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