Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nola.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission Control decad. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. Tonight's tale is taking us across
Speaker 3: the world to the nation of India, and on the way,
Speaker 3: we want to give a big thanks to our fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist people like Maya M and Sean C who
Speaker 3: took the time to reach out to us about this topic.
Speaker 3: We're exploring a tragic, twisted tale of corruption, crime, chemicals, and,
Speaker 3: according to some, the greatest industrial accident in human history.
Speaker 3: It's a story that was largely unfamiliar to a lot
Speaker 3: of people in the West. Here are the facts. Have
Speaker 3: you guys ever heard of Beaupaul Bhopl.
Speaker 4: Just to hear the name, very little knowledge of its geography,
Speaker 4: as is often the case with me in geographical location. Yeah.
Speaker 2: With regards to this disaster that's really, at least in
Speaker 2: the West. The major reason it's even written about or
Speaker 2: spoken about.
Speaker 4: I was not familiar with this disaster at all, and
Speaker 4: boy was I educated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not going to spend too too much time
Speaker 3: on the facts because the story itself is factual and
Speaker 3: so crazy. So just for a bit of background here,
Speaker 3: bopol Is Boupaul is the capital city of an Indian state,
Speaker 3: Madhya Pradesh. And if you look at this city on
Speaker 3: the map app, you'll see its smack dab in the
Speaker 3: middle of the country in central India, surrounded by natural
Speaker 3: artificial lakes alike. It is the sixteenth largest city in
Speaker 3: the nation of India and it's the one hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty first largest in the world. It's a big, big place.
Speaker 4: Oh man. Remember when we were hanging out with our
Speaker 4: buddy Mangesh in New York over the weekend. He was
Speaker 4: talking about he had a relative who is the head
Speaker 4: of forestry for the entire country of India, and we asked,
Speaker 4: you know what, wow, is that in like urban centers
Speaker 4: or mainly kind of more out in the sticks. And
Speaker 4: it's definitely out more in areas like this where you're
Speaker 4: going to have these very dense, kind of forested regions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and we can identify with that because
Speaker 3: here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, we live in
Speaker 3: a place that is sometimes called the city in a forest.
Speaker 3: Atlanta has an enormous expanse ofage. It's a green city
Speaker 3: in that regard, and that's kind of the story with
Speaker 3: this city. It has its own history dating back millennia.
Speaker 3: According to the legends, it's named after an ancient king,
Speaker 3: Raja Bojah. And if you look at the etymology, the
Speaker 3: paul in the name Beaupaul means something like reservoir or dam,
Speaker 3: so we could translate the name of this city to
Speaker 3: the city of the King Raja Boja or the city
Speaker 3: of lakes. That's awesome, yeah, and it probably was for
Speaker 3: quite some time. I mean, it's a beautiful place, you know.
Speaker 3: It's it's also almost paradoxically, it's home to a lot
Speaker 3: of industry. There are pharmaceutical manufacturers there, the automotive industry
Speaker 3: has a presence, as well as textiles manufacturers of electronic goods.
Speaker 3: But as heartbreaking as it is to admit, Bopaul isn't
Speaker 3: best known for its ancient history or it's beguiling attractions, Nords, greenery, nords,
Speaker 3: healthier industry. Instead, the city has become synonymous with disaster.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Sorry, folks, heads up told
Speaker 3: you we were getting to that early.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I may as well just rip the band aid off.
Speaker 2: Right, So this disaster begins on December third, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: As we were recording this in December this year, it
Speaker 2: will have been what, guys, forty years since this disaster.
Speaker 2: Let's describe the disaster.
Speaker 4: What happened so shortly after midnight on December third, nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty four in the neighborhood of forty tons of dangerous
Speaker 4: methyl iso cyanate or MIC, a very lethal gas, escaped
Speaker 4: from an insecticide plant that was owned and operated by
Speaker 4: an Indian subsidiary of the American firm Union in Carbide Corporation.
Speaker 4: This division was done as Union Carbide India Limited, which
Speaker 4: was huge at this time, and the company itself was actually
Speaker 4: founded back in nineteen seventy one of those legacy kind
Speaker 4: of chemical interests, right, and the Indian subsidiary was the
Speaker 4: very first petrochemical producer in the entirety of India, as
Speaker 4: you know, as you mentioned Ben since that point, a
Speaker 4: lot more have joined the party. They made all kinds
Speaker 4: of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they chemically stuff, mainly right, chemical products, plastic goods,
Speaker 3: photographic plates, films, industrial electrodes, laminated glass, machine tools, all
Speaker 3: kinds of things. And they also, unfortunately had a long
Speaker 3: standing shoddy track record when it came to safety.
Speaker 2: Shoddy, I think is understating it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean calling it a track record is
Speaker 3: probably understating it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty four alone, just
Speaker 3: in those four years leading up to the disaster, more
Speaker 3: than sixty seven different leakages of this substance methyl isocyanate
Speaker 3: or MC occurred, and management made sure to downplay these
Speaker 3: reports when they were asked by the public or the press,
Speaker 3: or indeed the Indian government. They said, look, you know,
Speaker 3: accidents happened. None of these events are a real threat
Speaker 3: to health. And even when something does go sideways, it
Speaker 3: never exceeds the legal standards for toxic emissions in the air.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and let's talk about these chemicals where they
Speaker 2: were stored. At this location, they had these huge storage tanks.
Speaker 2: There were three stories high, guys, three stories worth of
Speaker 2: this deadly toxic chemical that they, you know, would would
Speaker 2: take out just little bits at a time for the
Speaker 2: manufacturing process to make the products they were making. But
Speaker 2: they just kept that stuff just sitting there. It's so volatile.
Speaker 2: If it interacts with water at all, you will get
Speaker 2: explosive literally explosive chemical reaction results.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should also mention that they have been doing
Speaker 3: this since nineteen sixty nine, so they were around for decades.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and well, I'm sure we'll get into it. But
Speaker 2: it wasn't just this one chemical. They had all kinds
Speaker 2: of chemicals that were just stored on site, a lot
Speaker 2: of times improperly. Other times they had them in these
Speaker 2: evaporation ponds where they're just sitting there and leeching into
Speaker 2: the water supplies that's around the area. It's so weird
Speaker 2: because it is the company, right, Union Carbide, but it's
Speaker 2: also this specific site because they run a bunch of
Speaker 2: different Union Carbide factories and places like this, but this
Speaker 2: one in particular, it just seems that the safety was superlax.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Union Carbide India Limited was at the time
Speaker 3: of this operation. The actual company, the US based Union
Speaker 3: Carbide owned a little bit more like a smidge more
Speaker 3: than fifty percent of United Carbide India and the other
Speaker 3: forty nine point something percent. Forty nine point one percent
Speaker 3: is owned by Indian investors, some of whom are individuals,
Speaker 3: some of whom are factions of the government. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of There are a lot of stakeholders, we
Speaker 3: should say, and they're printing money making these products. So
Speaker 3: it is unfortunately no surprise that workers and activists who
Speaker 3: would repeatedly raise concern about these problems were roundly ignored.
Speaker 3: Perhaps in some cases they found themselves to be victims
Speaker 3: of retaliation because miic is not something you sell to
Speaker 3: the public. The public is never supposed to touch this. It's
Speaker 3: what's called an intermediary chemical in pesticide production. And longtime listeners,
Speaker 3: as you all know, pesticide is its own bag of
Speaker 3: badgers as far as health effects go. But even back
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties, even before the nineteen eighties, everybody
Speaker 3: who was read up on mic knew it was nasty,
Speaker 3: nasty stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, just let's let's say one more time. Methyl
Speaker 2: isocyanate isociety, the cionate part.
Speaker 4: It should be a tip. It's probably not great. I
Speaker 4: can only assume it's related to cyanide or maybe that's
Speaker 4: just me and my etymological year.
Speaker 2: I don't think you're wrong.
Speaker 3: No, okay, Well, methyl is also something that we don't
Speaker 3: love to see.
Speaker 4: Put together double not good, double one plus whatever the
Speaker 4: one is from the thing from nineteen eighty four. Yeah
Speaker 4: plus un good?
Speaker 3: Yes, there it is. So this leak results in a
Speaker 3: gas that drifts out of the plant and envelops densely
Speaker 3: populated neighborhoods in the.
Speaker 4: Area and poisoned fog.
Speaker 3: Yes, just so, and it kills Like World War One
Speaker 3: mustard gas warfare. This stuff kills thousands of people immediately,
Speaker 3: and then it creates a panic because people who don't
Speaker 3: immediately die, tens of thousands of other people are attempting
Speaker 3: to flee the city en mass.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about what happened. Something pretty standard there was,
Speaker 2: at least according to the official story. There was a
Speaker 2: worker who was flushing water through one of the systems,
Speaker 2: and it was a pipe, a long pipe series that
Speaker 2: was I guess rusted and corroding a bit, and somehow
Speaker 2: the water that he was flushing through that system entered
Speaker 2: into one of these storage tanks. Again, according to the story,
Speaker 2: there were pieces of the equipment that malfunctioned that allowed
Speaker 2: that water to shoot off into the storage tank. But
Speaker 2: immediately upon that water hitting it, it's set off that
Speaker 2: chain chemical reaction and the it exploded. One of those
Speaker 2: storage tanks exploded, and that's where all of those chemicals
Speaker 2: just started leaking out and then hugging the ground like
Speaker 2: some kind of I'd like a horror move, like a
Speaker 2: zombie bribe. You'll see where there's a mist on the
Speaker 2: ground or something that's you know, in this case, it's
Speaker 2: above a human head, but it's just floating.
Speaker 3: Outwards, like the fog or the mist. Other horror stories
Speaker 3: that would be comparable. This is real life. The final
Speaker 3: death toll is estimated to be somewhere between fifteen thousand
Speaker 3: to twenty thousand people. But there's something tricky about that
Speaker 3: because that quote unquote final death toll only counts the
Speaker 3: people who died immediately in the first few days. The
Speaker 3: actual number, the actual toll in blood is much higher.
Speaker 3: And also, oh, we didn't even mention this. As this
Speaker 3: gas is drifting over these populated neighborhoods at the same time,
Speaker 3: communication lines with the larger nation of India have have
Speaker 3: gone caput. They shut down, so when the accident occurs,
Speaker 3: but Paul itself is cut off from civilization.
Speaker 4: Does this feel a little Chernobyl asked to you guys,
Speaker 4: one hundred percent. Yeah, just in terms of the community,
Speaker 4: I mean all of it, but like the communication part
Speaker 4: was key. That was I guess more perpetrated by the
Speaker 4: Soviet government at the time in terms of siloing information
Speaker 4: and not telling the rest of the world. But I'm
Speaker 4: sensing a theme.
Speaker 3: And they show up later in tonight's show The Soviets,
Speaker 3: so if you're wondering how they play a role, you'll
Speaker 3: seum don't worry. Spoiler also want to give a special
Speaker 3: shout out since you mentioned Chernobyl. There is an excellent
Speaker 3: four part series on Netflix now called The Railwaymen, The
Speaker 3: Untold Story of Bopaul in nineteen eighty four, and do
Speaker 3: check that out especially, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 3: say enjoyed, but if you found chernobyl the series fascinating,
Speaker 3: then you'll see a lot of thematic unfortunate similarities in
Speaker 3: The Railwaymen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the differences. Well, you tell me, guys,
Speaker 2: I don't know that much about Chernobyl. But in this case,
Speaker 2: this facility, this factory was supposed to have at least
Speaker 2: six alarm systems and alert systems that would be triggered
Speaker 2: if any of their chemicals were released, and at least
Speaker 2: to everything I've seen, that none of those systems functioned.
Speaker 3: Also, I would note thattt that the factory was not
Speaker 3: supposed to be located where it was in the first place.
Speaker 3: It's because what we say it deployed in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: being as close to densely populated areas as it was,
Speaker 3: was a violation of a later thing called the Beaupual
Speaker 3: develop Plan from seventy five.
Speaker 2: Well, just because of how fast the gas could travel,
Speaker 2: right if if it caught wind and just started expelling
Speaker 2: from the facility, And well but even then, if there
Speaker 2: was any kind of system involved, they even just set
Speaker 2: off a siren right the way like you might hear
Speaker 2: a tornado siren in your.
Speaker 4: Town or something good old lasim just.
Speaker 2: To alert that, oh, something's wrong, right, But in this case,
Speaker 2: nobody had any idea anything was wrong.
Speaker 3: No, especially given the late hour of the incident. Something
Speaker 3: like half a million survivors suffered respiratory problems, continue to
Speaker 3: suffer these today, ie irritation, straight up blindness, other maladies,
Speaker 3: especially cancer, and it's all from exposure to this toxic gas. Eventually, survivors,
Speaker 3: many of them, received monetary compensation, but it's peanuts in
Speaker 3: comparison to what's happened to them. It's something like the
Speaker 3: equivalent of three high hundred and ten dollars US per person.
Speaker 3: And this, you know, we also know that forty thousand
Speaker 3: individuals of the five hundred thousand believed to be exposed
Speaker 3: are permanently disabled or maimed as a result of this.
Speaker 3: It is enormously difficult to articulate the magnitude of this calamity,
Speaker 3: and that's why it remains, even now in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: remains considered the worst industrial accident in all of human history.
Speaker 3: And you know, we're throwing numbers out, we're talking a
Speaker 3: little bit about chemistry, we're talking about zoning. Weirdly enough,
Speaker 3: maybe the best way to convey the impact of this
Speaker 3: hellish situation is to look directly at the stories of survivors.
Speaker 3: And with this I suggest we go to an excellent
Speaker 3: MPR piece from November of last year.
Speaker 4: Absolutely a journalist retoo Shotterjy tells the story of Rihanna
Speaker 4: b who was just sixteen years old when this catastrophe
Speaker 4: took place, and she and her family lived in a
Speaker 4: neighborhood near the plant. She her three brothers, her father,
Speaker 4: and her mother, who was eight months pregnant at the time,
Speaker 4: all were living there together, and like most of the
Speaker 4: folks in the neighborhood, her family all were asleep at
Speaker 4: the time of the incident, and the neighbors came and
Speaker 4: woke the family up. When Bee's parents opened the door,
Speaker 4: they were understandably very startled and shaken by what they saw.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, they walk out, and all of their neighbors
Speaker 3: are running around outside or looking around in confusion because
Speaker 3: the majority of people had just woken up. Suddenly they're coughing, cough, cough.
Speaker 3: They're rubbing their eyes, and their eyes and their lungs
Speaker 3: are burning with whatever this substance is in the air.
Speaker 3: And these people know there is a factory, but they
Speaker 3: don't know what I see is No one knew what
Speaker 3: was happening, none of the civilians unless they were directly
Speaker 3: working at the plant, and so B notes it was
Speaker 3: quote as if someone was burning chili's meaning chili pepper.
Speaker 3: If you've ever had chili pepper pepper spray, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Not healing as it inhaling. It is one of the
Speaker 2: worst things. Sometimes when I'm just cleaning off the dishes
Speaker 2: and I've got hot water hitting you know, the ghost
Speaker 2: peppers that i was just eating, I'm like, when it
Speaker 2: gets aerosolized, it's not a fun time. And in this
Speaker 2: case we're talking about it's the miic, right, but it's
Speaker 2: also hydrogen cyanide and monomethylamine, which are two other crazy
Speaker 2: dangerous chemicals that are making the oil burning. The oil
Speaker 2: burning lamps that are outside burn brown because of the
Speaker 2: substances that are getting into the flame.
Speaker 3: It looks like an evil spell. And also I know
Speaker 3: there were a lot of people nodding, probably in unfortunate sympathy,
Speaker 3: with the idea of burning ChIL.
Speaker 2: In the air.
Speaker 3: I want to give a shout out to my cousin,
Speaker 3: one of my cousins who doesn't listen to the show, thankfully,
Speaker 3: because he showed me the dangers of chili's When he
Speaker 3: was cutting some and I think being lazy, he scratched
Speaker 3: himself and he touched his eyes and while.
Speaker 4: Recover scratched himself in a middle gentleman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got him.
Speaker 4: I got him bad.
Speaker 3: And so back to the wee hours of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 3: December third, Bee's family, Rihanna Bee's family is trying to
Speaker 3: flee this gas, but the problem is everyone else is
Speaker 3: attempting to flee as well, and her mother, again is
Speaker 3: eight months pregnant. So with all the crowds, the chaos,
Speaker 3: the pandemonium, and her mother's vulnerable condition, the family elects
Speaker 3: to sit on the side of a nearby road and
Speaker 3: try to wake things out until the morning. And you've
Speaker 3: seen this pretty often if you've ever or if you've
Speaker 3: ever been in an area where a natural disaster is occurring,
Speaker 3: you see something similar. Like when people try to exit
Speaker 3: the path of a hurricane on the interstate. The inner
Speaker 3: states can be choked and they can become unusable. So
Speaker 3: this is what we're seeing happen here as a pedestrian
Speaker 3: version of that. And sadly, look, this is incredibly disturbing, folks,
Speaker 3: But sadly, in the case of Be's family alone, not
Speaker 3: everybody made it. By the end of the day, Both
Speaker 3: of her parents and one of her brothers, a younger
Speaker 3: when three years old, they had all died. They joined
Speaker 3: the thousands of victims who fell to the gas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just imagine there are thousands of people around
Speaker 2: you in that moment, if you are going through this,
Speaker 2: they are choking to death, they're vomiting themselves to death.
Speaker 2: They are it is I think you described it as
Speaker 2: hell That is probably what it looked and felt like
Speaker 2: in that moment.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry to keep being that guy that's like in
Speaker 4: this movie or tvach or whatever, but there. I recently
Speaker 4: saw the new spin off of The Walking Dead and
Speaker 4: there's a really I'd never seen it depicted. Like there's
Speaker 4: a really intense scene where there's a chemical attack, like
Speaker 4: a mustard gas type attack, and it was really done
Speaker 4: with such intensity and ferocity and people are like, you know,
Speaker 4: throwing up white stuff and their eyes are running, and
Speaker 4: you know a lot of people just die, but some
Speaker 4: people escape, but they their lungs are damaged for like
Speaker 4: months and they have to recover. And it was just
Speaker 4: I mean, I know it's a TV show, but I'd
Speaker 4: never really seen this depicted in that way before, and
Speaker 4: I found it really, you know, hard to watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I do think hellish is the appropriate word
Speaker 3: because gas has been deployed in warfare, and this is
Speaker 3: very similar to that. However, often in the case of
Speaker 3: biological warfare or chemical warfare, excuse me, these soldiers going
Speaker 3: into those situations will ideally be armed with some kind
Speaker 3: of protective gear. You know, we'll check out our episode
Speaker 3: on PB pills to see how that preventative measure can
Speaker 3: go wrong. But the most disturbing thing, and perhaps not
Speaker 3: appropriate for all of us in the audience this evening,
Speaker 3: is this just to drive the impact home. Rahana B
Speaker 3: vividly recalls in her interview with MPR how some of
Speaker 3: her relatives witnessed the eight month old fetus in her
Speaker 3: mother's womb, moving and struggling to survive until the next morning,
Speaker 3: long after the mother had passed. And this is one yeah,
Speaker 3: this is one story of thousands and thousands of people.
Speaker 3: And now Rona B has survived, you know, she started
Speaker 3: a family of her own, but she is haunted by
Speaker 3: the lifelong consequences the shadow of this mic stuff. She
Speaker 3: has high blood pressure and diabetes. In particular, her husband
Speaker 3: that she married a year after the disaster also has
Speaker 3: chronic health conditions. And these conditions are so serious that
Speaker 3: they prevented the couple from working, so they depend on
Speaker 3: their two sons for income. Their lives have been irreparably altered.
Speaker 3: And the worst part is this is so far from unique.
Speaker 3: Multiple studies over intervening decades have proven that survivors of
Speaker 3: this incident have a range of chronic health issues, real
Speaker 3: serious stuff, not like oh my knee aches a little
Speaker 3: when the weather's changing. We're talking about enormously higher rates
Speaker 3: of cancer. This is a real conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Well, we're also talking about like brain damage and birth
Speaker 2: defect issues, breast milk that has been contaminated. I saw
Speaker 2: in the a Guardian article that was mostly in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, written by Judah Passau and tim edwards where
Speaker 2: there was a person quoted in there who survived it
Speaker 2: saying the lucky ones were taken that day. We are
Speaker 2: unlucky for surviving. And that's just talking about to everyone
Speaker 2: that they lost individually, you know, in that moment and
Speaker 2: the following days, and all the people who have been
Speaker 2: injured by you know, as the long term effects of
Speaker 2: this thing, and just having to suffer through all of that.
Speaker 2: It's just horrifying, right right. So again, these.
Speaker 3: Claims are backed up by science, as always say, multiple
Speaker 3: studies have proven this, and with all this hard evidence
Speaker 3: about the consequences, it should come as no surprise that India,
Speaker 3: the survivors of the incident, and indeed the world entire
Speaker 3: we're asking themselves, and still are asking themselves what happened.
Speaker 3: We're going to take a break for a word from
Speaker 3: our sponsors, and then we're going to get into that question.
Speaker 3: And spoilers ahead, folks. It gets into some deep water
Speaker 3: pretty quickly. We have returned what happened? This is the
Speaker 3: biggest question I've mentioned earlier. You could watch a fictionalized,
Speaker 3: in depth exploration of the incident in the Netflix series
Speaker 3: The Railwaymen. It's similar to the earlier series on Chernobyl.
Speaker 3: I see we start with the immediate blowback, and then
Speaker 3: we get to the theories we've already kind of established.
Speaker 3: There were long standing issues at the chemical factory. Issues
Speaker 3: the workers had flagged time and time again, but we
Speaker 3: didn't say some of them. But let's get a little
Speaker 3: more specific. The workers realized that gas pressure detectors, pipes
Speaker 3: different air scrut like air fence scrubbers, and even their
Speaker 3: own training wasn't adequate. If something went wrong, and things
Speaker 3: were malfunctioning on a regular basis, including the safety alerts.
Speaker 2: And basic valves right that open and close pie pipes
Speaker 2: were malfunctioning on a regular basis, which is something you think, okay,
Speaker 2: that's wear and tear right and a factory, your valves,
Speaker 2: your pipes are going to need to get replaced over time.
Speaker 2: But if your primary things that close off dangerous chemicals
Speaker 2: from being either released or combined with other dangerous chemicals
Speaker 2: aren't working, you've got a serious problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in retrospect, indeed, this was a when, not an
Speaker 3: if situation. It was an accident waiting to happen, and
Speaker 3: then in the immediate aftermath, Union Carbide, through its Indian subsidiary,
Speaker 3: tries to disassociate itself from any legal responsibility. It leads
Speaker 3: to differing perspectives of the company, the state of India,
Speaker 3: and the public. It's a divide that continues today. Union
Speaker 3: Carbide floated a theory that we'll get to at a moment.
Speaker 3: But if we look at the scholarship, there's a great
Speaker 3: in depth report you can read for free online today
Speaker 3: called The Beau Paul Saga. The author Ingrid Eckerman from
Speaker 3: Scandinavia delves into four the four mean theories of what
Speaker 3: caused the disaster, and some of them are more plausible
Speaker 3: than others. There are a couple are just very difficult
Speaker 3: to prove, to be honest with you, that's right. And
Speaker 3: first we have what's known as the water washing theory,
Speaker 3: which came from the workers. The argument being made that
Speaker 3: management of the plant during this time in December were
Speaker 3: not familiar with established maintenance protocols and they didn't know
Speaker 3: that leaks could occur even after a production was halted.
Speaker 3: And I guess this kind of fits in Ben, who
Speaker 3: you were talking.
Speaker 4: About, how this had happened before or there were numerous
Speaker 4: instances of this type of leakage, so clearly, I don't
Speaker 4: know how many times the personnel shifted. I would imagine
Speaker 4: maybe there might have been a lot to turnover in
Speaker 4: a situation like this, But that is the theory that
Speaker 4: they the new bosses, didn't know what to do and
Speaker 4: just weren't educated, which I don't know. It seems to
Speaker 4: track to me, yeah.
Speaker 3: Quite possibly, right, Like if they weren't read up on
Speaker 3: the maintenance and the safety protocols, then they may have
Speaker 3: made dangerous assumptions like saying, Hey, a leak can't happen
Speaker 3: because we've stopped the machine, We've halted production, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 4: But it's being held in a thing, in a pressurized tank.
Speaker 4: I mean leaks. Of course, it could happen your house
Speaker 4: leaks even if you're not running the shower, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, it comes from any number of places. That's absurd, right.
Speaker 3: And yeah, even like think of a garden hose in
Speaker 3: a backyard. Even if you turn off the faucet, there's
Speaker 3: still water in the hose, that's right. So Eckerman goes
Speaker 3: in depth about some of the issues, writing that a
Speaker 3: supervisor from the day shift left instructions on flushing the
Speaker 3: pipes leading from those enormous three story tanks to the
Speaker 3: vent gas scrubber, so flush this out with water. But
Speaker 3: he forgot to mention a specific thing, something called slip
Speaker 3: binds that have to be placed on each end of
Speaker 3: the pipes. And so when the worker comes in to
Speaker 3: try to try to follow through with these tasks, they
Speaker 3: use these things called stopcocks, and they weren't sure whether
Speaker 3: they had been able to tighten everything to the level
Speaker 3: it needed to be. And that was due to corrosion
Speaker 3: and rust. Because we talked about wear and tear. What's
Speaker 3: happening is these things haven't been replaced in quite some time,
Speaker 3: so the water doesn't come out the way the worker
Speaker 3: is expecting to, and he finds that those filters are
Speaker 3: blocked with metal debris. He cuts off the water. The
Speaker 3: supervisor says, clean the filters, and then when he turns
Speaker 3: the water back on, it's only coming out of three
Speaker 3: of the four drains, and so the supervisor tells him
Speaker 3: to just keep the water running and the night shift
Speaker 3: will turn it off.
Speaker 2: And the idea is we're flushing, we're cleaning out this stuff,
Speaker 2: and potentially we're breaking through whatever blockage there is in
Speaker 2: that fourth one that's not functioning exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can keep it going, we can wear down
Speaker 3: the blockage, and then things will continue to function per normal,
Speaker 3: meaning with repeated malfunctions that are roundly ignored.
Speaker 2: It's a bit weird because it in this version. I
Speaker 2: guess it is the supervisor, right, It's like, oh man,
Speaker 2: the supervisor didn't know what the supervisor was supposed to
Speaker 2: do and what the process is. Where it's it's his fault.
Speaker 2: There is a worker who does ultimately clean the filters
Speaker 2: and turn on the water. The water that then, if
Speaker 2: this theory is correct, then goes in and causes the explosion.
Speaker 2: But again, it's like placing blame. It's like you'd be
Speaker 2: placing blame on It gets a little weird because ultimately
Speaker 2: it feels like Union Carbide is respon, right, the company
Speaker 2: that owns the factory. So no matter who at the
Speaker 2: factory caused an accident or disaster or tragedy like this,
Speaker 2: it's it's company's fault. But we'll get into that. But
Speaker 2: let's see, because there's another theory with the water too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's correct. There's the direct entry theory. This is the
Speaker 3: idea that the runaway chain reaction in the tank that
Speaker 3: resulted in the gas leak came about because of the
Speaker 3: introduction of a substantial amount of water. This is another
Speaker 3: theory or allegation placing the blame squarely on the workers.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: In other words, what they're saying is someone accidentally or
Speaker 3: deliberately pumped water into the tank, So it's an argument
Speaker 3: for either incompetence or sabotage. The workers and their representatives,
Speaker 3: of course, object to this because from their perspective, they're
Speaker 3: the people who have for more than a decade been saying, hey,
Speaker 3: if something goes wrong, we are in trouble because we're
Speaker 3: not doing the right maintenance, please help us bosses. And
Speaker 3: the bosses said, no, well, those.
Speaker 4: Are the folks usually hear that kind of stuff with
Speaker 4: when there's in common sense at upper levels the people
Speaker 4: who are in the trenches and really actually operate the
Speaker 4: machinery and are working the line. You know, it's not
Speaker 4: the suits up in the offices because they don't touch
Speaker 4: the stuff. It's all in theory for them.
Speaker 2: The person who pulled the lever, rather than the group
Speaker 2: of people that went down the chain that told that
Speaker 2: person to pull the lever.
Speaker 3: Right, or the people who designed the lever that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. There you go. And just for
Speaker 2: our purposes here, NPR and the Guardian and several other
Speaker 2: groups we looked at look at that first one, the
Speaker 2: water washing theory as like probably the closest to what
Speaker 2: happened as of right now. Right, that's what people point to,
Speaker 2: at least in the mainstream media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again we're going kind of in order of
Speaker 3: plausibility and some thing like the something like that initial theory,
Speaker 3: the water washing does seem to be the most accurate
Speaker 3: based on what we know. With the next few theories
Speaker 3: we verge into the realm of conspiracy, and one of
Speaker 3: the juiciest ones is the idea that this may have
Speaker 3: been to a degree purposeful. And again this is just
Speaker 3: a theory, but the idea is someone at UC said,
Speaker 3: we need a reason to close this factory.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they were bleeding money at this facility, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that's just a fact.
Speaker 3: That part is true, and you can see on the
Speaker 3: financials that they were indeed running at a loss.
Speaker 4: For some time.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know this. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: guys knew this. But at the time, if you're like
Speaker 3: a if you're a foreign owned company, and again the
Speaker 3: American based Union Carbide, they are the majority shareholder of
Speaker 3: the Indians subsidiary. If you are a company that wants
Speaker 3: to shut down your factory in India at this time
Speaker 3: in the eighties, you have to get permission from the
Speaker 3: government of India to do it. You can't just pull
Speaker 3: out of the country. So if they wanted to shut
Speaker 3: this thing down, if they are hemorrhaging money, then their
Speaker 3: next question becomes how do we make a good case
Speaker 3: to the Government of India in this argument. In this theory,
Speaker 3: management wanted like a p Andac style pearl harbor. They wanted,
Speaker 3: at least in their perspective, they wanted a minor accident,
Speaker 3: something that would give the government enough of a off
Speaker 3: putting vibe or sour taste that they would allow Union
Speaker 3: Carbid to close the plant. And so the idea here
Speaker 3: is that they were going to stage just a little leak.
Speaker 3: They were going to let something kind of dangerous slide through.
Speaker 3: There was precedent, this had happened again more than sixty
Speaker 3: times over the past four years. But the people who
Speaker 3: hatched this conspiracy in this theory, they never meant the
Speaker 3: mic leak to reach this level of danger. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a very disturbing allegation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well okay, but let's look at let's look at
Speaker 2: what Union Carbid did after this disaster. Did they go
Speaker 2: in and clean up the facility and try and get
Speaker 2: it to work again, or try and repair anything. No,
Speaker 2: Union Carbide literally let that factory rocked, didn't touch it,
Speaker 2: didn't go in and clean up anything after themselves. Right,
Speaker 2: they didn't. That's one of the major issues in this
Speaker 2: story is that union CARBI just said, Oh, well, I
Speaker 2: guess that one's broken, so we don't need that anymore.
Speaker 2: We're not going to use it anymore, and we don't
Speaker 2: need to think about it, which is mind blowing to me.
Speaker 2: First of all, it feels like a huge asset. But
Speaker 2: I guess the cleanup costs. Maybe they'd did some kind
Speaker 2: of back room math and they realized that the cleanup
Speaker 2: costs would far exceed any potential profits from the facility,
Speaker 2: which also.
Speaker 3: Makes us wonder how fully they did or did not
Speaker 3: grasp the magnitude of contamination. You know what I mean,
Speaker 3: because even in their official statements there's a lot of
Speaker 3: hedging in the.
Speaker 2: Beginning until they did their secret testing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the bill comes due. We're going to pause
Speaker 3: for one more break for a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 3: and then will introduce the Soviet element.
Speaker 4: True story. That's a weird.
Speaker 3: Sentence to say, but it is a true story. We've
Speaker 3: returned last. No, this is what we're talking about. Right,
Speaker 3: The very last of the main theory slash conspiracies blames
Speaker 3: the leak on not accidents, not large scale insurance fraud,
Speaker 3: but on actual warfare.
Speaker 4: Right, and we know that when it comes to war,
Speaker 4: you're going to kind of take whatever leg up you
Speaker 4: can get. There are opportunists everywhere, especially when it comes
Speaker 4: to getting an advantage, you know, over an opponent on
Speaker 4: the battlefield. So it should comes no surprise at the
Speaker 4: pro Soviet elements that were active at the time in
Speaker 4: India immediately declared, you know, and this is all in
Speaker 4: the war of public opinion as well, declared the strategy
Speaker 4: to be quote a deliberate chemical warfare experiment on the
Speaker 4: part of the United States, so they're basically waging info war. Here,
Speaker 4: Ekerman provides some really excellent context around this writing. A
Speaker 4: research and development unit was set up in Bopaul in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy six. The center, the biggest in Asia, had
Speaker 4: five insect rearing laboratories and a two hector experimental farm
Speaker 4: for testing chemical agents. Here new molecules were synthesized and
Speaker 4: tested it along quote maybe someone.
Speaker 3: Else sposed to go on, Yeah, what we can we
Speaker 3: can summarize here It looks like the Indian subsidiary of
Speaker 3: Union Carbide was conducting field studies of their of these
Speaker 3: chemical agents they're creating. And when they were doing these
Speaker 3: field studies, there were being a little off book about it,
Speaker 3: like there wasn't the proper oversight. You could call it
Speaker 3: plausible deniability or just lack of a good chain of
Speaker 3: command for reporting. But apparently upper management wasn't fully aware
Speaker 3: of what they were doing. And the It's strange because
Speaker 3: you know, it makes me think of conversations in the
Speaker 3: past about the gray area between nuclear enrichment for peaceful
Speaker 3: purposes versus nuclear enrichment for weapons of war. You know,
Speaker 3: a chemical factory, civilian chemical factory can very easily cross
Speaker 3: a porous border from civilian research to military research and applications.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gain of function research to prevent the next
Speaker 2: infectious disease from becoming a pandemic when it gets out
Speaker 2: into the world, or using that same research to develop
Speaker 2: an infectious disease that is way way more dangerous. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And everybody you talked to, no matter what, everybody
Speaker 3: you talked to will say, well, our guys are working
Speaker 3: on preventing it.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Department of Defense.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, yeah, yeah, it's in the name.
Speaker 3: In the name. Did you not reat the whole name anyway?
Speaker 3: The the idea here, which is really disturbing is that
Speaker 3: the Indian subsidiary was running a chemical warfare center or
Speaker 3: running chemical warfare experiments outs out of their factory there
Speaker 3: and that. So again there's Soviet propaganda, but this was
Speaker 3: taken as fact by a lot of people in India
Speaker 3: at the time, the belief that the MIC might have
Speaker 3: been purposely deployed similar to other earlier tests in the
Speaker 3: United States and thinking about stuff like Operation Large Area Coverage,
Speaker 3: you know, wherein the US wanted to measure dispersal dispersal
Speaker 3: patterns of aerosol agents. And so what they did is
Speaker 3: they put together something they thought was a pretty innocuous
Speaker 3: substance that they could trace, and they released it over
Speaker 3: vast swathes of the US, targeting poor areas in particular.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, it wasn't completely innocuous for humans though, right
Speaker 2: it was not.
Speaker 3: No, they said it was, but they were thought they
Speaker 3: weren't spraying this over DuPont Circle, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's the thing though, Like this is tricky because if
Speaker 3: you're the average person you're hearing about this, you're asking
Speaker 3: yourself how on Earth? Could this have happened? And then
Speaker 3: someone tells you it might have been a conspiracy, a
Speaker 3: secret operation, and they're able to point to earlier, like earlier,
Speaker 3: concurrent things the US has done on its own soil.
Speaker 3: Then it starts to look more and more plausible. And
Speaker 3: the Soviets would have been aware of those operations, by
Speaker 3: the way, well before the American public was aware.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes you think, it does. I don't like
Speaker 2: the way it makes me think, but it certainly does.
Speaker 4: We do know.
Speaker 3: Also, speaking of disturbing facts, the Pentagon sent a medical
Speaker 3: team after the disaster to collect intelligence on the effects
Speaker 3: of the leaked gas.
Speaker 2: So that's like, get the research. There's a disaster, at
Speaker 2: least have an understanding. Ye at least that is the
Speaker 2: way you'd sell it. From a pr perspective. The Pentagon's
Speaker 2: just going this disaster occurred, We're going to get our
Speaker 2: best understanding what occurred to again maybe prevent an attack.
Speaker 3: In the preventure. And you know, with that, again, it's
Speaker 3: the perspective that's tricky because if you already suspect that
Speaker 3: the US, through a corporate proxy, may engage in these
Speaker 3: kind of heinous acts, then you'll see a lot of
Speaker 3: adjacent facts that tie into that narrative. But if you think, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, these substances are just dangerous, of course you
Speaker 3: want to learn as much as you can about them,
Speaker 3: then that fact also makes sense. One thing's for certain, though,
Speaker 3: regardless of where you fall on the cause, this irreparably
Speaker 3: ruined and ended thousands of innocent lives. These are average
Speaker 3: people living in the neighborhood. They're not super wealthy. They're
Speaker 3: not heads of state, they're not in charge of Union
Speaker 3: Carbide India Limited. And the survivors are not conspiracy theorists,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. They're not like Bopaul Truthers
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: No, And perhaps the most damning thing about it, in
Speaker 3: a very real way, this disaster has never ended. People
Speaker 3: are still researching it today. There was a study we
Speaker 3: found from last year that greatly expands upon the number
Speaker 3: of people affected and the ways of which they were affected.
Speaker 3: And Matt, I think this speaks to something we foreshadowed
Speaker 3: a little bit earlier in the show This Evening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen eighty four December, this occurs. The company that
Speaker 2: owns the factory, the property on which this disaster occurred,
Speaker 2: they just shut down the factory and walked away.
Speaker 4: They have been around the dusty trail.
Speaker 2: They have been pursued like legally by the country of
Speaker 2: India to come back there and you know, clean up
Speaker 2: the mess that they made. But again they kind of
Speaker 2: argue that they didn't make the mess, it was an
Speaker 2: accident or whatever. They shirk responsibility. But India has been
Speaker 2: trying to get them back to the country and hold
Speaker 2: them accountable since nineteen eighty four and it still hasn't happened.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, maybe it's just a difference between the relation.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know. We certainly have industries here
Speaker 4: that shirk their responsibilities. But at least when the government
Speaker 4: makes a nuclear waste dump site, they at least create
Speaker 4: a program to clean it up and designate them as
Speaker 4: like super fund sites and things like that.
Speaker 3: Right with some public the p not all the time.
Speaker 3: So I want to get to this twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: study we just mentioned. So this study again greatly expands
Speaker 3: the amount of people affected and it expands our understanding
Speaker 3: of how they were affected. What they found is that
Speaker 3: the medical conditions disabilities that are wrought upon people who
Speaker 3: are exposed to the gas didn't stop with the people
Speaker 3: exposed that night, also the generation of babies, like the
Speaker 3: fetuses that were still in the wombs when this accident happened,
Speaker 3: they're affected too. And if you look at the demographics
Speaker 3: of this city in particular, you'll find that men born
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty five y're after or like the following
Speaker 3: months after this disaster, they have a much higher risk
Speaker 3: of cancer, they have lower education accomplishment, and they have
Speaker 3: much higher rates of disabilities compared with those born before
Speaker 3: or after nineteen eighty five, So that one year is
Speaker 3: a start outlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and that's the beginning, right, that's from that
Speaker 2: initial release, and they're already within i don't know what
Speaker 2: you call it, within the impact zone of all the
Speaker 2: other chemicals that have been leaking out of that factory
Speaker 2: for years, and now like they're getting hit by the
Speaker 2: effects of water and soil contamination of all the chemicals
Speaker 2: that were left there just to sit and rot and
Speaker 2: begin to leach again out of those ponds that were
Speaker 2: man made and created to what do they call it
Speaker 2: evaporation ponds, where noxious chemicals are put in there to
Speaker 2: theoretically evaporate at least somewhat into the atmosphere.
Speaker 4: Is that a part of the manufacturing process or is
Speaker 4: that a cleanup mitigation?
Speaker 3: That's a cleanup mitigation.
Speaker 2: Well, there's no cleanup mitigation.
Speaker 4: Well that's like that's in theory, that's what that's meant
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 2: I see, that's what the company would do. They'd have
Speaker 2: it on site, so when they're finished using those things,
Speaker 2: it would gradually go back into the atmosphere rather than
Speaker 2: just you know, shout in a cloud. But there's a
Speaker 2: study in nineteen ninety nine that showed ground water and
Speaker 2: well water that's anywhere near that site had six million
Speaker 2: times the mercury that is allowed by the EPA.
Speaker 3: And we're talking about to be clear, we're talking about
Speaker 3: two different studies, because again there are multiples. The one
Speaker 3: you're mentioning, Matt, the well water measured is from a
Speaker 3: study in the nineties. The one i've been ninety nine.
Speaker 3: The one I've been mentioning is from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: To show you how long people are looking at this,
Speaker 3: is it? Okay? If I had one more fact about
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty three study.
Speaker 4: Absolutely okay.
Speaker 3: So this study found that the outcomes, the health outcomes
Speaker 3: for people who were affected by this, it ranged much
Speaker 3: farther than previously assumed. It went far beyond what previous
Speaker 3: studies had found about, you know, the surrounding neighborhoods. People
Speaker 3: from as far away as sixty two miles were affected
Speaker 3: by the disaster and continued to be affected today.
Speaker 2: And I guess my only pointment is that I think
Speaker 2: that has less to do with that gas that got
Speaker 2: released and more to do with the overall contamination that
Speaker 2: that site represents from that one leak plus all of
Speaker 2: the other just noxious crap that they left there and
Speaker 2: didn't do anything with.
Speaker 3: And this is the fact that the science and the
Speaker 3: research continues is huge news. The most recent reports are
Speaker 3: some of the first things to demonstrate a clear, provable
Speaker 3: link between this disaster and the effect on children in Utero.
Speaker 3: And we know that there are going to be more
Speaker 3: reports coming, and we know that these problems will continue because,
Speaker 3: as we've mentioned a little bit throughout this episode, it's
Speaker 3: still not clean. There are still something around four hundred
Speaker 3: tons of assortied industrial waste present on the site. Like
Speaker 3: you said, they closed, they turned the key, and they
Speaker 3: clapped their hands and they walked away. The Dow Chemical
Speaker 3: Company bought Union carbide in two thousand and one, and
Speaker 3: neither Dow nor the Indian subsidiary, nor the Indian government
Speaker 3: have properly cleaned the site to this day.
Speaker 2: No I did. It's just so horrifying. There's another study
Speaker 2: two thousand too, that showed the contamination of women's breast
Speaker 2: milk who again, like you're talking sixty two miles like radius,
Speaker 2: who live very far away from this site, but they're
Speaker 2: still being affected because the water flows to everybody.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just goddess.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess the closest thing I can think of,
Speaker 4: I mean, aside from you know, maybe three Mile Island,
Speaker 4: and obviously Chernobyl didn't happen here, but it reminds me
Speaker 4: in a certain way of what happened in Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 4: with the water contamination and just the complete lack of
Speaker 4: doing anything about it for the longest time, and like
Speaker 4: toxic sludge coming out of the you know, faucet, and
Speaker 4: this is way way worse. But that's just I'm trying
Speaker 4: to think of to wrap my head around at any
Speaker 4: kind of parallel And to your point, Ben, it really
Speaker 4: makes sense that this is the most significant biological catastrophe
Speaker 4: in the history of you said, the.
Speaker 3: World, right, human history.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and yet I was woefully unfamiliar with it, which
Speaker 4: I'm maybe speaks to a certain amount of blinders that
Speaker 4: are on and whether in the media or whatever. And
Speaker 4: that it took this long for there to even be
Speaker 4: a Netflix documentary about it, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed, and we do have updates, you know, as
Speaker 3: time wends on. A Union car By does reach a
Speaker 3: settlement with the Indian government through mediation in the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: and they accept moral responsibility. They do have this settlement
Speaker 3: that they pay out. The settlement is controversial because it
Speaker 3: doesn't when it gets down to the per person, per
Speaker 3: survivor per victim basis, it's not enough to help really and.
Speaker 2: It's not to clean up anything. It's just to give
Speaker 2: a little bit of money to victims.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, And in nineteen ninety eight, the former factory
Speaker 3: site officially gets turned over to the state that'd be
Speaker 3: Madhya Pradesh. And we have to ask ourselves, you know,
Speaker 3: what happens next. Union Carbide is doing just fine.
Speaker 4: What is their status, Like there's still chemical conglom Okay,
Speaker 4: there's a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals, and isn't that the
Speaker 4: funny thing that happens with those kinds of acquisitions so
Speaker 4: often they're about disguising the sins of the past. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Dow Chemicals, through its subsidiary Union Carbide, they
Speaker 3: still make a lot of chemicals. They're often chemicals not
Speaker 3: sold directly to the public, but other businesses buy them
Speaker 3: and they use those chemicals to make stuff like pink packaging,
Speaker 3: household products, personal care, pharmaceuticals, textiles, automotive products, agricultural products.
Speaker 3: It goes on and on and on, and yeah, they're
Speaker 3: still making pesticides.
Speaker 2: Well, like, the big players at Dow were very upset
Speaker 2: and a bunch of shareholders were very upset when the
Speaker 2: decision was made to acquire Union Carbide because of this disaster,
Speaker 2: because of the potential lit gation and just all about yeah,
Speaker 2: but they still did it. And then Dow turned around
Speaker 2: and said, no, guys, we accept no responsibility for any
Speaker 2: of this stuff, and uh, we're not going to clean
Speaker 2: up the site. That's y'all's thing. Still, So, but is
Speaker 2: it who's Because it's it was under the control of
Speaker 2: the state then at that point, right, that's.
Speaker 4: Why, So they're just they're just shutting it off. Back
Speaker 4: onto the state. We're saying, yeah, we're no longer involved.
Speaker 2: Because Dow acquired Union Carbone in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: so at that point it was not They're not our
Speaker 2: problem anymore.
Speaker 3: Bruh, that's correct, and that's this is the thing that
Speaker 3: haunts means a question we would I think it haunts
Speaker 3: all of us. It's a question we would love your
Speaker 3: take on. Fellow conspiracy realist. The question becomes, how powerful
Speaker 3: are these conglomerates. Is it true, as some have accused,
Speaker 3: that a conglomerate could be powerful enough to, if it's
Speaker 3: so wished, so press the real cause of an ongoing
Speaker 3: disaster of this magnitude, effectively burying the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know, the same way that they bury
Speaker 3: those chemicals in the ground. It's a somber question, but
Speaker 3: these things are important and we would love to hear
Speaker 3: from you. Thanks again to everybody who wrote to us
Speaker 3: hipping us to this tale. Check out The Railwaymen on Netflix.
Speaker 3: It's not a sponsorship or partnership with us. We just
Speaker 3: think this is a great way to get the story
Speaker 3: out into the world. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4: That's right. You can find it at the handle conspiracy Stuff,
Speaker 4: where we exist on Facebook, on YouTube where Boyhatti is
Speaker 4: at George Washington getting up to some fun stuff and
Speaker 4: more fun stuff to come. Spoiler alert, he's going out west.
Speaker 4: We'll see what that. We'll see what that ends up like.
Speaker 4: You can also find us at x FKA Twitter again,
Speaker 4: that's the handlicing space stuff on Instagram and TikTok where
Speaker 4: conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2: Hey, do you like to call people?
Speaker 4: Why not call us?
Speaker 2: Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. When you
Speaker 2: call in, it's a voicemail system and it gives you
Speaker 2: three minutes. Say whatever you'd like. Just give yourself a
Speaker 2: cold nickname and let us know if we can use
Speaker 2: your name and message on the air. If you got
Speaker 2: more to send, they can fit that message. Why not
Speaker 2: instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are the people who read every single email we get.
Speaker 3: Go in depth. Send us the links, send us the photograph,
Speaker 3: send us the audio footage. Take us to the edge
Speaker 3: of the rabbit hole. We'll do the rest. Be careful, folks.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want You to Know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.