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