Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. When
Speaker 1: we think about fire, and we do think about fire
Speaker 1: a lot on this show, let's come out the time
Speaker 1: and time again. What are you are you confessing something
Speaker 1: that we that we love fire, that we worship fire,
Speaker 1: that we delight in its um, its growth, and its consumption. Um. No,
Speaker 1: but it is it must be fed. But it is
Speaker 1: an important aspect of Earth. You know, as we discussed
Speaker 1: on past episodes. You know, Earth is the only planet
Speaker 1: known to have fire, and there was a time when
Speaker 1: there was no fire on Earth because it wasn't possible yet. Um.
Speaker 1: You know fire. When we think about fire, we think
Speaker 1: about its fleeting nature, but also it's potential, it's tremendous
Speaker 1: power provided conditions are just right. Um. It's uh. It's
Speaker 1: always interesting to think about how fire is in many
Speaker 1: ways more un event than a thing, and for it
Speaker 1: to happen you need heat, fuel and oxygen, and the
Speaker 1: fuel and the oxygen we're not always present on our planet.
Speaker 1: Fire is more or less an aspect of the New
Speaker 1: Earth and The earliest evidence of charred vegetation dates back
Speaker 1: a mere four hundred and forty million years. Right, So
Speaker 1: today natural forest fires are just part of the cycle
Speaker 1: of life on the surface of Earth. But there was
Speaker 1: a time when Earth had its first forest fire. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine that, like the first time that ever happened. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy to imagine. And so this is this has
Speaker 1: been an aspect of life under their earth ever since. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, with with fire, it's it's interesting too because
Speaker 1: there's this trifecta. Obviously this necessary for it to exist. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is a delicate tripod. Remove one of the
Speaker 1: legs of the fire tripod and the fire will perish.
Speaker 1: Uh So. Yeah, our relationship with fire is sometimes like
Speaker 1: whoe is out of control? And other times it is
Speaker 1: you know, I can't get this thing to light at all? Um.
Speaker 1: You know. So I think we're all familiar with that,
Speaker 1: with the dual nature of fire. Uh So. For today's episode,
Speaker 1: and this will spill it into the next episode as well,
Speaker 1: I thought we might start with just what I thought
Speaker 1: was just really tantalizing question because I'd never really thought
Speaker 1: about it before, not not until you brought up this topic.
Speaker 1: And that is what is the longest that a single
Speaker 1: fire has raged? Uh? And I guess they're all sorts
Speaker 1: of sort of artificial parameters we might throw in. You know,
Speaker 1: what constitutes a single fire versus multiple fire spread out
Speaker 1: over time? Uh? I guess we kind of have to
Speaker 1: take the human scenario of like a hearth or a
Speaker 1: camp fire and imagine that is sort of our basic principle,
Speaker 1: like a single a single flame that keeps eating things,
Speaker 1: keeps consuming, maybe it moves. But what is the longest
Speaker 1: that such a fire has raged without snuffing out completely
Speaker 1: and having to be reset one way or another? Great question? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so of course you know the answer, and I that
Speaker 1: I know the answer to now. But but putting ourselves
Speaker 1: in the mindset of someone who doesn't know the answer,
Speaker 1: you might likely turn to a few different categories to
Speaker 1: start off. And the first would be what we just
Speaker 1: talked about, forest fires. Um. So you know, as long
Speaker 1: as we've had forests and fire, uh, this has been
Speaker 1: a possibility here on earth. Uh. Many of the worst
Speaker 1: forest fires in history, though, are measured in terms of acres, destruction,
Speaker 1: and fatality rather than in time. But if you dig,
Speaker 1: dig down, you you can start seeing some some time
Speaker 1: stamps on things. Many of the worst are dated to
Speaker 1: just a single day in human history um. Others last
Speaker 1: longer though some of the consist of multiple blazes, So
Speaker 1: it becomes perhaps a little more of a challenge to
Speaker 1: think of a continuous fire in these cases. Uh, though
Speaker 1: in many of the cases I think it does fit.
Speaker 1: Some wildfire seasons, of course, span many months, and then
Speaker 1: you have you have particular fires that have raged for
Speaker 1: a period of time. There's the Coyote Fire of nineteen
Speaker 1: siour in Santa Barbara, California, which lasted from September one
Speaker 1: to October one. So it seems we might if we're
Speaker 1: thinking about about modern forest fires, we're gonna probably look
Speaker 1: at something lasting days months, um uh, somewhere in that range. Now,
Speaker 1: as for wildfires of yesteryear, as well as blazes caused
Speaker 1: by prehistoric extinction events, I I couldn't find any stats
Speaker 1: on this, but I suppose it's worth thinking about. But
Speaker 1: it's also worth thinking about the fact that when you
Speaker 1: have a particularly large energetic fire, it can ultimately become
Speaker 1: something entirely different. You've become this this fire storm which
Speaker 1: creates and sustains its own wind system. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's one of the reasons when we start
Speaker 1: looking at some of these big blazes, they do tremendous damage,
Speaker 1: they can cover a pretty large area, but they're still
Speaker 1: not lasting long and time because they're just eating through
Speaker 1: all of that fuel in a relatively short period of time.
Speaker 1: And of course, with when we're talking about wildfires, we
Speaker 1: also have to think about the fact that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the human civilization has a has an impact as well
Speaker 1: on just how wildfires will play out through a given
Speaker 1: forest scenario. Uh, you know, and to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've been able to to jump in
Speaker 1: with um with orchestrated burns, control burns to try and
Speaker 1: uh simulate sort of the natural cycle of fires that
Speaker 1: would normally occur um. But another area where you have
Speaker 1: to factor in human civilization is of course when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with urban fires, where the trees and various other
Speaker 1: aspects of the natural world have been remade into an
Speaker 1: artificial environment a city, and then what happens when that
Speaker 1: catches fire. Well, I think a lot of the same
Speaker 1: practicalities are involved here as well. Some of the great
Speaker 1: fires to ravage cities are often measured to a single
Speaker 1: date in time UM, though there are some exceptions. There's
Speaker 1: the uh There's the one b C burning of Carthage,
Speaker 1: which reportedly took seventeen days. But this was also said
Speaker 1: to be a systematic burning of the city by the Romans,
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure if that would count UH so
Speaker 1: much because it was it was one of these situations obviously,
Speaker 1: where the Romans are like, let's burn the city down,
Speaker 1: let's make sure everything burns through. There are some other
Speaker 1: fires that are that are worth mentioning. There's the Great
Speaker 1: Fire of Utricht in the Netherlands that lasted nine days
Speaker 1: reportedly in twelve fifty three. There's the eighty nine first
Speaker 1: Great Fire of Lynn, Massachusetts, reportedly last two weeks, destroying
Speaker 1: roughly a hundred buildings. So it looks like, if we
Speaker 1: were going to say it looked to the world of
Speaker 1: like urban fires, for some sort of a candidate for
Speaker 1: longest fire, you're gonna be looking at something in the
Speaker 1: realm of days two weeks, But figures beyond that seemed
Speaker 1: kind of doubtful. All right. The next area to think about, though,
Speaker 1: would be, of course, human sustained fires. What about situations
Speaker 1: in which a human cultivated flame, a flame that's kept
Speaker 1: and fed more or less like a pet either for
Speaker 1: technological purposes, say like a forge or a pilot light,
Speaker 1: or something that's more religious or secular, or a secular
Speaker 1: symbol in nature, you know, something like a holy fire
Speaker 1: that's kept going, or some sort of a monument that
Speaker 1: has an eternal flame hooked up to it. I was
Speaker 1: shocked to discover how many monuments there are that have
Speaker 1: so called eternal flames on them because I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just uh, my morbid brain, but it seems
Speaker 1: like calling a flame eternal is just tempting the faces.
Speaker 1: Like you you know, this is not this flame will
Speaker 1: not burn forever. It's like settled down. You can't call
Speaker 1: it eternal. I was trying to think what you should
Speaker 1: call it instead. I can't come up with anything. I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe the long burning flame or something, or
Speaker 1: the attempted eternal flame. It's just eternal is not gonna happen, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess, and to a certain extent, I
Speaker 1: guess this is obvious. Like they're getting into the idea
Speaker 1: of like the fire is something that is that it
Speaker 1: can go out and it has to be cultivated. And
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of these are tied to two
Speaker 1: causes and memories with the with the idea of saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's make a point of remembering this individual
Speaker 1: or remembering this cause. Um, and and we'll use the
Speaker 1: fire as a symbol. Uh. But that that yeah, And
Speaker 1: there have been a number of these that that have
Speaker 1: sprung up just at the end of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: and and even you know, in the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: And uh and and it's also and it's certainly with
Speaker 1: the older ones that it gets more difficult to really
Speaker 1: figure out. Okay, has this been truly a perpetual eternal
Speaker 1: fire or has it gone out at least once, if
Speaker 1: not multiple times over the span of time that is
Speaker 1: attributed to it. I'm sorry that Roger Corman is invading
Speaker 1: my brain right now, but I'm thinking of a line
Speaker 1: and attack at the Crab Monsters where the giant psychic
Speaker 1: crab they're assaulting it with with different types of weapons.
Speaker 1: The humans are trying to defeat it, and at some
Speaker 1: point they use a fire based weapon and the crab
Speaker 1: counters by telling them he says something like that was
Speaker 1: quick thinking Dale, but the pity is that all fires
Speaker 1: must one day burn out. True, it's true. Um. But
Speaker 1: by the way, more fairly recently, someone was asking, I
Speaker 1: think in the discord for Stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: what are all the episodes in which Joe has mentioned
Speaker 1: attack of the crab monsters. No one had a clear answer,
Speaker 1: but a few a few episodes were brought up in
Speaker 1: which people remembered you you mentioning it. We'll add this
Speaker 1: to the list. Okay. Uh So, out of the various
Speaker 1: examples that come up, but one that I thought was
Speaker 1: pretty interesting is that of the the dast show in
Speaker 1: Temple Complex in Japan that has a flame that is
Speaker 1: said to have been burning for about twelve hundred years. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to say with something like this, uh. And
Speaker 1: ultimately I guess the it's the idea of the continuous
Speaker 1: flame that is most portant here. Uh. But but still
Speaker 1: this is an example of one that has supposedly been
Speaker 1: burning for over a thousand years. Now. This is not
Speaker 1: quite a flame. But I ran across this as well,
Speaker 1: and I thought I mentioned just because it's amusing and
Speaker 1: and maybe we have some listeners who can who can
Speaker 1: report on this firsthand. But there is something known as
Speaker 1: the Centennial light bulb in Livermore, California, specifically in the
Speaker 1: firehouse there. It's been burning there, uh, the bulb since
Speaker 1: nine one, though this has not been continuous. There have
Speaker 1: been power outages and electrical issues, etcetera. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly like what the ratio is between the time
Speaker 1: during that century plus that the light has been out
Speaker 1: versus on. But it's certainly a very old light bulb
Speaker 1: that still lights up. And there is a webcam you
Speaker 1: can like check in on its status at centennial bulb
Speaker 1: dot org. So this is same filament, no, no replaced parts,
Speaker 1: it's the same bulb old and it still works, still works,
Speaker 1: yeah uh, And and you can go visit it like
Speaker 1: on the website. It has information about how you can
Speaker 1: see this bulb for yourself. That is very impressive because
Speaker 1: obviously this is not an LED bulb or something. This
Speaker 1: is Lord knows how they're making light bulbs in nineteen
Speaker 1: o one, but this was in some form an incandescent
Speaker 1: filament based light bulb. Yes. Now, now getting back to
Speaker 1: the idea of fire and technology, I will say that
Speaker 1: I don't have an answer regarding things like pilot lights
Speaker 1: or you know, forge fires, industrial flames. Um, So there
Speaker 1: might be a really good example out there that I
Speaker 1: just couldn't find of a of a verified long burning
Speaker 1: pilot light or long burning forge fire, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But if listeners out there have have have something to
Speaker 1: submit on that count, let us have it. So, based
Speaker 1: on everything I've mentioned here and then, this very much
Speaker 1: reflects my mindset going into this. I was thinking, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, before we did any research, before we brought
Speaker 1: up the idea of the episode, I would have guessed, well,
Speaker 1: the longest raging fire, you know, maybe maybe it's it's gone,
Speaker 1: you know, a few weeks, a few months, uh, and
Speaker 1: you know the conditions are just right. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: I mean, how how long can a fire rage? Uh? Joe,
Speaker 1: would you like to get into uh one of the
Speaker 1: answers that that we're going to discuss in these episodes. Well,
Speaker 1: for the rest of the series, we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about naturally fueled flames. Flames that can burn for a
Speaker 1: long long time because humans weren't even necessary to create them, uh,
Speaker 1: that they're in they can arise in various ways. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some major categories I think more
Speaker 1: in the next part of this series. But there are
Speaker 1: various kinds of of of burning and ignition processes that
Speaker 1: it turns out have been going on on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth for hundreds or even thousands of years,
Speaker 1: which of course absolutely just dwarfs everything that that I
Speaker 1: that I've mentioned so far. It really puts things on
Speaker 1: an entirely different time scale, right, So I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk in uh in this episode about one example that
Speaker 1: really struck me when I was reading up for this
Speaker 1: that's sort of an odd man out, it's not exactly
Speaker 1: fitting into the other categories that we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about in part two, so I figured to be good
Speaker 1: to start with this one. So in the Northwest Territories
Speaker 1: of Canada, there is a stretch of seaside cliff faces
Speaker 1: and hills along the eastern coast of a place called
Speaker 1: Cape Bathurst where the earth and the rocks themselves seem
Speaker 1: to be perpetually burning, and they have been that way
Speaker 1: probably for thousands of years. In English, this place is
Speaker 1: known as the Smoking Hills or sometimes the Smoky Mountains,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with the ones in along the
Speaker 1: Tennessee North Carolina border. Different and smoky mountains literally smoking
Speaker 1: in this case, but in the language of the anuvialu It,
Speaker 1: and these are the people native to the western Canadian
Speaker 1: Arctic region. It is known as nar you At, which
Speaker 1: means big fire. And I was poking around for good
Speaker 1: historical resources on this place. A lot of the articles
Speaker 1: I dug up actually seemed rather confused, offering contradictory details
Speaker 1: about early observation. So the best thing I found was
Speaker 1: a piece in a magazine called Twosaiosat, which is a
Speaker 1: publication devoted to the language, culture and history of the Innuvvaluate.
Speaker 1: This article is by Charles Arnold and it's called ing
Speaker 1: Near you at the Smoking Hills of Franklin Bay. So
Speaker 1: Arnold identifies the earliest written account of the Smoking Hills
Speaker 1: as one tracing back to a Scottish naturalist, explorer and
Speaker 1: naval surgeon named Sir John Richardson, who wrote about the
Speaker 1: hills in the eighteen twenties while documenting an expedition that
Speaker 1: he made to chart the coastlines of northern Canada. And
Speaker 1: as a side note, this mission was actually organized in
Speaker 1: cooperation with another Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin, who many
Speaker 1: years later in eighteen forty five, would head up the
Speaker 1: infamous Lost Franklin Expedition, the goal of which was to
Speaker 1: fully chart a northwest sea passage through Canada. They were
Speaker 1: hoping to find a way to get around the northern
Speaker 1: part of the continent by water. Obviously, this is even
Speaker 1: though you know, if you look at a map you'll
Speaker 1: see a lot of gaps between the islands of northern Canada.
Speaker 1: This is more difficult than it might sound because often
Speaker 1: these waterways are are choked with ice. So when Franklin
Speaker 1: got lost in the eighteen forties, he was trying to
Speaker 1: find this northwest passage. And if you want to know more,
Speaker 1: you can look up what's known and unknown about the
Speaker 1: voyage of the HMS Terror and the HMS arab Us.
Speaker 1: If you want some good hair raising mystery with hints
Speaker 1: of cannibalism. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a faculous score. Um.
Speaker 1: You know what we've been able to piece together over
Speaker 1: the years through you know, the original history and then
Speaker 1: the finding of the wreckage and so forth. Um. Dan
Speaker 1: Simons wrote a fictional take on the Terror and the
Speaker 1: Arabis titled The Terror, which was a brick of a
Speaker 1: book that was then made in to an excellent AMC
Speaker 1: mini series a few years back. Uh. In this Franklin
Speaker 1: is played by the actor Kieren Hines. But I highly
Speaker 1: recommend this series. It's a wonderful mix of detailed historic
Speaker 1: depiction as well as fantasy and horror. Jared Harris and
Speaker 1: Tobias Menzies also star in that. It's really good. Rob
Speaker 1: can you do a short version of what we actually
Speaker 1: do know about the Lost Franklin expedition? Well, uh, there's
Speaker 1: a killer monster that shows up. No, No, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the that's the mini series I'm thinking of. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really really story. We could get into
Speaker 1: the full episodes really, but but basically, you have these
Speaker 1: two vessels that were that we're seeking the North Passage
Speaker 1: and they went missing, and and you get into like
Speaker 1: what happened to the crew, Like how long were they
Speaker 1: marooned out there in the ice and their ships locked
Speaker 1: in frozen in Where did where did they get to?
Speaker 1: Did anybody actually, you know, make it out. It's presumed,
Speaker 1: I think still that they all died. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's been a lot of analysis
Speaker 1: over the years about uh, you know what happened to them,
Speaker 1: and then and then later on we we actually found
Speaker 1: the wreckages. There's a famous painting I think that has
Speaker 1: to do with this, uh, with this lost voyage called
Speaker 1: It's got a really metal album name. It's called something
Speaker 1: like Man Proposes, God disposes or something um and it's
Speaker 1: the painting is just a polar bearers fighting over scraps
Speaker 1: of the wreckage. Yeah, for the for the longest the
Speaker 1: wreckage was was just lost entirely, but it was in
Speaker 1: September and expedition by Parks Canada discovered first the Arabis
Speaker 1: and then two years later they found a terror as
Speaker 1: well well. Anyway, coming back to the story, Sorry, so
Speaker 1: Dr John Richardson, the author of the account I'm about
Speaker 1: to site, was not involved in the lost expedition. He
Speaker 1: just was an early collaborator with Franklin. So turning back
Speaker 1: to his survey several decades earlier, in traveling along the
Speaker 1: shore of the place that would come to be known
Speaker 1: as Franklin Bay, Richardson made some observations of something marvelous
Speaker 1: cliffs that themselves appeared to be quote on fire giving
Speaker 1: out smoke, and where the ground appeared to consist of
Speaker 1: quote burnt clay's variously colored yellow, white, and deep red.
Speaker 1: I found another source quoting one of Richardson's accounts, where
Speaker 1: he says, quote at Cape Bathurst, the northern end of
Speaker 1: Franklin Bay, bituminous shale is exposed in many places, and
Speaker 1: in my visit there in eighteen six was in a
Speaker 1: state of ignition, and the clays which had been thus
Speaker 1: at supposed to the heat were baked and vitrified, so
Speaker 1: that the spot resembled an old brick field. And I
Speaker 1: will say I understand what Richard is is getting at here.
Speaker 1: Of course, brick fields are places where bricks are manufactured.
Speaker 1: You can look these up on the Internet and you
Speaker 1: can see the resemblance with the unnatural look of the
Speaker 1: baked earth. But when I look at pictures of the
Speaker 1: smoking hills, my computer ruined brain sees these landscapes, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately the first place it goes is that it looks
Speaker 1: like a level in doom. Yeah, it does. Um it. Also,
Speaker 1: I have to say it looks kind of delicious, like
Speaker 1: I'm also reminded of I don't like red velvet cake.
Speaker 1: It's like red velvet cake emerging from the earth. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's very interesting the way they produce these protruding
Speaker 1: rock formations. They're very jagged, uh, and they seem to
Speaker 1: be rather resistant to weathering compared to the unbaked rock
Speaker 1: all around them, which is more smoothed over. Yeah, very jagged, dairy,
Speaker 1: and very bloody looking in some cases. Say it looks
Speaker 1: like some sort of rock formation that is just gouged
Speaker 1: into the flash of a titan. Totally. So that's what
Speaker 1: Richardson saw in the eighteen twenties. He says, Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: we went past these cliffs. They appeared to be on fire.
Speaker 1: They're giving off smoke. We see a lot of burnt clay.
Speaker 1: It's yellow white and deep red. Very weird. Looks like
Speaker 1: an old brick field. But then the written history of
Speaker 1: the Smoking Hills continues after the disappearance of the Franklin
Speaker 1: expedition in the eighteen forties. So Franklin, the two ships Franklin,
Speaker 1: and the crews go missing, and in the year eighteen fifty,
Speaker 1: a ship called the HMS Investigator, under the command of
Speaker 1: Captain Robert McClure was searching for survivors of the Franklin
Speaker 1: party in the area around Franklin Bay. Once again, when
Speaker 1: the crew of this ship came across the same weird
Speaker 1: site cliffs by the sea that were strangely covered, and
Speaker 1: we're giving off plumes of smoke. And at first they
Speaker 1: thought that these might be campfires or signals from the
Speaker 1: Franklin survivors, so they sent out a small boat to
Speaker 1: check it out, see what's going on. But no, it
Speaker 1: was not survivors of the Franklin mission. Arnold in his
Speaker 1: article identify as testimony left by a Moravian missionary named
Speaker 1: Johann mr Sing who was a member of the shore party.
Speaker 1: And this is one where I really wanted to find
Speaker 1: the original text, but I don't. I can't if this
Speaker 1: has been digitized anywhere, I could not find it. It
Speaker 1: appears to be from what's called the Arctic Diary of
Speaker 1: Johann mr Ching eighteen fifty eighteen fifty four. That was
Speaker 1: that was published in print form in Toronto in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. But but I couldn't find the digital version.
Speaker 1: So I'm relying on arnold summaries of of what mr
Speaker 1: Ching says. But he says that when they got to
Speaker 1: the source of the smoke, they found no human life
Speaker 1: alive or dead. Only quote a thick smoke emerging from
Speaker 1: various events in the ground, and a smell of sulfur
Speaker 1: so strong that we could not approach the smoke pillar
Speaker 1: year than ten or fifteen feet flame there was none,
Speaker 1: but the ground was so hot that it scorched the
Speaker 1: soles of our feet. Arnold says that Mr. Ching compared
Speaker 1: the landscape to a huge chemical factory. He says that
Speaker 1: water from nearby ponds had been fouled by something from
Speaker 1: the earth, and that it that the water tasted sour,
Speaker 1: and they brought back samples of rocks from the smoking hills,
Speaker 1: brought him back to the ship where he Merching apparently
Speaker 1: claims that they ended up burning a hole in the
Speaker 1: mahogany table where Captain McClure kept them. So they took
Speaker 1: some rocks back to the captain and they're burning up
Speaker 1: his furniture. You know this This reminds me again of
Speaker 1: the mini series of The Terror because one of the
Speaker 1: things that they stressed in that show and Uh, and
Speaker 1: they have some of the people involved in the production
Speaker 1: that didn't mention this as well. They mentioned that when
Speaker 1: then they were researching the ships to portray them on
Speaker 1: the show. Uh, there was this this realization that you know,
Speaker 1: these were some of them most advanced vessels of any
Speaker 1: kind of that time period, and if we were to
Speaker 1: compare them to to our modern world, we might well
Speaker 1: compare them to spaceships. We might well think of them
Speaker 1: in terms of of of something that is meant to
Speaker 1: venture beyond our atmosphere. Um. And and here we have
Speaker 1: one of the and and Uh. Specifically, this was referring
Speaker 1: to the Terror and the Arabis. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: about the investigator, but I'm assuming that it may have
Speaker 1: been a similar in a similar fashion, may have been
Speaker 1: a very advanced ship. Um. But but here they are
Speaker 1: with the ship essentially arriving at an alien landscape. You know,
Speaker 1: it must have just been such a strange sight to behold.
Speaker 1: Here you are, um this, you know, this far flung
Speaker 1: and ultimately very very hostile, very dangerous environment. And here
Speaker 1: here are shores where things are are bloody and burning
Speaker 1: and it's like a chemical that, uh, you bring a
Speaker 1: piece of it inside the ship and it begins to
Speaker 1: burn a hole through the table in front of you.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, So here I guess we come
Speaker 1: to the question of what is actually causing these hills
Speaker 1: to smoke. You might assume, based on background knowledge that, okay,
Speaker 1: if there's heat and sulfurous gas coming out of the
Speaker 1: ground the sources volcanic, right, that that would be the
Speaker 1: obvious assumption. Yeah, that's that's where your mind instantly goes.
Speaker 1: But in this case, no, I found one source on
Speaker 1: this that that was pretty helpful. It was a paper
Speaker 1: called why do the Smoking Hills smoke? Why? Um? It
Speaker 1: was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences in
Speaker 1: four by W. H. Matthews and R. M. Bustin. And
Speaker 1: this paper invokes a term that I've never heard before.
Speaker 1: It refers to areas of fire baked rock as um.
Speaker 1: I think this word is French, so I think it
Speaker 1: would be pronounced bocan, but it's bo c A N
Speaker 1: N E s. And the author is right that you
Speaker 1: find these these fire baked rocks in quote cretaceous mudstones
Speaker 1: along sea cliffs and in areas of recent slumping. So
Speaker 1: the fire baking of the rocks and the earth lead
Speaker 1: to these weird patterns of coloration that can easily be
Speaker 1: seen with the naked eye, and that we heard described
Speaker 1: in the literary sources we just mentioned. So these color
Speaker 1: changes include bleaching and reddening of the mud stone, which
Speaker 1: is otherwise dark in color, and these colors can remain
Speaker 1: even after one of the bocans has stopped burning. And
Speaker 1: in places where these rocks are still burning and baking,
Speaker 1: you get smoke pouring out, you get sulfurous fumes as
Speaker 1: well as high ground temperatures. So the the earth you
Speaker 1: walk on gets hot. So what's the cause. Well, the
Speaker 1: authors of this paper, they performed a number of different analyzes,
Speaker 1: including petrographic, mineralogical, chemical, and calorific analyzes, and they determined
Speaker 1: that quote, the boca on are fumed by oxidation of
Speaker 1: pyrite and or organic matter. With heating of the strata
Speaker 1: by oxidation, combustible gases are driven off that may burn
Speaker 1: in restricted areas, resulting in localized melting of the strata. So,
Speaker 1: in reading this and a few other sources and putting
Speaker 1: things together, I think I understand this now and trying
Speaker 1: to put my understanding into other words, A lot of
Speaker 1: the rock in this area is mudstone or or type
Speaker 1: of shale rock. Mudstone is a sedimentary rock that can
Speaker 1: contain hydrocarbon or organic contents, So some amount of fossil
Speaker 1: fuel is naturally present in this rock, even if in
Speaker 1: low concentrations, and in this case, one of the main
Speaker 1: carbon constituents seems to be a form of lignite, which
Speaker 1: is a soft brown type of cold that is generally
Speaker 1: formed by the underground compression of pete. But this rock
Speaker 1: also contains a significant amount of iron pyrite, a mineral
Speaker 1: form of of iron sulfide which UM is also known
Speaker 1: as fool's gold. Yeah, and you know it's I think
Speaker 1: it's always a shame we call fool's golded because it
Speaker 1: implies it. It's into a certain extent, it's ugly and
Speaker 1: it's without value. But UH, pyrite can can look quite impressive,
Speaker 1: you know, if I've seen examples of it in UM, UH,
Speaker 1: in mineral museums before UH and UH. And of course
Speaker 1: in the fact that it can be used to ignite something.
Speaker 1: I believe it was used in UH in firearms in
Speaker 1: the past. UM. I did not know that, but that
Speaker 1: would make sense now reading about this, because so so
Speaker 1: what's going on here is that UM. When the cliff
Speaker 1: faces erode here at the smoking Hills and new faces
Speaker 1: of the mudstone strata are exposed to oxygen in the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: the carbon based fuel and the natural iron pyrite together
Speaker 1: undergo oxidation, a chemical reaction which leads to heating. The
Speaker 1: oxidation of the iron pye rite here is an exothermic reaction.
Speaker 1: It heats up the surrounding rock and this oxidation based
Speaker 1: heating leads to the release of flammable gases that are
Speaker 1: embedded in the rock. And so the authors think when
Speaker 1: these gases are released, they become a form of fuel
Speaker 1: evaporating in an environment of extreme heat with exposured oxygen.
Speaker 1: So here you have the three magic ingredients, right, you
Speaker 1: have fuel escaping, you have it's very hot, and you
Speaker 1: have oxygen nearby. So they burn, and these fires further
Speaker 1: heat and melt the strata of the rock. And I
Speaker 1: believe the implication is that this melting, uh this melting
Speaker 1: and baking helps continue to reveal new faces of strata
Speaker 1: to the atmosphere so that more oxidation can happen in
Speaker 1: the process can just continue it's auto ignition. It ignites
Speaker 1: automatically by being exposed to the oxygen, and the process
Speaker 1: is self sustaining. The author's right that you tend to
Speaker 1: find these bocan only in places where the strata of
Speaker 1: sedimentary rock has been suddenly exposed to the atmosphere, maybe
Speaker 1: by a landslide or some of the form of erosion
Speaker 1: or erosion UH that's left behind after the retreat of glaciers. Now,
Speaker 1: coming back to these historical counts, while the stories from
Speaker 1: Richardson and the McClure expedition are the earliest written accounts
Speaker 1: of the Smoking Hills, UH a new value at oral
Speaker 1: traditions about the mountains have been in circulation for much longer.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned the the traditional name for this place
Speaker 1: is in near you Wat, which means big fire. And
Speaker 1: this article by Charles Arnold, then after it recounts the
Speaker 1: literary section, it goes into a section on the oral tradition,
Speaker 1: including one excellent story that was told to the Danish
Speaker 1: anthropologist Canude Rasmussen in nineteen twenty four by a person
Speaker 1: living in the Cape Bathurst area named Alan all right Sake.
Speaker 1: So this is the story told by on our rightside,
Speaker 1: recounted to Rasmussen and and quoted in Arnold here. In
Speaker 1: the early infancy of man, people were never alone, whether
Speaker 1: they lived in a settlement or were traveling on long journeys,
Speaker 1: they were surrounded by a spirit people who lived as
Speaker 1: human beings, and were in fact human beings, except that
Speaker 1: they were invisible. Their bodies were not for our eyes
Speaker 1: or their voices for our ears. And when people traveled
Speaker 1: and pitched camp and began to build their snow huts,
Speaker 1: one might see round about the snow drifts that the
Speaker 1: snow blocks began to move, being lifted out of the
Speaker 1: drifts and piled together into a snow house, which seemed
Speaker 1: to grow of itself. Occasionally one might see the glitter
Speaker 1: of a copper knife, and that was all. They did
Speaker 1: not mind people coming into their houses, which were arranged
Speaker 1: just like those of human beings. All their belongings were visible,
Speaker 1: and people could trade with them very profitably. If one
Speaker 1: wished to buy something, all that was necessary was to
Speaker 1: point to it and at the same time show what
Speaker 1: one was prepared to give for it. If the spirit
Speaker 1: people agreed, the object required lifted itself up and moved
Speaker 1: towards the man who wanted it. But if they declined
Speaker 1: the bargain, the object remained where it was. So people
Speaker 1: were never alone. They always had small, silent and invisible
Speaker 1: spirits around them. But one day it happened that during
Speaker 1: a halt, A man seized his knife and cried, what
Speaker 1: do we want with these people who were always right
Speaker 1: on our heels. Saying this, he flourished his knife in
Speaker 1: the air and thrust it in the direction of the
Speaker 1: snow huts that had made themselves. Not a sound was heard,
Speaker 1: but the knife was covered in blood. From that moment,
Speaker 1: the spirits went away. Never again did anyone see the
Speaker 1: wondrous sight of snow drifts forming themselves into snow huts
Speaker 1: when one made camp, And forever the people lost their silent,
Speaker 1: invisible guardian spirits. It was said that they had gone
Speaker 1: to live inside the mouths in order to hide from
Speaker 1: man who had mocked and wounded their feelings. That is
Speaker 1: why to this day one can see the mountains smoking
Speaker 1: from the enormous cooking fires flaming inside them. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's wonderful. Yeah, I thought this was beautiful, and it
Speaker 1: also made me so sad that like the humans betrayed
Speaker 1: their their invisible companions. Yeah yeah, and that it also
Speaker 1: of course reminds me of of various other accounts that
Speaker 1: you see, particularly like Irish traditions, where you have these
Speaker 1: traditions of the former people or other other intelligent beings,
Speaker 1: be they some sort of spirit fulk or or or
Speaker 1: what have you, or something very humanoid in form, and
Speaker 1: they've been driven into the earth by the newer people.
Speaker 1: And we see a similar trend here. Yeah. Yeah. Arnold's
Speaker 1: site stories remembered by other inuvaluate people of the present
Speaker 1: describing their their memories of the stories about these people,
Speaker 1: describing the smoke from the hills as the cooking fires
Speaker 1: of the little people bowl who live inside the mountains.
Speaker 1: And there was one story he recorded that really struck me.
Speaker 1: This was wonderful. This was quoting a source named Fred
Speaker 1: Wolki who said, quote, they're as big as a fork
Speaker 1: that you eat with. They use a caribous ear for
Speaker 1: a parka. They turn it inside out and they just
Speaker 1: have to put it on, just take the inside off
Speaker 1: skin it already made park a. One thing that strikes
Speaker 1: me as interesting is how there's a convergence on everyone
Speaker 1: identifying in some way the smoking hills or in near
Speaker 1: you at as as artificial in nature. So in in
Speaker 1: these oral traditions, the smoke coming off of the hills
Speaker 1: or the cooking fires of the little people or the
Speaker 1: invisible people living inside the mountain, but also some of
Speaker 1: the earliest written records like uhr Ching's compared the area
Speaker 1: to a huge chemical factory. Richard compared it to a
Speaker 1: brick field. Both of these are products of human into story.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that that everybody seems to look at these
Speaker 1: things and think artificial made by people. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we just as as Earth is the fire planet, like
Speaker 1: we are the people of fire, we are the only
Speaker 1: organism that that has come to master it and and
Speaker 1: created works with it. So yeah, it makes sense that
Speaker 1: that the various cultures would look to this and their
Speaker 1: mind would at least temporarily go in the same direction.
Speaker 1: In any case, coming back to the question about some
Speaker 1: of the longest burning fires, um, I guess part of
Speaker 1: this would be dependent on what you're what you're counting
Speaker 1: as a fire. When you look at something so like
Speaker 1: I think the smoking hills, you will often not some
Speaker 1: maybe sometimes you will, but you will often not be
Speaker 1: seeing big gouts of flames like you would see at
Speaker 1: a camp fire. You'll just see this continuous smoking and
Speaker 1: baking of the rock, and so the burning there I
Speaker 1: think would be more akin to what you'd see probably
Speaker 1: with like a burning coal. You know a piece of
Speaker 1: coal that has been ignited. But considering that, we we
Speaker 1: can know for pretty sure that the Smoking Hills have
Speaker 1: probably been burning for hundreds or thousands of years. And
Speaker 1: there are multiple ways you can know this. I think
Speaker 1: there's some geological methods, but actually came across one study
Speaker 1: offering one interesting piece of evidence for how long these
Speaker 1: hills have been burning that I wouldn't have thought of,
Speaker 1: which is archaeology. So there was a paper by Raymond J.
Speaker 1: LeBlanc in American Antiquity in nineteen ninety one called Prehistoric
Speaker 1: Clinker Use on the Cape Bathurst Peninsula, Northwest Territories, Canada,
Speaker 1: the Dynamics of formation and procurement and talking about the
Speaker 1: background going into this study, LeBlanc says, quote field work
Speaker 1: conducted on the Cape Bathurst Peninsula and that's where the
Speaker 1: Smoking Hills are um has resulted in the discovery of
Speaker 1: seventy five sites representing occupation spanning more than three thousand years.
Speaker 1: Nearly all of these sites are characterized by the predominant
Speaker 1: use of a distinctive rock called a clinker, resembling a
Speaker 1: basalt to obsidian like material. It is formed by the
Speaker 1: spontaneous combustion of local organic rich shales. So some of
Speaker 1: the weird baked rocks left over at these auto ignition
Speaker 1: sites liking near you at uh these rocks have been
Speaker 1: used to make tools by the people living in the area,
Speaker 1: spanning back thousands of years. And I found that so
Speaker 1: interesting too, that you would take these these strange clinker
Speaker 1: rocks and turn them into technology. Yeah, yeah, from this
Speaker 1: from from this site that we interpret through the lens
Speaker 1: of biotechnology. Interesting. Now, one more paper I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention before I'm done with the Smoking Hills is by
Speaker 1: Magna Havas and Thomas C. Hutchinson, published in Nature in
Speaker 1: nine three called the Smoking Hills Naturaliscidification of an Aquatic Ecosystem.
Speaker 1: So you remember how those early reports of of the
Speaker 1: area report they said that the water of nearby ponds
Speaker 1: was foul and sour. Well, we know why that happens. Now.
Speaker 1: This is due to the acidification of the water by
Speaker 1: the sulfur dioxide produced by these mineral burning sites. So
Speaker 1: the water is very acidic, and this has actually changed
Speaker 1: the composition of the local microbial life and and insect
Speaker 1: life and stuff that the life that inhabits the area.
Speaker 1: So the authors here right quote. In an area of
Speaker 1: typically alkaline ponds with pH above eight point oh, ponds
Speaker 1: within the fumigation zone have been acidified below a pH
Speaker 1: of two point oh. Elevated concentrations of metals including aluminum, iron, zinc, nickel, manganese,
Speaker 1: and cadmium occur in these acidic ponds. Soils and sediments
Speaker 1: have also been chemically altered. The biota and these acidic
Speaker 1: ponds are characteristic of acidic environments worldwide in contrast to
Speaker 1: the typically arctic biota in adjacent alkali ponds. So the
Speaker 1: burning of the earth alters the chemical characteristics of the landscape,
Speaker 1: which in turn changed the bioecology. The chain reaction started
Speaker 1: thousands of years ago when these cliff faces and rocks
Speaker 1: were eroded and exposed the minerals to oxygen. The oxidation
Speaker 1: of the pyrite and the organic contents of the mudstone
Speaker 1: and the burning began. And this led to, over the
Speaker 1: thousands of years, a complete transformation of the surrounding ecosystem
Speaker 1: into one of these strange extremophile, acid rich biosystems. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's impressive, um, you know, and and thinking about this
Speaker 1: and thinking about extreme environments and uh and uh and
Speaker 1: so forth, and and also kind of going back to
Speaker 1: the idea of these uh, these these these ships being
Speaker 1: sort of like spaceships, uh, sailing upon these uh the strange,
Speaker 1: alien seeming environment. I I ran across a two paper
Speaker 1: in Chemical Geology the Journal Chemical Geology by Graspy at
Speaker 1: All that looked at the Smoking Hills as a possible
Speaker 1: analog for some geological conditions that have been observed on Mars. Um.
Speaker 1: Just to read a quick quote, um oxidative weathering of
Speaker 1: this unit creates extensive gerocide rich deposits and bandage gerocide
Speaker 1: and philo silicate rich mudstones similar to those observed on Mars.
Speaker 1: So I read through this paper here and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty deeply. It's the Chemical Geology general, so
Speaker 1: it's it's a bit dense of for my taste anyway.
Speaker 1: But the author is, if I'm understanding that correctly, they're
Speaker 1: suggesting that such signs on Mars some some similar looking
Speaker 1: details that we've observed on Mars via the probes we've
Speaker 1: sent there, if we interpret them through the lens of
Speaker 1: the Smoking Hills, it could possibly suggest a more habitable
Speaker 1: period Mars ancient past so that's fascinated to think about
Speaker 1: that as well. Absolutely so. I think maybe this is
Speaker 1: where we need to cap it for part one here,
Speaker 1: but there's so much more to talk about because the
Speaker 1: world is full of surprising and fascinating naturally fueled flames,
Speaker 1: and I think it will make for a carnival of
Speaker 1: geological wonders to to explore in the next part of
Speaker 1: this series. That's right, so tune in on Thursday as
Speaker 1: we continue with more fire from the Rocks. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you like to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, you can find them on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. UM.
Speaker 1: I think most of the invention episodes that we recorded,
Speaker 1: several of which are dealt with fire technology and fire
Speaker 1: related technology. I think most of those have been republished,
Speaker 1: if not all of them have been republished in this feed,
Speaker 1: but if not, you can also find the the podcast
Speaker 1: feed for Invention out there. UM. That was a fun
Speaker 1: though short lived show that we did on the side
Speaker 1: dealing with inventions UM in the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed. Though we also do listener mail on Monday's,
Speaker 1: we do in a short form artifact or monster fact.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays and on Friday we do something called Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns and just talk about a strange film, huge things.
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
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