Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday,
Speaker 1: so of course that means it's time to venture into
Speaker 1: the vault. But whereas the vault is usually quite dark
Speaker 1: and mysterious, today it is brightly lit by some kind
Speaker 1: of green flame. Ah. Yes, the Greek Fire. This episode
Speaker 1: originally aired August two, and it is about a historical
Speaker 1: would it would it be safe to call it a
Speaker 1: super weapon? It's at least some kind of nightmarish terror
Speaker 1: of war. Yeah, it's a super weapon, terror weapon, shock weapon. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's a fascinating episode because it's it gets into
Speaker 1: the power of secrets and the danger of secrets. And
Speaker 1: this one also has a fun dramatic reading at the
Speaker 1: top by Anie Reese of Savor and Stuff. Mom, I
Speaker 1: never told you, that's right. If you haven't checked out
Speaker 1: Savor yet, that's any and Lawrence Podcast, a relaunch of
Speaker 1: the food Stuff brand. You should check that out. It's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they definitely. I don't think they're gonna cover Greek Fire.
Speaker 1: They'll probably cover Greek cuisine if they haven't already, But
Speaker 1: Greek Fire that's is probably gonna remain just on this
Speaker 1: show if Greek feta is more your thing. But oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this will be Greek fire. We hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: Emperor Alexios ordered ships to be furnished by all the
Speaker 1: countries under the Roman sway. He had a number built
Speaker 1: in the capital itself, and would at intervals go around
Speaker 1: and instruct the shipwrights how to make them, as he
Speaker 1: knew that the pieces were skilled in sea warfare and
Speaker 1: dreaded a battle with them. On the power of each ship,
Speaker 1: he had a head fixed of a lion or other
Speaker 1: land animal, made in brass or iron, with the mouth
Speaker 1: open and then gilded over, so that their mere aspect
Speaker 1: was terrified, and the fire which was to be directed
Speaker 1: against the enemy through tubes he made to pass through
Speaker 1: the mouths of the beast, so that it seemed as
Speaker 1: if the lions and the other similar monsters were vomiting
Speaker 1: the fire. Then the man called Count aim On very
Speaker 1: boldly attacked the largest vessel at the stern, but got
Speaker 1: entangled in its rudders, and as he could not free
Speaker 1: himself easily, he would have been taken had he not
Speaker 1: with great presence of mind had recourse to his machine
Speaker 1: and put fire upon the enemy very successfully. Then he
Speaker 1: quickly turned his ship round and set fire on the
Speaker 1: spot to three more of the largest barbarian ships. At
Speaker 1: the same moment, a squall of wind suddenly struck the
Speaker 1: sea and churned it up and dashed ships together, and
Speaker 1: almost threatened to sink them. For the ways roared at
Speaker 1: the yard, arms creaked, and the sails were split. The
Speaker 1: barbarians now became thoroughly alarmed, firstly because of the fire
Speaker 1: directed upon them, for they were not accustomed to that
Speaker 1: kind of machine, nor to a fire which naturally flames upwards.
Speaker 1: But then this case was directed in whatever direction the
Speaker 1: sender desired, often downwards are laterally. And secondly, they were
Speaker 1: very much upset by the storm, and consequently they fled.
Speaker 1: That's's what the barbarians did. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind from How Stuff Works dot com. Hey you
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And those were the
Speaker 1: words of eleventh and twelfth century Byzantine Princess Anna Comnena
Speaker 1: from her book The Alexiad. And we we only tweaked
Speaker 1: it slightly for performance purposes here and it was brought
Speaker 1: to life by Annie Reese, one of the hosts of
Speaker 1: food Stuff. Food Stuff is another podcast here in the house,
Speaker 1: Stuff Works Family. It is about all things edible and potable.
Speaker 1: That's right. I don't I don't know that they've done
Speaker 1: anything on Greek food or Byzantine food. But just if
Speaker 1: if you can can't tell from that that lovely introduction,
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about the Byzantine Empire.
Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about a secret weapon of
Speaker 1: the Byzantine's, a weapon so secret that we're not even
Speaker 1: really sure what it consisted of in detail. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about Greek fire, the nuclear bomb of the Middle Ages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean really, it was ahead of its time. It
Speaker 1: was like napalm in the Middle Ages. It was like
Speaker 1: a flamethrower in the Middle Ages. Right, So we want
Speaker 1: to explore all the ins and outs of this ancient
Speaker 1: secret super weapon. I don't know, does it qualify a
Speaker 1: super weapon. It's kind of small scale, but it's in
Speaker 1: terms of power and awe at the time, you could
Speaker 1: maybe consider it a super I would think, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a it was a super weapon that definitely
Speaker 1: inspired terror and was extremely effective in particular situations. As
Speaker 1: is the case with a lot of a shock and
Speaker 1: awe weaponry, you know, it can't win. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: win a battle on its own. In the same way
Speaker 1: that you know, a tank is pretty great, but a
Speaker 1: tank needs infantry support if it's going to be effective.
Speaker 1: That's sort of thing, right. So to explore the world
Speaker 1: of Greek fire, all the science, all of the speculation
Speaker 1: about what it was, how it worked, how it came
Speaker 1: to be, we've got to first give you the setting.
Speaker 1: So what was the Byzantine Empire and where was Byzantium?
Speaker 1: All right, so we're basically talking about the region of
Speaker 1: the southern Balkans and Asia minor modern day Turkey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: rought modern day Turkey and part of Greece. But in
Speaker 1: the middle of the sixth century, this was an empire
Speaker 1: that that stretched out all the way across the North
Speaker 1: African coastal region from the Atlantic to Egypt, along with
Speaker 1: southern parts of Spain and Italy. U Now, to give
Speaker 1: you a sort of a timeline of this of this empire,
Speaker 1: in three twenty four, Constantine, the Emperor Constantine moved the
Speaker 1: capital of the Roman Empire itself to Byzantium. And of
Speaker 1: course we know Constantine was the first Roman emperor to
Speaker 1: claim to have converted to Christianity. Yes, so that's key.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, Roman Christian Christianity here, the Holy
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. Now this went for this is a successful
Speaker 1: empire for quite a spell. Here. It wasn't until fourteen
Speaker 1: fifty three that Constantinople, the capital, fell to the Ottoman
Speaker 1: Empire and afterwards, of course became Istanbul. Yeah, as the
Speaker 1: of the Animaediac song, we're illustrate for us. So all
Speaker 1: in all, this is an empire with one thousand, one
Speaker 1: nine year history. Yeah, though its borders changed a lot
Speaker 1: over the centuries, and during its final years the Byzantine
Speaker 1: Empire was reduced to a relatively minor state around the
Speaker 1: Constantinople area. But it's strange to realize that in some form,
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire didn't actually end before the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: And I usually think of when did the Roman Empire end?
Speaker 1: I think of the western Roman Empire around the city
Speaker 1: of Roman, which of course you know fell and that
Speaker 1: that's ushers in what historians generally have thought of as
Speaker 1: the Middle ages in Europe, you know, around the middle
Speaker 1: of the first millennium. But if you consider or the
Speaker 1: eastern part of the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire, which
Speaker 1: it certainly did consider itself the Roman Empire, the Roman
Speaker 1: Empire in some form lasted until the Renaissance in Europe,
Speaker 1: which is a just a bizarre thing to consider. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't mesh with my normal view of history. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's important to note. Uh. Likewise, I often
Speaker 1: fall into the trap of sort of thinking of the
Speaker 1: Byzantine Empire and thinking of it like sort of vaguely
Speaker 1: as a much smaller and briefer affair than it actually was.
Speaker 1: Now it's worth It's also important to note here that
Speaker 1: nobody actually called it the Byzantine Empire during its time.
Speaker 1: You only called inhabitants of Constantinople or a couple of
Speaker 1: other areas Byzantines. Now the subjects of the emperor themselves
Speaker 1: that they called themselves Romans, uh Constantine. The first, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, was the Fruit was the first Christian ruler
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire at least took on that mantle,
Speaker 1: uh He and he moved the capital to Constantinople, and
Speaker 1: as such they were the Christian Roman Empire and the
Speaker 1: western remnants of the Roman Empire proper they fell into
Speaker 1: barbarians successor kingdoms. So we mentioned that the Byzantine Empire had,
Speaker 1: you know, over a thousand year history, and during this
Speaker 1: time it was pretty much constantly at war in some
Speaker 1: form or another. It was constantly challenged by its neighbors.
Speaker 1: In the east, you had first the Persian Empire and
Speaker 1: then various Islamic powers later on. And to the north
Speaker 1: there were the Slavs and the Turkish Avars. There were
Speaker 1: the Bulgars, the Hungarians, the Serbs, and finally the Ottoman Turks. Um.
Speaker 1: I know, it seems kind of weird that you would
Speaker 1: put them with the north, but like that was sort
Speaker 1: of the shape of of of geographically of the territory
Speaker 1: at the time. So and and then likewise, in the
Speaker 1: west they were constantly engaging in these tent struggles with
Speaker 1: Greek city straight states and other Roman remnants, often with
Speaker 1: complications from papal politics. Yeah, and some of those complications
Speaker 1: get very complicated. Like one of the things a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't real lies about some of the Crusades
Speaker 1: is that, yes, the Crusades were waged by European Christians
Speaker 1: often against Muslims and Jews, but they also sometimes fought
Speaker 1: the Byzantine Christians. Yeah, I mean, there's the whole tail
Speaker 1: during the Crusades of the essentially the sacking of Constantinople
Speaker 1: by the Christian crusaders. Yeah. For usually for complicated, petty
Speaker 1: political reasons. But you know, they survived all this time,
Speaker 1: and one of and one of the reasons was that
Speaker 1: they were essentially still the Roman empire and spirit. They
Speaker 1: were well organized, they boasted strong fiscal and military systems,
Speaker 1: again testaments to their Roman history. And of course they
Speaker 1: had a secret weapon. There's nothing better than a secret
Speaker 1: weapon there. Really, we were talking about this earlier there.
Speaker 1: How many secret weapons can you really think of, even
Speaker 1: in the modern age? Well, I mean you can definitely.
Speaker 1: The modern parallel that comes to mind is the race
Speaker 1: for the atom bomb during the World War two era.
Speaker 1: It's it's a thing where if you go back and
Speaker 1: read it at the time, even if you you know,
Speaker 1: don't think that the atom bomb was a good thing
Speaker 1: for humanity to have discovered, I mean we probably might.
Speaker 1: A lot of us agree that the world would be
Speaker 1: better if nuclear weapons didn't exist, though some people might
Speaker 1: argue otherwise, some people might say that it's a really
Speaker 1: useful deterrent against more large scale conventional war, but it's
Speaker 1: a scary time. It's like trying to imagine what would
Speaker 1: the world have been like if the Nazis had gotten
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb first, or other scenarios along those lines. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that the atomic bomb, along with the various
Speaker 1: biological and chemical weapons are are probably the best analogy
Speaker 1: we have. But then to think of this in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages too, to extrapolate similar circumstances regarding state secrets
Speaker 1: and weapons systems, uh, it's it's kind of mind bockling
Speaker 1: right now. Greek fire is certainly much smaller in applied
Speaker 1: scale than a large scale bomb like in comic weapon
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, but it may be no less
Speaker 1: terrifying in the way that it's represented in legend. Oh yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about essentially when we'll get into the
Speaker 1: details here, and you already had an example from the intro.
Speaker 1: We're talking about ships spewing liquid fire like essentially spewing
Speaker 1: napalm onto enemy vessels, onto the water itself, causing the
Speaker 1: water to burn and then of course to burn ships
Speaker 1: which are generally highly flammable, as well as the individuals aboard.
Speaker 1: You would I would think, certainly think twice about approaching
Speaker 1: one of these Byzantine vessels, especially if it had a visible,
Speaker 1: uh you know, animal head on the front. But you
Speaker 1: can also think about it from the from the individual
Speaker 1: sailor's perspective, like the terror that would be inflicted on them,
Speaker 1: because if you so you imagine a naval battle and
Speaker 1: you are approaching a ship that is spewing fire, it
Speaker 1: is probably the case that because you're a medieval sailor,
Speaker 1: you don't know how to swim, and you might be
Speaker 1: far from shore, and so you were facing two possible
Speaker 1: fates either burning alive or jumping overboard and drowning. And
Speaker 1: even if you could swim, the water is now on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's it's not like you have a great option
Speaker 1: there either. Now we know there have been all kinds
Speaker 1: of thermal and incendiary weapons used throughout history. Fire plays
Speaker 1: a big role in more fair going back to prehistoric times, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just like burning and raising villages, Like a
Speaker 1: common way of siege tactics before siege engines were invented
Speaker 1: would be to just set fire to crops and villages
Speaker 1: surrounding a besieged castle or fortification to essentially draw them out,
Speaker 1: to say like, we're gonna torch everything you have if
Speaker 1: you don't come out to fight us. What kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to our episode on fire. Fire is is
Speaker 1: the basic, you know, the basic aspect of human technology.
Speaker 1: So as long as we've had it, we've used it
Speaker 1: for to kill each other and to keep each other alive, right,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's quite clear and quite easy to
Speaker 1: see why it's a useful tool in war. Also, it
Speaker 1: has that kind of scary element because it's not just
Speaker 1: a directed weapon like an arrow or a sword. It
Speaker 1: has a life of its own. You release fire into
Speaker 1: the wild and it can sort of carry on with
Speaker 1: its own business without completely unaided by your continued efforts.
Speaker 1: But I want to know when's the first time we
Speaker 1: saw this specific version of incendiary weapon reuse? What when
Speaker 1: does Greek fire itself first come on the scene. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked, Joe. It was the year six eight,
Speaker 1: and uh in Constantinople was in a kind of a
Speaker 1: tight spot, right, And so going forward from this point,
Speaker 1: I just want to acknowledge one of our main sources.
Speaker 1: It is a really interesting paper back from in the
Speaker 1: journal Technology and Culture by Alex Rowland called Secrecy, Technology
Speaker 1: and War, Greek Fire and the Defensive Byzantium six to
Speaker 1: twelve o four. So a lot of our information going
Speaker 1: forward is going to be coming from here, but we'll
Speaker 1: mention a few other sources also. So at Constantinople, we're
Speaker 1: under siege. What'spenning? Okay? So the caliph Mawejia has dispatched
Speaker 1: his fleet for the fifth consecutive time, and he's taken
Speaker 1: the peninsula of sizy Couse and here just south of
Speaker 1: the Byzantine capital. Uh, the entire Arab naval forces here,
Speaker 1: they've converged with the army and they're going to march
Speaker 1: on Constantinople and besiege it. Okay, So we have the
Speaker 1: Arab forces moving in and Constantinople, how's it going to
Speaker 1: defend itself? Well, I mean, luckily, it is a it
Speaker 1: is a very defensible city at the time they have,
Speaker 1: so they have a lot of a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: going for them. But that this is thing about being
Speaker 1: besieged is that it is a a long term affair.
Speaker 1: Usually it's about a steady strangling of the city of
Speaker 1: the nation even but being a coastal city, Constantinople has
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of its power and resources
Speaker 1: in its ability to travel the seas. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you've got a fleet coming in to attack your ability
Speaker 1: to travel the seas, that's no good, that's right. So
Speaker 1: they luckily Constantinople had a strong navy and pretty much
Speaker 1: had a strong imperial navy at least isolated to Constantinople
Speaker 1: for the you know, the duration of the empire. But
Speaker 1: what they needed, though, was it was a particular weapon.
Speaker 1: They needed something that would really give them a strong advantage,
Speaker 1: an advantage the likes of which we we we we
Speaker 1: heard in the intro to this episode, and that's where
Speaker 1: a particular individual comes into play. Kalinkas. Yes, the stories
Speaker 1: tell us that Kalinkas was a Syrian architect and engineer
Speaker 1: from the town known at the time as Heliopolis of Syria,
Speaker 1: and he arrived in Constantinople as a refugee after he
Speaker 1: had been driven out of his homeland, so he'd recently
Speaker 1: escaped the Arab conquest of Syria. He brought his military
Speaker 1: ideas and inventions with him to the Byzantines, and essentially
Speaker 1: he showed up on their doorsteps and offered them the
Speaker 1: science of napalm. Really with what it breaks down to,
Speaker 1: how do you imagine that scene breaking down? Like he
Speaker 1: knocks on the city walls and says, I have a flamethrower. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you had. He had to make
Speaker 1: a case for it, like, hey, I've got some ideas.
Speaker 1: They're they're really explosive. You're gonna love them for Maybe
Speaker 1: there was a posting, hey, we have an opening for
Speaker 1: a you know, a weapons engineer, a chemical engineer to
Speaker 1: help us with our weapons systems for this upcoming siege.
Speaker 1: What does a medieval weapons pitch meeting look like. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I'm I guess it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: like an audience with the king or or dignitaries, and
Speaker 1: then you know he's probably showing them some plans or something. However,
Speaker 1: he ended up pitching it. It was accepted. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was even referred to as clinicals fire, as well
Speaker 1: as Roman fire, marine fire, liquid fire, artificial fire, and
Speaker 1: of course Greek fire. Now it probably wasn't referred to
Speaker 1: as Greek fire at the time by the Byzantines because
Speaker 1: they didn't even think of themselves as Greeks. I think
Speaker 1: that name, that appellation came late or from Western Europeans, right,
Speaker 1: like Crusaders would encounter this or something like it, and
Speaker 1: because they were going east when they saw it, they
Speaker 1: referred to it as Greek fire, right, And then the
Speaker 1: name that name, in particular Greek fire ends up being
Speaker 1: applied to various things that might not have been the
Speaker 1: same Greek fire weapons system, or might have been just
Speaker 1: something just you know, remotely similar, like maybe it just
Speaker 1: involved flaming oils of some sort. Yeah, I've got to
Speaker 1: comment on that actually. So, according to Kelly Dvrees and
Speaker 1: Robert Douglas Smith in their book Medieval Military Technology from
Speaker 1: University of Toronto Press, in basically there were many different
Speaker 1: types of weapons referred to as Greek fire and the
Speaker 1: extant literature throughout the Middle Ages, so there were they
Speaker 1: separated into three main categories. You've got liquid fire pumped
Speaker 1: out through a nozzle, and then a liquid incendiary weapon
Speaker 1: that's hurled in small ceramic grenades. And then you've got
Speaker 1: later solid incendiaries that used explosive so that'd be something
Speaker 1: more like gunpowder for the purposes of today's discussion, we're
Speaker 1: focusing primarily on that original Byzantine marine fire, which is
Speaker 1: what Anna Cumnina was describing. It's a liquid jet of
Speaker 1: flame that vomited out of a nozzle on the ends
Speaker 1: of ships. And for for the purposes of simplicity, we
Speaker 1: could also call it Kalina costs fire, because that specifies
Speaker 1: that it's what was used in the eighth century by
Speaker 1: the Byzantines in their ships. These flamethrowers coming out the
Speaker 1: prow of the of the Byzantine warships. Now, in the
Speaker 1: case of this initial rollout of Greek fire, uh it
Speaker 1: turned was able to help turn the tide. According to
Speaker 1: the accounts, they're able to drive back the invaders, and
Speaker 1: the remnants of the air of fleet were then subsequently
Speaker 1: lost in a mighty storm. And when the forces again
Speaker 1: attempted the investiture of Constantinople and seven seventeen, the Byzantines
Speaker 1: again used the Greek fire, and this time they apparently
Speaker 1: had a an improved formula, and the invaders were driven
Speaker 1: off once again. And and this is a kind of
Speaker 1: a key historic moment. By the way, some historians rank
Speaker 1: it only under Charles Martel's victories over Islamic invaders in
Speaker 1: southern France during the seven thirties is a key stop
Speaker 1: point for Muslim expansion into Europe. So it's simply one
Speaker 1: of those moments in time where it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: a timeline forking off in an alternate direction. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: always love those things in history, like those key moments
Speaker 1: where I've never heard of like an alternate history that
Speaker 1: explores what would have happened if things have gone the
Speaker 1: other way. But I want to read that book. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's out there, yeah, yeah, and maybe maybe HBO will
Speaker 1: adapt it. It sounds equally problematic to to have like
Speaker 1: a modern series showing what a you know, what a
Speaker 1: predominantly Islamic at least, you know, at least Eastern Europe
Speaker 1: would have looked like, you know, it's just a it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to try and try and picture how that would
Speaker 1: have come together in an alternate timeline. But we should
Speaker 1: focus on the technology itself, because that's the core of today.
Speaker 1: What was Greek fire? Yeah, I mean, as you might
Speaker 1: imagine with a wonder weapons such as this, it was
Speaker 1: a matter of state secret, and it's a secret that
Speaker 1: seemingly died with the death of the Byzantine Empire in
Speaker 1: the four hundreds, or maybe much earlier, or much earlier
Speaker 1: later we'll get to uh. And to this day, chemists
Speaker 1: and historians they continue to devise possible recipes for it,
Speaker 1: and thoughts not only on the the just the the
Speaker 1: liquid itself, but also the weapons system and involved here
Speaker 1: what what what were they cooking up? How are they
Speaker 1: dishing it out? And to what degree was anyone ever
Speaker 1: able to replicate it? Fascinating questions we will explore in
Speaker 1: depth when we come back from this break. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back now, Robert. We're onto the Greek fire itself,
Speaker 1: the chemistry of the liquid substance, the liquid flame, and
Speaker 1: the delivery system for it. So what do modern scholars
Speaker 1: think about Greek fire and and what do we know
Speaker 1: about Greek fire from these medieval descriptions that we can
Speaker 1: use to try to figure out how it worked. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's get into the main properties of Greek fire. Though
Speaker 1: before we do that, I do want to point out
Speaker 1: one point that Rowland makes in his his paper, and
Speaker 1: that's that historian Theophanes wrote that the Bysantine, the Byzantine
Speaker 1: Emperor already had a fire ship program in the works
Speaker 1: two years before the arrival of kalin Cos. So it
Speaker 1: remains a mystery exactly what the nature of the prior
Speaker 1: system weapons system was and how he improved upon it
Speaker 1: with presumably with his formula. Yeah, that is one interpretation
Speaker 1: I've read that some modern historians look at this and say, okay,
Speaker 1: Kalina Cos if you assume he was a real person
Speaker 1: and he did show up to help with the Greek
Speaker 1: fire system, that what he actually did was not invent
Speaker 1: Greek fire or bring them Greek fire, but that he
Speaker 1: improved upon their recipe. That they already had some kind
Speaker 1: of chemical incendiary weapon that could be lit and and
Speaker 1: tossed out over enemies, but that he made it much
Speaker 1: more powerful. And what are the key characteristics that are
Speaker 1: often reported about this powerful version of Greek fire or
Speaker 1: Colina costs fire? Okay, so they're they're basically four of
Speaker 1: these properties. First of all, we've already alluded to this.
Speaker 1: It burns in water. Some say it some say it
Speaker 1: was ignited by water, but this is almost certainly a myth.
Speaker 1: It's also said that only vinegar, sand or urine could
Speaker 1: extinguish it. Now, in the next key characteristic. It was
Speaker 1: a liquid. It was something that was vomited forth from
Speaker 1: one of these animal heads or a siphon number three.
Speaker 1: At sea, it was shot from tubes or siphons and
Speaker 1: very rarely used on land. Okay, so it mainly came
Speaker 1: out of the prow of a ship, right, yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's something that would be you know, squirted or blasted
Speaker 1: out of um an aperture. And then finally, and this
Speaker 1: is this one is really interesting and will come into
Speaker 1: some of the theories that we're going to discuss us.
Speaker 1: There was smoke and a booming sound as it vomited
Speaker 1: forth from the two and this is about as detailed
Speaker 1: as our understanding of the properties get. Like, most of
Speaker 1: the theories that we're looking at are going to be
Speaker 1: speculating based on these characteristics. Now, all but the use
Speaker 1: of tubes, you can find in prior incendiary weapons used
Speaker 1: by other people, such as various historical accounts of just
Speaker 1: flaming oils being used. Fireworks existed in the region as
Speaker 1: early as the fourth century, and those could have created
Speaker 1: smoke and noise. But still there are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions regarding, you know, what, what exactly is going on here? Well,
Speaker 1: let's chase those questions. Man, all right, let's do it. Okay.
Speaker 1: So what are some potential ingredients that have been hypothesized
Speaker 1: by modern scholars that would have been constituents of the
Speaker 1: Greek fire recipe? We know that it was probably more
Speaker 1: than just one thing, right now, One thing that has
Speaker 1: been suggested by modern scholars is the idea of quicklime.
Speaker 1: Quick Lime is the common name for calcium oxide or
Speaker 1: C A O, and this is something that can be
Speaker 1: produced from lime bearing things found in nature, such as
Speaker 1: seashells or in limestone. You can do like a heat
Speaker 1: reduction of these things to produce quicklime. So it is
Speaker 1: something that was known to the ancient world. Now, the
Speaker 1: supporting evidence for the idea that quicklime was involved in
Speaker 1: the Greek fire recipe was that, of course, the production
Speaker 1: of calcium oxide was technologically feasible at the time it
Speaker 1: could have been done. In fact, people have been making
Speaker 1: quicklime for a long time, and it had even been
Speaker 1: used as a chemical weapon by the Romans hundreds of
Speaker 1: years before. But if you believe the part of the
Speaker 1: story that says Greek fire ignited on contact with water,
Speaker 1: quicklime could help you get there because calcium oxide produces
Speaker 1: a strong exothermic reaction on contact with water, meaning when
Speaker 1: you get it wet, it releases heat. And you can
Speaker 1: see videos of the they're they're like demonstration videos on
Speaker 1: YouTube where someone will get a container of quicklime and
Speaker 1: they'll just pour some water on it and immediately starts
Speaker 1: smoking and getting hot. Sometimes they'll even melt the container
Speaker 1: that it's sitting in. Now it's not flames, mind you,
Speaker 1: So that's part of the counter evidence. Of course, quicklime
Speaker 1: itself doesn't produce fire, but a heat producing chemical reaction,
Speaker 1: so the quicklime couldn't be the only ingredient. Also some
Speaker 1: counter evidence is that Roland points out the Greek fire
Speaker 1: was reported to have burned on the decks of ships,
Speaker 1: not just in the water, and if quicklime was the
Speaker 1: ignition catalyst, it would need to be heated by coming
Speaker 1: into contact with water, so that might weigh against the
Speaker 1: quick quicklime idea. But perhaps you could imagine a recipe
Speaker 1: in which quicklime is combined with another fuel or mixture
Speaker 1: of fuels, and when the Greek fire preparation comes into
Speaker 1: contact with water, the water reacts with the quicklime triggers
Speaker 1: the exothermic reaction. So it suddenly heat sit up, which
Speaker 1: increases the temperature of the mixture past the ignition point
Speaker 1: of the fuel, causing it to catch fire. See this
Speaker 1: this makes a certain amount of sense because it you're
Speaker 1: you're envisioning something that's not a primitive flamethrower so much
Speaker 1: as a chemical concoction that's going to spray safely or
Speaker 1: semi safely away from the warship and then it's going
Speaker 1: to hit the water near the enemy ship and they're ignite. Right.
Speaker 1: But as we've said, there's some complications there. One of
Speaker 1: the things is just that a lot of modern scholars
Speaker 1: think that the burns on contact with water part is
Speaker 1: a myth. I think there's more credence given to the
Speaker 1: idea that it could land on top of the water
Speaker 1: and continue burning while it's wet like, while it's in
Speaker 1: the water, But the idea that it would only ignite
Speaker 1: when it was touched by water, I think fewer people
Speaker 1: except that part of the story. Also, as Roland points out,
Speaker 1: and as I said a minute ago, it lands on
Speaker 1: the deck of the ship and the ship's burning. So
Speaker 1: in order for that to work, if it's triggered by quicklime,
Speaker 1: if that's what's raising the temperature of the mixture to
Speaker 1: the ignition point of the fuel. That probably wouldn't happen
Speaker 1: on the deck of a ship, unless the deck of
Speaker 1: the ship is always wet, which maybe it is, I
Speaker 1: don't know. And not to get too far ahead of us.
Speaker 1: But then that also makes me remember that there there's
Speaker 1: some allusions to the idea that one could defend against
Speaker 1: Greek fire by having like soaked items like soaked tarps
Speaker 1: and whatnot on your ship. So that would that would
Speaker 1: not seem to work if this was indeed the quicklime, right,
Speaker 1: and that would make the quicklime based version a really
Speaker 1: devilish weapon. Like you thought you could put it out
Speaker 1: with water, or you thought you could put up some
Speaker 1: damp rags to help protect yourself, but in fact, that
Speaker 1: would just make it even hotter, I mean, And really
Speaker 1: one of the key aspects of the weapon, uh, that's
Speaker 1: actually mentioned in the opening narration here today, is that
Speaker 1: it made fire behave in a way that that people
Speaker 1: were not expecting. Right, be it you know fire that's
Speaker 1: coming at you laterally, or if this is actually a
Speaker 1: you know, a true interpretation, then uh, you know, fire
Speaker 1: that is springing up from the water without a visible spark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's scary to imagine. All right, Well, okay, that's quicklime.
Speaker 1: What's what's our next potential candidate here? Okay. Roland also
Speaker 1: mentions that some scholars have debated the inclusion of calcium
Speaker 1: phosphied in the in the Greek fire mixture. So, calcium
Speaker 1: phosphied is a chemical compound is c A three P two,
Speaker 1: and it's a salt stable in the form of a
Speaker 1: crystal powder, commonly used as an ingredient in rat poison.
Speaker 1: So how does it kill rats? Well, when calcium phosphied
Speaker 1: comes into contact with water or acids, it reacts to
Speaker 1: release phosphine gas p H three. Now we've talked about
Speaker 1: phosphine gas before we mentioned it. I think phosphine gas
Speaker 1: was one of the proposed solutions to the question of
Speaker 1: what's caused saying will of the whist phenomenon? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: one of the reasons is that phosphine gas is highly toxic,
Speaker 1: highly flammable, and that it can spontaneously form explosive and
Speaker 1: igniting mixtures with the air. So when exposed to the air,
Speaker 1: it can just sometimes start up a flame on its own.
Speaker 1: You don't even need to ignite it. Now back to
Speaker 1: the rat poison. What happens when the rat eats it, Well,
Speaker 1: the rat eats the calcium phosphide or any other metal phosphides.
Speaker 1: Other metal phosphides are sometimes used as rat poison, and
Speaker 1: then the act of digesting the chemical releases the killer
Speaker 1: phosphine gas inside the rodent's body. Calcium phosphide has also
Speaker 1: been used for ignition properties in things like maritime flares.
Speaker 1: Uh So, what are the what's the supporting evidence that
Speaker 1: this could have been an ingredient. Well, it reacts with
Speaker 1: water to produce heat, kind of like quicklime. Right. So
Speaker 1: a byproduct of the reaction is phosphine gas, which is
Speaker 1: highly flammable potential fuel, and this could explain stories of
Speaker 1: Greek fire being ignited by water or burning on water,
Speaker 1: and phosphine gas can spontaneously form explosive mixtures like I
Speaker 1: just mentioned. So this could be really nasty, horrible stuff
Speaker 1: to be shooting out at a ship in a naval battle.
Speaker 1: You'd be not only shooting out stuff that can spontaneously
Speaker 1: ignite and react with water in a way that ignites,
Speaker 1: but also it would be producing poison gas. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: that that sounds like a terrifying weapon. What's the counter evidence. Well, basically,
Speaker 1: it's that people have tried this in experiments and it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to match the way it's described. Roland points
Speaker 1: out in his paper that twentieth century experiments with preparations
Speaker 1: containing calcium phosphied didn't exactly match what was being described
Speaker 1: in the ancient sources. So a lot of modern scholars
Speaker 1: think it's kind of unlikely that this was one of
Speaker 1: the ingredients. All right, so we've talked about quicklime, we've
Speaker 1: talked about calcium phosphied. What's our next candidate, how about saltpeter.
Speaker 1: This is one of the big debates in the history
Speaker 1: of kim is this is this? Is this the area
Speaker 1: of ultimate controversy in the twentieth century what was in
Speaker 1: Greek fire? But there have been debates, actually, and one
Speaker 1: of the big debates, and this is apparently was their
Speaker 1: salt Peter in it or not? And their pro Saltpeter
Speaker 1: scholars and anti saltpeter scholars. And it looks to me
Speaker 1: like in recent decades the anti Saltpeter camp has sort
Speaker 1: of one out. Well. One of the key reasons here,
Speaker 1: of course, is that is saltpeter was used in Greek fire.
Speaker 1: This would make Greek fire arguably the first gunpowder weapon,
Speaker 1: beating the ninth century Chinese discovery of its property. So
Speaker 1: there's a really a lot of you know, cultural pride
Speaker 1: uh swept up in this. So who was the first?
Speaker 1: Who are the first people to figure out how to
Speaker 1: kill people with saltpeter? First? Well, let's explore the saltpeter
Speaker 1: and see if we can puncture that pride. Now, saltpeter
Speaker 1: is the name for actually a group of nitrogen based compounds,
Speaker 1: primarily potassium nitrate or k n O through E. Now,
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate is again assault that has many different uses
Speaker 1: in all kinds of technological fields. It's in food preparation.
Speaker 1: It used to be used all the time as a
Speaker 1: preservative and cured meats. You can still sometimes see it
Speaker 1: used in food, but it's a little less common these days.
Speaker 1: It's also been used for various medical purposes, including both
Speaker 1: to suppress and enhance the libido. I'm not convinced that
Speaker 1: it would actually do either one of those. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen any evidence, but you know, people thought a lot
Speaker 1: of things, did a lot of things. I can imagine
Speaker 1: is somebody like leaving a trail of gunpowder to their
Speaker 1: libido and then like setting it off. But it also
Speaker 1: salt peter was also the primary ingredient in black powder,
Speaker 1: which was the original gunpowder. Now we have to dispecify
Speaker 1: black powder original gunpowder because modern bullet cartridges tend to
Speaker 1: use a different ignition material. But the original gunpowder it
Speaker 1: manages to shoot bullets out of guns because when you
Speaker 1: set it on fire, it burns very rapidly and creates
Speaker 1: lots of rapidly expanding gases, which, as they expand, push
Speaker 1: the projectile out the barrel of the gun very fast.
Speaker 1: So the traditional mixture for black powder was saltpeter, charcoal,
Speaker 1: and even sulfur. Here's something you might have wondered before.
Speaker 1: If the gunpowder is packed down under a musket ball,
Speaker 1: or it's inside an enclosed rifle cartridge, how does it burn?
Speaker 1: I mean, don't fires need to be exposed to oxygen
Speaker 1: in order to burn. And that's where the saltpeter comes in.
Speaker 1: That's that's the roll of the K and O three.
Speaker 1: The charcoal and the sulfur in the gunpowder are the
Speaker 1: fuel that burns, and the saltpeter is an oxidizer providing
Speaker 1: the oxygen atoms that allow the ignition reaction to happen
Speaker 1: without the gunpowder being exposed to open air. Now, this
Speaker 1: argument for Saltpeter's inclusion in the Greek fire formula. This
Speaker 1: was argued by French chemist Pierre Eugene Marceline or P. E. M. Bertolo,
Speaker 1: who lived Now. Bertolo was a really interesting guy, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to take us on a tangent, but I'd
Speaker 1: hate it if I didn't point out this interesting idea
Speaker 1: on the technological terror and war from Bernelow's perspective. We
Speaker 1: covered him in an episode of tech Stuff that I
Speaker 1: guest hosted with Jonathan Strickland. Tech Stuff if you don't
Speaker 1: listen as another podcast here in the House to Works
Speaker 1: Family hosted by Jonathan Strickland, and it was an episode
Speaker 1: I went on there to do with him that I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to do for a while about five ways
Speaker 1: people predicted that technology could end all wars spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: None of them worked, but Bertolow was one of these guys,
Speaker 1: and the short story on how he predicted it was
Speaker 1: that Bertolow predicted that by the year two thousand, engineers
Speaker 1: would create synthetic materials indistinguishable from organic matter, and this
Speaker 1: would be things like meats, vegetables, alcohol, tobacco. And he
Speaker 1: basically saw the whole world as this big solvable chemistry problem.
Speaker 1: This is wonderful because it actually ties in with, of course,
Speaker 1: the Star Trek utopian vision, where go up to a
Speaker 1: machine and you, you know, type in steak and you
Speaker 1: get your steak. Yeah, exactly. So he saw this sort
Speaker 1: of world of chemical abundance, a post scarcity world. And
Speaker 1: he also imagined that we could make food so nutritious
Speaker 1: and pure that it would alter our moral nature. In
Speaker 1: other words, like, through the power of chemical engineering, we
Speaker 1: would make ourselves better people. And I just want to
Speaker 1: do a quick quote from an interview of his from
Speaker 1: McClure's magazine published in eighteen four uh and Bertolo says,
Speaker 1: in this interview, man should grow in sweetness and nobility
Speaker 1: because he will have done with war, with existence based
Speaker 1: upon the slaughter of beasts. Perhaps, and this is only
Speaker 1: a dream. Remember, synthetic chemistry, or something we might call
Speaker 1: spiritual chemistry, will develop means to as profoundly alter men's
Speaker 1: moral nature as material chemistry will change the conditions of
Speaker 1: his environment. I love that. Now, that's kind of funny
Speaker 1: in the context of exploring the ancient chemical problem of
Speaker 1: how to make a mixture that best burns people in
Speaker 1: their ships. Love. But I mean we come back down
Speaker 1: to the nature of technology again, right, fire, As soon
Speaker 1: as we learned how to master it, we used to
Speaker 1: keep ourselves warm and to cook food, but also to
Speaker 1: to terrorize each other. And in chemistry, I mean you
Speaker 1: look at especially in the advances made by German chemists. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, at the you know, the dawn of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Um, you see, um, you see the sort
Speaker 1: of the butting heads of the chemistry of life and
Speaker 1: the chemistry of death. You know, we're learning how to
Speaker 1: manipulate chemical properties to better crow crops, where we're figuring
Speaker 1: out how to treat illnesses, but we're you know, accidentally
Speaker 1: inventing M D M A uh. And at the same
Speaker 1: time we're creating horrific chemical weapons to utilize against each other. Totally,
Speaker 1: and so it's clear that Bertolo had his mind on
Speaker 1: not just chemistry at the molecule level, but chemistry at
Speaker 1: the societal level. What chemistry meant for humankind, And so
Speaker 1: one of the things he was thinking about was chemistry
Speaker 1: in war, and so he turned his mind to this
Speaker 1: problem of what was in Greek fire, and he argued, yes,
Speaker 1: saltpeter was an ingredient. Supporting evidence for saltpeter would be
Speaker 1: one thing is that in the descriptions, the Greek fire
Speaker 1: shoots out of the nozzles on the front of the
Speaker 1: ships as if explosively, right, Yes, and there was also
Speaker 1: reportedly a boom and a smoke, great smoking effect, so
Speaker 1: you know, so others would argue whether some sort of
Speaker 1: a hydraulic system it's responsible for this, But you could
Speaker 1: also imagine, I mean, we're told there was a booming, noise,
Speaker 1: we're told there was smoke, So it it leads you
Speaker 1: to believe that there's some sort of explosive reaction taking
Speaker 1: place here. Yes, But on the other hand, what's the
Speaker 1: counter evidence that says no, no, no, saltpeter in the
Speaker 1: Greek fire. Well, one of the things would be, as
Speaker 1: you alluded to, you know, you might have been able
Speaker 1: to produce that that lateral trajectory if you just had
Speaker 1: highly pressurized liquids. So if maybe the ships were constructed
Speaker 1: in such a way that they were able to build
Speaker 1: up the pressure in the storage tanks and have valves
Speaker 1: that would suddenly allow it to shoot out. You could
Speaker 1: get a lot of pressure coming out of even medieval tubes.
Speaker 1: Another piece of counter evidence, where would the saltpeter come from?
Speaker 1: I think the thinking on this now is that it's
Speaker 1: not impossible that these people could have used salt peter,
Speaker 1: but there's no direct evidence that they had it. Also,
Speaker 1: the British chemist and historian J. R. Partington, who lived
Speaker 1: from eighteen eighty six to nineteen sixty five, argued against
Speaker 1: the theory that saltpeter was part of Greek fire. And
Speaker 1: Partington argued in a book called A History of Greek
Speaker 1: Fire and Gunpowder in nineteen sixty the Greek fire was
Speaker 1: made from distilled and natural petroleum. Will get there in
Speaker 1: just a second, uh, For that would would have been
Speaker 1: found on the beds of the northern shores of the
Speaker 1: Black Sea. And that what it was done was what
Speaker 1: we were just describing. It's pumped at high pressure over
Speaker 1: a flame like a modern flamethrower. Alright. Now, he suggests
Speaker 1: that a primary ingredient is this distilled natural petroleum. And
Speaker 1: this is a common consensus, I would say, of scholars
Speaker 1: who look at Greek fire today, So what's this stuff? All? Right,
Speaker 1: So there's there's a word that is used for this stuff,
Speaker 1: but I understand it's also one of these problematic terms
Speaker 1: that is kind of broadly applied, right, and that is naptha. Right.
Speaker 1: So it appears that various flammable liquids throughout the ages
Speaker 1: have been called naptha at different times and places. But
Speaker 1: in this case, we're probably talking about crude oil in
Speaker 1: some forms, some filtered form, right, that's right. One of
Speaker 1: the books that I was looking at for this is
Speaker 1: The Fall of Constantinople by Nicole Haldon and Turnbull uh
Speaker 1: and the authors. They write that Greek fire was likely
Speaker 1: distilled petroleum, perhaps with a resin added, like some sort
Speaker 1: of tree sap, like a pine resin. Yeah, pine resin,
Speaker 1: and this would have been adding to thicketed, thicken it
Speaker 1: up and prolong it's burning on the surface of the water.
Speaker 1: Now the author Halden, the middle one there is John
Speaker 1: Howden of Princeton University, and he's written, uh, some solo
Speaker 1: papers as well on Greek fire. You know. He he
Speaker 1: suspects that, yeah, that it was petroleum based liquid modified
Speaker 1: to increase its potency. He thinks that the create key
Speaker 1: ingredients were highly flammable light crude oil. Uh, this would
Speaker 1: be the naptha and that pine resin, which not only
Speaker 1: would have made it to burn more on the surface
Speaker 1: of the water, but it would have been sticky. It
Speaker 1: would have made the mixture burned hotter and longer. In general.
Speaker 1: I've actually read that one of the names, one of
Speaker 1: the contemporaneous names for Greek fire was sticky fire God.
Speaker 1: You know that gets That reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: the accounts of the use of actual flamethrowers. I think
Speaker 1: I've gone on this this tirade before on the podcast,
Speaker 1: but I feel like we we watch aliens, we watch
Speaker 1: the thing. We watch shows with flamethrowers in them, and yeah,
Speaker 1: those pretty terrifying on their own, but we don't really
Speaker 1: have of a true picture of the horrifying nature. I'll say,
Speaker 1: a World War two air of flamethrower, We're shooting this
Speaker 1: jelly to flaming death on people, right. I mean, we
Speaker 1: see it used most often these days, I think in
Speaker 1: science fiction, where it's used against like aliens and monsters.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to realize that a flamethrower is
Speaker 1: a horrifying terror weapon. Yeah that it is definitely a
Speaker 1: terror weapon. It is. Uh yeah, So if you want,
Speaker 1: if you want more than that, just look into any accounts,
Speaker 1: any testimony of its usage, say in the Pacific theater
Speaker 1: in World War two, and you will you will be
Speaker 1: totally sickened. It's a it's a devastating weapon. Alright. So
Speaker 1: we've discussed quicklime, We've discussed calcium phosphied, We've discussed saltpeter,
Speaker 1: We've discussed naptha, we've discussed pine resin. All of these
Speaker 1: have been hypothesized at various times in places as ingredients
Speaker 1: in Greek fire. Is that it? Or is there any
Speaker 1: other hypothesized ingredients? Well, I also ran across bit human. Well,
Speaker 1: so this was the world's first petroleum product. It's a sticky, black,
Speaker 1: viscous substance and you we probably know it better as asphalt,
Speaker 1: but it was highly prized in the ancient world, and
Speaker 1: it was for the longest it was primarily a Mesopotamian monopoly.
Speaker 1: The stuff substance saw use in various endeavors, boat cocking, art, cosmetics.
Speaker 1: Physicians in the region eventually used to treat a number
Speaker 1: of ailments U and these would have eventually these forms
Speaker 1: of treatment would eventually spread to Europe and Uh. I
Speaker 1: was reading about this, this one in particular as a
Speaker 1: candidate for Greek fire in the Journal of Mass Suspectrometry.
Speaker 1: And this was a study of a particular ancient vass
Speaker 1: from fifth century BC containing a sample of bitumen. Uh.
Speaker 1: By the way, ancient Egyptians used this as a preservative
Speaker 1: for their mummies. And the word mummy even comes from
Speaker 1: the Persian word for for wax, mumia, which was used
Speaker 1: to describe human. Okay, so we've got all these hypothesized ingredients,
Speaker 1: So in what way is it most likely they came together? Well,
Speaker 1: we already mentioned that Roland has something to say about that.
Speaker 1: He concludes, in agreement with the scholar he names, hr
Speaker 1: Ellis Davidson, that naptha was almost definitely the primary fuel,
Speaker 1: that pine resin was possibly used as a thickener, that
Speaker 1: quicklime may have been added to help it burn in
Speaker 1: or on water, but this is not viewed as necessary,
Speaker 1: And that saltpeter may have been added to give it
Speaker 1: explosive properties, but this is also not viewed as necessary.
Speaker 1: I found another paper on this It was in the
Speaker 1: Biotechnology Journal from the year two thousand six by procop
Speaker 1: at All called Enzymes Fight Chemical Weapons, and the authors
Speaker 1: here say that they think the Greek fire was probably
Speaker 1: a combination of resin sulfur, naptha, quicklime, and saltpeter. And
Speaker 1: of course we have to remember that even in even
Speaker 1: in these earlier accounts uh supposedly the Greek fire itself,
Speaker 1: the formula for it improved between the first and the
Speaker 1: second major usage. So it's possible that Kalina costs improved
Speaker 1: upon the formula, that it was tweaked by others. And
Speaker 1: as will explore in the After a Break here, there's
Speaker 1: also the nature of the secret here. What happens when
Speaker 1: you keep a secret so well that that it never
Speaker 1: leaks outside of your kingdom, it doesn't survive your empire.
Speaker 1: What does it say about the nature of the secret,
Speaker 1: how you kept it, and how that might backfire on
Speaker 1: you when you you need to retrieve that secret later.
Speaker 1: Thank and we're back, all right, Robert. Let's say that
Speaker 1: I have captured the recipe for Greek fire. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: an opposing general of some other army, and I know
Speaker 1: exactly what chemicals to mix and what proportions to make
Speaker 1: Greek fire am now is powerful as the Byzantine fire fleet. No,
Speaker 1: you're not. And because this is interesting, you can you
Speaker 1: can if you have a perfect mixture, the identical mixture.
Speaker 1: Let's say I have a bucket of it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have a bucket of it. Great, What are you gonna
Speaker 1: do with that bucket? Uh? Do you have a ship?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna maybe like throw it really hard? No, obviously
Speaker 1: system do you have any of the end you have
Speaker 1: the skill to use it? Right? So, from from the
Speaker 1: descriptions we know of ancient history, it's not just the
Speaker 1: recipe of the of the Greek fire that really matters
Speaker 1: in how it's deployed as a weapon in battle. That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, one can cannot help but be reminded of
Speaker 1: all the various news reports going on now about North
Speaker 1: Korea and its nuclear weapons program. We see the various
Speaker 1: steps in the thresholds that are being discussed, right, Like,
Speaker 1: It's it's one thing to be able to produce a
Speaker 1: an atomic bomb, but then can you can you miniaturize
Speaker 1: it right and then fitted into a warhead? Are you
Speaker 1: capable of aiding uh? An inconcontinental ballistic missile that can
Speaker 1: that can exit the atmosphere, re enter and hit the target.
Speaker 1: There they are additional um systems that have to be
Speaker 1: in place to fully utilize that weapon and their skills
Speaker 1: that have to be in place to be able to
Speaker 1: use it effectively against your enemy. Yeah, when you think
Speaker 1: about developments and weapons technology, and I do want to
Speaker 1: be clear, we're not trying to glorify weapons technology today
Speaker 1: or say like, look how beautiful it is all the
Speaker 1: destruction we can do. But as one important aspect of
Speaker 1: the development of science and technology, I think it's worth exploring.
Speaker 1: As you look at how weapons have developed in the
Speaker 1: last century or so, a lot of what has happened,
Speaker 1: with the exception of of course nuclear weapons and things
Speaker 1: like that, has not been so much changes in what
Speaker 1: you can blow up on like the incendiary or the
Speaker 1: chemical compounds there, but it's been in the delivery systems,
Speaker 1: right and Uh. For instance, the historians Howlden and Burn
Speaker 1: have argued that that, yeah, this was going with what
Speaker 1: we've said, we definitely had a liquid uh substance here.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh it was more of a scientific victory
Speaker 1: of preheating and pressurizing the liquid below deck. They argued,
Speaker 1: So this would mean that the delivery system is as important,
Speaker 1: or if not more important, then the true Greek fire.
Speaker 1: And you know the formula for the stuff, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just the Kalina cost fire. It's the Kalina
Speaker 1: cost weapon, right, the whole I mean the weapon system.
Speaker 1: And also like the tree, it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: fighter jet. Right, you can have the fighter jet, you
Speaker 1: can have like an F fourteen Tomcat, but you gotta
Speaker 1: have somebody to that's also capable of piloting that thing
Speaker 1: as well. So you have you have essentially you have
Speaker 1: the ammunition, you have the system, and then you have
Speaker 1: the skills required to use it in battle. Now, of course, uh,
Speaker 1: this this weapon system as a technology. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: again a state secret. And this is this is actually
Speaker 1: Roland's key area of focus in his article the Keeping
Speaker 1: of this Secret and and what does it? What does
Speaker 1: it do for your technology when the technology itself is secret? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Roland explains this via framework originally articulated by a guy
Speaker 1: named Derek De Solo Price in the nineteen seventies, where
Speaker 1: he he sets up science and technology as opposed in
Speaker 1: one very key UH aspect, which is that he calls
Speaker 1: science quote paperophiliic, meaning enjoying publishing or enjoying paper, whereas
Speaker 1: UH technology is largely paperophobic, meaning it wants to stay secret,
Speaker 1: it doesn't want to be widely published and disseminated. Science
Speaker 1: is about sharing knowledge with all of humanity. Technology is
Speaker 1: about using science to your advantage. And for examples of that,
Speaker 1: we can think too patents. You know, you have a
Speaker 1: patent on your technology because no one you don't want
Speaker 1: anyone else even if they figure out how to do it,
Speaker 1: You don't want them to make money off of it,
Speaker 1: or the or you want to go more historical, you
Speaker 1: can look to various guilds, trade guilds, trade secrets, and
Speaker 1: then state secrets as well, and we continue to see
Speaker 1: this play out today with everything from computing technology to
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. Now, Roland points out that you know, even
Speaker 1: mythical weapons of great might were typically secretive in nature
Speaker 1: and then and that in the real world, everyone from
Speaker 1: da Vinci to Samuel Colt took steps to safeguard the
Speaker 1: details of their inventions, in which you know, in Colts case,
Speaker 1: were certainly weapons and in in da Vinci's case were
Speaker 1: sometimes weapons depending on what he was concocting. But he
Speaker 1: also does acknowledge that there's a countervailing viewpoint, for example,
Speaker 1: from the researcher Pamela Long right that says that, Okay, so, yes,
Speaker 1: Greek Fire was a great state secret, but actually it's
Speaker 1: kind of an anomaly in that right, because a lot
Speaker 1: of other weapons technology did become widely disseminated public knowledge.
Speaker 1: That Greek Fire is kind of an outlier for the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. Yeah, this this one, And that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons it's so intriguing. This one example of a
Speaker 1: weapon system that was who's wrapped up in secrecy? But
Speaker 1: in what way does keeping a technology secret also undercut
Speaker 1: your ability to use it? Yes? This is This is
Speaker 1: where it's even more interesting. So for the for the
Speaker 1: for the formula, according to Rowland, they simply made and
Speaker 1: bottled the stuff and sealed up jars. Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he calls this the Coca Cola method. You just
Speaker 1: make it at the central factory. You've got your your
Speaker 1: central arsenal, and that's where you mix up all the
Speaker 1: stuff and you jar it up and you send it
Speaker 1: out and you don't let anybody else see what you're doing, right,
Speaker 1: and you're only darring it up at a centralized location,
Speaker 1: for instance, in or around Constantinople. It's not coming in
Speaker 1: from a you know, another province or anything. What are
Speaker 1: the eleven herbs and spices? I mean they arrive pre bagged.
Speaker 1: There's no way to know. But but of course there's
Speaker 1: more at play here than just that mere liquid. As
Speaker 1: we've we've related, so the technology entails matter, power, a
Speaker 1: tool or machine, and technique. So power plus matter via
Speaker 1: machine and a human operative utilizing the technique that will
Speaker 1: give you the fire itself, the basic equation of technology. Right,
Speaker 1: So the formula here, the formula itself was the matter,
Speaker 1: the power was the fire, the spark, the machine and
Speaker 1: technique or largely a mystery, but you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the theories boiled down to, you know, a system
Speaker 1: of tubes and a like a heating under underneath the
Speaker 1: deck of the ship, right, like a pressurized cauldron that
Speaker 1: would be heating the oil or the nap the head
Speaker 1: of time and keeping it under high pressure. And then
Speaker 1: a valve that you could turn to suddenly release a
Speaker 1: jet of it which would spray over a flame. And
Speaker 1: the author points out that all the information needed to
Speaker 1: design such a pressurized weapon system. This would not have
Speaker 1: been a godsend. You don't have to imagine uh clinicos
Speaker 1: as as an alien visiting the human civilization and giving
Speaker 1: them flame covers. No, in fact, this is highly uh
Speaker 1: It's something you definitely imagine that people would have come
Speaker 1: up with just based on Roman learning. And this is
Speaker 1: something that we we should emphasize about the state of
Speaker 1: technology and what we often refer to as the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: what sometimes called the Dark Ages. Now, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of historical thought in the twentieth
Speaker 1: century that, you know, like Enlightenment historians who looked back
Speaker 1: on the medieval period and called it all the Dark Ages,
Speaker 1: they really were sort of underestimating the intellectual flourishing that
Speaker 1: went on in some places in the Middle Ages in Europe.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, after the collapse of the
Speaker 1: Western Roman Empire throughout much of Europe, there was kind
Speaker 1: of a period in which much knowledge was lost and
Speaker 1: forgotten and fewer historical records were produced. So for for
Speaker 1: some time, for some centuries in the later millennia, the
Speaker 1: later half of the first millennium CE, you could sort
Speaker 1: of say that there was a technological Dark Age there
Speaker 1: was less progress for a while than there had been
Speaker 1: in the Roman period, and a lot of what we
Speaker 1: used to know how to do was forgotten. So it
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting that you see this advance taking place.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, now you know, so who knows if you
Speaker 1: would be able to acquire them, But if you could,
Speaker 1: if you could get a copy of Heroes Newmatica and
Speaker 1: Vittruvius is d Architectura, you would have, according to Roland,
Speaker 1: the basic elements you'd need to figure out how to
Speaker 1: construct your own pressurized weapon system for Greek fire and
Speaker 1: he he writes the following I read a quick quote.
Speaker 1: He says, the technique itself would have been a secret
Speaker 1: of almost as much sophistication as the formula for without
Speaker 1: pressure gauges and safety valves, it was surely a delicate
Speaker 1: task to heat and pressurize of volatile liquid in dark
Speaker 1: and cramp quarters below deck in combat without accident. God,
Speaker 1: can you imagine that? So you're you're the nap the
Speaker 1: pumper in the belly of the of the fire ship. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: just this just bottled death down there and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be h hopefully you know, spit away from your ship
Speaker 1: and on to the others. So you've just got to
Speaker 1: imagine that if they were operating ships like this, they
Speaker 1: frequently would just become engulfed in flames and kill all
Speaker 1: of the people operating them. Well, you might think so,
Speaker 1: but there are actually no reports of such accidents. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they didn't occur. It could be a
Speaker 1: situation where, you know, especially if if you know, if
Speaker 1: if you're if Byzantines are writing about their fabulous weapon system,
Speaker 1: maybe you're not going to write about the failures. You're
Speaker 1: only going to write about the victories. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: we we don't have any accounts of of Greek fire
Speaker 1: vessels blowing up of the system backfiring. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say that that there are accounts of other similar weapons
Speaker 1: systems backfiring, which gives us, uh, gives us an idea that, well,
Speaker 1: this kind of thing might have easily occurred and it
Speaker 1: just wasn't written about, or though the writings have not survived.
Speaker 1: But if we look to China, of all places, uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's actually a detailed description of a similar weapons
Speaker 1: system that was employed around nine hundred CE in China.
Speaker 1: So there's a a ten forty four military work titled
Speaker 1: woo Jing zong Yao, and it details a brass container
Speaker 1: fitted with a horizontal pump gunpowder ignition chamber and a
Speaker 1: small diameter nozzle. And this was designed for use on
Speaker 1: the you know, the ramparts of a fortress or what
Speaker 1: it would be used against siege weapons. But they were
Speaker 1: also apparently used in naval battles, uh, particularly one naval
Speaker 1: battle on the young Z River near Nanjing in between
Speaker 1: Tang and Song forces. And here's the where it ties
Speaker 1: into what we're discussing here. The Tige used it, but
Speaker 1: the wind changed and the fires blew back on their
Speaker 1: own ships. So who knows if this was exactly the
Speaker 1: same weapon system, if it was inspired by it, or
Speaker 1: if it was just independently produced. But I feel like
Speaker 1: what they're describing here taking place on the young Z
Speaker 1: River could easily have occurred with one of these vessels, right,
Speaker 1: and we might not know about it. Now here's a question,
Speaker 1: did anybody ever find themselves in the scenario I described
Speaker 1: earlier where you're you're a general facing off against the
Speaker 1: Byzantines or the Romans as they would have called themselves,
Speaker 1: and you've captured some of this fire in a bottle. Uh.
Speaker 1: Did did it ever get turned against them? Um? It
Speaker 1: does not seem that it did. But we do have
Speaker 1: a case in eight fourteen, the Bullguards captured thirty six
Speaker 1: siphons and jars of Greek fire to go with them.
Speaker 1: So they had you know, the at least I guess
Speaker 1: the hand because there were two types. So they had
Speaker 1: like the ship based siphons and then like a handheld
Speaker 1: model apparently according to some accounts, so they had the fire.
Speaker 1: They had the technology, but apparently they didn't know how
Speaker 1: to use it, because there's no evidence that they were
Speaker 1: able to capitalize on it. Uh. Likewise, Marcus the Greek
Speaker 1: published a Greek fire recipe in the twelfth century, but
Speaker 1: you didn't see that technology spread. And also after nine
Speaker 1: hundred CE, Arab forces had similar incendiary weapons, but they
Speaker 1: weren't able to utilize it as the Byzantines had. So
Speaker 1: you can easily interpret this as being a situation where Okay,
Speaker 1: you have the h the AMMO, you have the weapon,
Speaker 1: but you just don't have the training or the you know,
Speaker 1: the systematic approach to its use. So in other words,
Speaker 1: to steal the secret, you'd have to steal all the
Speaker 1: components and that would be difficult, or it would because
Speaker 1: one of the keys here was the people with knowledge
Speaker 1: of all the components, according to Roland, were never in
Speaker 1: the same place at the same time, right, So you
Speaker 1: had people building it was a compartmentalization of military technology
Speaker 1: where you'd have the people who are the pyromancers in there,
Speaker 1: you know, in their secret dungeon making your Greek fire,
Speaker 1: whoever they are. But then you've also got the people
Speaker 1: who are building the pump system and the siphons into
Speaker 1: the belly of these warships, and the who are being
Speaker 1: trained in how to operate it. And you've got to
Speaker 1: have all these pieces come together for the weapon to
Speaker 1: be viable. Right. So you're gonna have I guess a
Speaker 1: key number of overseers that are going to be able
Speaker 1: to put all of this together. But this is where
Speaker 1: we have the power of secrecy and the risk of secrecy,
Speaker 1: because it seems that there were very few people who
Speaker 1: had that information that knew how all these components came together. Uh,
Speaker 1: And we're able to put it all together now. According
Speaker 1: to legend, you had only two families that knew the
Speaker 1: full formula, the full weapon system here and and the
Speaker 1: technique for using it, and that would have been the
Speaker 1: emperor's family, the royal family itself, and also a family
Speaker 1: referred to as the Lampros family. I've seen people speculate
Speaker 1: that the lamp Pros family is not a real historical right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Roland spends a good amount of time discussing the ins
Speaker 1: and outs of both of these. Basically, I guess one
Speaker 1: of the key things to keep in mind here is
Speaker 1: just how the golden throne worked in in Byzantine culture.
Speaker 1: It worked by you getting murdered, basically, Well, it worked
Speaker 1: by you murdering somebody else and then you getting murdered.
Speaker 1: Well he he compares it actually to the Chinese imperial model,
Speaker 1: where whoever the emperor is is the is divine, it's
Speaker 1: the chosen of heaven, and so there's almost no such
Speaker 1: thing as a usurper, right because once you've usurped it,
Speaker 1: you've got it and you're okay with God. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the you know, a quick version of it. But
Speaker 1: there was an hereditary nature to the throne in Byzantine culture,
Speaker 1: but once you took the throne, it was yours. So
Speaker 1: there was a lot of backstabbing, a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of plots and intrigue, and uh that's so. Here's
Speaker 1: here's a scenario. If you're planning to stage a series
Speaker 1: of murders and take the throne um where on your
Speaker 1: priorities list is Greek Fire, you know, is getting us.
Speaker 1: You're worried about the people in the room with you
Speaker 1: right now? Yeah, yeah, I mean you're you're plotting to
Speaker 1: to take the throne and kill who needs to be killed,
Speaker 1: backstab or front staff, whoever needs to get it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the passing down of that of the details of that
Speaker 1: weapon system, it either might not be a priority, it
Speaker 1: might not be possible. It's very susceptible to loss because again,
Speaker 1: very few individuals, you know, in the royal family, for instance,
Speaker 1: you're going to have access to it. And if there
Speaker 1: is a periphery family that's close to the throne that
Speaker 1: also carries the secret, well they're just going to be
Speaker 1: just as susceptible to back in front stabs. As you proceed,
Speaker 1: Roland points out one situation where it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: how a Greek Fire protecting family, you know, a family
Speaker 1: who is known to the emperor and keeps the state secret,
Speaker 1: could have survived a series of events and that series
Speaker 1: of events was one emperor was deposed, a new emperor
Speaker 1: deposed him and came in, then the original emperor came
Speaker 1: back and re took the throne. So you're imagining, basically,
Speaker 1: each time something like this happens, key, allies are all
Speaker 1: eliminated because you don't want anybody, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: get one over on you. So when the new emperor
Speaker 1: deposed the original one, you imagine they probably would have
Speaker 1: killed all of the original emperor's uh supporting families if
Speaker 1: the lamp Pross families somehow survived this, when the original
Speaker 1: emperor who was deposed returned to power, probably would have
Speaker 1: killed that family for supporting the usurper. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: all of this is still theoretical, you know, as to
Speaker 1: the exact nature of the secret, but and h and
Speaker 1: how it was kept. But but Roland backs it all
Speaker 1: up with the fact that Constantinople was able to keep
Speaker 1: a governmental monopoly on silk production. Um silk production, of course,
Speaker 1: relies on the the use of the silkworm, and it's
Speaker 1: really kind of comparable in many ways because you've got
Speaker 1: to you have to actually have the worms, uh. And
Speaker 1: but then you also have to know how to tend
Speaker 1: to them and uh and rear them and use them.
Speaker 1: So just stealing the worms alone is not the same
Speaker 1: as stealing the technology. Now, the best kind of secrets
Speaker 1: come with magical curses, don't they don't they? Because like
Speaker 1: a great tomb that you shouldn't be robbed, it'll have
Speaker 1: a curse that will lay on you if you disturbed
Speaker 1: the tomb. And a great state secret, for a secret
Speaker 1: weapon should have a curse if you send this secret
Speaker 1: to the enemy. Yeah, I mean, treason should not only
Speaker 1: be um, you know, betrayal of of the state, It
Speaker 1: should be a betrayal of God. Right. We actually have
Speaker 1: a wonderful quote here, and this is from this from
Speaker 1: the writings of Emperor Constantine the seven he would have
Speaker 1: lived nine nine fifty nine, who, addressing his son, warned
Speaker 1: that the Greek fire was a not just a state secret,
Speaker 1: but a holy state secret. This too was revealed and
Speaker 1: taught by God through an angel to the Great and
Speaker 1: Holy Constantine, the first Christian emperor, And concerning this he
Speaker 1: received great charges from the same Angel. As we are
Speaker 1: assured by the faithful witness of our fathers and grandfathers,
Speaker 1: that it should be manufactured among the Christians only, and
Speaker 1: in the city ruled by them, and nowhere else at all,
Speaker 1: nor should it be sent nor taught to any other
Speaker 1: nation whatsoever. And then he goes on to insist quote
Speaker 1: a death most hateful and cruel awaits anyone who breaks
Speaker 1: this secret. Yeah, there's a wonderful, illustrated example of this
Speaker 1: given in the quote where he talks about there was
Speaker 1: a general or some some kind of major figure in
Speaker 1: the Byzantine Empire who sold the secret of how to
Speaker 1: make Greek Greek fire to some enemies of the state,
Speaker 1: and when he tried to walk into a church next,
Speaker 1: he was struck dead at the doors of the church.
Speaker 1: There you go. I mean, it's it seems perfectly in
Speaker 1: keeping with what we've talked about concerning Byzantine culture and
Speaker 1: the rulership that, yeah, you would also just utilize myth
Speaker 1: and religion to help safeguard your secrets as well. Now,
Speaker 1: the author of our opening monologue, Anna Komnena, wrote a
Speaker 1: out this too, right, Yes she did, and she would
Speaker 1: have been in on the secret given her position within
Speaker 1: the royal family. And she also apparently provided an incomplete
Speaker 1: formula of the fire at some point as well. Again,
Speaker 1: the nature of a well kept secret is it's susceptible
Speaker 1: to loss and uh and it was eventually lost, perhaps
Speaker 1: for centuries before it was confirmed lost in twelve oh four.
Speaker 1: And indeed subsequent accounts of Greek fire are a few
Speaker 1: far between and often doubtful. Yeah, after that story of
Speaker 1: it being used to repel the second invasion in the
Speaker 1: early seven hundreds, do we even really see it used
Speaker 1: again much? I mean, the original preparation by the Byzantines Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think there are any strong cases for it now.
Speaker 1: According to that book The Fall of Constantinople by Nicole
Speaker 1: Haldon in Turnbell, there are there's some form of quote
Speaker 1: unquote Greek fire they used was used twice during the
Speaker 1: final siege of Constantinople in fourteen fifty three. This is
Speaker 1: again when they were conquered by the Ottoman Empire. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is where an incoming grain ship to use
Speaker 1: it against attackers, and then another account the fire was
Speaker 1: directed onto the siege engine. But then again, as we've established,
Speaker 1: lots of things started to be called Greek fire after
Speaker 1: the concept came into vogue. So as for how the
Speaker 1: secret was kept for that long, well we we already
Speaker 1: talked about like the hereditary nature of the secret of
Speaker 1: Greek fire. We talked about um the the often murderous
Speaker 1: ends to to various individuals and positions of power in
Speaker 1: the Byzantine Empire. We mentioned the Lampros family and how
Speaker 1: their doubts there now. Rowland also discusses the possibility that
Speaker 1: the Lampros might have merely served for some time in
Speaker 1: an official capacity, something comparable, say to the military official
Speaker 1: who carries the nuclear football for the US president. You know,
Speaker 1: they might just to be like a designated secret keeper,
Speaker 1: guardian of the Greek fire, or something to that effect, right,
Speaker 1: And he says that this is possible, but it's difficult
Speaker 1: all to evaluate further, we just don't know enough about
Speaker 1: Byzantine bureaucracy. We we have no idea who this theoretical
Speaker 1: firemaster would have been, you know, like we we don't
Speaker 1: have any any records of such a title, and if
Speaker 1: they existed, they must have been called something else. There
Speaker 1: are various official positions that have been brought up that
Speaker 1: that could have, you know, arguably been secret keepers of
Speaker 1: the fire, but either the position didn't have close access
Speaker 1: to the emperor, which would be key or the powers
Speaker 1: of the office were deluded over time in a way
Speaker 1: that wouldn't seem to fit an office that was in
Speaker 1: charge of the secret weapon. And we already mentioned how
Speaker 1: allies of the emperor very often got eliminated when the
Speaker 1: next emperor deposed him and came in. Yes, again, we
Speaker 1: do know that the weapon was lost, and it just
Speaker 1: becomes more of a question of when it was lost
Speaker 1: and how it was lost. So we know that the
Speaker 1: Byzantine Navy suffered numerous key defeats in the centuries to
Speaker 1: follow defeats which they failed to use their legendary wonder
Speaker 1: weapon to, you know, to defend themselves. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is another point Roland sort of gets on, is that
Speaker 1: it may have been a problem with the secrecy that
Speaker 1: if you're so concerned about keeping the secret of how
Speaker 1: your weapon works that you are reluctant to deploy it,
Speaker 1: like if you're reluctant to hand it over to satellite allies.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing that if you're running an empire,
Speaker 1: you've got your locals who work directly under you. You're
Speaker 1: the emperor, your your local people work directly under you.
Speaker 1: But then you've got all kinds of people working for
Speaker 1: you who are farther away, and by virtue of being
Speaker 1: farther away, you don't know if you can trust them
Speaker 1: quite as much. And so say you hand over some
Speaker 1: fire breathing you know, Greek fire ships to them, how
Speaker 1: do you know that they're not going to eventually turn
Speaker 1: that technology against you? So maybe you shouldn't arm them
Speaker 1: with your strongest weapons. Maybe you should only keep those
Speaker 1: close to home where you've got a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a firm hand on the control of them, and you
Speaker 1: can keep the secret to yourself. But that just limits
Speaker 1: the way in which you can actually deploy this powerful weapon.
Speaker 1: And another argument here is, okay, you have your your
Speaker 1: special secret weapon. You're it's a but it's a shock weapon,
Speaker 1: it's a surprise weapon. And the thing about that that
Speaker 1: sort of weapon is that it's it's most effective when
Speaker 1: it's first deployed. So you know what happens when you
Speaker 1: try and pull that trick again and again. Your enemies
Speaker 1: begin to learn, they begin to be able to they
Speaker 1: begin to take precautions. Maybe they you know, there are
Speaker 1: some accounts of being able to drape the ship in
Speaker 1: in like wet cloth to help protect it. Now, whether
Speaker 1: that worked or not, who knows. The other idea being
Speaker 1: that this was more or less a close combat scenario weapon.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not gonna be able to launch it
Speaker 1: at great distances, so then your enemies may be realized. Okay,
Speaker 1: well they have Greek fire. We need to figure out
Speaker 1: how to combat them from afar and annihilate them from afar.
Speaker 1: Keep there, keep our distance in a way that they're
Speaker 1: unable to deploy their wonder weapon. Yeah. I mean, it
Speaker 1: might be a horrifying weapon up close, but what if
Speaker 1: it can only shoot about twenty feet? Yeah, because really
Speaker 1: it was made for galley warfare, this close combat among
Speaker 1: these these vessels. Now, it's also possible that as the
Speaker 1: Arab threat declined in the eighth century and no other
Speaker 1: naval power threatened Byzantium until really until the Italian City
Speaker 1: States in the twelfth century, that they simply stopped producing
Speaker 1: specialized fire vessels if they didn't need them. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because it's another key thing is that these are these
Speaker 1: are very specialized weapons. It's if you think to any
Speaker 1: like strategy video game where you're building units for your army,
Speaker 1: like this is not a unit you would just spam
Speaker 1: the heck out off because it's it's ultimately very specialized.
Speaker 1: You could build a thousand of them and you'll lose
Speaker 1: the WARLD like that, because the war is not being
Speaker 1: exclusively fought for this theater of battle. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: that's also I mean talking about the difference between naval
Speaker 1: and land powers. I mean, a lot of the threats
Speaker 1: you might be facing would be from the land, and
Speaker 1: this is now. People did talk about land based uses
Speaker 1: for Greek fire, but it's a lot less common. It's
Speaker 1: primarily in this ship based method. And that's one reason
Speaker 1: that I sort of favor the pressurized cauldron and pump
Speaker 1: method as opposed to saying that they're well, there might
Speaker 1: have been saltpeter in it or some other kind of
Speaker 1: explosive incendiary oxidizer to get that power pushing it out.
Speaker 1: I think that the fact that we primarily see it
Speaker 1: being used in ships is a good indication that they
Speaker 1: had to have a large apparatus of pumps and hydraulics
Speaker 1: in place in order to pressurize it to get it
Speaker 1: to shoot the way they wanted. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: there's there's definitely a strong case or that and uh
Speaker 1: and and of course The cost is another huge factor
Speaker 1: here too. So if this is a specialized shock weapon
Speaker 1: that is also expensive to produce, because even it's been
Speaker 1: argued that the fuel itself was fairly inexpensive. Still, the
Speaker 1: pressurized system we're talking about in the training for those individuals,
Speaker 1: it becomes a very costly weapon. And so does it
Speaker 1: make sense to have a bunch of fireships just on
Speaker 1: hand if you don't need them, you know, and and
Speaker 1: and end up you know, you end up not needing
Speaker 1: them for say a century or more. So, looking at
Speaker 1: this whole discussion, I'm trying to figure out what the
Speaker 1: main takeaway about the interplay between secrecy and technology is. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there are a couple of key points.
Speaker 1: I mean, one is just that a secretive technology is
Speaker 1: more than just uh some you know, a patent on
Speaker 1: a sheet of paper, necessarily more than just a formula. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a lot more complicated than that. And
Speaker 1: to steal technology is is a is a grander endeavor,
Speaker 1: uh than simply you know, taking a few photographs of
Speaker 1: a top secret document. It's funny how in this uh,
Speaker 1: this peperophobic versus peperophilic conception of technology versus science. You
Speaker 1: can almost look at the same thing and call it
Speaker 1: a paperophobic technology or a paperophilic piece of science. I
Speaker 1: think about fire itself in the Greek myth, you know,
Speaker 1: so you have Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. Is
Speaker 1: the fire their science or is it technology? I mean
Speaker 1: as a tool. Usually we think to think of technology
Speaker 1: as a thing in a tool in science is an
Speaker 1: abstract process. But isn't it? Is it an example of
Speaker 1: sharing scientific knowledge or technological knowledge? Um? I mean maybe
Speaker 1: it's that the gods think about fire as a technology,
Speaker 1: a state secret to be protected to keep out of
Speaker 1: the hands of these humans, and Prometheus re envisioned it,
Speaker 1: uh to to take it out of the technological realm
Speaker 1: and say this is science. This is basic knowledge that
Speaker 1: can be applied to all things, and it should be
Speaker 1: shared to all people. Yeah. And I think the other
Speaker 1: aspect here is, even if we strip away the military
Speaker 1: aspects in the in the state security aspects of Greek fire,
Speaker 1: it's such a specialized technology that doesn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of uses outside of this particular uh you know, field
Speaker 1: of battle. Like, it's not it's hard to I cannot
Speaker 1: instantly think of an example of another application for Greek
Speaker 1: fire as an advanced technology is a specialized technology. What's
Speaker 1: a peaceful use for a flamethrower? There's there's not one.
Speaker 1: And even if you go to Burning Man, you're not
Speaker 1: seeing a true flamethrower. You know, you're seeing a pyro
Speaker 1: techniqu you know exchange. You're seeing uh, you know, fire
Speaker 1: a shot into the sky, but it's not like jellied gasoline, um,
Speaker 1: you know, squirted onto people. I mean, maybe it does
Speaker 1: make me think there are some things that are not
Speaker 1: worth sharing because there is no conceivable positive use for them.
Speaker 1: But then again, maybe that's just my lack of imagination.
Speaker 1: Maybe somebody out there, if you're listening right now and
Speaker 1: you can think of a way that a flamethrower could
Speaker 1: be used in a totally peaceful way that harms no
Speaker 1: one and helps people live better lives or uh you know,
Speaker 1: builds a better not a better mousetrap that's a killing machine. Also,
Speaker 1: well builds a better something very sweet and wonder full.
Speaker 1: Let us know. I want to know what that is.
Speaker 1: What do you do with a flamethrower? That's all happy times.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of a some e card from years
Speaker 1: back where it was I think it was from a
Speaker 1: medieval woodcut of or it was made to look like
Speaker 1: one of an individual standing next to some ridiculous looking
Speaker 1: wheeled contraption and he had kind of a sad look
Speaker 1: on his face, and the text just read I invent
Speaker 1: awful things. And that's kind of what we're talking about
Speaker 1: with Greek fire. Yes, it's it's very advanced, it's very sophisticated,
Speaker 1: it's super secret, but it's really an awful invention. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been interesting, Robert, Yeah, Yeah, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Uh so, and and hopefully it's it's
Speaker 1: stirs some interesting thoughts out there, you know, whether you're
Speaker 1: into the history of military technology or not. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: just about the kind of going off on our our
Speaker 1: previous episode about secrets and the keeping of secrets. You know,
Speaker 1: it ties into that and and also just the nature
Speaker 1: of technology. I'm glad I learned that saltpeter can be
Speaker 1: used for ammunition, for sausage, or for sexual impotence. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: fire up that libido, or don't actually attempt to fire
Speaker 1: up your libido with saltpeter, or at least don't blame
Speaker 1: it on us when things go awry. All right, Hey,
Speaker 1: we thank you for listening in. And uh, while you're
Speaker 1: waiting on the next episode of Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind to come out, why don't you head on over
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