Doomed to Fail - Can you recommend a Natural Disaster podcast?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to doomed to fail. My name is Taylor, and along with my co-host Fars, we bring you stories of history's most notorious disasters and epic failures. And for the next two weeks, I'm going to highlight some natural disaster stories that we did. So first, let's start with the OG listeners will know, our seven-part series on volcanoes. So episode, and I'm going to list episodes in order now. They're all going to be in the show notes. You can always go back and find them and then for the volcano and fire stories they also have a omnibus episode where it's like five hours long if you really wanted to listen to the whole thing so episode 38 volcanoes part one it's about mount toba so this is the volcano that erupted like 70,000 years ago and we are

Starting point is 00:00:49 all born from the humans that survived and the Neanderthals that we hooked up with and then were that that's it that's humanity so that was like 70,000 years ago and then episode 42 is on pompey so you learn about how pompey became one of the um you know most interesting archaeological sites ever um and did you know that napoleon's sister is one of the people who was really a big part of the original excavation of pompe because it was lost for like a thousand years thousands of years which is wild. Episode 46, Volcanoes part three, is about Mount Tambora. That is when we had the year, I thought, is summer.

Starting point is 00:01:36 So there was so much ash in the air from this that in Europe, the next summer, it was really gloomy, and that is when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, which is super interesting. And we talk about the Shelley's as well, so you can find an episode on them. Episode 51 is on Crackatoa, which is how we learned about tectonic plates, kind of for the first time. and by the way, we didn't really know or agree on them until the 1960s. But Crackatoa was really interesting because it was the first time that it was like international news. You could have international news very quickly because of the way the technology was working. So people knew about it right away, and it also really affected the weather globally.

Starting point is 00:02:14 Episode 59, Volcanoes Part 5 is about Montpellay. This one's fun. It's in the Caribbean, and it is, I mean, fun isn't when the pyroclastic flow starts coming down from the of the volcano giant scorpions and centipedes are coming into people's houses. They're batting them away, but try not to die and a lot of people die. It's super, super interesting. Episode 66, Part 6 is on the eruption of Mount St. Helens up in Washington State in the United States. That one was something that were, you know, several people died.

Starting point is 00:02:47 The news and thing was happening. There's an exciting story about, you know, people who were there doing work and then it happened really fast. And then actually since then, I've seen, well, since I did this episode, I've seen the X-Files, remember the one with Bradley, gosh, the guy from the West Wing, where he is like the volcano guy and he likes the girl and end up living in the volcano. It's kind of like that, but not really. Anyway, the book I read for episode 66 about Mount St. Helens, I emailed the author and told them that I had written, I done this episode, and they listened to it and wrote back and were very kind. And they were like, oh, my wife and I loved it. We laughed really hard. So that was fun. And then volcanoes wraps up with episode 71 about what will happen when Yellowstone erupts, which it will someday, and there'll be some mass extinctions. We talk about other mass extinctions and a lot of volcanoes on the moon and Mars and other places. So lots of volcanoes, parts 1 through 7 are available. Next, let's talk about other disasters that are natural disasters. Episode 73 is on the Salt and see, which I can kind of see from my house if I'm a mountain. And it is a man-made lake, sort of, that was supposed to be like a paradise town, and it is absolutely not. Episode 74 is

Starting point is 00:04:06 about the Great Fire of London, which starts our fire series. This one, you know, like all of the cities, as we will learn, that burn down in these huge massive fires, they are made of sticks and stones. You know, it's like they are just a tinderbox, everything is drawn, that year, it's windy, it's all those things, and you're in a society where, and this is in 1666, a society that you rely on fire. So obviously things are just like a tinderbox, exactly that. Episode 77 is about clouds. There's a couple times in history where people have been like stuck in a cloud or times that clouds like cause plane crashes and did different things and it's interesting and fun. So listen to that one.

Starting point is 00:04:54 is on the Great Chicago Fire. It was not the cow in the barn, but it did happen in front of the barn. And it also, the house didn't burn down, but the barn didn't, everything south of it. So super wild. Also, during the Great Chicago Fire, this is right after Lincoln was assassinated

Starting point is 00:05:12 a couple years later, and poor Mary Todd Lincoln was there and had to, like, evacuate. Just like, what a life, that poor lady. Episode 86 is on the Great San Francisco Earthquake, which is going to fold into episode 89 about the great San Francisco fire. So first came the earthquake, then came the fire.

Starting point is 00:05:30 In this case, it's not as much as, like, in London, it was a bakery. In Chicago, it was probably like a cigarette and then just, like, built and built and built. But with this one, once the earthquake came, then, like, gas lines were broken and, you know, cooking pots were pushed over, and the fire just kind of raged out of that disaster. episode 95 is about Mount Everest and all the people who've died on their way there if you die on your way there they leave you there um they just leave you there and there's this that purple yellow boots yellow boots the guy his body's up there and they're not certain who he is and i'm like check his pockets i don't get it and also in the news the other day there was

Starting point is 00:06:15 a long line to get the top of Mount Everest just like people are starving it anyway episode 99 is about the blue hole, which is a terrifying place to go underwater and dive and potentially die. Never. Never scoop a dive in a cave, guys. Just don't do it. Let's not do it. No. And speaking of caves, episode 136 is about John Jones. He's the guy who climbed into that cave in Utah and ended up like in the wrong place. And he did one of those things makes me nauseous where you have to get to the next part of the cave by like squishing your body in the tini as way possible. But he was in the wrong spot. And he was in the wrong spot. and ended up just like face down in a hole and he died there and he's still there his body's still

Starting point is 00:06:56 there they couldn't get him out um just absolutely awful then we go to episode 142 about limnick eruptions which is like gas that's underneath a lake that comes up and it's happened a couple times in africa where entire villages and livestock are killed just instantly by this rise or this like poisonous gas episode 163 another reason to stay out of the water is the terrifying story of Tom and Eileen Longergan. I'm so sorry, you guys. Who are the people who were on the scuba diving trip and they got left behind by the boat and no one found them? They just somehow, you know, either got eaten by sharks or drowned. It's the story in open water. That movie, it's terrifying. And it's a true story. And then let's talk about fires one more time because in the beginning of

Starting point is 00:07:48 2025 was obviously the big fire in Los Angeles area. And I learned about conservation camps, which is where incarcerated people can learn to fight fires. And I had some questions. It was being, I don't know, proposed in the media a couple different ways. And I'm like, should I be happy that they're given this opportunity? Is it exploitation? Like, what is it? What does it mean? So I learned a little bit about it where it came from where it started. And then I met a man on Instagram named Brett Crawford who is an incredible artist and he was a firefighter when he was incarcerated years ago and we talked about it and interviewed him and it was a great conversation so that is a bonus episode right after episode 164 and then we'll end with episode 196 which is

Starting point is 00:08:30 the Donner Party and this is a natural disaster if there ever was one they took the wrong turns could you imagine like I'm afraid driving a car on a mountain that has like like a thin road, you know, like in Malibu. Not in like Reno where you are driving up a mountain and it's not a road. It's just like a path and you have horses and they're dying because they're starving. And then you have this huge wagon that you eventually just kind of abandoned that you end up in this place by this lake and you have to live there because there's nowhere to go and everyone starves to death and it's freezing and it's snowing. When they go back to the place where the Donner Party lived, the trees are cut down like 12 feet above the ground. because that's how high the snow was.

Starting point is 00:09:15 You know, so, like, when it's snowing, you have the tree down, but you're not even, you're not even on the ground. Super sad. So, that's it. There's so many. I'm going to actually post some of these in our feed, so you can find them easier, but also please go back and find them. And then, yeah, for the next two weeks,

Starting point is 00:09:33 let's focus on some natural disasters, go back and learn something. If you have any questions or if you know of one that we should cover, let us know. Doomedepilopod at gmail.com. You can find us on all those social media. at the end. Bye. Thank you.

Doomed to Fail - Can you recommend a Natural Disaster podcast?

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