Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And we're back with
Speaker 3: part four. And I would say probably it's got to
Speaker 3: be the final part right now, at least the final
Speaker 3: part for now of our series on mud. So in
Speaker 3: previous episodes in the series, which if you haven't listened
Speaker 3: to them, you should go back and check those out first,
Speaker 3: but we talked about the history of mud on Earth.
Speaker 3: It's a more surprising and dynamic story than you might imagine.
Speaker 3: That was in part one. We talked a bit about
Speaker 3: what defines mud. You know, it tends to be, of course,
Speaker 3: wet soil of a smaller particle size that gives it
Speaker 3: that sticky consistency. We talked in part two about animal
Speaker 3: behavior and mud, such as pig wallowing, Arnold Schwarzenegger wallowing mud,
Speaker 3: what do they call it, mud skippers, the fish that
Speaker 3: have these interesting mud habitat behaviors, and other things like that.
Speaker 3: In the episode just before this one, we talked a
Speaker 3: lot about mud bricks, the history of mud in human construction.
Speaker 3: And today we're back to sort of round things out
Speaker 3: with the grab bag of different little topics that didn't
Speaker 3: make it anywhere else.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, this will I think this will be
Speaker 2: the capstone for this series. But Mud does open up
Speaker 2: the possibility for some standalone episodes later on. I think
Speaker 2: there's a It ends up touching on so many different
Speaker 2: aspects of the world and our habitats and also human creation.
Speaker 2: So who knows, there may be more mud in the future,
Speaker 2: but this is going to be like the This is
Speaker 2: the bedrock mud. This is the initial foundation of mud
Speaker 2: bricks upon on which we might build future episodes.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. So to kick things off today,
Speaker 3: I wanted to start by thinking about a principle that
Speaker 3: maybe should be used in the natural sciences. We'll see,
Speaker 3: and it's basically the heavy metal principle of nature, which
Speaker 3: states that for every phenomenon in nature, there's a good
Speaker 3: chance there is a heavy metal version of that phenomenon.
Speaker 3: If you start with the kind of like an easy
Speaker 3: listening or jazz or country of your classic mud puddle,
Speaker 3: the heavy metal version, I think is the mud pot
Speaker 3: So you think of a normal mud puddle, there's usually
Speaker 3: a depression in the ground where surface water collects after
Speaker 3: rain soaks through the soil, especially if the soil particle
Speaker 3: particles are small, creates an area of plastic or even
Speaker 3: fully liquid mud. And if water stops flowing into the
Speaker 3: puddle from above, it can dry up. But now imagine
Speaker 3: a mud puddle with a thick liquid consistency, sort of
Speaker 3: like paint, but boiling bubbling, like a big pot of stew,
Speaker 3: forming opaque bubbles of gas that the gas is clearly
Speaker 3: trapped in those clay particles rising up from below, and
Speaker 3: you can see them form into spheres on the surface
Speaker 3: sometimes and they stay there for a moment before they
Speaker 3: finally burst, and depending on the consistency of the mud,
Speaker 3: might splatter all over the place when they do burst,
Speaker 3: maybe even throwing clumps of mud up into the air
Speaker 3: such that it piles around this puddle of mud, forming
Speaker 3: mounds or even a cone that the mud puddle rises from,
Speaker 3: or a weird kind of collar of mud splatter all around.
Speaker 3: This is a mud pot, and it's also it could
Speaker 3: develop into one example of a term. There's a term
Speaker 3: called mud volcano that actually seems to be used to
Speaker 3: refer to a multiple very different things, but one thing
Speaker 3: that gets called a mud volcano is the kind of
Speaker 3: mound that can build up from the life cycle of
Speaker 3: a mud pot.
Speaker 2: Quick Weird House cinema trivia here for you, Joe, Can
Speaker 2: you name two movies that we've covered that feature boiling
Speaker 2: mud or the appearance of boiling mud, no matter how
Speaker 2: they actually created it via actual footage or some other
Speaker 2: kind of technique.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, you are really stumping me. I seem to
Speaker 3: recall there's some boiling mud in Legend. Isn't that where
Speaker 3: Meg Mucklebones lives? But I don't think we actually watched
Speaker 3: Legend for Weird House?
Speaker 2: Did we? No? No, not as of this recording.
Speaker 3: Oh wait a minute, did we do Labyrinth? No, we
Speaker 3: didn't do Labyrinth. But Labyrinth has boiling mud, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, or something that looks like it. Now, the
Speaker 2: two movies that I believe we've watched that have boiling
Speaker 2: mud or the effect of boiling mud, Planet of the
Speaker 2: Vampires and nineteen seventy eights Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right, Both of those just escaped my memory.
Speaker 3: But yeah, two masterpieces in their own right.
Speaker 2: Came into my head as you were describing it. Because
Speaker 2: it is a very like otherworldly feeling thing. Though even
Speaker 2: though it is very much all of this world, it
Speaker 2: kind of lends itself to alien environments or environments like
Speaker 2: in Beauty and the Beast, which are supposed to be
Speaker 2: kind of like on the edge of the civil lies world,
Speaker 2: sort of bordering on the supernatural. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the Beating in the Beast, there's like boiling
Speaker 3: mud or at least bubbling mud even within the grounds
Speaker 3: of the castle, I think, isn't there. I think, so, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's like a courtyard that has mud pots within it,
Speaker 3: and that seems yeah, at the edge of fantasy. But
Speaker 3: to look at a mud pot and understand what's going
Speaker 3: on here, I think we should start with the concept
Speaker 3: of a hot spring. So hot spring's form when water
Speaker 3: heated by geothermal energy deep underground rises to the surface
Speaker 3: and forms a pool, or when water that collects at
Speaker 3: the surface due to you know, regular runoff and surface
Speaker 3: features is heated by steam more heat from below, and
Speaker 3: this surface water can be anywhere between you know, pleasantly
Speaker 3: warm bathtub temperature and lethal boiling. So you do not
Speaker 3: ever want to jump into a hot spring unless it's
Speaker 3: one that is like very well known in advanced to
Speaker 3: be a consistent safe temperature if in out, stay away.
Speaker 3: I've read something like twenty people are known to have
Speaker 3: died from jumping into or falling into hot springs at
Speaker 3: Yellowstone National Park in the United States alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember reading about some of this when we
Speaker 2: were doing some episodes on springs and holy waters associated
Speaker 2: with springs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and sometimes it can be deceiving, Like there are
Speaker 3: tragic cases of people just trying to like get close
Speaker 3: to see what the temperature is like and then falling
Speaker 3: in and dying. There was a case like this I
Speaker 3: was reading about from the year twenty sixteen where let's see. Well,
Speaker 3: so I was reading an article about it from the
Speaker 3: local news station KULR eight in Billings. I guess Billings, Montana,
Speaker 3: near Yellowstone, And so the headline was man killed in
Speaker 3: Yellowstone hot spring allegedly trying to quote hot pot. I
Speaker 3: guess hot potting is like, you know, jumping into a
Speaker 3: hot spring to hang out in it. But to read
Speaker 3: from the article, it says the man who died in
Speaker 3: a Yellowstone hot spring last summer was apparently looking for
Speaker 3: a place to hot pot in the park. Yellowstone officials
Speaker 3: recently released the final report on the incident following a
Speaker 3: Freedom of Information Act request. The victim's sister recorded the
Speaker 3: incident on her cell phone. The accident happened in Norris
Speaker 3: Geyser Basin on the afternoon of June seventh. Deputy Chief
Speaker 3: Ranger Laurent Veresse says, it is a very dangerous area
Speaker 3: with boiling, acidic waters. So the article tells the story
Speaker 3: of how the man and his sister went off the
Speaker 3: approved path and they were checking out different like hot
Speaker 3: springs or maybe more mudpot type areas to see what
Speaker 3: the temperature was, and unfortunately, the man, while trying to
Speaker 3: get close to check the temperature, slipped and fell in,
Speaker 3: and the article says, quote search and rescue rangers who
Speaker 3: arrived later did find the victim's body in the pool,
Speaker 3: along with his wallet and flip flops, but a lightning
Speaker 3: storm stopped the recovery efforts. The next day, workers could
Speaker 3: not find anys Veras says the water was churning and acidic.
Speaker 3: He remarked, quote, in a very short order, there was
Speaker 3: a significant amount of dissolving. So the apparently boiling and
Speaker 3: acidic conditions in the water essentially disintegrated the victim's remains.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so it is no joke.
Speaker 3: Do not mess around with like, oh, maybe I'll go
Speaker 3: check out this hot spring and see if I should
Speaker 3: get in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen to your park rangers, obey signage.
Speaker 3: But so okay, So that's hot springs water that pools
Speaker 3: on the surface that is either connected to a hydrothermal
Speaker 3: system that heats it, or is heated by heat coming
Speaker 3: off of a hydrothermal system below in the ground. So
Speaker 3: also in this family of surface outlets for geothermal energy
Speaker 3: are fumaroles, which are holes in the earth where steam
Speaker 3: rising from geothermally heated water escapes. A mud pot is,
Speaker 3: in a way still a type of mud puddle. Mud
Speaker 3: pots are pools where water collects and mixes with clay particles,
Speaker 3: forming a thick liquid mud, usually gray or cream colored,
Speaker 3: sometimes black, but there are other colors possible too. This
Speaker 3: mud puddle is heated by geothermal activity from below, or
Speaker 3: at least is permeated by gas that's released from below,
Speaker 3: and mudpots often release hydrogen sulfide gas, which smells like
Speaker 3: rotten eggs. And while people who see these things often
Speaker 3: describe them as marvelous, one of the most amazing things
Speaker 3: they've seen in nature, if not exactly beautiful. An element
Speaker 3: of the mudpot encounter, described at least as often is
Speaker 3: the dank, putrid smell, which is in the air before
Speaker 3: you can even see the thing. You might maybe you
Speaker 3: hear it, but you smell it now. An interesting thing
Speaker 3: is I wonder if this reflects a development in the
Speaker 3: understanding of mudpots. But I've read different accounts of the
Speaker 3: most common ways that mudpots are formed, So I want
Speaker 3: to start with an older account, from a reputable source,
Speaker 3: but an older one. This is from a textbook from
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties by the American geologist Lewis V. Pearson
Speaker 3: that essentially describes a mud pot as like a hot spring,
Speaker 3: but with limited water supply, and Pierson says it goes
Speaker 3: like this. If there is basically a net positive flow
Speaker 3: of water into a hot spring, meaning that more water
Speaker 3: is flowing into the hot spring, either from below or
Speaker 3: from above, or the combination of both, than the rate
Speaker 3: of evaporation of that water, this will lead to overflow
Speaker 3: from the spring, and the water will overflow the basin
Speaker 3: of the pool and drain away. And in fact, if
Speaker 3: you look up pictures of hot springs, you can often
Speaker 3: see rocks nearby stained where the runoff from the spring
Speaker 3: is going. It'll maybe carry colorful extremophile microbes with it,
Speaker 3: so you'll see almost kind of like a little red
Speaker 3: river running off the side of it. And so in
Speaker 3: these cases, if the flow of water into the pool
Speaker 3: is positive, the water stays relatively clear, relatively limpid, in
Speaker 3: Pearson's words, often a deep blue or green color, though
Speaker 3: it can appear different colors like red or yellow, again
Speaker 3: due to extremophiles present.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Of course, presumably if the net flow of water into
Speaker 3: the pool is strongly negative, the pool will just dry up.
Speaker 3: But Pearson says if the rate of evaporation is roughly
Speaker 3: equal to the rate of inflow of water into the pool,
Speaker 3: the hot spring neither dries up nor overflows. Then the
Speaker 3: acidic water sitting in the pool dissolves the surrounding rock
Speaker 3: into clay, which then mixes with the water and forms mud,
Speaker 3: and you are left with a pool of hot, bubbling mud,
Speaker 3: which is sometimes described as boiling because of the way
Speaker 3: that it bubbles. It certainly can look like it is boiling,
Speaker 3: but technically I've read that these mud pots have variable temperature.
Speaker 3: They are sometimes less hot than the boiling point of water, which,
Speaker 3: of course, at one atmosphere of pressure is one hundred
Speaker 3: degree c or two twelve fahrenheit. In some cases, the
Speaker 3: mud pot is actually much cooler than that, but the
Speaker 3: mud is still bubbling because of hot gases from below,
Speaker 3: so hot gases in the earth are still rising up
Speaker 3: through it. In that case, it's not actually the mud boiling,
Speaker 3: it's just it's being permeated by gas that's trying to rise.
Speaker 3: Pierson says that the mud in these pots can be
Speaker 3: different colors. It can be white, yellow, red, purple, or black.
Speaker 3: This is often due to the presence of oxides of
Speaker 3: iron or manganese. I think manganese oxides tend to be
Speaker 3: more black. Of course, iron oxide tends to be more red.
Speaker 3: And for this reason of all these different colors, these
Speaker 3: mudpots are sometimes called paint pots. They can look like
Speaker 3: a bubbling pool of paint of different colors mixed together.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Pierson says that as more clay is dissolved into the water,
Speaker 3: the mud becomes thicker. Of course, so you're getting more
Speaker 3: soil to the same roughly the same amount of water.
Speaker 3: So as you mix in more sediment it becomes a
Speaker 3: thicker consistency, and this makes the ebulition, meaning the bubbling,
Speaker 3: less regular. So imagine the way that, like a soup
Speaker 3: in a pot on the stove, as it becomes thicker,
Speaker 3: the bubbling becomes less regular and more kind of random
Speaker 3: and chaotic and violent rob it. Do you know what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about from cooking experiences.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it can kind of even like shake the pot.
Speaker 3: A little bit, right, yeah. Yeah, So this is my
Speaker 3: experience in the kitchen. Like you boil something with basically
Speaker 3: a watery consistency or broth like consistency, the bubbles will
Speaker 3: be pretty even. There'll be a steady rate, you know,
Speaker 3: they'll pop evenly as long as the heat is consistently applied.
Speaker 3: But if you were talking about like a very thick stew,
Speaker 3: you can sometimes get much less predictable and more explosive bubbles.
Speaker 3: So it might not bubble at all for a bit,
Speaker 3: and then suddenly a huge bubble pops and it splatters
Speaker 3: all over the stovetop.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I was cooking one of these just last night.
Speaker 3: Well, apparently a similar thing that happened as the mud
Speaker 3: in a mudpot thickens with thick mud, steam builds up
Speaker 3: higher pressure before rising to the top and popping, which
Speaker 3: means it can happen, in Pearson's words quote spasmodically and
Speaker 3: with some violence, the mud being thrown into the air
Speaker 3: and about the vent where it collects inconsiderable masses. And
Speaker 3: this is one version of the concept of the mud volcano.
Speaker 3: Because the mud pot that bubbles this way and kind
Speaker 3: of builds up mud around it can form a cone
Speaker 3: that looks like a volcano mountain, it looks like a
Speaker 3: cone volcano, or it can kind of form a caldera
Speaker 3: around itself made out of ejected mud. Now, often this
Speaker 3: mud erodes very easily, so this building process can be
Speaker 3: kind of cyclical. But yeah, it can build up a
Speaker 3: little sort of mini volcano made out of mud and
Speaker 3: just kind of keep popping and spewing onto itself. Pearson
Speaker 3: says that this usually marks the end of the period
Speaker 3: of activity for a hot spring. As the activity of
Speaker 3: a hot spring is dying away, it's more likely to
Speaker 3: go through a mud pot and a volcano period. Now,
Speaker 3: I mentioned I came across some different accounts of what
Speaker 3: is exactly going on in a mud pot. That was
Speaker 3: the older account. There a lot of the more recent
Speaker 3: sources I was looking at describe the source of the
Speaker 3: water going into the mud pot as placing more emphasis
Speaker 3: on that being surface water. So, for example, the National
Speaker 3: Park Service has some materials about what's going on with
Speaker 3: the mudpots at Yellowstone, and these sources claim that it
Speaker 3: essentially acts more like a double boiler. So, again with
Speaker 3: kitchen analogies, I guess that's where we have a lot
Speaker 3: of our experience with boiling liquids a double boiler. If
Speaker 3: you never used this, rob it's like you put like
Speaker 3: a glass bowl on top of a pot that has
Speaker 3: a little bit of water boiling in it, and the
Speaker 3: steam from the boiling water rises and it gently heats
Speaker 3: the bowl from below, as opposed to just you know,
Speaker 3: putting whatever you have in the bowl in the pot
Speaker 3: directly and having hot metal applied to it.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever done this myself. Interesting.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's used usually when you need to heat something
Speaker 3: very gently, like if you're trying to heat something that
Speaker 3: could easily overheat and would be ruined by doing so,
Speaker 3: like if you are making It's used sometimes in baking,
Speaker 3: when you need to melt chocolate to a particular temperature.
Speaker 3: To get the inconsistency you want, or if you're making
Speaker 3: like a hollandaise sauce, because you know, you heat a
Speaker 3: hollandaise sauce too much, and you know with scrambled eggs. Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, but so anyway, it's just like letting the
Speaker 3: steam from below do the heating of the food, as
Speaker 3: opposed to letting applying direct heat from the heating element
Speaker 3: through the metal to the food. And the source from
Speaker 3: the National Park Service claims that in the case of
Speaker 3: these mudpots, what's usually happening is that water from the
Speaker 3: surface collects in a basin or a depression that is
Speaker 3: not actually connected to the water flow from the hydrothermal
Speaker 3: systems in the ground. Instead, the bottom of the basin
Speaker 3: or the depression is usually considered impermeable because of lining
Speaker 3: with fine particles of clay. So that's sort of your bowl.
Speaker 3: The bottom of the double boiler and the hydrothermal system
Speaker 3: below releases steam and usually some hydrogen sulfide gas, which
Speaker 3: rises through the bottom layers of clay and causes the
Speaker 3: mud puddle to both heat up and bubble as the
Speaker 3: gas rises to the top. Then you have again extremophile
Speaker 3: organisms microorganisms in these pools that can use the hydrogen
Speaker 3: sulfide gas to make energy, and in the process they
Speaker 3: create sulfuric acid, which turns the mud pool extremely acidic,
Speaker 3: and then it helps dissolve more rock in the surrounding
Speaker 3: basin and turns that into clay, and so the mud
Speaker 3: just like you know, you get continuous supply of new
Speaker 3: clay particles from that dissolution, and it gets thicker and thicker.
Speaker 3: And this source also says that mudpots can be a
Speaker 3: by the season, so like rain and melting snow can
Speaker 3: make the mud and the pots cooler and thinner, and
Speaker 3: then hot, dry weather in the summer can cause them
Speaker 3: to thicken or even dry up completely, which means that
Speaker 3: these are ultimately somewhat transient and dynamic features. Like a
Speaker 3: mud pot or a mud volcano of this variety might
Speaker 3: only be active for a few months. It can also
Speaker 3: be active much much longer, but it might just be
Speaker 3: a very brief, shortly lived thing. Before maybe it just
Speaker 3: transforms into a kind of fixed fumarole where steam is
Speaker 3: coming out of a hole in the ground. Now, there
Speaker 3: is another use of the term mud volcano that can
Speaker 3: refer to a different geological process that can in some
Speaker 3: cases be extremely explosive and large in scale and violent.
Speaker 3: I was reading about this in an article from December
Speaker 3: twenty twenty by a ut Ostin geologist named Michael R. Hudic.
Speaker 3: That is, it's it's a particular example of a mud
Speaker 3: volcano that occurred in Indonesia in two thousand and six
Speaker 3: in the Siduarjo regency that is known sometimes as the
Speaker 3: Lumpur Siduarju. Lumpur is the word for mud, And there
Speaker 3: was this massive, sudden eruption. There was like steam releasing
Speaker 3: from a vent in the ground and rumbling, and then
Speaker 3: it started just exploding with these huge amounts of mud
Speaker 3: that ended up completely engulfing villages in the surrounding area.
Speaker 3: It was like many acres and people had to be
Speaker 3: evacuated in order to get out of harm's way. These
Speaker 3: villages were completely swallowed up in mud. There were like
Speaker 3: these farming villages in the area. And so this is
Speaker 3: not like a little mound of mud ejected by a puddle.
Speaker 3: This was like a landscape destroying, violent ejection of mud.
Speaker 3: And it seems like in many of these cases where
Speaker 3: there is this large, explosive kind of mud eruption, and
Speaker 3: one thing that might be going on is the interaction
Speaker 3: with hydrocarbon gases, so for example, methane, and of course
Speaker 3: methane being very flammable, can make these eruptions actually flaming eruptions,
Speaker 3: where like when the hot methane comes into the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: it can ignite. The cause of this particular mud volcano
Speaker 3: eruption in two thousand and six is apparently controversial. It
Speaker 3: seems like a lot of people have attributed it to
Speaker 3: drilling of a natural gas well in the area by
Speaker 3: an oil and gas company. Of course, the oil and
Speaker 3: gas company claims, no, it wasn't us it was a
Speaker 3: naturally occurring event, but it did seem to be significant
Speaker 3: hydrocarbon gas involved in this kind of eruption. And this
Speaker 3: kind of thing is scary because it's hard to imagine.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess we are familiar with the concept
Speaker 3: of like an igneous volcanic eruption, you know, where it's
Speaker 3: like a rock volcano erupting and it's releasing all of
Speaker 3: this gas and rock and molten rock and pyroclastic flow
Speaker 3: and all these things. And so I guess we are
Speaker 3: already familiar with the concept of large destructive volcanoes. But
Speaker 3: the idea that it could just like flood a landscape
Speaker 3: with mud is another stranger and differently frightening version of
Speaker 3: that kind of image.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's one thing to have vast quantities
Speaker 2: of mud where you know mud will be seasonally or otherwise.
Speaker 2: It's another thing for mud to just suddenly appear where
Speaker 2: it's not expected. And this seems to be like one
Speaker 2: of the more exaggerated cases of it, you know, whereas
Speaker 2: the vast quantities of mud just emerging and taking over
Speaker 2: people's homes and so forth. Yeah, Now, on the subject
Speaker 2: of mud volcanoes, I have also been reading a little
Speaker 2: bit about this idea of mud volcanoes on Mars. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you came across any of this. I
Speaker 2: was looking at a paper from twenty twenty quoting Peter Burrows,
Speaker 2: a professor geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and
Speaker 2: basically he proposed that mud from mud volcanoes may have
Speaker 2: flowed in Mars past, and therefore some of the things
Speaker 2: we see in visuals from Mars that looks like it
Speaker 2: could be the result of lava flows could perhaps be
Speaker 2: the result of mud flows in the past, so he
Speaker 2: and his team conducted experiments to see how this would work,
Speaker 2: and found that while the mud eventually would freeze under
Speaker 2: those Chili Martian conditions, there would be a little time
Speaker 2: for it to flow, freezing and crusting over at the surface,
Speaker 2: initially enabling it to move a bit before the freeze
Speaker 2: firmly took hold. Because I guess that, you know, it's
Speaker 2: one of the things about thinking about mud elsewhere in
Speaker 2: the universe. We have plenty of sci fi visions of
Speaker 2: muddy planets, but for mud to be there, you need
Speaker 2: some sort of moisture to be there as well. But
Speaker 2: we do, I think, love the idea of mud planets.
Speaker 2: You know, take any especially any kind of like exotic
Speaker 2: terrestrial environment, and somebody somewhere has turned a whole planet
Speaker 2: into that. You know. Yes, so you have jungle planets,
Speaker 2: you have desert planets like Oracus. If you look at
Speaker 2: Star Wars, you have planets like Dagoba, just a swamp world.
Speaker 2: Not only does it have a lot of mud, like
Speaker 2: the mud and the muck will just swallow up whole spaceships.
Speaker 3: That's true, though, you know, it's interesting. They never say
Speaker 3: in the Star Wars movies that the entire planet Dagoba
Speaker 3: is a swamp, but you just assume that's the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've seen some maps and these are
Speaker 2: you know, like you know, artistic interpretations that kind of
Speaker 2: run with that, and it's like, oh, yeah, whole planet
Speaker 2: just swamp. And that raises a lot of questions like
Speaker 2: what how would that work? That would the entire planet
Speaker 2: be a swamp? Does that mean it doesn't have oceans,
Speaker 2: it just has swamp? I don't know. I should look
Speaker 2: into this and say, I'm sure some people have written
Speaker 2: some papers about this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if you, like, could you have a
Speaker 3: swamp if you didn't have other types of regions to
Speaker 3: support the U like the geological and atmospheric conditions that
Speaker 3: would create a swamp.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, come back to Wars in just a second, but
Speaker 2: I want to hit another couple of cosmic mud examples.
Speaker 2: One concerns SMAP SMAP, which is also a Japanese boy band.
Speaker 2: Apparently this became obvious when I was researching this, but
Speaker 2: in this case it stands for Soil Moisture Active Passive.
Speaker 2: That's NASA's environmental monitoring satellite launched in twenty fifteen and
Speaker 2: still active as of this recording. I think it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be active through at least the end of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. But it can measure land surface soil moisture
Speaker 2: up to a certain depth. So it's an eye in
Speaker 2: the sky essentially on mud. And the data that it
Speaker 2: collects is useful because it spills over into better understandings
Speaker 2: of the carbon cycle, weather and climate models, drought monitoring,
Speaker 2: and so much more. But of course that's concerning Earth.
Speaker 2: We know there's mud on Earth. This is another idea
Speaker 2: I ran across this, the idea that you at one
Speaker 2: point anyway had just cosmic mud ball flying around through space.
Speaker 3: Okay, so if you imagine like a comet as a
Speaker 3: formation of ice and dust that's flying around in space,
Speaker 3: of course all the ice is frozen, Like what if
Speaker 3: a comet was wet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually found some discussion of this in a
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen article for New Scientists by Sam Wong. In
Speaker 2: this it doesn't conserve comets, but it concerns asteroids, particularly
Speaker 2: early asteroids or carbonaceous asteroids, that may have delivered water
Speaker 2: and organic molecules to Earth. And apparently it can be
Speaker 2: helpful to model them as just big old mudballs. So
Speaker 2: the idea here is that ice, dust and chondrules come
Speaker 2: together and the pressure has not yet compacted it all
Speaker 2: into rock right away. It will in time, but at
Speaker 2: this point early on, it hasn't all been compacted into rock,
Speaker 2: and the ice will end melting due to decaying radioactive
Speaker 2: atoms in the dust and gas, resulting in a quote
Speaker 2: unquote schelegi mud wow, And this would eventually become rock again,
Speaker 2: but for a time they would be muddy asteroids. According
Speaker 2: to the modeling by Philip Bland at Curtain University in Perth,
Speaker 2: Australia and his collaborator Brian Travis at the Planetary Science
Speaker 2: Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 3: That is interesting. Okay, so they got they've got a
Speaker 3: pretty strong internal heat source because they've got all these
Speaker 3: young radioactive atoms in them that are still decaying at
Speaker 3: a pretty rapid rate. So they're keeping the ice content
Speaker 3: like melted and moist. And then of course they've got
Speaker 3: all like the dust and rock soil content in them.
Speaker 3: And yeah wow, this like big balls of mud flying
Speaker 3: through space.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So I before I ran across this, I
Speaker 2: didn't even think this was possible. You know, you think
Speaker 2: of mud as being something you're going to encounter, particularly
Speaker 2: on an Earth like world. Now, coming back to Earth,
Speaker 2: Wak worlds and Mud. Another Star Wars planet of note,
Speaker 2: especially if you've seen the movie Solo, which came out
Speaker 2: several years back. There's a planet called Membon, and in
Speaker 2: that movie we see Imperial mud Troopers or swamp troopers
Speaker 2: as they're sometimes called, engaged in some sort of drawn
Speaker 2: out battle on this world. And Joe, in case you
Speaker 2: haven't seen this, I included an image here of what
Speaker 2: mud troopers look like as compared to just normal Imperial stormtroopers.
Speaker 3: Looks like a dirty job, looks like this may be
Speaker 3: like the last thing that, like all the other troopers
Speaker 3: try to sign up for different detail and you know,
Speaker 3: the last picks for all the other ones, like Nope,
Speaker 3: you cannot go to Hawth and be a snowtrooper. You
Speaker 3: got to be a mud trooper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's the way it's presented in
Speaker 2: the movie too, Like Han Solo, a young Han Solo
Speaker 2: is a mud trooper on this awful world. Then, of
Speaker 2: course they're also drawing in a lot of comparisons to
Speaker 2: trench warfare and war's past and so forth, which will
Speaker 2: we'll get back to in a bit. But one of
Speaker 2: the interesting things, and of course this is kind of
Speaker 2: across the board when you look at sci sci fi
Speaker 2: often is looking backwards and taking things from the past
Speaker 2: and putting this futuristic spin on them. Because I don't recall,
Speaker 2: and I could be wrong. It's been a while since
Speaker 2: I've seen Solo, but I don't think the Imperial mud
Speaker 2: Troopers leveraged any kind of Sci Fi technology to deal
Speaker 2: with the mud. It seems like they would have leaned
Speaker 2: heavily on repulsor technology to kind of float above it,
Speaker 2: or to use some sort of technology to either rapidly
Speaker 2: dry out muddy conditions or to like flash freeze them
Speaker 2: so that you wouldn't have to get slogged down in them.
Speaker 2: It seems like that would be something to try if
Speaker 2: the Imperial budget allowed for it. I guess they spent
Speaker 2: that all on big walking machines that are gonna, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess in theory, not get bogged down in the mud.
Speaker 2: Off the top of my head, I don't think I
Speaker 2: can even think of another sci Fi vision where there's
Speaker 2: any kind of like sci Fi treatment of mud like
Speaker 2: this be wrong because I'm not. I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of military sci Fi out there, so someone might
Speaker 2: have looked at it. I do remember a gadget in
Speaker 2: John Steekley's Armor that is like a people in power
Speaker 2: armor versus insect aliens on a desert world that involves
Speaker 2: sand clotters and a machine that would turn the sand
Speaker 2: of the desert into solid walls of fortification. So I
Speaker 2: imagine you'd want something like that, something that, through sci
Speaker 2: Fi shenanigans, can instantly dry out an area or make
Speaker 2: it solid, as opposed to shifting sand or in this case,
Speaker 2: like mud that's going to cling to you and suck
Speaker 2: you down into the muck.
Speaker 3: I don't know if sand is the best choice for that.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be better to use a cohesive soil with
Speaker 3: smaller particles like clay or silt?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So I don't know any of you out there,
Speaker 2: who certainly are more red and military sci fi than me,
Speaker 2: there might be an example of this, so right in
Speaker 2: and let us know.
Speaker 3: Now. Of course you keep saying military sci fi in particular,
Speaker 3: and it makes sense why you would do that, because
Speaker 3: of the the significance of mud in combat and warfare
Speaker 3: in human history.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, you know mud. I was thinking about
Speaker 2: this a lot like mud is not only an environmental
Speaker 2: condition that occurs naturally in the world, but it's often
Speaker 2: this condition that is at an interaction point between the
Speaker 2: natural world and human activity. You think of muddy roads, right,
Speaker 2: We think of paths that are not well maintained that
Speaker 2: get really muddy and sloppy in places. And then there
Speaker 2: are several walks that my family does like this in
Speaker 2: the area where you know, we know exactly where that
Speaker 2: muddy stretch is, and there are often a lot of
Speaker 2: slapdash efforts to mitigate it, you know, boards that are
Speaker 2: thrown down on the rock. Yeah, and you know that
Speaker 2: works for a little bit sort of. That also creates
Speaker 2: additional splash hazards and new and exciting ways to slip
Speaker 2: and fall in the mud. But yeah, mud is also
Speaker 2: a big factor in human warfare and has been for
Speaker 2: a long long time. You pointed this out to me,
Speaker 2: and this is something that has been covered in various
Speaker 2: articles over the last couple of years. But there is
Speaker 2: a Russian term putitsa that refers to a season or
Speaker 2: seasons of the year when unpaved roads become treacherous due
Speaker 2: to the mud created by rain and or melting snow
Speaker 2: on said roads. It's had a major impact on land
Speaker 2: wars in Russia and Eastern Europe, for ages, impacting the
Speaker 2: Mongol invasion, both World Wars, and also the Russo Ukrainian
Speaker 2: War that, as of this recording, is still ongoing. It's
Speaker 2: been observed that among Russia's mistakes during the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two invasion of Ukraine, they underestimated the muddy roads season
Speaker 2: that was just kicking off at that time.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is sort of one of the factors
Speaker 3: affecting the seasonal planning of offensives in conflict in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. And on the other hand, another major area
Speaker 2: for mud and war is the First World War. And
Speaker 2: I mean you can instantly picture this probably if you've
Speaker 2: seen images, footage and fictional recreations of those trench warfare environments.
Speaker 2: What do you think of You think of like blasted landscape,
Speaker 2: you think of mud, You think of these just awful
Speaker 2: conditions where like the natural world is just worn away
Speaker 2: and all that remains is mud and fortifications and explosions
Speaker 2: and death and pain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like heavily shelled or trodden over areas where it
Speaker 3: seems like a lot of the plant life has been
Speaker 3: killed and stripped away, and now like the roots are,
Speaker 3: it's not really holding the soil together the way it was,
Speaker 3: and now it's just mud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you've ever taken a poetry class, you
Speaker 2: may have run across the fact that, yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of great but depressing poetry and writings in general
Speaker 2: that came out of this time period, people describing these conditions,
Speaker 2: describing the horrors of war and the horrors of chemical
Speaker 2: war and so forth. One of the best literary treatments
Speaker 2: of war and mud, however, just has to be that
Speaker 2: of American British war nurse turned novelist and poet Mary Borden.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventeen, she wrote a poem called the Song
Speaker 2: of the Mud. You can find this in full on
Speaker 2: Poetry Foundation dot org. But it's really really good. Joe,
Speaker 2: were you familiar with this poem?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is a new one for me. I
Speaker 2: this is not one that I remember covering in poetry classes.
Speaker 2: But she writes of quote, the frothing, squirting, spurting liquid
Speaker 2: mud that gurgles along the road beds unquote, as well
Speaker 2: as quote the thick, elastic mud that is needed and
Speaker 2: pounded and squeezed under the hoofs of the horses, though
Speaker 2: she also juxtaposes this with more natural seeming aspects of mud,
Speaker 2: even like mud as something that can be beautiful. From Afar,
Speaker 2: I'm going to read the final stanza from the poem,
Speaker 2: but again I encourage everyone to go out and read
Speaker 2: it in full quote. This is the song of the mud.
Speaker 2: The beautiful, glistening golden mud that covers the hills like satin.
Speaker 2: The mysterious, gleaming, silvery mud that is spread like enamel
Speaker 2: over the valleys. Mud, the disguise of the war zone. Mud,
Speaker 2: the mantle of battles, mud, the smooth, fluid grave of
Speaker 2: our soldiers. This is the song of the mud.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's interesting, And I don't know the connotations of
Speaker 3: mud is used and that stands at least are more
Speaker 3: I don't know, more positive than I would have expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot of dark imagery
Speaker 2: in there about it, like swallowing up guns and taking
Speaker 2: people down and like like not only like the physical
Speaker 2: power of the mud, but also like the emotional toll
Speaker 2: of the mud, which I'll come back to in a
Speaker 2: bed as well.
Speaker 3: When I was thinking of World War One poetry and
Speaker 3: the concept of mud, I thought of the one of
Speaker 3: the poems of Wilfrid Owen. I just had to look
Speaker 3: it up because I didn't remember the name, but it's
Speaker 3: the Apologia pro poemate Mayo, which I think means defense
Speaker 3: of my poetry. And this is by Wilfrid Owen, who
Speaker 3: was a British poet who fought in World War One.
Speaker 3: Wrote a lot of poetry associated with the war, like
Speaker 3: Anthem for Doomed Youth you might have read. But the
Speaker 3: opening stands of this poem was, I too saw God
Speaker 3: through mud, the mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled,
Speaker 3: war brought more glory to their eyes than blood, and
Speaker 3: gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, I don't remember that bit, but I
Speaker 2: remember Owen. He's definitely one of the names that comes
Speaker 2: up when a poetry class steers sharply into the trenches.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, a book that I mentioned earlier in this series, Mud,
Speaker 2: a Military History by C. E. Wood, is a full
Speaker 2: book dealing with mud. In war. And so if you
Speaker 2: need more of this, I highly recommend you pick up
Speaker 2: that book. It's very well written, it's you, it's very absorbable.
Speaker 2: But in it would stresses that while more permanent domains
Speaker 2: of mud are certainly important in warfare, you need to
Speaker 2: know where the swamps, marshes and bogs are and how
Speaker 2: to either circumnavigate them or utilize them, force the enemy
Speaker 2: to move through them, that sort of thing. But the
Speaker 2: main area of interest in the book is transitional mud.
Speaker 2: That is the kind that arrives and departs without significant warning.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this previously traversible landscape suddenly has mud in
Speaker 3: it that is going to interfere with your progress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this becomes key because I mean, this is
Speaker 2: not something you can necessarily plan for, or planning can
Speaker 2: fall short of taking it into account. And it's a
Speaker 2: variety of mud that has played a crucial role in
Speaker 2: the history of armed conflict. One of Wood's main focuses
Speaker 2: in this is how mud hinders forward advancement in warfare,
Speaker 2: so impacting combatants, animals, and machines of war, and of
Speaker 2: course not just war machines and soldiers and tanks and
Speaker 2: horses with knights on them and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But of course everything that supports a war effort, that
Speaker 2: supports an army and its advancement, the vehicles that are
Speaker 2: carrying food, any kind of medical support that is in
Speaker 2: tow all of that sort of thing as well. So
Speaker 2: generals have to contend with the impact of permanent mud,
Speaker 2: seasonal mud, random transitional mud, in addition to all of
Speaker 2: the other threats and challenges of battle, all the other
Speaker 2: environmental concerns that will come into play. And there are
Speaker 2: also huge human health and mental health challenges with mud
Speaker 2: that the author deals with in greater detail. There's a
Speaker 2: great quote in the book though, about this, attributed to
Speaker 2: historian Martin Gilbert. Quote. At night, crouching in a shell
Speaker 2: hole and filling it, the mud watches like an enormous octopus.
Speaker 2: The victim arrives, it throws its poisonous slobber out at him,
Speaker 2: lines him, closes round him, buries him. For men die
Speaker 2: of mud as they die of bullets. But more horribly,
Speaker 2: mud is where men sink, and what is worse, where
Speaker 2: their souls sink. Hell is not fire, that would not
Speaker 2: be the ultimate in suffering. Hell is mud?
Speaker 3: Wow? Well, there is something I think interesting there in
Speaker 3: that mud in a way militates against people's ability to
Speaker 3: see their own suffering as noble or to see it
Speaker 3: in any grandiose terms, that there's something kind of humbling
Speaker 3: and humiliating about suffering brought on by an environment of mud.
Speaker 3: And thus like death in mud is an image that
Speaker 3: brings a lot more despair than the idea of a
Speaker 3: sort of like violent death or death in fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now on thinking about this though, hell
Speaker 2: is mud, that of course made me think of Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I remember there being some mud
Speaker 2: in Dante's Ferno somewhere. You have varied all the different
Speaker 2: circles and bulgs in Inferno. They have different characteristics, different flavors.
Speaker 2: And indeed there is a circle in Dante's Inferno where
Speaker 2: there is mud. It is the third Circle. And I
Speaker 2: had to I had to look it back up again.
Speaker 2: I was looking in my translation by Durling and Martinez,
Speaker 2: and this is just a couple of lines from it. Quote,
Speaker 2: I am in the third circle with the eternal cursed,
Speaker 2: cold and heavy rain. It's rule and quality never change.
Speaker 2: Great hailstones, filthy water and snow poured down through the
Speaker 2: dark air. The earth stinks that received them. It's also
Speaker 2: the realm of Cerberus. But when quote the great worm
Speaker 2: opens his mouth to growl at Dante and Virgil, Virgil
Speaker 2: throws dirt into the monster's three mouths, and the monster
Speaker 2: gobbles it all down delicious. Yeah. Yeah, is durling, and
Speaker 2: Martinez explained in the notes in my translation of Inferno,
Speaker 2: the mud food connection is key here. Quote the rain, hail,
Speaker 2: and snow and resulting mud are versions of the food
Speaker 2: and drink to which the gluttons were addicted in the
Speaker 2: last analysis, merely visions of the elements earth and water.
Speaker 3: Sort of portraying the like the the worthlessness of the
Speaker 3: pleasures of gluttony. That like that you're just sort of
Speaker 3: concerning yourself with material rubbish rather than having your mind
Speaker 3: on heavenly things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also like the sense that it's it's all
Speaker 2: mud anyway, or even that it's it's all excrement. There's
Speaker 2: also a lot of dog imagery here. Obviously we have
Speaker 2: Cerberus with the three dog heads, and then we also
Speaker 2: have pig imagery thrown in and also mud excrement comparisons
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Hey, pig imagery bringing us back to pig mud wallowing,
Speaker 3: which actually turns out to be a quite clever adaptation
Speaker 3: of nature.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so brief departure into hell, but coming back to
Speaker 2: the surface world and the hell we make for ourselves there.
Speaker 2: Coming back to war as what explains that the mere
Speaker 2: challenge of moving around and mud can lead to exhaustion
Speaker 2: for the individual soldier, and this exhaustion can prove fatal.
Speaker 2: It can also hold true for pack animals as well.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you're in a very muddy situation
Speaker 2: and you're having to just move through mud constantly or
Speaker 2: for a lengthy period of time, like that's just making
Speaker 2: every step so much harder. And there's a good chance
Speaker 2: you're already doing something exhausting, that is mentally trying. You're
Speaker 2: already under a great deal of stress, and now each
Speaker 2: each time you try and lift your boot your foot
Speaker 2: out of the mud, more effort is required of you. Now,
Speaker 2: there have been efforts to improve footwear for soldiers at
Speaker 2: different time periods, such as having wider essentially kind of
Speaker 2: like plank bottom shoes that the US Army experimented with
Speaker 2: special mud boots and shoes in World War Two, and
Speaker 2: then again in Vietnam would include several prototype photos here.
Speaker 2: Joe I included a screen cap here for you to
Speaker 2: look at these. They're not much to look at, but
Speaker 2: you can see they're like basically different designs of wide
Speaker 2: flat surfaces that would be scrapped or somehow attached the
Speaker 2: bottom of boots.
Speaker 3: Some of them look like huge wooden hoofs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do. And you know, I'm not certain because
Speaker 2: it's just the subtitle. He was very brief, but I
Speaker 2: guess it's possible that some of these could be for horses.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe the round one that's kind of
Speaker 2: hoof shaped is for a horse. I don't know, huh,
Speaker 2: because certainly, you know, horses would be of concern, and well,
Speaker 2: not all of these military engagements. Of some of them.
Speaker 2: Tracked vehicles like tanks and half tracks perform better in
Speaker 2: some muddy situations, but a tract vehicles certainly can get
Speaker 2: stuck in the mud. As Wood points out, they can
Speaker 2: also slide out of control through the mud and down
Speaker 2: muddy hillsides as well. Tracks can spread weight out more
Speaker 2: evenly than tires, So that's one of the appeals of
Speaker 2: having tracks or half tracked designs in these vehicles, but yeah,
Speaker 2: they're still not perfect. And then if you throw trenches
Speaker 2: into the mix, as it was encountered in the First
Speaker 2: World War, especially, you know that one of these big
Speaker 2: tanks can get stuck in the trench, and therefore you need,
Speaker 2: like other vehicles to lay down temporary bridges so that
Speaker 2: the tanks can make it across those trenches. Now, coming
Speaker 2: back to health though, human health and mud, Wood also
Speaker 2: points out that extremely muddy conditions often lead to deteriorating
Speaker 2: sanitary conditions. Wood points out that wounded soldiers rarely reach
Speaker 2: medical facilities clean, so and then this make sense. You're
Speaker 2: in muddy conditions, you're going to enter into the medical
Speaker 2: facilities muddy and that and also it means that oftentimes
Speaker 2: it's not just like any kind of pure mud, That
Speaker 2: mud is going to be mixed with all manner of
Speaker 2: unhygienic ingredients from the war zone. Muddy conditions also severely
Speaker 2: hinder the ability to just evacuate the wounded or to
Speaker 2: have medical personnel come in to deal with people who
Speaker 2: are wounded.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, in addition to all these general concerns, it
Speaker 3: seems like I have memories of reading about at least
Speaker 3: interpretations of some decisive battles in history where mud played
Speaker 3: a role in how the battle turned out, or at
Speaker 3: least some historians believed that it did. Like I seem
Speaker 3: to recall the Battle of Agincore as one example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Battle of Agincore is a big one. This
Speaker 2: is from fourteen fifteen English victory over the French in
Speaker 2: the One Hundred Years War. The French had to advance
Speaker 2: heavily armored knights through very muddy conditions. And this key
Speaker 2: to this too is that this was transient mud. I've
Speaker 2: read this was These were not muddy conditions that were expected.
Speaker 2: This was I believe there is like a huge storm,
Speaker 2: so they weren't prepared for it. They marched anyway, and
Speaker 2: they end up sinking in the mud, especially if they've
Speaker 2: been knocked off their horse, easily immobilized once unhorsed in
Speaker 2: all that heavy armor. And it's said that, you know,
Speaker 2: some of the French knights drowned in the mud there.
Speaker 3: And this seems to be kind of a pattern that
Speaker 3: emerges in history, like it is bad to be caught
Speaker 3: as the side in a battle that is trying to
Speaker 3: advance through the mud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean all these factors are going to
Speaker 2: come into play. It's going to slow you down. This
Speaker 2: stuff's going to get stuck, and then when the battle
Speaker 2: turns against you, it's going to turn even worse. A
Speaker 2: couple of other examples that come up frequently. There's the
Speaker 2: mud March from the Battle of Fredericksburg eighteen sixty two
Speaker 2: in the American Civil War. This was on the Union side.
Speaker 2: General Burnside's troops were and it ended up having to
Speaker 2: go through some really muddy conditions and a number of
Speaker 2: key artillery pieces and wagons became trapped in the mud,
Speaker 2: delaying the Union advance. And this was due to like
Speaker 2: sudden stormy conditions that were not expected that made it
Speaker 2: difficult to move these key pieces. Now, the Battle of
Speaker 2: the So from nineteen sixteen, this was this is another
Speaker 2: example that comes up now. This one, though, is an
Speaker 2: inconclusive battle of the First World War between German forces
Speaker 2: and some British and French forces. Entailed massive casualties on
Speaker 2: both sides in very muddy trench warfare conditions. So not
Speaker 2: a situation where like the mud gave either side an advantage,
Speaker 2: but just made it. It seemed to contribute it to
Speaker 2: it just being like an awful, awful battle for both sides. Now,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned already, like muddy conditions, muddy trench warfare.
Speaker 2: It's like just kind of you instantly picture it when
Speaker 2: you're thinking of World War One in particular, or perhaps
Speaker 2: like Germany's in the Eastern Front and World War Two,
Speaker 2: and both of these are theaters of war that have
Speaker 2: been recreated in various films over the years and TV
Speaker 2: shows and the like. But also you just tend to
Speaker 2: see a lot of muddy war conditions and muddy battlefields
Speaker 2: and especially muddy conditions after the battle in other films
Speaker 2: and also in video games. And I had never really
Speaker 2: thought of this before, but I was reading a little
Speaker 2: bit about this on the blog The Excellent Blog, a
Speaker 2: collection of Unmitigated Pedantry by historian Brett Devereaux. I've referred
Speaker 2: to this blog a few times because it's a great read.
Speaker 2: He does things like, you know, analyze the warfare in
Speaker 2: The Lord of the Rings, both the books and the
Speaker 2: Peter Jackson movies and so forth, does a lot of
Speaker 2: talking about Roman military, So.
Speaker 3: It's like a military historian writing about topics nerds would
Speaker 3: be interested in, yes.
Speaker 2: Very much so. So if you're into a lot of
Speaker 2: these nerdy settings, or you're into ancient warfare and medieval
Speaker 2: warfare and so forth, I definitely recommend it. But I
Speaker 2: was reading one of his posts where he points out
Speaker 2: that that, yeah, you see a lot of films and
Speaker 2: especially video games that depict the aftermath of pre modern
Speaker 2: battles as being just muddy and bloody messes. And he
Speaker 2: points out that this doesn't seem to be the norm,
Speaker 2: you mean, in reality. In reality, yes, it was not
Speaker 2: always just a muddy mess after an ancient or medieval
Speaker 2: battle took place. Right now, that's not to say that
Speaker 2: you don't have, like the examples we're discussing, where you
Speaker 2: have definite muddy places that either erupt because there's a
Speaker 2: great like it's a road where there's a lot, a
Speaker 2: great deal of travel, and then it becomes muddy. And
Speaker 2: then you have transient mud in the mix. You have
Speaker 2: muddy conditions popping up because of extreme storm activity that's
Speaker 2: taken place. But he points out that like if you
Speaker 2: just have like a normal grassy environment field somewhere where
Speaker 2: there's a battle taking place, it's not like a single
Speaker 2: battle taking place there over the course of a day
Speaker 2: or even a couple of days is going to just
Speaker 2: wear down all the vegetation and turn it into mud.
Speaker 2: In particular, he points to photographic evidence from the American
Speaker 2: Civil War that shows that, Yeah, you can have a
Speaker 2: large army, say, moving through an area, and it's not
Speaker 2: going to kill off the grass and muddy things up
Speaker 2: over the course of a single day or a couple
Speaker 2: of days. It's the sort of thing that occurs due
Speaker 2: to prolonged traffic, prolonged activity, and also environmental conditions thrown
Speaker 2: in there as well. So you know, all of those
Speaker 2: things you see with like a trench warfare environment, but
Speaker 2: it's not just going to pop up over the course
Speaker 2: of a couple of days because an army moved through
Speaker 2: a place, or even because two armies clashed at a
Speaker 2: particular location.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so maybe when people are dug in and there's
Speaker 3: there's frequent foot traffic or heavy machinery moving around, or
Speaker 3: when an area is subject to prolonged shelling or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I see the appeal of it in
Speaker 2: cinematic portrayals and dramatic portrayals of the aftermath of war,
Speaker 2: because it's like we have been bloodied, people are suffering
Speaker 2: and wounded, and it makes sense that you sort of
Speaker 2: heighten that feeling that the earth itself, the world is
Speaker 2: wounded by all of this, like the wrongness of everything
Speaker 2: that has occurred here. So like I like that connection,
Speaker 2: and I think it certainly plays well. But it's it's
Speaker 2: a fun or an interesting commentary on this to sort
Speaker 2: of put it in, you know, look at it within
Speaker 2: the perspective of how battles seem to have actually impacted
Speaker 2: or not impacted the environment.
Speaker 3: So it's not necessarily the battle of a single day
Speaker 3: that can turn a place muddy, but it's more like
Speaker 3: the prolonged human presence, which maybe why you can see
Speaker 3: places become very muddy if they're also like the site
Speaker 3: of a festival or fair grounds, how muddy that can get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it gets very muddy very quickly. You see this
Speaker 2: with with places that even you know are more or
Speaker 2: less permanent. You know that they're having to continually figure
Speaker 2: out how figuring out how the water flows and how
Speaker 2: to keep mud from becoming a problem. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's you do see it at festivals a lot. I
Speaker 2: guess that what the nineties Woodstock oh a example of
Speaker 2: really muddy conditions and people getting into the mud, and
Speaker 2: it also becoming sort of a hell escape in that
Speaker 2: particular encounter. But there's also mud at the original woodstock,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's sort of these scenes of sort
Speaker 2: of innocent, hippy enjoyment of muddy conditions, you know, slattering
Speaker 2: yourself with mud. So you know, being covered in mud
Speaker 2: and trapped in mud is not necessarily a bad thing,
Speaker 2: but certainly, you know, in if you're also engaging in
Speaker 2: a in a bloody battle, I don't think anyone's going
Speaker 2: to be a fan. All right, We're looking at the
Speaker 2: clock here and we realize we have to end Mud
Speaker 2: Part four, despite the fact that we did want to
Speaker 2: get in a little bit at least into the discussion
Speaker 2: of mud and religion. One of the most obvious aspects
Speaker 2: of this being that so many religions, especially ancient religions
Speaker 2: and mythologies, involves some idea of humans being made for
Speaker 2: mud or clay or dirt, but particularly clay and mud,
Speaker 2: you know, very much leaning into the idea of a
Speaker 2: creator deity or deities as being potters that are molding
Speaker 2: us and perhaps baking us, in making us what we are.
Speaker 2: But then we also had some other stuff to say
Speaker 2: about that, so well, I don't know, we'll have to
Speaker 2: come back to this in some form. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: we're gonna come back and do Mud Part five because
Speaker 2: we already said we wouldn't do that, but we did
Speaker 2: leave the door open for various mud creatures to slather in.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we'll discuss it off Mike and come back.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're gonna go and close it up.
Speaker 2: But we'd love to hear from everyone out there if
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on just mud in general, experience with mud,
Speaker 2: experiences with muddy conditions, mud in military science fiction, mud,
Speaker 2: and in military history in all of is fair game
Speaker 2: writ in. We would love to hear from your reminder
Speaker 2: that are core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: here on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind podcast feed We have listener mail episodes on Monday,
Speaker 2: Short Form Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesday, and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most series concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
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