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Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realists. We're back with a classic episode. You've

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Speaker 1: all probably heard about Three Mile Island, but as we

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Speaker 1: discovered in twenty twenty, that's unfortunately only one of several

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Speaker 1: similar and equally disturbing stories.

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Speaker 2: Oh dude, this is rocket Dyne. Oh wow, not until

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Speaker 2: I read the description, I remember what this is. This

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Speaker 2: is crazy scary because you know, we hear, as you said,

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Speaker 2: we hear about some of these big stories, right, but

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Speaker 2: then there's other stuff happening that has potential implications for

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Speaker 2: a massive loss of life that just kind of occurs,

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Speaker 2: and nobody even really knows about it exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In this episode, we are exploring the events of July

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine where a little place called the Santa

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Speaker 1: Susana Field Laboratory partially melted down, and Uncle Sam said.

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Speaker 2: Sh nobody gots to know about this.

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Speaker 4: He shushed it hard. We're gonna have a word from

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Speaker 4: our sponsors and then we'll jump right into the.

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Speaker 3: Story from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History

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Speaker 3: is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now

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Speaker 3: or learn this stuff. They don't want you to know.

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Speaker 3: A production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 4: Hello and welcome back to the show. My name is Noel.

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Speaker 1: Our writer Dive Matt Frederick is actually on vacation today.

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Speaker 4: They call me Ben.

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Speaker 1: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul

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Speaker 1: Mission Control Deck, and most importantly you are here and

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Speaker 1: that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 1: No I was thinking of a way to open this episode,

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Speaker 1: and I've got to say I thought back on this.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to get your opinion. For a lot of

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Speaker 1: people here in the US, the first childhood understanding we

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Speaker 1: have of nuclear technology doesn't come from a textbook. It

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Speaker 1: actually comes from The Simpsons. Was that your experience?

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Speaker 4: Oh? Absolutely. I mean, just like that iconic shape of

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Speaker 4: those cooling towers, which you used to think, oh, that's

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Speaker 4: where the nuclear stuff happens, but that's not, in fact

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Speaker 4: the case. Those are just the cooling towers. But that

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Speaker 4: iconic Simpson's opening where you trace Homer's activities like from

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Speaker 4: you know, his seat at the nuclear power plant in

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Speaker 4: Springfield where he like pushes the button or whatever. I

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Speaker 4: guess I'm confusing him with George Jetson a little bit,

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Speaker 4: but it was similar because it was meant to be

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Speaker 4: like a job any idiot could do kind of sort

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Speaker 4: of the joke because Homer is sort of this classic

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Speaker 4: buffoon and then you see that nuclear rod that accidentally

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Speaker 4: slips into his pocket and then finds its way into

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Speaker 4: like the baby's crib or something. It's a whole thing

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Speaker 4: where you kind of trace, you know, the movement of

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Speaker 4: this nuclear rod through that opening sequence. Yeah, I like what.

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Speaker 1: I like what you pointed out about how Homer is

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Speaker 1: a bit of a use the word buffoon. He is

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Speaker 1: kind of an income poop. He's lovable, but he's definitely oafish.

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Speaker 1: And despite being one of the dumbest guys in Springfield,

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Speaker 1: he somehow has a job at a nuclear plant that

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Speaker 1: routinely experiences low level or even high level disasters. And

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Speaker 1: interestingly enough, in the show, even though I haven't seen

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Speaker 1: The Simpsons in a while, a lot of these disasters

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Speaker 1: never get revealed to the people living in Springfield.

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Speaker 4: And like the Rods just escape. It's sort of the joke, right,

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Speaker 4: I mean, it really is kind of lampooning this whole

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Speaker 4: culture of cover up in American nuclear power, from things

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Speaker 4: like Three Mile Island to even like you know, Ruther

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Speaker 4: Russian attempts to contain the disaster at Chernobyl and this

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Speaker 4: idea that you know, those in power can never be wrong,

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Speaker 4: and if we say it didn't happen, then it didn't

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Speaker 4: happen as long as no one finds out right, right.

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Speaker 1: I bet Monty Burns would probably love the novel nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty four just as much as us, but for very

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Speaker 1: different reasons. So you know, as it turns out, you know,

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Speaker 1: the things like this can happen in the real world,

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Speaker 1: but spoiler alert, when they do, they're not near as

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Speaker 1: funny as a plotline in the Simpsons.

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Speaker 4: Wait, you mean three eyed fish aren't cuddly, cute little

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Speaker 4: creatures that just flop around with a smile.

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Speaker 1: You know, I have to point out maybe this is

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Speaker 1: an episode for another day, but I was immensely heartbroken

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Speaker 1: to learn that when those kind of mutations occur, they

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Speaker 1: usually don't result in a living animal. Certainly not one

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Speaker 1: that makes it to adulthood. That's a shame, and.

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Speaker 4: Certainly not one that's cuddly that you could model like

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Speaker 4: a plushy toy.

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Speaker 1: After right, right, agreed, So we are going somewhere with

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Speaker 1: this today, Conspiracy Realist. We were inspired to make today's

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Speaker 1: episode via an email from Wayne C. Wayne C wrote

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Speaker 1: to us a while back and you said, have you

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Speaker 1: covered the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory. Is this something you

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Speaker 1: could cover? And Wayne you go on to mention that

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Speaker 1: you were surprised, so very few people have heard about this,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, peep behind the curtain, we had not

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Speaker 1: heard of this either. So here are the facts.

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Speaker 4: The Santa Susanna Field Laboratory is was, let's say, yeah,

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Speaker 4: I can use past tense in terms of when it

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Speaker 4: was operational, a massive complex of research and development labs

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Speaker 4: located in Semi Valley, which is in southern California, and

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Speaker 4: it has a long history. It really is one of

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Speaker 4: those classic kind of the Atomic Age kind of you know,

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Speaker 4: nineteen forties kind of facilities where it was really you know,

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Speaker 4: the dawning of a new era and all that, and

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Speaker 4: nuclear power was the wave of the future. So yeah,

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Speaker 4: it's been operational doing one thing or another since around

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Speaker 4: nineteen forty seven, two years after the detonation of the

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Speaker 4: world's first nuclear weapon, an aerospace company called North American

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Speaker 4: Aviation decided to build a facility located in a rural

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Speaker 4: part of the hills above Simi Valley and at First,

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Speaker 4: the purpose of the site was to test rocket engines.

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Speaker 1: And they did this for a long time. From nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty nine to two thousand and six, the US Space

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Speaker 1: Program routinely used this site to develop and test a

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Speaker 1: very tricky part of rocketry, which was liquid propellant. Liquid

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Speaker 1: propellant is some high grade stuff. You know, it's surprised,

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Speaker 1: it's complicated. It's also very dangerous in terms of the

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Speaker 1: contaminants that you know, in terms of just the chemicals themselves.

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Speaker 1: But that's not all they did. As you mentioned Nolan,

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, under the supervision of the US Atomic

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Speaker 1: Energy Commission, that's the predecessor of the Department of Energy,

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Speaker 1: the FEEL Lab. We'll call Santa Susanna s SSFL. For this,

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Speaker 1: they added something they called Area four, and from nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty three to at least nineteen eighty, Area four was

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Speaker 1: home to nuclear reactors.

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Speaker 4: From nineteen sixty six to nineteen ninety eight, the US

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Speaker 4: government actually sponsored a liquid metal research center at the site.

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Speaker 4: Does that mean they were making T one thousands ben?

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Speaker 4: Is that what that means?

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Speaker 1: One would hope? I think some of that work is

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Speaker 1: still probably classified. We don't know, But liquid metals, just

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Speaker 1: like nuclear materials, just like liquid rocket propellant. Also is

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Speaker 1: not the kind of stuff you know, you want to

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Speaker 1: play with. It's not the kind of stuff you want

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Speaker 1: to see at the bottom of the slide in your

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Speaker 1: local playground. And you know, speaking of civilian stuff, that's

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Speaker 1: one interesting part of ss FL. Santa Susanna is only

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Speaker 1: about seven miles northwest of Canoga Park. It's only thirty

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Speaker 1: miles northwest of downtown LA, this huge population center.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true. There's a community called Bell Canyon that

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Speaker 4: runs across the entire southern border. And here's the thing.

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Speaker 4: Despite that close proximity to you know, people's homes, into

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Speaker 4: residential areas, and to schools and churches and libraries for

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Speaker 4: many people to this day, the site and the activities

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Speaker 4: that took place inside of it have remained shrouded in mystery. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said an earlier episode, I think Q Tom,

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Speaker 1: wait's what's the building in there? You're right, this site

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Speaker 1: was the home of numerous secret projects that were private

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Speaker 1: public partnerships. That's pretty common, you know, especially in the

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Speaker 1: aerospace industry or the nuclear industry. And it sounds crazy

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Speaker 1: to say, Well, the locals eventually just came to accept

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Speaker 1: that there was this weird facility on the you know,

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Speaker 1: on the other side of the park or in town,

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Speaker 1: and they just went about their daily lives. But we

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Speaker 1: have to remember, first off, it's crazy how quickly things

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Speaker 1: become normal. And we also have to remember that this

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Speaker 1: a lot of this work was occurring throughout the Cold War,

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Speaker 1: right from the very end of World War Two, so

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Speaker 1: there's a little bit of patriotism tied up in there.

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Speaker 1: There's a little bit of you know, people tended to

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Speaker 1: trust the government more in general, so.

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Speaker 4: They were like ruols.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, no one saw it coming. But because

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Speaker 1: of that, you know, there's a I think there's a

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Speaker 1: sense of inherent nationalism there, like we may not know

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Speaker 1: what they're doing, but we're the good guys, and they're

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Speaker 1: the goodest of the guys exactly.

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Speaker 4: Oh, Ben, I watched and researching for this. There's a

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Speaker 4: really cool documentary on YouTube called Atomic Cowboys. It's like

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Speaker 4: a little thirty minute doc about this whole situation, but

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Speaker 4: intersperses all of this amazing footage that you've probably seen.

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Speaker 4: Some of it is really idyllic, kind of like Ozzie

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Speaker 4: and Harriet type. You know, neighborhoods, and you know, all

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Speaker 4: that stuff interspersed with like stop drop and roll or

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Speaker 4: not stop dropping roll, duck and cover that kind that's

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Speaker 4: the one. Sorry, stop dropping roll is completely different. But

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Speaker 4: they had these things, these communities that were built situated

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Speaker 4: near these facilities. They were called atomic cities, and it

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Speaker 4: was like almost a point of pride to live in

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Speaker 4: these It was like you were part of the future,

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Speaker 4: you know. And all of these little, you know, pretty

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Speaker 4: much propaganda videos, let's be honest, are are really just

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Speaker 4: showing Oh and just like anyone else, Little Johnny's on

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Speaker 4: his way to school and here's you know, his mother, Margaret,

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Speaker 4: and oh and father's coming home from work at the plant.

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Speaker 4: You know, everything's honky darry here in Atomic City. And

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Speaker 4: it's absolutely covering up just the image there and that

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Speaker 4: associating it with that nationalism and that kind of sears

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Speaker 4: catalog kind of idealism. There's a real nasty underbelly going

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Speaker 4: on that we're going to get into that this was

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Speaker 4: all kind of trying to cover up, if not a

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Speaker 4: completely purposefully, definitely subconsciously.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'll never forget a DVD short film

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Speaker 1: series that I subscribed to a long time ago from

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Speaker 1: the makers of McSweeney's. It's called Walfin. I think a

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Speaker 1: Mission Control has seen some of those two. There was

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Speaker 1: one episode that had a damning look into the private

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Speaker 1: public partnerships. It's a paint commercial and you might be

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Speaker 1: able to find this on YouTube. And the paint commercial

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Speaker 1: actually shows is by a private paint company, and it

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Speaker 1: actually shows how great the paint that they produce is

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Speaker 1: because it can withstand certain aspects of a nuclear detonation.

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Speaker 1: And I think they got that footage because of a

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Speaker 1: partnership with the US government. Thinks were very sticky. Like

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Speaker 1: if you think if you think business and government are

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Speaker 1: way too friendly and corrupt in the modern day, first off,

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Speaker 1: you're right. Secondly, this is actually a little bit better

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Speaker 1: than it used to be in this regard.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely no separation of church and state in that regard.

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Speaker 4: Back in those days, I mean, Uncle Sam was very,

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Speaker 4: very very cozy with private industry and unfortunately feels like

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Speaker 4: we're rolling back to a situation that's starting to resemble

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Speaker 4: the forties a little bit in that respect nowadays, in

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Speaker 4: my opinion. But yeah, let's get more into what were

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Speaker 4: they building in there. It was used. They had two

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Speaker 4: thousand acres that were used for the testing and development

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Speaker 4: of rocket engines for the US space program and for

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Speaker 4: other weapons research advanced weapons research, and during its history,

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Speaker 4: more than thirty thousand rocket engine tests were conducted at

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Speaker 4: I'm going to crib a name. I saw a press

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Speaker 4: conference with some of the former employees. They call it

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Speaker 4: santas which that kind of day. So we're conducted there

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Speaker 4: at Santa Su.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, thirty thousand. Now that counts all kinds of tests.

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Speaker 1: That counts, you know, actual launches to just like hey,

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Speaker 1: let's rev up the engine, see if it explodes. They

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Speaker 1: were also, as you mentioned, they were conducting a lot

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Speaker 1: of nuclear research. Over the course of forty years or so.

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Speaker 1: That one specific area at the complex, Area four would

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Speaker 1: eventually be home to ten different nuclear reactors, a fabrication

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Speaker 1: facility to make plutonium, a fuel facility for uranium, and

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Speaker 1: something called a hot labs that's a way to that's

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Speaker 1: where they remotely maybe machine parts or separate radioactive material.

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Speaker 1: And the reason they're doing it remotely, of course, is

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Speaker 1: because it is a death sentence to be exposed to

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Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff for a significant amount of time,

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Speaker 1: so we can understand why, why the US government, why

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Speaker 1: Uncle Sam was not in a hurry to tell the

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Speaker 1: public hey were building a nuclear site. We're trying to

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Speaker 1: be safe, but just just so you know, duck and

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Speaker 1: cover I guess, which doesn't work. Like you know, some

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Speaker 1: of our older audience members today, you may have gone

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Speaker 1: to school at the time when people were conducting those

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Speaker 1: nuclear attack drills, especially during like the Cuban missile crisis.

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Speaker 1: From what I understand, they told kids to just get

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Speaker 1: under their desk.

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Speaker 4: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Maybe the desk that they were using were a much

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Speaker 1: higher quality than the desk we grew up with.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it basically would generate some kind of Pompeii level

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Speaker 4: duck and covering skeletons. You know, that's kind of what

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Speaker 4: would happen there, I think. But they had little cartoon

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Speaker 4: turtles that we're telling you how to do it. So

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Speaker 4: who doesn't believe a cartoon turtle?

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Speaker 1: You know, I love I love a cartoon mascot. Yes,

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Speaker 1: stick those on anything, you know.

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Speaker 4: I'll do whatever they say literally, right as an adults,

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Speaker 4: we need a cartoon mascot for the show.

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Speaker 1: So send your suggestions to Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

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Speaker 1: We'd love to check them out. But you know, this

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Speaker 1: place did not have a cartoon mascot. It was very

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Speaker 1: much not off the books, but it was very much

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Speaker 1: like a need to know basis as far as what

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Speaker 1: was going on. And it's no surprise that they were

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Speaker 1: doing that. That's not inherently evil because they you know,

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Speaker 1: you want to prevent rival governments from learning about your

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Speaker 1: nuclear process. You want to stop those leaks. But here's

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Speaker 1: the problem. Despite the fact, despite their intense efforts to

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Speaker 1: hide this from the public and from their rivals, the

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Speaker 1: truth came out and drips and drabs because people started

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Speaker 1: getting sick. What are we talking about? Well tell you,

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Speaker 1: after a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, authorities, as you said at the at the end

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Speaker 4: of the first half been or third whatever, I don't

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Speaker 4: know math. The research was hidden, it was obscured by

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Speaker 4: the government Santa suit. It required that level of discretion.

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Speaker 4: But hand in hand with that went some much less

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Speaker 4: savory shall we call it obfuscations. I'm using some five

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Speaker 4: dollars words today, And they in fact covered up and

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Speaker 4: hid several multiple disasters that had long standing effects on

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Speaker 4: employees and their families' lives.

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Speaker 1: This is this is amazing. Okay, this is amazing and

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Speaker 1: the worst way. So if you ask before we get

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Speaker 1: into this, if we were all everybody listening and all

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Speaker 1: of us here, if we were just hanging out and

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Speaker 1: we asked everybody in the room, what are what are

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Speaker 1: the big nuclear disasters, we'd say stuff like Chernobyl. We'd

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Speaker 1: stay stuff like the nuclear accidents, not the bombings. We'd

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Speaker 1: see three mile islands, three mile Island of course, Fukushima

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Speaker 1: or something. This should be on that list. The first,

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Speaker 1: like the first huge nuclear reaction or accident, dates all

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Speaker 1: the way back to nineteen fifty nine. One of the

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Speaker 1: nuclear reactors, again just thirty miles away from Los Angeles,

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Speaker 1: partially suffered a meltdown. Workers tried to repair it, and

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Speaker 1: when they couldn't, the management of the of the facility said,

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Speaker 1: you know what, open the door of the reactor. Let

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Speaker 1: that radiation out into the air. This this means it

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Speaker 1: is virtually certain that that irradiated material spread to those

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Speaker 1: nearby commune we mentioned early, such as Canooga Park or

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Speaker 1: Semi Valley, Chatsworth, and they they did eventually, like more

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Speaker 1: than a month later, have some kind of press statement,

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Speaker 1: but it was very much.

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Speaker 4: Not the truth. Six weeks after the meltdown, the Atomic

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Speaker 4: Energy Commission, again the predecessor to the Department of Energy,

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Speaker 4: issued a statement saying that there had been a minor,

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Speaker 4: a little oopsie. They called it a fuel element failure,

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Speaker 4: but that there had been quote no release of radioactive

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Speaker 4: materials into the environment, and that just wasn't true. NASA, Yeah, no,

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Speaker 4: NASA and aerospace company Rocketdyne, which I love the name

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Speaker 4: of that. It sounds like something out of one of

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Speaker 4: the Fallout games, which, by the way, I'm downloading Fallout

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Speaker 4: seventy six right now. I'm really excited. Doing this research

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Speaker 4: made me crave that kind of nuclear wasteland, like nineteen

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Speaker 4: forties apocalyptic vine, So looking forward to playing that. But yeah,

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Speaker 4: Rocket Dime continued to use the site for thousands of

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Speaker 4: rocket tests like this was a non issue through the

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Speaker 4: nineties or the early nineties, nineteen ninety Those activities also

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Speaker 4: released all sorts of toxic chemicals into the air and

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Speaker 4: deposited them in the groundwater, the surface water as well,

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Speaker 4: and also the soil. All of this was also covered up.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you could say it was buried. I don't know

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Speaker 1: why your kids are getting sick. Maybe you should be

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Speaker 1: a better parrot, et cetera, et cetera.

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Speaker 4: These are the types of.

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Speaker 1: Terrible lies and misdirections that people in power can employ.

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Speaker 1: We mentioned that during its history, during the history of SSFL,

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Speaker 1: there was not just that one accident in nineteen fifty nine,

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Speaker 1: there were several nuclear accidents at the lab. But when

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Speaker 1: we mentioned Three Mile Islands, what we didn't mention is

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Speaker 1: that multiple experts believe that partial melt out Area four

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Speaker 1: could be the worst nuclear disaster in US history. If

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Speaker 1: you measure the amount of radiation released, it may have

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Speaker 1: released more radiation than what was released during Three Mile

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Speaker 1: NBC did some fantastic deep dive journalism on this with

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Speaker 1: some other sources, and I like the way they put it.

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Speaker 1: They said, the nineteen fifty nine Santus is on a

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Speaker 1: field laboratory sodium reactor experiments. Level is unknown, but it's

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Speaker 1: thought to have released two hundred and sixty times more

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Speaker 1: radiation than the Three Mile Island disaster. It is insane

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Speaker 1: that that was not all over the news. A three

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Speaker 1: mile by the way, occurred March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine.

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Speaker 1: So twenty years later and still probably didn't beat the

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Speaker 1: hidden record of SSFL. Can we just really quickly talk

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Speaker 1: about how radiation works.

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Speaker 4: I didn't really fully grasp it until I saw the

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Speaker 4: television special Chernobyl. They do such a good job of

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Speaker 4: explaining how it really damages your body. Basically, radiation particles

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Speaker 4: are like you can think of them as physical things.

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Speaker 4: They penetrate your body and damage your tissues. And if

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Speaker 4: you're bombarded with like high levels of radiation, as many

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Speaker 4: of the folks who were unfortunate enough to have been

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Speaker 4: in Chernobyl were, it will start to make you melt

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Speaker 4: from the inside out. For lack of a better expression,

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Speaker 4: I mean, you will get lesions on your skin. It

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Speaker 4: really is like some sights sci fi nightmare kind of

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Speaker 4: body horror, like David Cronenberg type stuff. But with just

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Speaker 4: a little bit of radiation. It might not be enough

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Speaker 4: for you to register it like physically like that, but

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Speaker 4: it can damage cells in your body and cause mutations

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Speaker 4: and cause you to get things like cancer. That's a

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Speaker 4: big one. And it's just because these things shoot at you.

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Speaker 4: And the way they describe it in the show is

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Speaker 4: like bullets, you know, they're like each one is like

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Speaker 4: a little radiation bullet, you know, and it depends on

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Speaker 4: where it hits. That kind of determines what the effects

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Speaker 4: will be and how dense the hail of bullets that

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Speaker 4: you're receiving is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And to explain what it means by a level

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Speaker 1: five event, I said three Mile Islands. The level five events,

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Speaker 1: this nineteen to fifty nine incident is probably higher. There

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Speaker 1: is something called the International Nuclear Event scale. It goes

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Speaker 1: from zero to seven, with zero being an anomaly with

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Speaker 1: no real safety consequence to level seven a major accident.

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Speaker 1: These are world changing events. Right now, there are only

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Speaker 1: officially two level seven disasters Chernobyl and Fukushima, so nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty six and twenty eleven. But for something to be

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Speaker 1: a level five incident like three Mile Island, that means

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Speaker 1: it is an accident that has wider consequences, things that

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Speaker 1: go beyond the immediate environment. Means it can impact people around.

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Speaker 1: That means there will be at least several deaths. That

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Speaker 1: means that there will also be opportunity for more critical

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Speaker 1: failures in the future unless something's done immediately so that

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Speaker 1: it's a big deal. On a one out of seven,

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Speaker 1: this was at least a five, And we mentioned that

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Speaker 1: the management at the time just said, you know, open

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Speaker 1: the door, you let the radiation out, not because we're jerks,

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Speaker 1: but because this is the only way to prevent the

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Speaker 1: reactor from exploding. The employees were also given back tee

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Speaker 1: to clean off the walls, right.

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Speaker 4: Which is just basically just an antiseptic. I mean, it's

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Speaker 4: the same bactine you would spray on a booboo. You know. Look,

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Speaker 4: if your kid like skin, their need spray back team,

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Speaker 4: And this is what they would use to clean off

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Speaker 4: the stuff from the walls.

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Speaker 1: And then they used cotex pads for the floors. They

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Speaker 1: were sworn to silence Omerta. Don't tell anyone, not even

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Speaker 1: your spouse. That's just one disaster. There was another one

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Speaker 1: that occurred two years before, in nineteen fifty seven.

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Speaker 4: And really quickly too. I mean there was when you

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Speaker 4: say Omerica, it was almost like it was this strong

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Speaker 4: arm kind of attitude where someone asked, there's in that

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Speaker 4: documentary I was talking about. One of the employees or

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Speaker 4: the lab workers asked like, can I tell my wife

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Speaker 4: about this? Like this is this seems like it would

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Speaker 4: affect her and my family, And they were like, you

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Speaker 4: will not breathe a word of this, like under you know,

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Speaker 4: implied threat. You know what I mean the tone he

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Speaker 4: said he was very scared for his safety because there

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Speaker 4: was like, you know, a military official that was kind

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Speaker 4: of like this strong man kind of in the background,

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Speaker 4: sort of looming large, and yeah, there was this implied threat.

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Speaker 4: For sure, you will not tell anyone about this.

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Speaker 1: I mean consider you know, once again it's the argument

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Speaker 1: of the greater good. What is one person or two people,

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Speaker 1: or one hundred people's lives worth when compared to nuclear supremacy.

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Speaker 1: They really thought that they could and should do anything

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Speaker 1: legal or illegal necessary to win first place in the

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Speaker 1: arms race. So that's why these things keep getting covered up.

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Speaker 1: The nineteen fifty seven case is hot lap, not a reactor. Again,

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Speaker 1: that's the stuff to remotely handle or machine radioactive metal.

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Speaker 1: This was a side of a fire that got out

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Speaker 1: of control, and the fire can transport these irradiated substances

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Speaker 1: much further than they normally would be. We also have

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Speaker 1: we also know for sure now in twenty twenty, we

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Speaker 1: know for sure that at least four of the site's

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Speaker 1: ten total nuclear reactors became accident sites at some point.

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Speaker 4: In their career. Yeah, I mean, there were some interviews

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Speaker 4: in the documentary I keep referring to nuclear cowboys, I

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Speaker 4: think is what it's called. Highly recommend to check it out.

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Speaker 4: Some old stock interviews that were like testimonies. I think

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Speaker 4: I can't quite place the sources, but it was referred

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Speaker 4: to as a very slipshod operation, and you know, we

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Speaker 4: just know back in those days, standards weren't what they

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Speaker 4: are today. I'm sure they were doing the best they

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Speaker 4: could with what they had, I guess, but no, now,

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Speaker 4: this one's just really out of control. Bad Ben. I

433
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:35,720
Speaker 4: think I may have told you. I used to work

434
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 4: for Georgia Public Radio and my beat was a facility

435
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 4: near where I lived in Augusta called the Savannah River Site,

436
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 4: which was actually built right around the same time as

437
00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 4: as Santa Sue, and they refine nuclear material, you know,

438
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 4: for weapons, you know, for nuclear nuclear weapons payloads, and

439
00:26:55,440 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 4: then over time it was converted into play to reclaim

440
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:06,120
Speaker 4: nuclear materials from you know, these kind of spent nuclear

441
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:08,520
Speaker 4: cores or whatever from these from these weapons, and it

442
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 4: was part of the Atoms for Peace program where they

443
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 4: would actually kind of convert these weapons into material they

444
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:18,239
Speaker 4: could then reuse, but it became a big source of

445
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 4: you know, activists kind of ire because they were dumping

446
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 4: radioactive materials into open pits in the ground. Then become

447
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,479
Speaker 4: what's called superfund sites, which I always thought, you know,

448
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 4: that doesn't sound like super fun at all, But it's

449
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 4: fund with a D because it designates the kind of

450
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:40,479
Speaker 4: government assistance that it is given to help clean up

451
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 4: these sites. And that is a big thing with this

452
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 4: that we'll get into a little later, but right away,

453
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 4: this idea of these very dangerous methods of disposing of

454
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 4: nuclear material at the sites becomes a big issue as well.

455
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, So as I was saying, you know, I think

456
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: it's worth the time to walk through through the other

457
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: nuclear accidents. You can maybe call the nineteen fifty nine

458
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,840
Speaker 1: sodium reactor, you can call that a disaster. But also

459
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,679
Speaker 1: in March of nineteen fifty nine, just a few months

460
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:20,679
Speaker 1: before the sodium reactor, the A six reactor experienced a

461
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 1: release of fission gases, so again contaminating the environment. In

462
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:30,439
Speaker 1: sixty four, another reactor had damage to eighty percent of

463
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 1: its fuel. In sixty nine, another reactor had damage, luckily

464
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: only a third of its fuel, but again remember the

465
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,719
Speaker 1: fuel is nuclear material. And then there was a fire

466
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, another.

467
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 4: Fire, another fire. Yeah, radioactive fire reminds you. And again

468
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 4: this the smoke and the heat really does a number

469
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 4: on carrying these particles, you know, far and wide right,

470
00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 4: And this one involved combustible primary reactor coolant or contaminated

471
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 4: with mixed fission products. And these reactors also didn't have

472
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:11,320
Speaker 4: containment structures. This is a big deal because that directly

473
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 4: puts the workers at risk. Because we'll get into a

474
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 4: little later, they weren't required to wear like hazmat suits.

475
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 4: They were wearing some form of protection, but it certainly

476
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 4: wasn't all encompassing. And the reactors didn't have containment structures.

477
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:33,760
Speaker 4: They were essentially giant concrete domes. Those cooling towers that

478
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 4: surround most nuclear reactors, right, They didn't have that, so

479
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 4: it was just kind of emitting these particles into the air.

480
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 4: Now we get into the disposal part, which is just

481
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 4: you know, ridiculous. They were called burn pits, sodium burn pits.

482
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 4: There were multiple spills and contamination events involved with these,

483
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 4: and these burn pits were essentially open air pits that

484
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 4: were used for cleaning parts or components of the for

485
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 4: machinery that had been contaminated by radioactive sodium and was

486
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 4: also contaminated by the burning of radioactively and chemically contaminated items,

487
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:14,479
Speaker 4: and very few, if any safety precautions were taken the

488
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 4: ones I was talking about at Savannah Riversite. They at

489
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 4: least kind of ligned them with some material like sort

490
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 4: of like a barrier against the groundwater or against the

491
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 4: you know, leaking leaching into the soil. But if I'm

492
00:30:25,760 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 4: not mistaken, Ben, these were just pits that were dug

493
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 4: right into the ground.

494
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing I would say, to be absolutely fair

495
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 1: for these folks is that there were a lot of

496
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:39,920
Speaker 1: things they didn't understand that we do know now in

497
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: the in the you know, in the realm of safety

498
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: around radioactive nuclear materials. But they they knew more than

499
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 1: enough to know that this was a horrible idea. I'd

500
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 1: like to put a human face on this by introducing

501
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: a guy named James Palmer. He may have showed up

502
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: in the in some other documentaries too, but he did

503
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: some interviews with journalists later. He was a former worker

504
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: at SSFL and he had a crew of twenty seven people.

505
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 1: Of those twenty seven people twenty two died of cancer.

506
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: Cancer is a horrible thing. It happens for a number

507
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 1: of reasons, but there was a clear correlation here. To

508
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: say otherwise is to willfully be ignorant. He described stuff

509
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,120
Speaker 1: in this interview where he would come home from work

510
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: and he would be feeling, you know, kind of normal,

511
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 1: maybe a little pooped because he'd been working all day.

512
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: He would try to kiss his wife hello, and her

513
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: lips would be burned because of the chemicals he had

514
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 1: been breathing at work. They actually fished in one of

515
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: three ponds that were radiated, and sometimes the water was

516
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: so polluted that this being real life, the fish didn't

517
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:53,160
Speaker 1: develop three eyes. They just died off and started floating

518
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 1: on the surface. And they would try to, like when

519
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: they were fishing, they would try to like wash the

520
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: fish with hydrogen proper side to neutralize any kind of contamination,

521
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: but obviously that doesn't work. He said that every single

522
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: water source there was contaminated. He sums it up in

523
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 1: an interview with Ivan Sure County Star by saying this

524
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 1: was a horror show. And you know, when we talked

525
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: about how they disposed of stuff, it just gets worse.

526
00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, And by the way, it's really fascinating that every

527
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 4: every source that I found about this story is from

528
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 4: the La Times or from somewhere out there in that

529
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 4: part of the country. It really was just not a

530
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 4: national news story. It's it's mind boggling, I mean, you know,

531
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:48,880
Speaker 4: because now we're seeing multiple just absolutely egregious, you know,

532
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 4: events taking place at this facility, and they were covered

533
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 4: up and so back to the disposal sometimes And this

534
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,080
Speaker 4: came from an interview. I believe it was with Paul

535
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 4: because he definitely did some interviews and made the rounds,

536
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:06,400
Speaker 4: but there were a few others as well, so forgive

537
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 4: me if I'm mistaken there, but a gentleman who worked

538
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 4: in the site at the time many years later, fifty

539
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 4: years later, was doing this interview and talked about how

540
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 4: sometimes they would dispose of radioactive sodium by rowing bundles

541
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 4: of the stuff. Like I say bundles loosely, it's just

542
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 4: the term I'm using out into the middle of one

543
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 4: of those ponds in a small rowboat and then dropping

544
00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 4: it into the water, and then the workers would turn

545
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 4: back and row ashore duck for cover and then peek

546
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:41,640
Speaker 4: up like you would taking cover in like a shooter

547
00:33:41,760 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 4: game and fire a shot with a thirty hot six

548
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 4: rifle at that bundle out in the water. It reminds

549
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 4: me of some sort of twisted Viking funeral kind of

550
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 4: you know. And then it wouldn't like cause it to

551
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 4: explode by igniting a spark, No, it was the water

552
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 4: that would cause it to explode, because the water would

553
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 4: then penetrate the sodium and react violently. A massive explosion

554
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 4: would ensue. And they did this pretty frequently, and they

555
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:12,800
Speaker 4: were supposed to be just quote unquote disposing of clean sodium,

556
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:16,720
Speaker 4: but like you said, bem, oftentimes in those burn pits,

557
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 4: radioactive sodium would end up in there as well with

558
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 4: radiactive contamination. So this would leak into the groundwater, it

559
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,279
Speaker 4: would create that smoke, the explosion that would carry it

560
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 4: into those bedroom communities, those atomic cities. Yep, yep.

561
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:34,799
Speaker 1: And look, I know what a lot of us are

562
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:38,439
Speaker 1: thinking right now when you hear that, you're thinking, but, hey,

563
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:43,400
Speaker 1: aren't explosions cool. Yeah, that's subjectively true. Explosions are really cool,

564
00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: but radiation is not. So you know, you can kind

565
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 1: of get a picture and implication here that this is

566
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,879
Speaker 1: a bit of a diversion for some of these guys too,

567
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: because you get to see this massive explosion. But it's

568
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 1: not worth the price we paid. So if this was

569
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: all secret, if this was happening under the dark of night,

570
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:08,399
Speaker 1: if people were being threatened to be quiet about it,

571
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 1: then how do we know about it today? How to

572
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 1: wane Cee send us an email? How are we getting

573
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 1: these facts? We'll tell you after we're from our sponsor.

574
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: We're back. So I mentioned earlier at the top of

575
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 1: the show that this cover up continued for quite a while,

576
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: you know, from the late forties on. But one thing

577
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: that I think stymied efforts to cover up these close

578
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: calls and this nuclear disaster is just simply the medical data.

579
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:50,719
Speaker 4: People who lived.

580
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 1: In the area were getting cancer at a much higher

581
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 1: rate than you would expect out of a population. It

582
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 1: was at a level such that other people in the

583
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 1: area started to notice, you know what I mean, Like

584
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: six year olds don't usually have these kind of diseases,

585
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 1: and multiple ones don't. And I believe it wasn't until

586
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:14,319
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies that things started to come out, not

587
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:17,840
Speaker 1: the full extent, but started to leak to the public.

588
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:19,879
Speaker 1: And by that point, I would guess it was kind

589
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:22,240
Speaker 1: of already an open secret in the region.

590
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 4: What do you think. Yeah, it wasn't until November of

591
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy nine that a k NBCTV report revealed that

592
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:35,840
Speaker 4: evidence of that partial meltdown. I can't it's just shocking

593
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 4: to me. That's almost the nineteen eighties, and this has

594
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:40,800
Speaker 4: been going on since the forties.

595
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it may have been a situation where

596
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:48,400
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but it may have been

597
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:51,520
Speaker 1: a situation where the journalist was allowed to cover it,

598
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: because I'm sure other people have been making inquiries for

599
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,560
Speaker 1: some time, but maybe they were trying to get ahead

600
00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: of the facts, you know, or ahead of the fallout.

601
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:04,920
Speaker 1: Poor choice of words there, but you know, the social fallout.

602
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,359
Speaker 4: Of this perfect choice of words there, Ben, And ironically,

603
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 4: I always misused that nineteen seventy nine was when the

604
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 4: three Mile Island disaster took place.

605
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:17,720
Speaker 1: So that's a perfect time to slide that in under

606
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: the radar, you know, And investigation since then have happened.

607
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:26,640
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty nine, the Department of Energy launched investigation

608
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: or concluded an investigation, and they said there was widespread

609
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 1: contamination radioactive and chemical contamination. Because remember we're talking thirty

610
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:40,319
Speaker 1: thousand rocket tests that were spread across the Santa Susanna site.

611
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: It was riddled with it, and the report clearly pointed

612
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: to several cover ups over at least the past few decades.

613
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:52,320
Speaker 1: This was reported, but as you said, primarily in local media,

614
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 1: and again this is almost nineteen ninety now, the local population,

615
00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: the municipal governments, they reacted. The lawsuits started to roll in,

616
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: and people lobbied to shut down any continued nuclear activity

617
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: at the site, because remember that went on until two

618
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:11,359
Speaker 1: thousand and six.

619
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:16,240
Speaker 4: Yes, that's true. And on July twenty sixth of nineteen

620
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 4: ninety four, two scientists Otto k. Heimi and Larry A.

621
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 4: Pew were killed when the chemicals they were illegally burning

622
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 4: in those open pits, surprise, surprise, exploded. There was a

623
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:33,239
Speaker 4: grand jury investigation and an FBI raid on the facility,

624
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:40,240
Speaker 4: and three Rocket Dyne officials pled guilty to illegally storing

625
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 4: explosive materials. In June of two thousand and four, the

626
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 4: jury was, though deadlocked on the more serious charge, which

627
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 4: related to illegal burning of hazardous waste. And this isn't

628
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 4: burning trash in your backyard, my friends, this is not

629
00:38:56,320 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 4: leaf piles. You know, without a permit. This this is

630
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 4: a wanton disregard for not only the safety of your employees,

631
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 4: but of the public. Agreed.

632
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: And you know you have to wonder too whether there

633
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: is any corruption of the jury, right, any witness, intimidation

634
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: or tampering. Don't have solid proof of that, but I

635
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical to think that that

636
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:25,879
Speaker 1: could be in the.

637
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 4: Cards A million percent.

638
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:35,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have. We have also information on ongoing medical claims.

639
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: There's an epidemiologist named hal Morgenstern, and he conducted a

640
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:44,360
Speaker 1: long term study between nineteen eighty eight and two thousand

641
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:48,440
Speaker 1: and two. He found that people living within two miles

642
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 1: of the lab site are sixty percent more likely to

643
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:57,840
Speaker 1: be diagnosed with certain specific cancers compared to residents living

644
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:02,360
Speaker 1: just five miles from the site. So there there is

645
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: a clear correlation here.

646
00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 4: Well, and what it's just a more extreme example, but

647
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 4: it's what they refer to as like the fallout zone.

648
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 4: You know, there is a range around this the the

649
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 4: area where this radiation radiates from that you know is

650
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 4: going to be more susceptible to this stuff. And then

651
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 4: you know, further away it's it's much difficult, much more difficult,

652
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:25,160
Speaker 4: unless you know, something like wind patterns carry it farther

653
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,720
Speaker 4: or you know, even with Fukushima, there was a concern

654
00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:33,800
Speaker 4: that birds were carrying radioactive materials outside of beyond that

655
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 4: that fallout zone. So yeah, this absolutely makes sense. And

656
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 4: in October of two thousand and six, the Santa Susanna

657
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 4: Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, which was you know, supposedly an

658
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:48,240
Speaker 4: independent review board composed of scientists and researchers from around

659
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:51,680
Speaker 4: the US, concluded that based on the available data and

660
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:55,239
Speaker 4: computer models, contamination of the facility resulted in an estimated

661
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 4: two hundred and sixty cancer related deaths.

662
00:40:59,760 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

663
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, there were multiple lawsuits that have been in the works.

664
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 4: Companies like Boeing have also reached settlements with some plaintiffs,

665
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 4: though the settlements remained controversial. There's an article in the

666
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 4: La Times called how one Woman's fight is helping workers

667
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 4: decades after Santa Susanna radiation exposure, and it talks about

668
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 4: this woman named Bonnie Clee, who worked for Rockadyne in

669
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 4: the sixties and seventies, has kind of really come forward

670
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 4: to champion the case of her fellow employees and co workers.

671
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 4: Who were affected by this. She started having pain in

672
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:41,399
Speaker 4: her bladder and she went and saw a doctor who

673
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:45,479
Speaker 4: told her that she had cancer and it was likely

674
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:52,399
Speaker 4: due to occupational hazards. And there have been payouts thus far,

675
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 4: but there was even an issue where the Department of

676
00:41:55,560 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 4: Labor had in fact denied many of the claims filed

677
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 4: by these workers who were stricken with cancer. And this

678
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 4: was under a program called the two thousand Energy Employees

679
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 4: Occupational Illness Program Act. So the burden of proof was

680
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 4: just obviously very very difficult to achieve, and she helped

681
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:20,759
Speaker 4: compile letters and press releases and news articles and all

682
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:24,240
Speaker 4: of this stuff and helped kind of get that decision

683
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 4: overturned so folks were able to receive restitution for this condition.

684
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 1: Let me go back in so in the notes of

685
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:41,279
Speaker 1: my research, I just mentioned companies like Boeing reaching settlements,

686
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 1: but I also want to mention I want to hit

687
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: that line about multiple lawsuits being actively in the works.

688
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 1: The story doesn't have an ending yet. One plaint of

689
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: Margaret and Galosso she sued Boeing, but she said her

690
00:42:56,160 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: attorneys went behind her back and accepted a thirty million

691
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 1: dollars settlement with Boeing, but they never got her approval,

692
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:06,279
Speaker 1: and she thinks they were doing it because they get

693
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: a sixty percent cut after you know their costs and fees,

694
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:14,120
Speaker 1: which can happen, and then they are also there are

695
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: also problems with how settlements are being distributed to people,

696
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 1: like some plaintiffs are only receiving, you know, at the

697
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:25,120
Speaker 1: end of the day, something like thirty thousand dollars. And

698
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: in the United States, if you have a serious medical condition,

699
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:33,800
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars is not going to solve your problem.

700
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:38,760
Speaker 1: You sadly right, exactly, so you can see how these

701
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: settlements are rightly controversial. I just want to make sure

702
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:47,080
Speaker 1: that I emphasize that these are ongoing legal battles.

703
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 4: That's right. And just to quickly backtrack to Bonnie Klee

704
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,279
Speaker 4: when she assembled all those materials and those petitions and

705
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 4: delivered them to the federal government in two thousand and seven,

706
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:00,880
Speaker 4: As I said, it did lead to to a change

707
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 4: and the ability for folks to get those claims accepted.

708
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 4: But it's fascinating. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and

709
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 4: Health or NIOSH created a special designation just for that

710
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 4: field lab and this two hundred and eighty acre area

711
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 4: four that we've talked about extensively, and this was for

712
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 4: workers who were exposed for at least two hundred and

713
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:29,600
Speaker 4: fifty days between January first of nineteen fifty five and

714
00:44:29,719 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 4: January thirty first of nineteen fifty eight, and then it

715
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:35,919
Speaker 4: was eventually expanded to nineteen sixty five. So it's cool

716
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:39,399
Speaker 4: to see at least, you know, an individual being able

717
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 4: to make some change, But then you're right, been the

718
00:44:41,280 --> 00:44:46,840
Speaker 4: quality of those payouts kind of trumps the quantity at times, right.

719
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the employees were, you know, probably the most

720
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:55,520
Speaker 1: directly exposed, but you know, innocent residents were exposed. People

721
00:44:55,560 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: in real life were getting sick and they had no

722
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:02,839
Speaker 1: idea why there's a no angle here that should be

723
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: considered more closely, especially as it affects the future in

724
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: a way that a lot of people don't think about.

725
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:13,520
Speaker 1: As you might recall conspiracy realist California, like other parts

726
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:17,560
Speaker 1: of the world, has recently been plagued by wildfires, and

727
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 1: many indications to tell us or lead us to believe that,

728
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:26,920
Speaker 1: depending on weather conditions, these wildfires may become a semi

729
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:31,959
Speaker 1: regular or annual thing. At two a little bit before

730
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:35,359
Speaker 1: two thirty. On November eighth, twenty eighteen, just a few

731
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:41,319
Speaker 1: years ago, South California, Edison reported a circuit outage at

732
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:46,040
Speaker 1: the Susanna site, and two minutes later there were flames

733
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 1: seen in a canyon near that location. There was a

734
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 1: guy there, a reporter named Stu Mundel working for k

735
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 1: CAL nine. He was overhead in a helicopter took a

736
00:45:56,640 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 1: picture before the fire broke out. It turned out that

737
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 1: had before this fire began, they had disabled and taken

738
00:46:04,160 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: apart a lot of the fire suppression systems at the site,

739
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:12,360
Speaker 1: so people couldn't even people couldn't even fight small fires

740
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:18,279
Speaker 1: at this location. And this led La County Deputy fire

741
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 1: chief at the time, Vince Payinna, to say they could

742
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: have stopped what would later become known as the Woolsey

743
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:31,240
Speaker 1: Forest fire. By one estimate, this fire by itself released

744
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:36,560
Speaker 1: forty thousand tons of ash contaminated with radiation and chemicals

745
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 1: and with you know, if there's not an extensive cleanup,

746
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:43,320
Speaker 1: which still has not happened, then we have to reasonably

747
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,839
Speaker 1: assume something worse could happen the next time a wildfire

748
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:50,160
Speaker 1: rolls through town. This is dangerous.

749
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 4: This is.

750
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 1: You know, like the old Harrison Ford film. This is

751
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 1: clear and present danger.

752
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:00,360
Speaker 4: Get off my plane. Mean, that's a different way that

753
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,280
Speaker 4: was what was that Air Force one? Sorry I forgot

754
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 4: about that way memory. He was the he was the

755
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 4: ask of the president. He was the president, but he,

756
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:13,799
Speaker 4: like you know, took on the terrors single handedly. But

757
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 4: it's true, Ben, and all of this still is ongoing.

758
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:19,399
Speaker 4: Like you said, the story's not over in terms of

759
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:22,360
Speaker 4: the folks whose lives were upended by this, you know,

760
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:26,319
Speaker 4: who lost loved ones. And also the site itself is

761
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:30,319
Speaker 4: still not cleaned up. That there was an agreement that

762
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 4: was made with the federal government to clean up the site,

763
00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 4: but then it was determined that it wasn't realistic, and

764
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:40,800
Speaker 4: it was it was kind of thrown out. It's still

765
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 4: kind of in limbo right now, and it's really not

766
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 4: clear as to when this will take place. You know,

767
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:49,239
Speaker 4: I go back to Savannah riversite really quick, just just

768
00:47:49,239 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 4: for some like firsthand knowledge of the efforts there. It

769
00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:55,400
Speaker 4: is an ongoing process cleaning up the Savannah River site.

770
00:47:55,520 --> 00:48:00,719
Speaker 4: They have to test wildlife, Ben constantly. They tag turtles

771
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:03,399
Speaker 4: by drilling little holes in their shells and putting these

772
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 4: trackers in there and they find the same turtle and

773
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:11,280
Speaker 4: then test them for radiation to see to track how

774
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 4: effective their cleanup efforts have been over time. And because

775
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 4: the turtles go out and wander, you know, and they

776
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:19,800
Speaker 4: could potentially pick it up. And there are these open

777
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 4: pits that I was talking about that they've had to

778
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 4: fill in and clean up and all of that, and

779
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 4: so that is ongoing and as is this, but it

780
00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:29,959
Speaker 4: doesn't appear here been that there are even really any

781
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 4: measures put in place at all. At least Savannah River

782
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:35,960
Speaker 4: site's been sort of you know, on track and making

783
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 4: ongoing efforts to clean up that stuff. But it really

784
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 4: is a slippery slope there.

785
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: Savannah also has a nuclear weapon missing somewhere off the

786
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:48,520
Speaker 1: coast in the water, so they have got they've got

787
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:52,240
Speaker 1: a lot to struggle with. So going back to SSFL,

788
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 1: going back to the Santo Susanna Field Laboratory, I want

789
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: to note there was a EPA study in twenty twelve,

790
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 1: pretty extensive, cost taxpayers around forty one million dollars, and

791
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 1: they showed that there are astronomical levels of radiation in

792
00:49:08,640 --> 00:49:10,840
Speaker 1: the area. This is we're going to get into the

793
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:13,760
Speaker 1: weeds maybe a little bit, but this is important because

794
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: we all need to be aware of just how much

795
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: radiation we're talking about here. The presence of things like

796
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:25,120
Speaker 1: strontium ninety tests two hundred and eighty four times higher

797
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:30,400
Speaker 1: than normal, Caesium one thirty seven is over nine thousand

798
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: times higher than normal, plutonium two thirty nine ninety two

799
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 1: times higher. The hits keep coming, and these are these

800
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,920
Speaker 1: measures are pulled like twenty four feet below the soil surface,

801
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 1: so that's super deep. That's a lot of penetration. And

802
00:49:48,200 --> 00:49:52,359
Speaker 1: you know, both private entities like Boeing and the US

803
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:55,720
Speaker 1: government have continued to say they're going to do something.

804
00:49:56,520 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 1: Boeing currently owns most of the site, they bought it

805
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six. They want to turn it into

806
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: something they call an open space habitat. But really, you know,

807
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:13,359
Speaker 1: when you look at how much, how much energy, and

808
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:16,440
Speaker 1: how much money is going to have to go into

809
00:50:16,560 --> 00:50:19,520
Speaker 1: the effort to fix this, you can see how I

810
00:50:19,520 --> 00:50:21,360
Speaker 1: get the feeling a lot of people are passing the

811
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:24,960
Speaker 1: bill around, you know what I mean. There's a guy

812
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:28,959
Speaker 1: who probably knows the most in the world, at least

813
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 1: officially about SSFL is a guy named Dan Hirsch. Professor

814
00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:36,840
Speaker 1: Dan Hirsch. He used to direct Santa Cruz's program on

815
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:41,840
Speaker 1: environmental nuclear policy. He says everything in the area is

816
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:47,640
Speaker 1: heavily contaminated. It has approximately one hundred different unique toxic

817
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:51,400
Speaker 1: chemicals in the soil, including you know, we mentioned the

818
00:50:51,480 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: radiation or the radioactive stuff, but we didn't mention the

819
00:50:55,360 --> 00:51:01,400
Speaker 1: heavy metals like mercury, the volatile organic compounds VOS. Fun

820
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 1: fact about VOCs probably my favorite fact about VOCs. That's

821
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:07,840
Speaker 1: what forms new car smell.

822
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:11,640
Speaker 4: Oh wow, yeah, I did not know that at all.

823
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:14,919
Speaker 1: Man, you're hearing the heat or you're you're smelling, sorry,

824
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:18,960
Speaker 1: my cinisation is coming out. You're smelling the the chemicals

825
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:23,319
Speaker 1: that you know that release when stuff inside your car

826
00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 1: is heated on a hot day. That's why a newer

827
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 1: car will smell like voc or sometimes your car just

828
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:32,040
Speaker 1: if it's hot, will smell like that.

829
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 4: Is it meant to kind of what's the word looking for?

830
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:39,480
Speaker 4: Kind of mimic like the smell of like hot leather seats.

831
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 4: You know, it's kind of what I've always assumed.

832
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:44,319
Speaker 1: The new car smell is.

833
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, or maybe it's just like hot seats in general,

834
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:50,000
Speaker 4: and like all the chemicals that go into like coating

835
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 4: those seats and the fabric and all that stuff to

836
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 4: treat it to make it like stain resistant. It really does.

837
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:57,239
Speaker 4: Just it's weird that we people like it because they

838
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 4: associate it with this concept of own a thing or

839
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:03,080
Speaker 4: of like, you know, something that's new, But it really

840
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:04,360
Speaker 4: is just a chemical smell.

841
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:09,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's bad for you over time. But you know,

842
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:12,400
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit of a gearhead. I love that stuff.

843
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:15,400
Speaker 1: I used to have it just sprayed around the house

844
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 1: until we did an episode on car stuff and I

845
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:21,439
Speaker 1: learned exactly what I was snorting, So lesson learned there.

846
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:27,200
Speaker 1: Luckily that didn't make my house super contaminated. But Professor

847
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 1: Hirsch points out that in his opinion, and again he's

848
00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:33,960
Speaker 1: very well acquainted with this, the santas Is on a

849
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:39,160
Speaker 1: Field Experiment site is Again this is just his opinion

850
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:42,600
Speaker 1: saying this. He says it's the most contaminated site in

851
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:47,520
Speaker 1: the United States by any measure. And he thinks that

852
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:51,800
Speaker 1: even the studies that have been released on the correlation

853
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:55,759
Speaker 1: between cancer and chronic health conditions, the one in two

854
00:52:55,800 --> 00:53:00,760
Speaker 1: thousand and six, he thinks that still isn't the whole truth.

855
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:03,759
Speaker 1: He thinks there's much more to the story. We're just

856
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:09,320
Speaker 1: scratching the scandalous surface of this this cover up. I

857
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:12,839
Speaker 1: don't I guess it's not ongoing because people can talk

858
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:15,240
Speaker 1: about it now, but it's not resolved.

859
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, because the study that was released in two thousand

860
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:19,680
Speaker 4: and six estimated the between three hundred and eighteen hundred

861
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:23,320
Speaker 4: that's a pretty wide swath people developed cancer as a

862
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 4: result of the nineteen fifty nine meltdown. That's the meltdown,

863
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 4: not the other incidents, the or the thirty thousand rocket

864
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 4: engine tests that we talked about at the top of

865
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:41,080
Speaker 4: the show. So absolutely just scratching the super scandalous surface

866
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:45,320
Speaker 4: of these cover ups, which are not conspiracy theories, my friends,

867
00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:48,080
Speaker 4: these are that is what this is. This is a

868
00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 4: conspiracy to cover up a very real thing that happened

869
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 4: that the public should have known about, but that they

870
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 4: did not want you to know.

871
00:53:56,360 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: Yes, and this story unfortunately doesn't end. This is ongoing.

872
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: So we want to thank Wayne for hipping us to this.

873
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:11,600
Speaker 1: At the risk, at the risk of sounding like I

874
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: live in too much of a weird cover up bubble,

875
00:54:15,040 --> 00:54:18,880
Speaker 1: I'm usually aware of these things. So I learned a

876
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:21,879
Speaker 1: lot in the research for this episode, and I want

877
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,359
Speaker 1: to know many people living there in southern California. I

878
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:28,800
Speaker 1: want a resolution too. We want to hear your thoughts.

879
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: Were you aware of this, do you have personal experience

880
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:34,400
Speaker 1: with it? Let us know why you're at it. Why

881
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:37,799
Speaker 1: not let us know about any other nuclear or industrial

882
00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: cover ups in your neck of the Global Woods. You

883
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: can find us pretty much anywhere on the internet where

884
00:54:43,239 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: on Twitter, We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook. Shout out

885
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 1: to our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. You

886
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:52,360
Speaker 1: can follow us there. You can also follow us as individuals.

887
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 4: You sure can. I just want to say I was

888
00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 4: completely unaware of the story as well, and just blown

889
00:54:57,600 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 4: away by the fact that it was just these regional

890
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:02,880
Speaker 4: I mean La Times obviously a big publication, but it

891
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:06,400
Speaker 4: was all sources from right around that part of the world.

892
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 4: So if you have stories like this, please let us

893
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:10,880
Speaker 4: know in all those ways, Ben said, And if you

894
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:12,600
Speaker 4: do want to find us as individuals, you can find

895
00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:16,239
Speaker 4: me on Instagram where I am at how Now, Noel Brown, I.

896
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 1: Am at Ben Bowlin hsw on Twitter. I am at

897
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:25,839
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan on Instagram. Matt is on Instagram, but he's

898
00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:29,400
Speaker 1: kinda he's got a weird conspiracy of his own about it.

899
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:31,680
Speaker 1: You'll have to follow the breadcrumbs. Let us know what

900
00:55:31,760 --> 00:55:37,400
Speaker 1: you find. If you don't like social media, we get it.

901
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,400
Speaker 1: We got a phone number you can call us anytime.

902
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 1: We are one eight three three std WYTK. But hold on,

903
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 1: you might say, what do I do if I hate

904
00:55:49,640 --> 00:55:53,919
Speaker 1: social media? What if I I hate phones? We've got

905
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:56,319
Speaker 1: good news for you, folks. We have one last way

906
00:55:56,360 --> 00:55:59,200
Speaker 1: to contact us any old time you want, twenty four

907
00:55:59,200 --> 00:56:01,600
Speaker 1: to seven every day of the year, and that is

908
00:56:01,680 --> 00:56:24,280
Speaker 1: our email address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

909
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:26,480
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production

910
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:31,120
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

911
00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.