one that struck me as really interesting.
Speaker 2: It was a picture of what the author says, or
Speaker 2: the remains of Route sixty one, which is a section
Speaker 2: of roadway a highway that's now abandoned since it was
Speaker 2: re routed elsewhere. And if you look at the pictures,
Speaker 2: you can see why. Right down the middle of the
Speaker 2: road is a gigantic crack, again like in a bad
Speaker 2: earthquake movie, and so the road is just sort of
Speaker 2: split down the middle. And it actually reminded me a
Speaker 2: bit of the cracks and crevices that had been forming
Speaker 2: in Mount WinGen for the past six thousand years or
Speaker 2: more when you look at the pictures of that. I
Speaker 2: don't know the exact cause of every surface feature we're
Speaker 2: looking at here, but if I had to guess, I
Speaker 2: would say this is probably some kind of collapse caused
Speaker 2: by the burning out that's going on underneath the surface,
Speaker 2: just like we saw in these other cases or like
Speaker 2: would have caused the sinkhole.
Speaker 1: Of course, sometimes the real life tragedy does inspire great art.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting that the town of Centralia inspired the
Speaker 1: fictional town of Valkanvania in the nineteen ninety one film
Speaker 1: Nothing but Trouble, Really, dan Ackroid's weird horror comedy about
Speaker 1: a bunch of sort of sort of. I guess you
Speaker 1: would say Texas chainsaw massacre esque family residing above a
Speaker 1: big coal mine fire. Quite a film. Quite a film.
Speaker 2: Tri Star Pictures or whoever it is, should have a
Speaker 2: standing cash prize for anybody who can manage to watch
Speaker 2: that whole movie.
Speaker 1: It has a lot of fun things in it. You've
Speaker 1: got a wonderful digital underground performance.
Speaker 2: I think you got to make it through a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff before you get to that.
Speaker 1: Dan Ackroyd is clearly having the time of his life
Speaker 1: in this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if it's if it's, if you considered a film
Speaker 1: for an audience of one an absolute success, I think
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: There's another interesting tidbit I came across that's related to
Speaker 2: the Centralia coal mine, and it seems geologically interesting, But
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell if it was because of the fire
Speaker 2: in particular. So there was a news report I read
Speaker 2: on the site for a new station called WNEP sixteen.
Speaker 2: I guess that's an ABC affiliate, and this was out
Speaker 2: of Butler Township, Pennsylvania, and it's talking about a geyser
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania. That's not something that you would expect to
Speaker 2: find in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the footage here, though it looks geysery, but.
Speaker 2: This is not a natural geyser. This is a geyser
Speaker 2: that was created when many years ago, the mining company
Speaker 2: I guess that ran the Centralia mine drilled a hole
Speaker 2: in the ground connecting to one of the tunnels for
Speaker 2: ventilation of the mine shafts, and somehow now with the
Speaker 2: tunnels partially flooded. I think it's especially when there's like
Speaker 2: been heavy rain or when the snow melts in the spring,
Speaker 2: you get suddenly a guyser gushing up out of this
Speaker 2: ventilation hole. And it looks like a real guyser. It's
Speaker 2: just spraying up into the air and then running off
Speaker 2: into a nearby creek. And they say that the guyser
Speaker 2: has a distinct smell. It smells like eggs which I
Speaker 2: guess is an indication of sulfurous compounds, and that would
Speaker 2: again make sense since you know, you got the coal
Speaker 2: down there and it's on fire. And I was unable
Speaker 2: to tell if this, guys, is actually related to the
Speaker 2: fire or if it's just an unrelated, weird feature of
Speaker 2: this same mine.
Speaker 1: You see, Like there's a quote in the tweet that's
Speaker 1: attached where the reporters saying that it's been there as
Speaker 1: long as quote anyone can remember. There's a mention of
Speaker 1: like some people say, oh, there used to be a
Speaker 1: second one, and it is kind of I mean, all
Speaker 1: of this is a stark reminder of how an enterprise
Speaker 1: like coal mining, how you're you're changing the earth, you know,
Speaker 1: at least on a local level, and of course you
Speaker 1: can get into larger issues of actual climate change as well,
Speaker 1: but even just on a local level, like you're just
Speaker 1: you're vastly altering how the ground beneath your feet is functioning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, let's move on to another fire in
Speaker 4: the earth.
Speaker 1: This is a fun one. I'm excited to talk about
Speaker 1: it because it concerns natural fires that may have been
Speaker 1: burning for two and a half millennia, as well as
Speaker 1: a mythical monster, and that monster is the Chimera. Oh
Speaker 1: and the chimera, of course. I think most folks out
Speaker 1: there will have some image of this in their mind.
Speaker 1: There are some wonderful depictions of it. There's the Chimera
Speaker 1: of Arezzo. It's an Etruscan bronze statue of four hundred
Speaker 1: BCE that's absolutely gorgeous. If anyone has seen this, or
Speaker 1: seen or reproduction of this.
Speaker 2: I've been to a retzo, but I don't think I've
Speaker 2: seen this.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure. I didn't put in my notes
Speaker 1: where it is currently how so I don't know where
Speaker 1: its current status is. But I've seen plenty of images
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's this wonderful, uh you know, dark bronze finish, and
Speaker 1: it looks impressive for a creature that is not always
Speaker 1: impressive in artistic renditions, because it is it is not
Speaker 1: only a chimera. It is the chimera. It is this.
Speaker 1: It is this, this hybrid form that some have criticized
Speaker 1: for not completely making all that much sense and maybe
Speaker 1: being too counterintuitive. So at the heart of things, the
Speaker 1: chimera is, of course a goat monster. Most of its
Speaker 1: recognizable body is usually that of a goat. I guess
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about the camera of Arezzo
Speaker 1: is that less of it is a goat, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's why it's more impressive, Like it looks like the
Speaker 1: artists decided to lean more into the into the lion
Speaker 1: aspects of its body. But generally when you hear talk
Speaker 1: about yeah, we're talking about something that is in large
Speaker 1: part a monstrous she goat. It roams the myths of
Speaker 1: ancient Greece and Rome, and the name itself means she goat,
Speaker 1: and in all depictions it has at least some goat
Speaker 1: properties to its hybrid form.
Speaker 2: Hm, that's funny. I certainly believe you that that's true.
Speaker 2: But I do not really associate the camera with a
Speaker 2: goat at all. I think, like, yeah, like lion, snake,
Speaker 2: eagle or something.
Speaker 1: Yes, some depictions it has wings. I want to say that.
Speaker 1: In the Dungeons and Dragon's Monster Manual they give it
Speaker 1: wings specifically. Now, the oldest records of the monster can
Speaker 1: be found in the sixth book of Homer's Iliad, and
Speaker 1: this is you know, written down at some point in
Speaker 1: the eighth century BCE, and the beast here is described
Speaker 1: as a great fire breathing, she goat with a lion's
Speaker 1: head and the tail of a serpent. And then slightly
Speaker 1: more recently, Hesiod wrote of the chimera in his book Theogeny,
Speaker 1: composed between seven thirty and seven hundred DCE. So in Theogeny,
Speaker 1: Hesiod is discussing the monstrous Echidna quote divine, stubborn hearted Echidna,
Speaker 1: half nymph with dark eyes and fair cheeks, and half
Speaker 1: on the other hand, a serpent, huge and terrible and vast,
Speaker 1: speckled and flesh devouring beneath caves of sacred earth. And
Speaker 1: there in the depths, Echidna mates with the deadly giant Typhon,
Speaker 1: and they produce quote, fierce hearted children monsters, all including
Speaker 1: the two headed dog Orthos, the three headed dog Cerebus,
Speaker 1: and then the even more headed lenaean Hydra, as well
Speaker 1: as the sphinx, the Nemian lion, and of course the chimera.
Speaker 1: And here's what Hesiod had to say about the kr
Speaker 1: And these are these are all translations from the Reverend J.
Speaker 1: Banks translation. Quote. But she Echidna bore chimera, breathing, restless fire,
Speaker 1: fierce and huge, fleet footed, as well as strong. This
Speaker 1: monster had three heads, one indeed of a grim visaged lion,
Speaker 1: one of a goat, and another of a serpent, a
Speaker 1: fierce dragon in front a lion, a dragon behind, and
Speaker 1: in the midst a goat breathing forth the dread strength
Speaker 1: of burning.
Speaker 2: Fire, and in the midst a goat.
Speaker 1: So like, mostly a goat, that's what you're saying, mostly,
Speaker 1: that's what That's what I take it.
Speaker 2: To me, is that he's saying the middle head is
Speaker 2: the goat head, I think, or wait, but it's also
Speaker 2: saying in front a lion and a dragon behind. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I'm trying to picture this. I'm having it, and I.
Speaker 1: Think this is This is why you have a lot
Speaker 1: of variation in how it's depicted, like that the the
Speaker 1: Etruscan statue, for instance, and other depictions will have the
Speaker 1: oa head just straight up growing out of the back
Speaker 1: of the creature other times, but it's a good head.
Speaker 1: And the goat always looks a little awkward there, like,
Speaker 1: what what are you even doing there, buddy? Like you
Speaker 1: can imagine the creatures moving around the goast just sort
Speaker 1: of awkwardly making a play for vegetation and stuffed.
Speaker 2: In Nibylon, you see a ripple in the water. The
Speaker 2: Jaws theme plays, but it's a goat's head poking out
Speaker 2: over the certain bah. Yeah wait, dude, the goats baar.
Speaker 2: They don't really they bleat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the bleeding. So yeah, you see. Then you see
Speaker 1: it depicted other ways where all the heads are sort
Speaker 1: of arranged up front and so forth. But yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: I imagine a lot of this is coming from different
Speaker 1: interpretations like this passage. Now, every monster must have its slayer,
Speaker 1: of course, and in this case it is mighty Bellerophon,
Speaker 1: sometimes described as a half human son of Poseidon, who
Speaker 1: uses Athena's bridle to capture the winged Pegasus right into
Speaker 1: battle against the Chimera, and then he thrust his spear
Speaker 1: into the monster's flaming maw. Where what happens The metal
Speaker 1: instantly melts. Oh no, he's defeated. Oh no, he's not,
Speaker 1: because then the liquid metal chokes the deadly monster to death.
Speaker 1: So I always found that to be kind of a
Speaker 1: nice twist.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Now, surely the hero didn't intend for the
Speaker 2: metal to melt and choke the monster.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never doubt these heroes, These Greek
Speaker 1: heroes are are wicked smart.
Speaker 2: That strikes me as more like a like a War
Speaker 2: of the World's type ending where yeah, something you didn't
Speaker 2: even expect kills the monster.
Speaker 1: Now you're probably asking, okay, well, how does this tie
Speaker 1: into places and fire? Well, this myth is certainly tied
Speaker 1: to specific places. For starters, it is written that the
Speaker 1: Chimera was for a time the pet of the king
Speaker 1: of Krea before it escaped and rampaged. This was a
Speaker 1: region of western Anatolia from the eleventh through sixth centuries BCE.
Speaker 1: This region is now part of Turkey. But then the
Speaker 1: Chimera is said to descend upon an area to the
Speaker 1: southeast of Caria in Lysia, where it generally devours every
Speaker 1: mortal in sight and just sets everything on fire. So
Speaker 1: this is the realm of Mount Chimera. In the Book
Speaker 1: of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges writes that Virgil describes
Speaker 1: the Chimera and the Aeneid, and that the fourth and
Speaker 1: fifth century commentator Servius ties the monster to Licia and
Speaker 1: went so far as to say that the monster was
Speaker 1: a metaphor for a volcano there, and this was apparently
Speaker 1: echoed by plenty of the elder as well.
Speaker 2: Okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1: This is how Borges summarizes it. Quote, the base of
Speaker 1: the volcano is infested with serpents. On its sides, there
Speaker 1: are meadows where goats pasture, and on top flames shoot forth,
Speaker 1: and lions have their dens.
Speaker 2: I see. Okay, So it's like combining the different types
Speaker 2: of local wildlife, at least allegedly, the serpents around the base,
Speaker 2: and then the goats grazing in the meadow and the lions
Speaker 2: in their caves, and then you have, of course the
Speaker 2: flames coming out. I guess that's the dragon aspect, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I have to say, like, when I was
Speaker 1: reading this, it sended a little far fetched to me
Speaker 1: because we've talked about geomithology before, but I don't remember
Speaker 1: like a version of geo mythology where like the aspects
Speaker 1: of a given geographical feature are then just sort of
Speaker 1: cobbled together into a into a hybrid monster. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, Borges also finds this ridiculous and mentions
Speaker 1: that he thinks it's absurd, as well as an idea
Speaker 1: that I think was put forth by Plutarch that Chimera
Speaker 1: is the name of a pirate who just happened to
Speaker 1: have these three different animals as part of his iconography
Speaker 1: and his flag and so forth.
Speaker 2: It was a pirate.
Speaker 1: Now. One of the advancements in the sort of figuring
Speaker 1: out this myth and tying the myth into actual geology.
Speaker 1: This occurred during the early nineteenth century. In eighteen eleven,
Speaker 1: hydrographer and Irish rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort linked Mount
Speaker 1: Chimera to the geographical features in the region known as
Speaker 1: jan Ar or Janartis. And he explored this region, I believe,
Speaker 1: in eighteen eleven through eighteen twelve, basically going around looking
Speaker 1: at various ruins, citing various ruins, and he's noted during
Speaker 1: this time for rediscovering Hadrian's Gate built there for Roman
Speaker 1: Emperor Hadrian in the year one thirty. So jan Artists,
Speaker 1: what does it look like? Well, it matches up with
Speaker 1: some of these other descriptions we've discussed in these episodes.
Speaker 1: You have a rocky mount here with active gas seeps
Speaker 1: that have produced burning flames for depending on what sources
Speaker 1: you're looking at, perhaps two and a half millennia, so
Speaker 1: perhaps twenty five hundred years. So some still kind of
Speaker 1: interpret it and say, well, this site could have been
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the monster itself, And I guess you
Speaker 1: can kind of open that up and you can look
Speaker 1: at the ideas of the monster being a metaphor for them,
Speaker 1: for this mountain, or just kind of like the oh,
Speaker 1: here's this weird landscape with fire, and you end up
Speaker 1: with this idea of, well, a monster lives here. Surely
Speaker 1: this is the habitat for some sort of monstrous fire
Speaker 1: breathing creature. So the seeps in question here are largely
Speaker 1: on barren ground and they follow various fissures and perhaps faults,
Speaker 1: according to a twenty fifteen paper I was looking at
Speaker 1: from Meyer Dombard at All, published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
Speaker 1: These researchers also reported a fluid seap that they discovered
Speaker 1: in this area, and numerous papers mentioned as well that
Speaker 1: sailors used the fires of the mountain as a kind
Speaker 1: of natural landmark at night in ancient times. Today, however,
Speaker 1: hikers visit the flames and they do things apparently like
Speaker 1: brew tee, cook marshmallows over them, or you know, just
Speaker 1: just look at them as well. Because this is all
Speaker 1: part of the Olympus National Park. So if you know,
Speaker 1: if you're in Turkey, this is a site you can
Speaker 1: go and see. Now, the seeps here are reportedly stronger,
Speaker 1: as are the flames during winter, and apparently this is
Speaker 1: link to changes in atmospheric pressure and ground water recharge.
Speaker 1: And this kind of takes us back to where we're
Speaker 1: just talking about. You know, when you disrupt the underground
Speaker 1: environment through extensive coal mining, you know, these are the
Speaker 1: sort of things like groundwater recharge or the situations you're
Speaker 1: potentially interfering in the vent gases that come up. I
Speaker 1: was looking at a profile of these and it is
Speaker 1: mostly methane and there's some other ingredients in there as well. Now,
Speaker 1: as to whether there are actual snakes there, I mean,
Speaker 1: one presumes, I know there are snakes in Turk. I
Speaker 1: guess it's if we can presume that there either are
Speaker 1: goats or could have been goats there as well, goats
Speaker 1: like a rocky area with some vegetation to muncheon. And
Speaker 1: as far as lions go, you won't find any lions
Speaker 1: here today, but there were once lions found throughout what
Speaker 1: is now Turkey. So I mean, I guess all of
Speaker 1: that is plausible as well to at least a certain extent.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. If you compare maps of the historic distribution
Speaker 2: of lions to the present distribution throughout Africa and Eurasia,
Speaker 2: it's well, on one hand, it's kind of sad to
Speaker 2: see how much their range has been constricted, but it's
Speaker 2: also eye opening to like, it's eye opening about how
Speaker 2: so many ancient myths and stories all throughout the Middle
Speaker 2: East and the Greek myths and stuff, it seems that
Speaker 2: there are lions everywhere. And you're like, what, because you
Speaker 2: don't really think that there are lions wandering around and
Speaker 2: say Greece or Turkey today, but you know, thousands of
Speaker 2: years ago, they're absolutely.
Speaker 1: It brings us back to the topic we discussed in
Speaker 1: the past about the first known human animal hybrid represented
Speaker 1: in art, that of the lion man. Yeah. Yeah, Now
Speaker 1: this side of this side is also interesting because there
Speaker 1: is a link to the Greek forge god he Festus
Speaker 1: here as well. Hepestus, of course, was the blacksmith's god
Speaker 1: who was also deformed after his father Zeus cast him
Speaker 1: off Mount Olympus for taking his mother Hera's side in
Speaker 1: an argument, Or at least that's one version of the story.
Speaker 1: The Remains of a temple to Hefestus I can be
Speaker 1: found at this site just below the fires, which again
Speaker 1: makes sense given that the sites of natural flames like
Speaker 1: this seem to be inevitably tied to human industry. Like
Speaker 1: we've discussed in these various other examples, people see them
Speaker 1: and they think of like cook fires and the depths
Speaker 1: maintained by the little people, or you know, we think
Speaker 1: of industrial processes, you know, chemical fires and so forth,
Speaker 1: But then sometimes we all tie them to fire breathing monsters.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to mention one more thing that Borjes
Speaker 1: brings up about the chimera. He discusses how he thinks
Speaker 1: that the chimera was ultimately quote too heterogeneous. In other words,
Speaker 1: these parts were all too dissimilar, and it all resists
Speaker 1: quote merging into a single animal. So I guess in
Speaker 1: that you could say that he's sort of saying that
Speaker 1: it's too counterintuitive. To a certain extent, he contends that
Speaker 1: people got a bit tired of the idea of the chimera,
Speaker 1: and we see that reflected in the use of chimeracle
Speaker 1: and the use of chimera as referring to something that
Speaker 1: is just too outrageous to be true. Too outrageous to
Speaker 1: actually exist in the real world, something that just doesn't
Speaker 1: gel together in a form that you can believe in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I'm always curious about why our intuitions
Speaker 2: about imaginary beings work the way they do. I'm sure
Speaker 2: I've asked questions like this on the show a bunch
Speaker 2: of times, But like, why does one unreal monster seem
Speaker 2: plausible in quotes and another one doesn't? Like the chymerira is, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's got a goat head in the middle of its back,
Speaker 2: or at least in some depictions, and people are just like, eh, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: that doesn't work. The hydra, which has many heads coming
Speaker 2: out of the Yeah, that that works.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean even the vegetable lamb of Tartary, as
Speaker 1: fantastic as that is and is you know, with the
Speaker 1: gulf existing between plant and mammal like, that feels more
Speaker 1: believable and I think clearly was more believable for a
Speaker 1: very long period of time compared to the chimera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what are the underlying psychological factors, Like what
Speaker 2: subconscious criteria do we use to judge an unreal being
Speaker 2: that makes sense to us versus an unreal being that
Speaker 2: doesn't the chimera goat head. That's just that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe part of it comes down into like a basic,
Speaker 1: you know, primal estimation of another animal, like what is
Speaker 1: the head on this thing going to bite me? What
Speaker 1: is the head on this animal seem to want to do?
Speaker 1: And if you look at that goat head sticking out
Speaker 1: of the middle of the camera's back, what am I
Speaker 1: supposed to make of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What's it even doing?
Speaker 2: Now? Cyclops, on the other hand, one big eye in
Speaker 2: the forehead. I picture that all day long. That works.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the interesting things about these I guess
Speaker 1: you could call them, you could think of them as
Speaker 1: minimally counterintuitive monsters and hybrids, is that the best of
Speaker 1: them we continue to look at and reconsider and also
Speaker 1: apply like theoretical biological models like I've read. I know,
Speaker 1: I read a wonderful paper once on the biology of
Speaker 1: the centaur where the author was discussing how the centaur's
Speaker 1: body would work, and you know, really focusing on onlatory
Speaker 1: system and and the fact that it would need two hearts,
Speaker 1: one in the human part and one in the horse part.
Speaker 1: You know, I love I love examinations like that. So,
Speaker 1: but it's an example of how the the centaur, as
Speaker 1: fantastic as it is, is not so far removed from
Speaker 1: reality that we can't apply this line of thinking to it. Whereas, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen anybody go out on
Speaker 1: a limb and write a you know, a paper like
Speaker 1: This is how the biology of the chimera would work.
Speaker 1: This is how it would breathe fire. This is the
Speaker 1: function of the the live goat head growing from its back,
Speaker 1: and this is why its tail is a live snake.
Speaker 1: This is the diet it consumes. Yeah, this, it's just
Speaker 1: it's just ridiculous. Now, coming back just a little bit too, uh,
Speaker 1: you know to what we've been talking about here, eternal
Speaker 1: flames and all I do want to point out that
Speaker 1: this is the examples we've brought up are are certainly
Speaker 1: not the only examples of natural gas seeps and so forth,
Speaker 1: where eternal flames have evoked mythic ideas, religious devote and
Speaker 1: so forth. I was reading Seeps in the Ancient World, Myths,
Speaker 1: Religions and Social Development by Giuseppe Etope of the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy, and he has
Speaker 1: a book titled natural Gas Seepach, but one of the
Speaker 1: chapters is devoted to just looking at some of these examples.
Speaker 1: So he mentions the chimera there. He mentions the fires
Speaker 1: of Baku that we previously discussed, as well as a
Speaker 1: couple of other examples. There's the Baba GurGur seep in Iraq,
Speaker 1: he writes, was probably the burning fiery furnace into which
Speaker 1: King and Nebucanezer cast of the Jews.
Speaker 2: I've seen this claim before, So Baba gurger is it's
Speaker 2: like an oil field near Kirkook, I believe, And there
Speaker 2: is at least one place there where, yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: there is a natural gas seep where the volatiles that
Speaker 2: are out of it have been set a flame and
Speaker 2: they're burning. And yeah, I don't know what the actual
Speaker 2: evidence is that this is the basis of the Bible story.
Speaker 2: One of these many cases where somebody like connects a
Speaker 2: story from ancient history or mythology or legend to an
Speaker 2: observable feature today. And in some cases you can do that,
Speaker 2: like there's a pretty clear link, and in other cases
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure how strong the evidence for that
Speaker 2: direct connection is. But so, yeah, there is the story
Speaker 2: of King Nebuchadnezzar throwing what is it, Shadragnieshak and a
Speaker 2: bed nego. Oh yeah, yeah, into a burning furnace, and
Speaker 2: I have read some modern authors saying, ah, maybe the
Speaker 2: furnace was this geological feature we see today. Bobby GurGur,
Speaker 2: by the way, I think, means something like father flame
Speaker 2: or Daddy flame.
Speaker 1: Another example that he brings up is the sacred Mangarma's
Speaker 1: flame in Indonesia, which has been active at least since
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century, he writes, and is still used in
Speaker 1: annual Buddhist ceremonies. And then there's the Oracle of Delphi
Speaker 1: in Greece, which we've discussed at least a little bit
Speaker 1: on the show. In the past, there's talk of there
Speaker 1: having been an internal flame at the Temple of Apollo
Speaker 1: there at least at one point. And then there's this
Speaker 1: idea that I believe researchers have kind of gone back
Speaker 1: and forth on this idea that vapors from the earth
Speaker 1: contributed to the visions granted to the priestess of the
Speaker 1: sacred site. The idea I think kind of fell out
Speaker 1: of favor for a while, but more recent geological research
Speaker 1: I was looking at it from two thousand and four
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. They argue that, Okay, the site
Speaker 1: here lies over a fault where gas leaks could theoretically
Speaker 1: cause oxygen and reduction in an individual that would then
Speaker 1: result in a mild hypnotic state complete with hallucinations. I mean,
Speaker 1: even coming back to this ap article about Centralia, you
Speaker 1: have this quote about the you know, the woman talking
Speaker 1: about feeling like she's a zombie walking around due to
Speaker 1: the fumes, which is an altered state. And in this
Speaker 1: and in this case, I mean she she knows that
Speaker 1: it's not the divine trying to speak through her, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But you can you can well imagine a situation where
Speaker 1: if you're combining holy expectations, religious expectations, and ritual with
Speaker 1: this sort of environment, you could easily get to this point.
Speaker 2: If only we could get a medical readout on the
Speaker 2: the oracles of Delphi, that that might be really illuminating. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kind of information exists.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind going back and looking at the oracle
Speaker 1: again in the future. It's there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting writing about it. It is a has a wonderful history.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're going to go and close it out there.
Speaker 1: This this was a fun journey. We got to talk
Speaker 1: about a number of fascinating locations around the Earth, some
Speaker 1: wonderful history, mythology, and religion. If there's a particular site
Speaker 1: we didn't discuss that you would like to bring to
Speaker 1: our attention, certainly write in and let us know. And
Speaker 1: especially if you have visited any of these locations and
Speaker 1: you have direct first hand experience, perhaps you've actually glimpsed
Speaker 1: the flames emerging from the earth, definitely write in and
Speaker 1: tell us about it, share your photos, etc. We would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. In the meantime. Core episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish every Tuesday and Thursday,
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, short form,
Speaker 1: Monster fact or Artifact episodes on Wednesdays, listener Mail on Mondays,
Speaker 1: and on Friday. We set aside most serious concerns and
Speaker 1: just discuss a weird film with Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say Hello. You can email us at contact Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.