WEBVTT - The History of Fake Towns. 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:03.320 Hey, everybody. We are very excited to be going back 0:00:03.320 --> 0:00:08.040 out on the road in early February to Seattle, Portland's 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:13.520 and San Francisco. That's right, February first, second, third, the future. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:16.880 We're gonna be in those fabulous towns on stage for 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.320 the first time in three years. Chuck. That's right. Tickets 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:22.600 are on sale now, go get them, come see us, 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:26.000 and you can get those tickets at link Tree slash 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:28.520 s y s K Live. That's l I n K 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:32.480 t R dot E slash s y s K Live. 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:37.320 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:46.440 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.800 there's Chuck. Jerry's here too, across the country. Even, what 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.120 a time to be alive, What a time to be 0:00:53.200 --> 0:01:00.800 alive listening to Stuff you Should Know? Uh? Yes, and 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.280 should we can? We start off with a little shout 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.320 out to our colleagues. Yes, for sure, our buddies that 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:09.600 stuff they don't want to to know, did something big, huh. 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.160 They wrote a book like we did. And we are 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.880 very proud of these guys are colleagues. We've known our 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.640 friends for so long now mm hmm. And what do 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:22.920 they cover? They cover conspiracies, but not like trust me. 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:26.200 It's not like this big pro conspiracy thing. No. No, 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.400 they do a lot of um ripping the lid off 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:34.720 of the crack pots. It's a good way to say 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:38.319 thank you. Well. What they do is they apply critical 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:41.760 thought and critical thinking, which is one thing that's missing 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.760 a lot when it comes to conspiracy theories, right exactly, 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.240 because they're all smart dudes and they're pretty down to earth, 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:50.240 um and they have a great podcast, and now they 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:53.640 have a great book and it's um an eponymous book. 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:55.560 Stuff they don't want you to know is the name 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.160 of the book and the podcast, and I think it 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:01.000 just published, Chuck. So that means that you can get 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.920 it everywhere. I mean everywhere. You can get it at 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.440 like Eagle Eye Books in Atlanta, you can get it 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:11.960 at UM, the Corner Shop, Amazon dot com. Uh, you 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.119 can get it everywhere in between the stuff they don't 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:18.000 want you to know in hardcover because it just came 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:19.760 out hot off the presses. As a matter of fact, 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:21.960 when you pick up this book, you should probably be 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.639 wearing other myths because it is that new. That's right. 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:27.600 I can't wait to get my own copy. If you're 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:32.239 into history, for into reading about proven conspiracies and uh 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.880 not a bunch of goblody cook then highly recommend. I'm 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:39.200 sure you can't wait go check it out. Um, so 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:44.600 we're talking today about fake cities, right, yeah, like rock Ridge, 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:52.840 rock Ridge, do you get that? No, Oh, it's Blazing Saddles. 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.160 The name of the real town was rock Ridge. But 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.520 they at the end of Blazing Saddles Cleveland Little comes 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:01.360 up with a g enius plan to build a fake 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:06.400 rock Ridge for when the bad guys come in and 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.399 then they'll blow it up. So well, that's that's sort 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.520 of kind of what we're talking about today. Yeah, I 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.200 was gonna say that that, Um mel Brooks like really 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.080 did his research because there's a there's a lot of 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.679 reality in that people have done that kind of thing 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:24.440 many times over the years, many times, and some are 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.720 cooler than others. For sure. I can't wait to talk 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:31.400 about the Seattle thing that's really cool. Well, which one 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.320 is not cool? Let's start with that. Well, I don't 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:36.920 know about not cool, but possibly not even didn't even 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:41.960 really happen. Is in the seventeen hundreds there was a Russian, 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:47.000 very famous Russian military leader named Gregory Timken because he's Russian. 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:51.000 It's not Gregory, right, it's Gregory with an eye. I 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:56.880 don't see a lot of that anymore, hey, greg Although 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:58.640 it did have a friend in high school. His last 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.200 name was Griggs though, all right, I take that back. Yeah, 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:05.240 that's way different. But supposedly, as the story goes, they 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:09.640 built under his guidance what we're called, um what was 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:14.360 called a Potemkin village in order to impress Empress Catherine 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.440 the Second as she came through town and like, here, 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:19.680 look at this great fake town that she would think 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:23.200 is real. And then they would supposedly strike the set 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:25.920 and then go build it down river, and then she 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.680 would see and I guess believe it was a different 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:31.880 place and like, look, how great we're doing kind of thing. 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.599 But then I believe, after more digging, historians have said, 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.320 I don't think they actually did that. It was probably 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.160 more of a let's get this place all cleaned up 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.719 for her visit, and somehow history kind of changed that. Yeah, 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.000 which is I mean, I buy that he was one 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.640 of Catherine the great favorites of the court, so um, 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:53.359 it's possible that he would have gone to all that 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:57.400 trouble to please her. Um. Regardless of whether it happened 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.919 or not. Potemkin Village is now like a whole term 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:06.000 for any kind of fake facade that's used generally as 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.200 some sort of propaganda. The fact that it was kind 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:13.360 of like Catherine the Great um centric kind of leads 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:17.359 to that that extension of government propaganda. And and there's 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.520 a very famous North Korean village that's frequently referred to 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:25.080 as a Pattempkan village to yeah, the peace village. How 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.840 are you going to pronounce that North Korean name? I'm 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.599 going to pronounce it as such Jong Dong. I think 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.600 that's it. Uh. They also call it propaganda village, while 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:38.640 they don't call it that, but other people call it that. Um. 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:40.440 But you know the famous d m Z there the 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.320 Demilitarized Zone, you can you know, you can see this 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:50.280 very clean, lovely, modern, prosperous area of North Korea right 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.200 there from the d m Z. But you know, as 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.880 far as people speculate, there's really it's kind of just fake. 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:00.000 There's nothing there. There's no people, there's no nothing. Yeah, 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.000 And if you look like closely at it, there's no 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.200 glass in the windows. Even like it's as far as 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.560 pattemp and villages go. It's a halfhearted effort if you 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:13.960 ask me. The Nazis did this too in World War 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:18.840 Two too, you know, disgusting effect as well. Right, Yeah, 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.320 they did an altered version of it. They took a 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:25.120 real village UH and dressed it up in a way 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:29.000 for that that suited their propaganda needs. But there was 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:33.040 a place called UH. I think it's thair sheen stopped, 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:37.960 but that might be wrong. So it was a it 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.800 was a depot essentially, it was a sorting place for 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.920 um Jewish Germans and um Jews from other countries the 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:49.320 Germany had invaded there were shipped to this place and 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:51.919 then they were sorted out and basically sent to different 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:56.640 death camps around Germany. So so many people passed through 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:58.960 this that even for the short time they were there, 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:02.720 conditions were so bad ad that they would um, they 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:04.880 would die while they were there. Plenty of people died. 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.680 But the this thing was such a focal point, It 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:13.400 was such a crux of this Nazi death machine that um, 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:16.480 if it were you know, revealed for what it actually was, 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.480 the Nazis plans would have been revealed to the world. 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:21.960 So when the Red Cross said we want to see 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.480 this place that we want to make sure everybody's being 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:29.040 cared for appropriately. Um, the Nazis kind of started scrambling there, 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.840 like give us two weeks. You know. It's funny as 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.880 I was going to say, give us three weeks. You're 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.480 you're way more aggressive on your schedule than I. Totally, 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:42.440 that's very appropriate. Uh yeah, you know, they cleaned it up. 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:47.640 They brought in apparently rose bushes. They changed the hospital 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:52.240 to a library. They changed the gymnasium or as you 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:57.680 would say in Germany, ga nasium into a place of 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.679 prayer for the Jewish people. They shipped out out anyone 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.160 who didn't look well basically, and only people who looked 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:06.840 healthy and were in good health remain. And you know, 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.200 they put a town square and made it look like 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.360 a really lovely thing with swings and sandboxes and even 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:16.600 a phony restaurant. And uh, what I didn't see was 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:21.520 how it worked. It worked perfectly. The Red Cross came 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.720 and we're like, oh, this is delightful, and left and 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.880 then everything just got right back to business after that. 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:30.640 So it served its purpose, Like it fooled the Red 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:32.480 Cross into going back and telling the rest of the 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:35.760 world like, no, the Nazis aren't running death camps. Come on, 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.720 everybody relaxed. They've got a restaurant and rose bushes. So 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:44.600 we know this only because of post World War two history, right. Um. 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:47.880 The thing that I saw that makes it just just 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:53.120 the the uey gouey evil topping on this horrible Sunday 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.120 is um. They build it to the rest of the 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:01.000 world as a spa town that elderly drewman Jews could 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:05.719 go live in in peace and safely. Just when you 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:09.800 think you've learned all the bad stuff the Nazis did, Yeah, 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.120 here comes another one. I've never heard of this before. Surprising. Yeah, 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.040 and I just wanted to reiterate, Chuck, I hate Nazis. 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.079 I hate Nazis of today. I hate the Nazis back then. 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.720 If you're a Nazi, I hate your guts. You can't 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:26.400 stand you. You're You're terrible. You're on record. I'm with you. 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.720 I'm on record too, So I feel like Chuck, Um, 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:31.760 you can kind of swing the whole thing back around. 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:37.000 It's not necessarily for propaganda, but um, there's there's decoy 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:41.319 cities that were essentially created to um well to to 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:44.720 act as decoys during wartime. Right yeah, and this was 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.240 I think this was the initial seat of the idea 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.559 for this topic. Maybe I don't think anyone said anything 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:52.760 in or maybe they did. But the more I started 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:54.520 kind of poking around, I was like, wow, there's been 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.600 a lot of times in history where for one reason 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:01.680 or another, a fake city was built old and once 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:04.240 I started sort of unpeeling that onion, I was like, wow, 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:06.800 there there's been all kinds of fake cities, and decoy 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.559 cities was a big part of it in World War Two, uh, 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.199 specifically in Britain what they did at first, it started 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:16.320 out as something called a que site, which is when 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.040 they just said, hey, let's put up like a fake 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:24.120 factory or something that will divert uh. The German bombs 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:28.079 that way and they'll waste some ordinances and they'll we'll 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.920 get them off track and confuse them, and more importantly, 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:34.000 they won't be bombing the real factories. Uh. And this 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:36.760 was I believe the idea of someone named Colonel John Turner. 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:39.960 And they said, well that bully to that, sir, that 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.520 works so well, why don't you go out and build 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:48.280 seven fake cities? And he went huh, And they said, hey, 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:50.480 it only has to look like a city from a 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:52.480 guy throwing a bomb out of a plane, so you 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:54.640 don't have to get too fancy. Yeah, that was like 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:56.760 a stroke of genius when they figured out, like, yeah, 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:58.800 you don't. You can just do like the rough edges 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:02.280 of it, because they remembered that they were hiding from 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.839 bombardiers who were looking for cities that were undergoing blackouts, 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.920 so that you know, there wasn't supposed to be much 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:11.880 of the city visible at all. They would look for 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:15.600 maybe somebody had left their door open accidentally, or someone 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:18.720 had forgot to extinguish a street light, something like that. 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.520 So they were able to just kind of make a 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.640 few structures, put some scaffolding together, and then light it 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.120 randomly here there, um, and all of a sudden you 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.280 had the impression of, at least from you know, ten 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:34.520 thousand feet or however high up you are when you 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:38.520 drop bombs on British cities, um, that it looked like 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.199 there's your target right there. And it actually worked to 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.320 great success. It really did work, and they ended up 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:48.000 being I believe the first site was called Starfish and 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:52.040 so they ended up calling them Starfish Cities just from 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:54.880 that first one. But initially they were called special fire 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.840 sits or s f sites, And part of that had 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.480 to do with the fact that after the bombing run 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:04.440 would go through, they would go through and set little 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:07.680 fires and set off a little explosions on their little 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:12.080 fake scaffolded city. Uh so again, so the bombardier would 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:14.360 look down and say, we got them. Look at that. 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:16.920 Look at that beautiful, big firetown there. Yeah. And even 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:20.640 more to the point, successive bombardiers that came the next 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:23.040 night or whatever would be like, oh, that was the target. 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:24.840 They hit it, and now that's where I'm gonna drop 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.520 my bombs too. Beautiful. Yeah, it really was. And here's 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:30.760 the thing though, you said they actually worked, uh and 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:33.600 I bailed on you, but I'm back with numbers. They 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.920 built two hundred and thirty seven of these uh starfish 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:42.080 sites or starfish cities, and I think the estimates are 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:47.560 they diverted about seven hundred bombing raids and potentially saved 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:54.400 about three thousand lives. Pretty great, big success. So um as, Yeah, 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.559 it was extraordinarily successful. But the British weren't the first 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.280 um to come up with this idea and leave on 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:02.719 little wasn't even the first to come up with it. 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:07.439 It was actually our friends, um Leigh Francais uh in Paris. 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.559 They decided in World War One that they were sufficiently 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:15.760 concerned about German zeppelin bombing raids, which has got to 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:20.120 be the slowest most just you know, terrible bombing well 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:24.000 probably not terrible, but definitely the slowest bombing um around. 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.280 So they said, we need to we need to find 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:30.720 a different site and build a replica of Paris. And 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.840 the whole idea was to like really rebuild a replica 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:38.079 of Paris with the champsi Lisse and the Arc de 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.240 Triomphe and um, like you don't I don't know if 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.320 they had plans for an Eiffel Tower. Surely they did, 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.360 but um they had it in three sections, and the 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.120 first section they worked on was the industrial section, and 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:51.320 eventually that that came to be the only one that 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.400 was completed. But it sounded like it was pretty amazing. Yeah, 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:57.720 I mean they had they were I would love to 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.520 see pictures of this thing. Did you see pictures? It's 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:04.160 pretty cool. I mean, how how to scale was it? 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:08.240 It was giant, so they made it life size, but 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:14.720 they used you know, um Chinsey materials, so they used 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:17.839 like really kind of you know scaffolding like a skeleton 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.400 of a giant building like that would serve as a 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:24.120 like a fake industrial building. And then they would put 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:28.080 some sort of like um opaque canvas over it or 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:31.280 an opaque covering up subsort, and then light it from inside, 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.360 so to a bombar deer, it looked like a glass 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:39.240 ceiling industrial UM building at night. So they were doing 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:41.760 stuff like that. They had UM they had like a 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.440 little platforms that moved along that were carrying lamps, so 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:49.280 it looked like trains moving around the area. Uh. They 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:53.000 did it to to really great effect. UM. And apparently 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:54.960 the only reason they didn't move on with the rest 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:58.600 of the plan was because the French military got good 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:03.280 enough at UM shooting down zeppelin's that the Zeppelin attack stopped. 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:05.880 The Germans were like, you should probably figure out something 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:08.600 faster than a zeppelin to to drop bombs from. Yeah, 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:10.360 the difference is like, why are we building these fake cities. 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:12.880 Look how slow that thing is. Somebody just shoot a 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.400 flaming arrow that way, Yeah exactly. We can all just 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:18.760 move to the left at our leisure and we'll all 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.720 be all right. Well, all of this it's funny. Um 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:23.440 ed helped us out with this one, and he kind 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:25.520 of started out with a section that we're not going 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.200 to cover about, like movie backlots. But I'm sure all 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:31.760 of this stuff, I mean, in World War two and 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.360 beyond was influenced by the fact that they're like, oh, 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:37.600 wait a minute, we're making movies now where we build 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.000 fake cities. It's a great effect. Like it ain't that hard, 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.960 right exactly. I mean, it's just I guess it's it 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:48.200 must just be one of those ideas that's out there 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:50.840 where it's like, we needed a new city, but we 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:53.080 don't want to build a whole new city, so let's 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:55.360 just build a part of a city, just enough to 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:58.600 kind of fool people from a distance. Yeah, the whole 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.200 backlock thing, bat backlot thing is pretty. It's pretty. It's 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:07.960 got its own interesting um story itself. The thing is is, 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:09.720 if you stop and think about it, you're like, oh, 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.200 they had a they had a fake barbershop there. Oh, 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.280 they had a fake Victorian mansion there. It's like, if 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:17.840 you really step back and think about it, you're like, 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:21.880 who cares? But for some reason, there's something really engrossing 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.960 about that kind of stuff. Oh I love it, alright, 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.760 So that's a good set up there. You ready to 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.760 take a break, I am, Chuck. Let's take a break 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:33.240 right now, all right, and then we'll talk about Seattle 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:56.040 stuff you should know, Nash stuff you should know. And 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:59.480 speaking of Seattle, Chuck, we're gonna be in Seattle. Had 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.720 a feeling you're gonna work a live show promo into this. Yeah, 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.399 we're gonna be in Seattle on February one at the 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:11.840 More Theater. That's last February. And this is actually happening 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:13.880 to This isn't something we forgot to edit out, like 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.720 these shows are going on come hell or high water. 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.600 That's right, We're going to Seattle, to a real city. 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:22.560 But one of the cooler stories I think in this 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:29.399 episode is the fake city that Boeing built in Uh. 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:34.080 This was Boeing was building B seventeen bombers at what 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:38.000 was called Plant Number two, and that was a very 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.919 dangerous place to work in World War Two and for 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.160 obvious reasons. So they said, all right, here's what we're 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:46.800 gonna do instead of building because what you typically do 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:49.200 with like a decoy factory or que site or whatever 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.840 is build something, you know, fifteen miles away. And they said, 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:56.560 why don't we just build, like, build something that looks 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:58.280 like the real thing. Fifth females away, they said, why 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.679 don't we just shield our real thing by building an 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:05.960 innocuous faketown on top of the factory. And that's exactly 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:08.480 what they did they did. Have you seen pictures of this, 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.880 Oh yeah, this is super cool. It's all about what 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.000 it looks like from overhead. So again they didn't need 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:19.960 to build everything exactly life size and exactly with great material. 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.000 They built cars out of plywood, and the grass was 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:25.600 like dyed burr lap and stuff like that. The trees 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:31.560 were these weird kind of surrealist approximation of trees um. 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:33.960 So when you were walking among this stuff, you're like 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:37.760 that car is um cut off in half lengthwise, or 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.800 that house is like all it is is like the top, 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:43.920 you know, third in the roof. It's weird, but from 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.000 overhead it really did a good job disguising it. And 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.280 they would send Boeing workers up there once in a while, 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:53.000 like hang laundry or sunbathe, or walk along the sidewalks 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.359 and just to give the impression. And I was thinking 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:57.679 about I'm like, that is a really dangerous thing to 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:02.520 have your employees do yeah, so like, hey, if you're 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:04.840 gonna take a smoke break, go up there. Yeah. But 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.600 at the same time, if the if the building is 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.119 gonna get bombed, whether they're up there in the building, 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:12.400 I guess it doesn't really matter. So it's more good point, 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:15.879 no more dangerous than working inside anyway. Yeah, that's a 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.480 really good point. I didn't think about that. Uh. Yeah, 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.640 they had, um, I think kind of the more ingenious 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:25.800 things because obviously they're seeing it built, uh from way 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.480 way high up where the bombers are, it couldn't look 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.600 out of place, like in relation to everything else around it, 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:34.840 So they couldn't just like stick it down there in 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:37.960 any old order. They had to align the street grid 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.640 with generally what was going on around them. And it's 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:44.080 it's really cool. There's a cool website that has a 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:46.480 lot of really great pictures of like and you know 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.960 it's the time too, so this like super cool lady 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:52.840 in like standing at the street corner. They got a 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:57.119 little cheeky with the street signs Burlett Boulevard and Synthetic Street, 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.560 so I think they ended up uh having a little 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:06.200 fun with it, maybe a little. Somebody thought in the 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:08.800 middle of World War two to put joke signs up. 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.800 At least, that's pretty great, right. Um. Also, Chuck, I 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:17.119 heard that those streets were so well lined up you 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.760 could get on in the middle of that fake suburb 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.359 on top of the Boeing building and drive straight through 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:26.919 all the way to Portland's and then on to San Francisco, 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:34.760 where we'll be on February two and very nice. So um, yeah, 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.199 the whole Boeing thing, Luckily it never worked out. The 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:39.240 whole reason that they did that was because they were 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:41.200 on the West Coast in Seattle and they were worried 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:45.840 about Japanese bombing raids that never happened. Um, obviously, I 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:51.040 think it's possible. I mean I know that we in 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:54.520 our book. I think on our chapter about Coma Kaze. 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:58.960 This is a really book forward episode, isn't it. Um. 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:02.800 The Japanese Actually there was a battle in the United States, 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:05.119 but it was in Alaska. So I don't think the 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:09.040 Japanese ever came to the West Coast, did they. Well no, 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:11.280 I was just kind of kidding, like I think they 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.600 would have known if there was, you know, a bunch 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:15.520 of plane circling overhead, and they were just like, we 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:20.399 just can't find where it's working. Just keep smiling, just 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:26.040 keep pretending we're in a sober Uh. Sometimes the project. Uh, 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:27.920 it seems like a lot of these I think they're 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:30.000 well intended and they get off on the right foot 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:32.639 and then it ends up being scrapped for one reason 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:35.800 or another. But you know, it makes a great point. 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:39.439 If you're the United States Military and you want to 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:43.359 build some big facility somewhere, you you want to build 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:45.960 it away from things, obviously, so it's a little more secretive. 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:48.280 But you can't build it too far from stuff because 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:52.160 you need workers, and you need equipment and shipping and 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:56.359 construction and all the things that being close to things provide. 0:21:56.400 --> 0:22:00.560 So uh with the town of apix floor to a 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:03.399 p I X, which will explain what that means in 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:05.919 a minute. This was in Palm Beach County in the 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:12.000 nineteen fifties, where they bought up ten square miles in 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:14.880 what was at the time kind of rural western Palm Beach. 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:17.439 There weren't a lot of people around then because they 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:20.040 wanted to build a factory. They were developing liquid hydrogen 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:23.800 is UH fuel, and they're like, let's develop this fuel, 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:26.719 will build this factory in another place nearby and we'll 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:29.920 build a pipeline. Uh, And it just kind of never 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:32.280 fully came to fruition, I think because they realized it 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:37.359 was too expensive to ship liquid hydrogen that way. Yeah, 0:22:37.359 --> 0:22:39.399 they figured out it was cheaper to just put them 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:42.600 in refrigerated trucks and drive them. So they actually did 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.760 create the liquefaction plant to produce the hydrogen for the 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:50.159 rocket fuel UM, but they just never went on to 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:54.560 do UM the full project, which was built a worker's 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:57.960 village to support the plant. And the whole idea was 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:00.680 they were just going to say, this is a nilizer plant, 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:03.320 and this is a basically, you know, a suburb, suburban 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:08.040