Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and it's Saturday. So we have another
Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be Part four,
Speaker 1: the final episode in our series from last year on Mud.
Speaker 1: This one originally published seven eighteen, twenty twenty three. We
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed these episodes, either enjoyed them originally or
Speaker 1: enjoying them in in vault format here, so let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and sync once more into the world of Mud.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: Part four. And I would say probably it's got to
Speaker 3: be the final part right now, at least the final
Speaker 3: part for now of our series on Mud. So in
Speaker 3: previous episodes in the series, which if you haven't listened
Speaker 3: to them, you should go back and check those out first.
Speaker 3: But we talked about the history of mud on Earth.
Speaker 3: It's a more surprising and dynamic story than you might imagine.
Speaker 3: That was in part one. We talked a bit about
Speaker 3: what defines mud. You know, it tends to be of course,
Speaker 3: wet soil of a smaller particle size that gives it
Speaker 3: that sticky consistency. We talked in part two about animal
Speaker 3: behavior and mud, such as pig wallowing, Arnold Schwarzenegger wallowing mud,
Speaker 3: what do they call it, mud skippers, the fish that
Speaker 3: have these interesting mud habitat behaviors, and other things like that.
Speaker 3: In the episode just before this one, we talked a
Speaker 3: lot about mud bricks, the history of mud in human construction,
Speaker 3: and today we're back to sort of round things out
Speaker 3: with a grab bag of different little topics that didn't
Speaker 3: make it anywhere else.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, I think this will be the capstone
Speaker 1: for this series, but mud does open up the possibility
Speaker 1: for some standalone episodes later on. I think there's a
Speaker 1: It ends up touching on so many different aspects of
Speaker 1: the world and our habitats and also human creation. So
Speaker 1: who knows, there may be more mud in the future,
Speaker 1: but this is going to be like the This is
Speaker 1: the bedrock mud. This is the initial foundation of mud
Speaker 1: bricks upon on which we might build future episodes.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. So to kick things off today,
Speaker 3: I wanted to start by thinking about a principle that
Speaker 3: maybe should be used in the natural sciences. We'll see,
Speaker 3: and it's basically the heavy metal principle of nature, which
Speaker 3: states that for every phenomenon in nature, there's a good
Speaker 3: chance there is a heavy metal version of that phenomenon.
Speaker 3: If you start with the kind of like an easy
Speaker 3: listening or jazz or country of your classic mud puddle,
Speaker 3: the heavy metal version, I think is the mud pot.
Speaker 3: So you think of a normal mud puddle, there usually
Speaker 3: a depression in the ground where surface water collects after
Speaker 3: rain soaks through the soil, especially if the soil particle
Speaker 3: particles are small, creates an area of plastic or even
Speaker 3: fully liquid mud, and if water stops flowing into the
Speaker 3: puddle from above, it can dry up. But now imagine
Speaker 3: a mud puddle with a thick liquid consistency, sort of
Speaker 3: like paint, but boiling bubbling like a big pot of stew,
Speaker 3: forming opaque bubbles of gas that the gas is clearly
Speaker 3: trapped in those clay particles rising up from below, and
Speaker 3: you can see them form into spheres on the surface
Speaker 3: sometimes and they'll stay there for a moment before they
Speaker 3: finally burst and, depending on the consistency of the mud,
Speaker 3: might splatter all over the place when they do burst,
Speaker 3: maybe even throwing clumps of mud up into the air
Speaker 3: such that it piles around this puddle of mud, forming mounds,
Speaker 3: or even a cone that the mud puddle rises from,
Speaker 3: or a weird kind of collar of mud splatter all around.
Speaker 3: This is a mud pot, and it's also it could
Speaker 3: develop into one example of a term. There's a term
Speaker 3: called mud volcano that actually seems to be used to
Speaker 3: refer to a multiple very different things. But one thing
Speaker 3: that gets called a mud volcano is the kind of
Speaker 3: mound that can build up from the life cycle of
Speaker 3: a mud pot.
Speaker 1: Quick Weird House cinema trivia here for you, Joe, Can
Speaker 1: you name two movies that we've covered that feature boiling
Speaker 1: mud or the appearance of boiling mud, no matter how
Speaker 1: they actually created it via actual footage or some other
Speaker 1: kind of technique.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, you are really stumping me. I seem to
Speaker 3: recall there's some boiling mud in Legend. Isn't that where
Speaker 3: meg Mucklebones lives? But I don't think we actually watched
Speaker 3: Legend for Weird House.
Speaker 1: Did we? No? No, not as of this recording.
Speaker 3: Oh wait a minute, did we do Labyrinth? No, we
Speaker 3: didn't do Labyrinth. But Labyrinth has boiling mud, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, or something that looks like it. No, the
Speaker 1: two movies that I believe we've watched that have boiling
Speaker 1: mud or the effect of boiling mud, Planet of the
Speaker 1: Vampires and nineteen seventy eight's Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right, Both of those just escaped my memory.
Speaker 3: But yeah, two masterpieces in their own right.
Speaker 1: Came into my head as you were describing it because
Speaker 1: it is a very like otherworldly feeling thing. Though even
Speaker 1: though it is very much all of this world, it
Speaker 1: kind of lends itself to alien environments or environments like
Speaker 1: in Beauty and the Beast, which are supposed to be
Speaker 1: kind of like on the edge of the civilized world,
Speaker 1: sort of bordering on the supernatural. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in The Beauty and the Beast, there's like boiling mud,
Speaker 3: or at least bubbling mud even within the grounds of
Speaker 3: the castle, I think, isn't there. I think, so, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's like a courtyard that has mud pots within it,
Speaker 3: and that seems, yeah, at the edge of fantasy. But
Speaker 3: to look at a mudpot and understand what's going on here,
Speaker 3: I think we should start with the concept of a
Speaker 3: hot spring. So hot springs form when water heated by
Speaker 3: geothermal energy deep underground rises to the surface and forms
Speaker 3: a pool, or when water that collects at the surface
Speaker 3: due to regular runoff and surface features is heated by
Speaker 3: steam more heat from below, and this surface water can
Speaker 3: be anywhere between you know, pleasantly warm bathtub temperature and
Speaker 3: lethal boiling. So you do not ever want to jump
Speaker 3: into a hot spring unless it's one that is like
Speaker 3: very well known in advance to be a consistent safe temperature.
Speaker 3: If in doubt, stay away. I've read something like twenty
Speaker 3: people are known to have died from jumping into or
Speaker 3: falling into hot springs at Yellowstone National Park in the
Speaker 3: United States alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember reading about some of this when we
Speaker 1: were doing some episodes on springs and holy waters associated
Speaker 1: with springs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and sometimes it can be deceiving, like there are
Speaker 3: tragic cases of people just trying to like get close
Speaker 3: to see what the temperature is like and then falling
Speaker 3: in and dying. There was a case like this I
Speaker 3: was reading about from the year twenty sixteen where let's
Speaker 3: see well, so I was reading an article about it
Speaker 3: from the local news station KULR eight in Billings. I
Speaker 3: guess Billings, Montana near Yellowstone, And so the headline was
Speaker 3: man killed in Yellowstone hot spring allegedly trying to quote
Speaker 3: hot pot. I guess hot potting is like, you know,
Speaker 3: jumping into a hot spring to hang out in it.
Speaker 3: But to read from the article, it says the man
Speaker 3: who died in a Yellowstone hot spring last summer was
Speaker 3: apparently looking for a place to hot pot in the park.
Speaker 3: Yellowstone officials recently released the final report on the incident
Speaker 3: following a Freedom of Information Act request. The victim's sister
Speaker 3: recorded the incident on her cell phone. The accident happened
Speaker 3: in Norris Geyser Basin on the afternoon of June seventh.
Speaker 3: Deputy Chief Ranger Laurent Veress says, it is a very
Speaker 3: dangerous area with boiling acidic waters. So the article tells
Speaker 3: the story of how the man and his sister went
Speaker 3: off the approved path and they were checking out a
Speaker 3: different like hot springs or maybe more mudpot type areas
Speaker 3: to see what the temperature was, and unfortunately, the man,
Speaker 3: while trying to get close to check the temperature, slipped
Speaker 3: and fell in. And the article says, quote search and
Speaker 3: Rescue rangers who arrived later did find the victim's body
Speaker 3: in the pool, along with his wallet and flip flops,
Speaker 3: but a lightning storm stopped the recovery efforts. The next day,
Speaker 3: workers could not find any remains. Veras says the water
Speaker 3: was churning and acidic. He remarked, quote in a very
Speaker 3: short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving. So
Speaker 3: the apparently boiling and acidic conditions in the water essentially
Speaker 3: disintegrated the victim's remains.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So it is no joke.
Speaker 3: Do not mess around with like, oh, maybe I'll go
Speaker 3: check out this hot spring and see if I should
Speaker 3: get in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen to your park obey signage.
Speaker 3: But so, okay, So that's hot springs, water that pools
Speaker 3: on the surface that is either connected to a hydrothermal
Speaker 3: system that heats it or is heated by heat coming
Speaker 3: off of a hydrothermal system below in the ground. So
Speaker 3: also in this family of surface outlets for geothermal energy
Speaker 3: are fumaroles, which are holes in the earth where steam
Speaker 3: rising from geothermally heated water escapes. A mud pot is
Speaker 3: in a way still a type of mud puddle. Mudpots
Speaker 3: are pools where water collects and mixes with clay particles,
Speaker 3: forming a thick liquid mud, usually gray or cream colored,
Speaker 3: sometimes black, but there are other colors possible too. This
Speaker 3: mud puddle is heated by geothermal activity from below, or
Speaker 3: at least is permeated by gas that's released from below,
Speaker 3: and mudpots often release hydrogen sulfide gas, which smells like
Speaker 3: rotten eggs. And while people who see these things often
Speaker 3: describe them as marvelous, one of the most amazing things
Speaker 3: they've seen in nature, if not exactly beautiful, an element
Speaker 3: of the mudpott encounter described at least as often is
Speaker 3: the dank, putrid smell, which is in the air before
Speaker 3: you can even see the thing. You might maybe you
Speaker 3: hear it, but you smell it now. An interesting thing
Speaker 3: is I wonder if this reflects a development in the
Speaker 3: understanding of mudpots. But I've read different accounts of the
Speaker 3: most common ways that mudpots are formed, so I want
Speaker 3: to start with an older account from a reputable source,
Speaker 3: but an older one then. This is from a textbook
Speaker 3: from the nineteen twenties by the American geologist Lewis V.
Speaker 3: Pearson that essentially describes a mudpot as like a hot
Speaker 3: spring but with limited water supply, and Pearson says it
Speaker 3: goes like this. If there is basically a net positive
Speaker 3: flow of water into a hot spring, meaning that more
Speaker 3: water is flowing into the hot spring, either from below
Speaker 3: or from above, or the combination of both, than the
Speaker 3: rate of evaporation of that water, this will lead to
Speaker 3: overflow from the spring, and you know, the water will
Speaker 3: overflow the basin of the pool and drain away. And
Speaker 3: in fact, if you look up pictures of hot springs,
Speaker 3: you can often see rocks nearby stained where the runoff
Speaker 3: from the spring is going. It'll maybe carry a colorful
Speaker 3: extremophile microbes with it, so you'll see almost kind of
Speaker 3: like a little red river running off the side of it.
Speaker 3: And so in these cases, if the flow of water
Speaker 3: into the pool is positive, the water stays relatively clear,
Speaker 3: relatively limpid, in Pearson's words, often a deep blue or
Speaker 3: green color, though it can appear different colors like red
Speaker 3: or yellow, again due to extremophiles present.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Of course, presumably if the net flow of water into
Speaker 3: the pool is strongly negative, the pool will just dry up.
Speaker 3: But Pearson says if the rate of evaporation is roughly
Speaker 3: equal to the rate of inflow of water into the pool.
Speaker 3: The hot spring neither dries up nor overflows. Then the
Speaker 3: acidic water sitting in the pool dissolves the surrounding rock
Speaker 3: into clay, which then mixes with the water and forms mud,
Speaker 3: and you are left with a pool of hot, bubbling mud,
Speaker 3: which is sometimes described as boiling because of the way
Speaker 3: that it bubbles. It certainly can look like it is boiling,
Speaker 3: but technically, I've read that these mudpots have variable temperature.
Speaker 3: They are sometimes less hot than the boiling point of water, which,
Speaker 3: of course one atmosphere of pressure is one hundred degree
Speaker 3: c or two twelve fahrenheit. In some cases the mud
Speaker 3: pot is actually much cooler than that, but the mud
Speaker 3: is still bubbling because of hot gases from below, so
Speaker 3: hot gases in the earth are still rising up through it.
Speaker 3: In that case, it's not actually the mud boiling, it's
Speaker 3: just it's being permeated by gas that's trying to rise.
Speaker 3: Pearson says that the mud in these pots can be
Speaker 3: different colors. It can be white, yellow, red, purple, or black.
Speaker 3: This is often due to the presence of oxides of
Speaker 3: iron or manganese. I think manganese oxides tend to be
Speaker 3: more black. Of course, iron oxide tends to be more red.
Speaker 3: And for this reason of all these different colors, these
Speaker 3: mudpots are sometimes called paint pots. They can look like
Speaker 3: a bubbling pool of paint of different colors mixed together. Now,
Speaker 3: Pearson says that as more clay is dissolved into the water,
Speaker 3: the mud becomes thicker. Of course, so you're getting more
Speaker 3: soil to the same roughly the same amount of water.
Speaker 3: So as you mix in more sediment, it becomes a
Speaker 3: thicker consistency, and this makes the ebullition, meaning the bubbling,
Speaker 3: less regular. So imagine the way that, like a soup
Speaker 3: in a pot on the stove, as it becomes thicker,
Speaker 3: the bubbling becomes less regular and more kind of random
Speaker 3: and chaotic and violent rob it. Do you know what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about From cooking experiences.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it can kind of even like shake the
Speaker 1: pot a little bit, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is my experience in the kitchen. Like
Speaker 3: you boil something with basically a watery consistency or broth
Speaker 3: like consistency, the bubbles will be pretty even. There'll be
Speaker 3: a steady rate, you know, they'll pop evenly as long
Speaker 3: as the heat is consistently applied. But if you were
Speaker 3: talking about like a very thick stew, you can sometimes
Speaker 3: get much less predictable and more explosive bubbles. So it
Speaker 3: might not bubble at all for a bit, and then
Speaker 3: suddenly a huge bubble pops and it splatters all over
Speaker 3: the stovetop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was cooking one of these just last night.
Speaker 3: Well, apparently a similar thing that happens as the mud
Speaker 3: in a mud pot thickens. With thick mud, steam builds
Speaker 3: up higher pressure before rising to the top and popping,
Speaker 3: which means it can happen, in Pearson's words quote spasmodically
Speaker 3: and with some violence, the mud being thrown into the
Speaker 3: air and about the vent where it collects inconsiderable masses.
Speaker 3: And this is one version of the concept of the
Speaker 3: mud volcano. Because the mud pot that bubbles this way
Speaker 3: and kind of builds up mud around it, it can
Speaker 3: form a cone that looks like a volcano mountain, it
Speaker 3: looks like a cone volcano, or it can kind of
Speaker 3: form a caldera around itself made out of ejected mud. Now,
Speaker 3: often this mud erodes very easily, so this building process
Speaker 3: can be kind of cyclical. But yeah, it can build
Speaker 3: up a little sort of mini volcano made out of
Speaker 3: mud and just kind of keep popping and spewing onto itself.
Speaker 3: Pearson says that this usually marks the end of the
Speaker 3: period of activity for a hot spring, sort of as
Speaker 3: the activity of a hot spring is dying away, it's
Speaker 3: more likely to go through a mud pot and a
Speaker 3: volcano period. Now, I mentioned I came across some different
Speaker 3: accounts of what is exactly going on in a mud pot.
Speaker 3: That was the older account. A lot of the more
Speaker 3: recent sources I was looking at describe the source of
Speaker 3: the water going into the mud pot as placing more
Speaker 3: emphasis on that being surface water. So, for example, the
Speaker 3: National Parks has some materials about what's going on with
Speaker 3: the mudpots at Yellowstone, and these sources claim that it
Speaker 3: essentially acts more like a double boiler. So, again with
Speaker 3: kitchen analogies, I guess that's where we have a lot
Speaker 3: of our experience with boiling liquids a double boiler. If
Speaker 3: you never used this, rob it's like you put like
Speaker 3: a glass bowl on top of a pot that has
Speaker 3: a little bit of water boiling in it, and the
Speaker 3: steam from the boiling water rises and it gently heats
Speaker 3: the bowl from below, as opposed to just you know,
Speaker 3: putting whatever you have in the bowl in the pot
Speaker 3: directly and having hot metal applied to it.
Speaker 1: I don't think i've ever done this myself. Interesting.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's used usually when you need to heat something
Speaker 3: very gently, like if you're trying to heat something that
Speaker 3: could easily overheat and would be ruined by doing so,
Speaker 3: like if you are making It's used sometimes in baking
Speaker 3: when you need to melt chocolate to a particular temperature
Speaker 3: to get the indconsistency want, or if you're making like
Speaker 3: a hollandaise sauce because you know, you heat a hollandaise
Speaker 3: sauce too much, and you know, with scrambled eggs.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, But so.
Speaker 3: Anyway, it's just like letting the steam from below do
Speaker 3: the heating of the food, as opposed to letting applying
Speaker 3: direct heat from the heating element through the metal to
Speaker 3: the food. And the source from the National Park Service
Speaker 3: claims that in the case of these mudpots, what's usually
Speaker 3: happening is that water from the surface collects in a
Speaker 3: basin or a depression that is not actually connected to
Speaker 3: the water flow from from the hydrothermal systems in the
Speaker 3: ground instead. The bottom of the basin or the depression
Speaker 3: is usually considered impermeable because of lining with fine particles
Speaker 3: of clay, So that's sort of your bowl. The bottom
Speaker 3: of the double boiler and the hydrothermal system below releases
Speaker 3: steam and usually some hydrogen sulfide gas, which rises through
Speaker 3: the bottom layers of clay and causes the mud puddle
Speaker 3: to both heat up and bubble as the gas rises
Speaker 3: to the top. Then you have again extremophile organisms microorganisms
Speaker 3: in these pools that can use the hydrogen sulfide gas
Speaker 3: to make energy, and in the process they create sulfuric acid,
Speaker 3: which turns the mud pool extremely acidic, and then it
Speaker 3: helps dissolve more rock in the surrounding basin and turns
Speaker 3: that into clay, and so the mud just like you know,
Speaker 3: you get continuous supply of new clay particles from that dissolution,
Speaker 3: and it gets thicker and thicker. And this source also
Speaker 3: says that mud pots can be affected by the season,
Speaker 3: so like rain and melting snow can make the mud
Speaker 3: and the pots cooler and thinner, and then hot, dry
Speaker 3: weather in the summer it can cause them to thicken
Speaker 3: or even dry up completely, which means that these are
Speaker 3: ultimately somewhat transient and dynamic features. Like a mud pot
Speaker 3: or a mud volcano of this variety might only be
Speaker 3: active for a few months. It can also be active
Speaker 3: much much longer, but it might just be a very brief,
Speaker 3: shortly lived thing before maybe it just transforms into a
Speaker 3: kind of fixed fume role where steam is coming out
Speaker 3: of a hole in the ground. Now, there is another
Speaker 3: use of the term mud volcano that can refer to
Speaker 3: a different geological process that can in some cases be
Speaker 3: extremely explosive and large in scale and violent. I was
Speaker 3: reading about this in an article from December twenty twenty
Speaker 3: by a ut Austin geologist named Michael R. Hudik that
Speaker 3: is describing like it's it's a particular example of a
Speaker 3: mud volcano that occurred in Indonesia in two thousand and
Speaker 3: six in the Siduarjo regency that is known sometimes as
Speaker 3: the Lumpur Siduarju. Lumpur is the word for mud And
Speaker 3: there was this massive sudden eruption. There was like steam
Speaker 3: releasing from a vent in the ground and rumbling, and
Speaker 3: then it started just exploding with these huge amounts of
Speaker 3: mud that ended completely engulfing villages in the surrounding area.
Speaker 3: It was like many acres and people had to be
Speaker 3: evacuated in order to get out of harm's way. These
Speaker 3: villages were completely swallowed up in mud. They were like
Speaker 3: these farming villages in the area. And so this is
Speaker 3: not like a little mound of mud ejected by a puddle.
Speaker 3: This was like a landscape destroying, violent ejection of mud.
Speaker 3: And it seems like in many of these cases where
Speaker 3: there is this large explosive kind of mud eruption, one
Speaker 3: thing that might be going on is the interaction with
Speaker 3: hydrocarbon gases, so for example, methane, and of course methane
Speaker 3: being very flammable, can make these eruptions actually flaming eruptions,
Speaker 3: where like when the hot methane comes into the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: it can ignite. The cause of this particular mud volcano
Speaker 3: eruption in two thousand and six is apparently controversial. It
Speaker 3: seems like a lot of people have attributed it to
Speaker 3: drilling of an app gas well in the area by
Speaker 3: an oil and gas company. Of course, the oil and
Speaker 3: gas company claims, no, it wasn't us. It was a
Speaker 3: naturally occurring event. But it did seem to be significant
Speaker 3: hydrocarbon gas involved in this kind of eruption. And this
Speaker 3: kind of thing is scary because it's hard to imagine.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess we are familiar with the concept
Speaker 3: of like an igneous volcanic eruption, you know, where it's
Speaker 3: like a rock volcano erupting and it's releasing all of
Speaker 3: this gas and rock and molten rock and pyroclastic flow
Speaker 3: and all these things. And so I guess we are
Speaker 3: already familiar with the concept of large destructive volcanoes. But
Speaker 3: the idea that it could just like flood a landscape
Speaker 3: with mud is another stranger and differently frightening version of
Speaker 3: that kind of image.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's one thing to have vast quantities
Speaker 1: of mud where you know, mud will be seasonally otherwise.
Speaker 1: It's another thing for mud to just suddenly appear where
Speaker 1: it's not expected. And this seems to be like one
Speaker 1: of the more exaggerated cases of it, you know, whereas
Speaker 1: the vast quantities of mud just emerging and taking over
Speaker 1: people's homes and so forth. Now, on the subject of
Speaker 1: mud volcanoes, I have also been reading a little bit
Speaker 1: about this idea of mud volcanoes on Mars. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you came across any of this. I was
Speaker 1: looking at a paper from twenty twenty quoting Peter Burroughs,
Speaker 1: a professor of geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences,
Speaker 1: and basically he proposed that mud from mud volcanoes may
Speaker 1: have flowed in Mars past, and therefore some of the
Speaker 1: things we see in visuals from Mars that looks like
Speaker 1: it could be the result of lava flows could perhaps
Speaker 1: be the result of mud flows in the past. So
Speaker 1: he and his team conducted experiments to see how this
Speaker 1: would work, and found that while the mud eventually would
Speaker 1: freeze under those Chili Martian conditions, there would be a
Speaker 1: little time for it to flow, freezing and crusting over
Speaker 1: at the surface, initially enabling it to move a bit
Speaker 1: before the freeze firmly took hold. Because I guess that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the things about thinking about
Speaker 1: mud elsewhere in the universe. We have plenty of sci
Speaker 1: fi visions of muddy planets, but for mud to be there,
Speaker 1: you need some sort of moisture to be there as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we do I think love the idea of mud planets.
Speaker 1: You know, take any especially any kind of like exotic
Speaker 1: terrestrial environment, and somebody somewhere has turned a whole planet
Speaker 1: into that. You know, So you have jungle planets, you
Speaker 1: have desert planets like Oracus. If you look at Star Wars,
Speaker 1: you have planets like dagobas just a swamp world. Not
Speaker 1: only does it have a lot of mud, like the
Speaker 1: mud and the muck will just swallow up whole spaceships.
Speaker 3: That's true, though, you know, it's interesting they never say
Speaker 3: in the Star Wars movies that the entire planet Dagoba
Speaker 3: is a swamp, but you just assume that's the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I've seen some maps and these are
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, artistic interpretations that kind of
Speaker 1: run with that, and it's like, oh, yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: planet just swamp. And that raises a lot of questions
Speaker 1: like what how would that work? That would the entire
Speaker 1: planet be a swamp? Does that mean it doesn't have oceans?
Speaker 1: It just has swamp. I don't know. I should look
Speaker 1: into this and say, I'm sure some people have written
Speaker 1: some papers about this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if like, could you have a swamp
Speaker 3: if you didn't have other types of regions to support
Speaker 3: the like the geological and atmospheric conditions that would create
Speaker 3: a swamp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I'll come back to Star Wars in just a second,
Speaker 1: but I want to hit another couple of sort of
Speaker 1: cosmic mud examples. One concerns SMAP SMAP, which is also
Speaker 1: a Japanese boy band. Apparently this this became obvious when
Speaker 1: I was researching this, but in this case it stands
Speaker 1: for Soil Moisture Active Passive. That's NASA's environmental monitoring satellite,
Speaker 1: launched in twenty fifteen and still active as of this recording.
Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to be active through at least
Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty three. But it can measure
Speaker 1: land surface soil moisture up to a certain depth. So
Speaker 1: it's an eye in the sky essentially on mud. And
Speaker 1: the data that it collects is useful because it spills
Speaker 1: over into better understandings of the carbon cycle, weather and
Speaker 1: climate models, drought monitoring, and so much more. But of
Speaker 1: course that's concerning Earth. We know there's mud on Earth.
Speaker 1: This is another idea I ran across this, the idea
Speaker 1: that you, at one point anyway had just cosmic mud
Speaker 1: balls flying around through space.
Speaker 3: Okay, so if you imagine like a comet as a
Speaker 3: formation of ice and dust that's flying around in space,
Speaker 3: of course all the ice is frozen, like what if
Speaker 3: a comet was wet?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually found some discussion of this in a
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen article for New Scientists by Sam Wong. In
Speaker 1: this it doesn't conserve comets, but it concerns asteroids, particularly
Speaker 1: early asteroids or carbonaceous asteroids, that may have delivered water
Speaker 1: and organic molecules to Earth, and apparently it can be
Speaker 1: helpful to model them as just big old mudboss. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that ice, dust, and chondrules come
Speaker 1: together and the pressure has not yet compacted it all
Speaker 1: into rock right away. It will in time, but at
Speaker 1: this point early on, it hasn't all been compacted into rock,
Speaker 1: and the ice will end up melting due to decaying
Speaker 1: radioactive atoms in the dust and gas, resulting in a
Speaker 1: quote unquote schuldgi mud and this would eventually become rock again,
Speaker 1: but for a time they would be muddy asteroids. According
Speaker 1: to the modeling by Philip Bland at Curtin University in Perth, Australia,
Speaker 1: and his collaborator, Brian Travis at the Planetary Science Institute
Speaker 1: in Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 3: That is interesting. Okay, so they've got a pretty strong
Speaker 3: internal heat source because they've got all these young radioactive
Speaker 3: atoms in them that are still decaying at a pretty
Speaker 3: rapid rate. So they're keeping the ice content like melted
Speaker 3: and moist. And then of course they've got all like
Speaker 3: the dust and rock soil content in them. And yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: there's like big balls of mud flying through space.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I before I ran across this, I
Speaker 1: didn't even think this was possible. You know, you think
Speaker 1: of mud as being something you're going to encounter, particularly
Speaker 1: on an earth like world. Now, coming back to Earth
Speaker 1: like worlds and mud. Another Star Wars planet of note,
Speaker 1: especially if you've seen the movie Solo, which came out
Speaker 1: several years back. There's a planet called Mimbon, and in
Speaker 1: that movie we see Imperial mud troopers or swamp troopers
Speaker 1: as they're sometimes called, engaged in some sort of drawn
Speaker 1: out battle on this world. And Joe, in case you
Speaker 1: haven't seen this, I included an image here of what
Speaker 1: mud troopers look like as compared to just normal Imperial.
Speaker 3: Storm troopers looks like a dirty job, looks like they
Speaker 3: this may be like the last thing that, like all
Speaker 3: the other troopers try to sign up for different detail
Speaker 3: and you know, the last picks for all the other ones,
Speaker 3: like Nope, you cannot go to Hawth and be a
Speaker 3: snow trooper. You got to be a mud trooper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, and I think that's the way it's presented
Speaker 1: in the movie too, like Han Solo, a young Han
Speaker 1: Solo is a mud trooper on this awful world. Then
Speaker 1: of course they're also drawing in a lot of comparisons
Speaker 1: to trench warfare and war's past and so forth, which
Speaker 1: well we'll get back to in a bit. But one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things, of course, this is kind of
Speaker 1: across the board when you look at sci fi. Sci
Speaker 1: fi often is looking backwards and taking things from the
Speaker 1: past and putting this futuristic spin on them. Because I
Speaker 1: don't recall, and I could be wrong, it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I've seen Solo, but I don't think the
Speaker 1: Imperial mud Troopers leveraged any kind of sci fi technology
Speaker 1: to deal with the mud. It seems like they would
Speaker 1: have leaned heavily on repulsor technology to kind of float
Speaker 1: above it, or to use some sort of technology to
Speaker 1: either rapidly dry out muddy conditions or to like flash
Speaker 1: freeze them so that you wouldn't have to get slogged
Speaker 1: down in them. It seems like that would be something
Speaker 1: to try if the imperial budget allowed for it. I
Speaker 1: guess they spent that all on big walking machines that
Speaker 1: are gonna, I guess, in theory, not get bogged down
Speaker 1: in the mud. Off the top of my head, I
Speaker 1: don't think I can even think of another sci fi
Speaker 1: vision where there's any kind of like sci fi treatment
Speaker 1: of mud like this. I could be wrong, because I'm not.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of military sci fi out there,
Speaker 1: so someone might have looked at it. I do remember
Speaker 1: a gadget in John Steekley's Armor that is like a
Speaker 1: people in power armor versus insect aliens on a desert
Speaker 1: world that involves sand clotters and a machine that would
Speaker 1: turn the sand of the desert into solid walls of fortification.
Speaker 1: So I imagine you'd want something like that, something that,
Speaker 1: through sci fi shenanigans, can instantly eye out an area
Speaker 1: or make it solid as opposed to shifting sand or
Speaker 1: in this case like mud that's going to cling to
Speaker 1: you and suck you down into the muck.
Speaker 3: I don't know if sand is the best choice for that.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be better to use a cohesive soil with
Speaker 3: smaller particles like clay or silt.
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, So I don't know any of you out
Speaker 1: there who certainly are more red and military sci fi
Speaker 1: than me, there might be an example of this, So
Speaker 1: write in and let us know.
Speaker 3: Now. Of course you keep saying military sci fi in particular,
Speaker 3: and it makes sense why you would do that because
Speaker 3: of the significance of mud in combat and warfare in
Speaker 3: human history.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, you know mud. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this a lot like mud is not only an environmental
Speaker 1: condition that occurs naturally in the world, but it's often
Speaker 1: this condition that is at an interaction point between the
Speaker 1: natural world and human activity. You would think of muddy roads, right,
Speaker 1: We think of paths that are not well maintained, that
Speaker 1: get really muddy and sloppy in places. And then there
Speaker 1: are several walks that my family does like this in
Speaker 1: the area where you know, we know exactly where that
Speaker 1: muddy stretch is, and there are often a lot of
Speaker 1: slapdash efforts to mitigate it, you know, boards that are
Speaker 1: thrown down the rockport. Yeah, and you know that works
Speaker 1: for a little bit sort of. That also creates additional
Speaker 1: splash hazards and new and exciting ways to slip and
Speaker 1: fall in the mud. But yeah, mud is also a
Speaker 1: big factor in human warfare and has been for a
Speaker 1: long long time. You pointed this out to me, and
Speaker 1: this is something that has been covered in various articles
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years. But there is a
Speaker 1: Russian term putitsa that refers to a season or seasons
Speaker 1: of the year when unpaved roads become treacherous due to
Speaker 1: the mud created by rain and or melting snow on
Speaker 1: said roads. It's had a major impact on land wars
Speaker 1: in Russia and Eastern Europe, for ages, impacting the Mongol invasion,
Speaker 1: both World Wars, and also the Russo Ukrainian War that
Speaker 1: as of this recording, is still ongoing. It's been observed
Speaker 1: that among Russia's mistakes during the twenty twenty two invasion
Speaker 1: of Ukraine, they underestimated the muddy road season that was
Speaker 1: just kicking off at that time, right.
Speaker 3: So this is sort of one of the factors affecting
Speaker 3: the seasonal planning of offensives in conflict in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. And on the other hand, another major area
Speaker 1: for mud and war is the First World War. And
Speaker 1: I mean you can instantly picture this probably if you've
Speaker 1: seen images, footage and fictional recreations of those trench warfare environments.
Speaker 1: What do you think of You think of like blasted landscape,
Speaker 1: You think of mud, You think of these just awful
Speaker 1: conditions where like the natural world is just worn away
Speaker 1: and all that remains is mud and fortifications and explosion
Speaker 1: and death and pain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like in heavily shelled or trodden over areas where
Speaker 3: it seems like a lot of the plant life has
Speaker 3: been killed and stripped away, and now like the roots
Speaker 3: are it's not really holding the soil together the way
Speaker 3: it was, and now it's just mud.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if you've ever taken a poetry class, you
Speaker 1: may have run across the fact that, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of great but depressing poetry and writings in general
Speaker 1: that came out of this time period, people describing these conditions,
Speaker 1: describing the horrors of war and the horrors of chemical
Speaker 1: warfare and so forth. One of the best literary treatments
Speaker 1: of war and mud, however, just has to be that
Speaker 1: of American British war nurse turned novelist and poet Mary Borden.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventeen, she wrote a poem called The Song
Speaker 1: of the Mud. You can find this in full on
Speaker 1: Poetry Foundation dot org. But it's really really good. Joe,
Speaker 1: were you familiar with this poem?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one is a new one for me. I
Speaker 1: this is not one that I remember covering in poetry classes.
Speaker 1: But she writes of quote the frothing, squirting, spurting liquid
Speaker 1: mud that gurgles along the road beds unquote, as well
Speaker 1: as quote the thick, elastic mud that is kneaded and
Speaker 1: pounded and squeezed under the hoofs of the horses. Though
Speaker 1: she also juxtaposes this with more natural seeming aspects of mud,
Speaker 1: even like mud as something that can be beautiful. From
Speaker 1: afar m I'm gonna read the final stanza from the poem,
Speaker 1: but again I encourage everyone to go out and read
Speaker 1: it in full. Quote. This is the song of the mud,
Speaker 1: The beautiful, glistening, golden mud that covers the hills like satin,
Speaker 1: the mysterious, gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel
Speaker 1: over the valleys. Mud, the disguise of the war zone. Mud,
Speaker 1: the mantle of battles, mud, the smooth, fluid grave of
Speaker 1: our soldiers. This is the song of the mud.
Speaker 3: Well, that's interesting, and I don't know the connotations of
Speaker 3: mud is used, and that stands at least are more
Speaker 3: I don't know, more positive than I would have expected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of dark imagery in
Speaker 1: there about it, like swallowing up guns and taking people
Speaker 1: down into like not only like the physical power of
Speaker 1: the mud, but also like the emotional toll of the mud,
Speaker 1: which I'll come back to you in a bit as well.
Speaker 3: When I was thinking of World War One poetry and
Speaker 3: the concept of mud, I thought of the one of
Speaker 3: the poems of Wilfrid Owen. I just had to look
Speaker 3: it up because I didn't remember the name, but it's
Speaker 3: the apology of pro poemate Mayo, which I think means
Speaker 3: defense of my poetry. And this is by Wilfrid Owen,
Speaker 3: who was a British poet who fought in World War One.
Speaker 3: Wrote a lot of poetry associated with the war, like
Speaker 3: anthem for Doomed Youth, you might have read. But the
Speaker 3: opening stands of this poem was, I too saw God
Speaker 3: through mud, the mud that cracked on cheeks when wretch's
Speaker 3: mild war brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
Speaker 3: and gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, I don't remember that that bit, but
Speaker 1: I remember Owen. He's definitely one of the names that
Speaker 1: comes up when a poetry class steers sharply into the trenches.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, a book that I mentioned earlier in this series, Mud,
Speaker 1: a Military History by ce Wood, is a full book
Speaker 1: dealing with mud in war. And so if you if
Speaker 1: you need more of this, I highly recommend you pick
Speaker 1: up that book. It's it's it's very well written, it's
Speaker 1: very you know, it's very absorbable. But in it would
Speaker 1: stresses that while more permanent domains of mud are certainly
Speaker 1: important in warfare, you need to know where the swamps, marshes,
Speaker 1: and bogs are and how to either circumnavigate them or
Speaker 1: utilize them, force the enemy to move through them, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But the main area of interest in
Speaker 1: the book is transitional mud, that is the kind that
Speaker 1: arrives and departs without significant warning.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this previously traversible landscape suddenly has mud in
Speaker 3: it that is going to interfere with your progress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this becomes key because I mean, this is
Speaker 1: not something you can necessarily plan for, or planning can
Speaker 1: fall short of taking it into account. And it's a
Speaker 1: variety of mud that has played a crucial role in
Speaker 1: the history of armed conflict. One of Wood's main focuses
Speaker 1: in this is how mud hinders forward advancement in warfare,
Speaker 1: so impacting combatants, animals, and machines of war, and of
Speaker 1: course not just war machines and soldiers and tanks and
Speaker 1: horses with knights on them and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: but of course everything that supports a war effort, that
Speaker 1: supports an army and its advancement, you know, the vehicles
Speaker 1: that are carrying food, any kind of medical support that
Speaker 1: is in tow all of that sort of thing as well.
Speaker 1: So generals have to contend with the impact of permanent mud,
Speaker 1: seasonal mud, random transitional mud, in addition to all the
Speaker 1: other threats and challenges of battle, all the other environmental
Speaker 1: concerns that will come into play, and there are also
Speaker 1: huge human health and mental health challenges with mud that
Speaker 1: the author deals with in greater detail. There's a great
Speaker 1: quote in the book though, about this, attributed to historian
Speaker 1: Martin Gilbert. Quote at night, crouching in a shell hole
Speaker 1: and filling it, the mud watches like an enormous octopus.
Speaker 1: The victim arrives, it throws its poisonous slobber out at him,
Speaker 1: blinds him, closes round him, buries him. For men die
Speaker 1: of mud as they die of bullets. But more horribly,
Speaker 1: mud is where men sink, and what is worse, where
Speaker 1: their souls sink. Hell is not fire, That would not
Speaker 1: be the ultimate in suffering. Hell is mud.
Speaker 3: Wow, Well, there is something I think interesting there in
Speaker 3: that mud in a way militates against people's ability to
Speaker 3: see their own suffering as noble or to see it
Speaker 3: in any grandiose terms. That there's something kind of humbling
Speaker 3: and humiliating about suffering brought on by an environment of mud,
Speaker 3: and thus, like death in mud is an image that
Speaker 3: brings a lot more despair than the idea of a
Speaker 3: sort of like violent death or death in fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now on thinking about this though, hell
Speaker 1: is mud, that of course made me think of Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: and I was like I remember there being some mud
Speaker 1: in Dante's Inferno. Somewhere. You have varied all the different
Speaker 1: circles and bulgas, and in Inferno they have different characteristics,
Speaker 1: different flavors. And indeed there is a circle in Dante's
Speaker 1: Inferno where there is mud. It is the third Circle.
Speaker 1: And I had to I had to look it back
Speaker 1: up again. I was looking in my translation by Durling
Speaker 1: and Martinez, and this is just a couple of lines
Speaker 1: from it. Quote, I am in the third Circle with
Speaker 1: the eternal cursed, cold and heavy rain. Its rule and
Speaker 1: quality never change. Great hailstones, filthy water, and snow poured
Speaker 1: down through the dark air. The earth stinks that received them.
Speaker 1: It's also the realm of Cerberus. But when quote the
Speaker 1: great worm opens his mouth to growl at Dante and Virgil,
Speaker 1: Virgil throws dirt into the monster's three mouths, and the
Speaker 1: monster gobbles it all down.
Speaker 3: M delicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. As Durling and Martinez explained in the notes
Speaker 1: in my translation of Inferno, the mud of food connection
Speaker 1: is key here. Quote. The rain, hail and snow and
Speaker 1: resulting mud are versions of the food and drink to
Speaker 1: which the gluttons were addicted in the last analysis, merely
Speaker 1: visions of the elements earth and water.
Speaker 3: Sort of portraying the like the worthlessness of the pleasures
Speaker 3: of gluttony, that like you just sort of concerning yourself
Speaker 3: with material rubbish rather than having your mind on heavenly things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also like the sense that it's all mud anyway,
Speaker 1: or even that it's it's all excrement. There's also a
Speaker 1: lot of dog imagery here. Obviously we have Cerberus with
Speaker 1: the three dog heads, and then we also have pig
Speaker 1: imagery thrown in and also mud excrement comparisons as well.
Speaker 3: Hey, pig imagery bringing us back to pig mud wallowing,
Speaker 3: which actually turns out to be a quite clever adaptation
Speaker 3: of nature.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so brief, brief departure into hell, but coming back
Speaker 1: to the surface world and the hell we make for
Speaker 1: ourselves there. Coming back to war as what explains that
Speaker 1: the mere challenge of moving around and mud can lead
Speaker 1: to exhaustion for the individual soldier, and this exhaustion can
Speaker 1: prove fatal. Can also hold true for pack animals as well.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you're in a very muddy situation
Speaker 1: and you're having to just move through mud, constantly or
Speaker 1: for a lengthy period of time, like that's just making
Speaker 1: every step so much harder. And there's a good chance
Speaker 1: you're already doing something exhausting, that is mentally trying, that
Speaker 1: you're already under a great deal of stress. And now
Speaker 1: each each time you try and lift your boot your
Speaker 1: foot out of the mud, more effort is required of you. Now.
Speaker 1: There have been efforts to improve footwear for soldiers at
Speaker 1: different time periods, such as having wider essentially kind of
Speaker 1: like plank bottom shoes that the US Army experimented with
Speaker 1: special mud boots and shoes in World War Two and
Speaker 1: then again in Vietnam. Would include several prototype photos here.
Speaker 1: Joe I included a screen cap here for you to
Speaker 1: look at these. They're not much to look at, but
Speaker 1: you can see they're like basically different designs of wide
Speaker 1: flat surfaces that would be scrapped or somehow toach the
Speaker 1: bottom of boots.
Speaker 3: Some of them look like huge wooden hoofs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do. And you know, I'm not certain because
Speaker 1: it's just the subtitle. He was very brief, but I
Speaker 1: guess it's possible that some of these could be for horses.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe the round one that's kind of
Speaker 1: hoof shaped is for a horse. I don't know, huh,
Speaker 1: because certainly, you know, horses would be of concern. And well,
Speaker 1: not all of these military engagements. Of some of them,
Speaker 1: Tracked vehicles like tanks and half tracks can perform better
Speaker 1: in some muddy situations, but a tract vehicles certainly can
Speaker 1: get stuck in the mud. As Wood points out, they
Speaker 1: can also slide out of control through the mud and
Speaker 1: down muddy hillsides as well. Tracks can spread weight out
Speaker 1: more evenly than tires, So that's one of the appeals
Speaker 1: of having tracks or half tracked designs in these vehicles.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're still not perfect. And then if you
Speaker 1: throw trenches into the mix, as it was encountered in
Speaker 1: the First World War, especially, you know that one of
Speaker 1: these big tanks can get stuck in the trench, and
Speaker 1: therefore you need, like other vehicles to lay down temporary
Speaker 1: bridges so that the tanks can make it across those trenches. Now,
Speaker 1: coming back to health though human health and mud, Wood
Speaker 1: also points out that extremely muddy conditions often lead to
Speaker 1: deteriorating sanitary conditions. Wood points out that wounded soldiers rarely
Speaker 1: reach medical facilities clean. So then this makes sense. You're
Speaker 1: in muddy conditions, you're going to enter into the medical
Speaker 1: facilities muddy and that. And also it means that oftentimes
Speaker 1: it's not just like any kind of pure mud, that
Speaker 1: mud is going to be mixed with all manner of
Speaker 1: unhygienic ingredients from the war zone. Muddy conditions also severely
Speaker 1: hinder the ability to just evacuate the wounded or to
Speaker 1: have medical personnel come in to deal with people who
Speaker 1: are wounded.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, in addition to all these general concerns, it
Speaker 3: seems like I have memories of reading about, at least
Speaker 3: interpretations of some decisive battles in history where mud played
Speaker 3: a role in how the battle turned out, or at
Speaker 3: least some historians believed that it did. Like I seem
Speaker 3: to recall the Battle of Agincore as one example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Battle of Agincore is a big one. This
Speaker 1: is from fourteen fifteen English victory over the French in
Speaker 1: one Hundred Years War. The French had to advance heavily
Speaker 1: armored knights through very muddy conditions. And the key to this,
Speaker 1: too is that this was transient mud. I've read this
Speaker 1: was these were not muddy conditions that were expected. This
Speaker 1: was I believe there was like a huge storm, so
Speaker 1: they weren't prepared for it. They marched anyway, and they
Speaker 1: end up sinking in the mud, especially if they've been
Speaker 1: knocked off their horse, easily immobilized once unhorsed in all
Speaker 1: that heavy armor. And it's said that, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the French knights drowned in the mud there.
Speaker 3: And this seems to be kind of a pattern that
Speaker 3: emerges in history, like it is bad to be caught
Speaker 3: as the side in a battle that is trying to
Speaker 3: advance through the mud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, all these factors are going to
Speaker 1: come into play. It's going to slow you down, this
Speaker 1: stuff's going to get stuck, and then when the battle
Speaker 1: turns against you, it's going to turn even worse. A
Speaker 1: couple of other examples that come up frequently. There's the
Speaker 1: mud March from the Battle of Fredericksburg eighteen sixty two
Speaker 1: in the American Civil War. This was on the Union side,
Speaker 1: General Burnside's troops and it ended up having to go
Speaker 1: through some really muddy conditions and a number of key
Speaker 1: artillery pieces and wagons became trapped in the mud. Delaying
Speaker 1: the Union advance, and this was due to like sudden
Speaker 1: stormy conditions that were not expected that made it difficult
Speaker 1: to move these key pieces. Now, the Battle of the
Speaker 1: Son from nineteen sixteen, this is another example that comes
Speaker 1: up now. This one, though, is an inconclusive battle of
Speaker 1: the First World War between German forces and some British
Speaker 1: and French forces. Entailed massive casualties on both sides in
Speaker 1: very muddy trench warfare conditions. So not a situation where
Speaker 1: like the mud gave either side an advantage, but just
Speaker 1: made it seem to contribute it to it just being
Speaker 1: like an awful, awful battle for both sides. Now, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned already, like muddy conditions, muddy trench warfare, it's
Speaker 1: like just kind of you instantly picture it when you're
Speaker 1: thinking of World War One in particular, or perhaps like
Speaker 1: Germany's in the Eastern Front and World War Two, and
Speaker 1: both of these are theaters of war that have been
Speaker 1: recreated in various films over the years and TV shows
Speaker 1: and the like. But also you just tend to see
Speaker 1: a lot of muddy war conditions and muddy battlefields and
Speaker 1: especially muddy conditions after the battle. In other films and
Speaker 1: also in video games. And I had never really thought
Speaker 1: of this before, but I was reading a little bit
Speaker 1: about this on the blog The Excellent Blog, a collection
Speaker 1: of Unmitigated Pedantry by historian Brett Devereaux. I've referred to
Speaker 1: this blog a few times because it's a great read.
Speaker 1: He does things like, you know, analyze the warfare in
Speaker 1: The Lord of the Rings, both the books and the
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson movies and so forth, does a lot of
Speaker 1: talking about Roman military, so.
Speaker 3: It's like a military historian writing about topics nerds would
Speaker 3: be interested in.
Speaker 1: Yes, very much so. So if you're into a lot
Speaker 1: of these nerdy settings, or you're into ancient warfare and
Speaker 1: medieval warfare and so forth, I definitely recommend it. But
Speaker 1: I was reading one of his posts where he points
Speaker 1: out that that, yeah, you see a lot of films
Speaker 1: and especially video games that depict the aftermath of pre
Speaker 1: modern battles as being just muddy and bloody messes. And
Speaker 1: he points out that this doesn't seem to be the norm,
Speaker 1: you mean, in reality, In reality, yes, it was not.
Speaker 3: Always just a muddy mess after a after an ancient
Speaker 3: or medieval battle took place.
Speaker 1: Right Now, that's not to say that you don't have
Speaker 1: the examples we're discussing where you have definite muddy places
Speaker 1: that either erupt because there's a great like it's a
Speaker 1: road where there's a lot, a great deal of travel,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes muddy, and then you have transient
Speaker 1: mud in the mix. You have muddy conditions popping up
Speaker 1: because of extreme storm activity that's taken place. But he
Speaker 1: points out that if you just have like a normal
Speaker 1: grassy environment field somewhere where there's a battle taking place,
Speaker 1: it's not like a single battle taking place there over
Speaker 1: the course of a day or even a couple of days,
Speaker 1: is going to just wear down all the vegetation and
Speaker 1: turn it into mud. In particular, he points to photographic
Speaker 1: evidence from the American Civil War that shows that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have a large army, say, moving through an area,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to kill off the grass and
Speaker 1: muddy things up over the course of a single day
Speaker 1: or a couple of days. It's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that occurs due to longed traffic, prolonged activity, and also
Speaker 1: environmental conditions thrown in there as well. So you know,
Speaker 1: all of those things you see with like a trench
Speaker 1: warfare environment. But it's not just going to pop up
Speaker 1: over the course of a couple of days because an
Speaker 1: army moved through a place, or even because two armies
Speaker 1: clashed at a particular location.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so maybe when when people are dug in and
Speaker 3: there's there's frequent foot traffic or heavy machinery moving around,
Speaker 3: or when an area is subject to prolonged shelling or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I see the appeal of it in
Speaker 1: cinematic portrayals and dramatic portrayals of the aftermath of war,
Speaker 1: because it's like, we have been bloodied, people are suffering
Speaker 1: and wounded, and it makes sense that that you sort
Speaker 1: of heighten that feeling that the earth itself, the world
Speaker 1: is wounded by all of this, like the wrongness of
Speaker 1: everything that has occurred here. So like, I like that connection,
Speaker 1: and I think I think it certainly plays well. But
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, a fun or an interesting commentary
Speaker 1: on this to sort of put it in, you know,
Speaker 1: look at it within the perspective of how battles seem
Speaker 1: to have actually impacted or not impacted the environment.
Speaker 3: So it's not necessarily the battle of a single day
Speaker 3: that can turn a place muddy, but it's more like
Speaker 3: the prolonged human presence, which maybe why you can see
Speaker 3: places become very muddy if they're also like the site
Speaker 3: of a festival or fair grounds. How muddy that can get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets very muddy very quickly. You see this
Speaker 1: with places that even you know are more or less permanent.
Speaker 1: You know that they're having to continually figure out how
Speaker 1: figuring out how the water flows and how to keep
Speaker 1: mud from becoming a problem. But yeah, it's it's you
Speaker 1: do see it at festivals a lot. I guess that
Speaker 1: what the nineties Woodstock oh an example of really muddy
Speaker 1: conditions and people getting into the mud and it also
Speaker 1: becoming sort of a hell escape in that particular encounter.
Speaker 1: But there was also mud at the original Woodstock, and
Speaker 1: you know, they're these scenes of sort of innocent, hippy
Speaker 1: enjoyment of muddy conditions, you know, slattering yourself with mud.
Speaker 1: So you know, being covered in mud and trapped in
Speaker 1: mud is not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: in if you're also engaging in a bloody battle, I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone's going to be a fan. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're looking at the clock here and we realize we
Speaker 1: have to end Mud Part four, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: we did want to get in a little bit at
Speaker 1: least into the discussion of mud and religion. One of
Speaker 1: one of the most obvious aspects of this being that
Speaker 1: so many religions, especially ancient religions and mythologies, involves some
Speaker 1: idea of humans being made for mud or clay or dirt,
Speaker 1: but particularly clay and mud, you know, very much leaning
Speaker 1: into the idea of a creator deity or deities as
Speaker 1: being potters are that are molding us and perhaps baking
Speaker 1: us in making us what we are. But then we
Speaker 1: also had some other stuff to say about that, so well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll have to come back to this
Speaker 1: in some form. I'm not saying we're gonna come back
Speaker 1: and do Mud Part five, because we already said we
Speaker 1: wouldn't do that, but we did leave the door open
Speaker 1: for various mud creatures to slather in. So yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: discuss it off Mike and come back. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to go and close it up, but we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there if you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on just mud in general, experience with mud, experiences
Speaker 1: with muddy conditions, mud, in military science fiction mud, and
Speaker 1: in military history. All of it is fair game right in.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from your reminder that are
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