Doomed to Fail - Ep 256: Don't Breathe - The Great Smog of London

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

In the not-so-distant past, 1952 to be exact, London experienced several days of pea-soup colored, deadly fog. The combination of coal, diesel engines, cold weather, and an anticyclone (which is a new word for us) ended up causing 12,000 deaths.   Dig out your kn95 masks and join us for The Great Smog of London.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. Then Taylor, we are alive and on the radio. Not really, but how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. It is exceedingly and oppressively hot in Texas. Gross. And so, yeah, the need to be inside is overwhelming. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm sure. What's going over there?

Nothing is nice. It's a little cloudy. We were in Big Bear this weekend, which is like a little bit cooler than it is here. But on the lake, it was really pretty. It was nice. I guess, I mean, I just said it's kind of cool and cloudy and it's 94, so what do I know? I mean, that's still an improvement from here. I think it was 106 yesterday. Ew, gross.

It was 94 by you too. But you have the humids. We got, I don't know. I think the humidity mostly hits in the Houston area here. It's just dry, terribleness. I was literally out at a nursery looking for plants that I could put up on the ground and trying to figure out what could actually stand this

because then you have the swing in wintertime to 15 degrees for a couple weeks. And so, yeah, it's not the easiest, but whatever. It is what it is. I'm sure they know. Someone could have figured it out. Paradise of Barbados. is what I settled on, which are beautiful, beautiful, very, very large shrubs that have incredible plants that look like...

Nice. Yellow and orange and red. It's really cool. So, anyways, I'll settle on that eventually. Perfect. You want to introduce us? Yes. Hello, everyone.

Welcome to doomed to fail. We bring historical disasters and failures, and I'm Taylor joined by Fars. Yes. We are here to talk about something. historical and as a caveat i as we talked about on the last episode i've not seen the odyssey when i'm going tonight i'm preparing myself for taylor i'm sure it's going to be great because like i said christopher nolan i mean i love troy and this is like an extension sort of of that it literally is not that's just like so hilarious but like someone else said that this was like

a sequel to troy and it's like no so so this is like the prequel to troy then but whatever No, but I mean, no, it's not. It is after Troy, but it's not like the movies aren't comparable. At all. Whatever. Whatever. Brad Pitt's going to be doing this thing. It's fine.

I also feel like you don't know how gay Achilles is when you talk about Brad Pitt as Achilles. Is he gay? Super gay. I didn't know that. I did not know that. But, but like, regardless, like, I'm going to go see it. And I am really, like, I'm excited, but I'm also nervous because, man, And three hours for me is like...

I think you're going to be fine. Where are you sitting? Are you sitting on the edge so you can pee if you have to? I don't know. Rachel got the tickets. I did see someone, because I know last time when we talked about it, you were like, there's no one Greek in it. And then I saw a Greek person saying, which is actually a lot of sense.

In Greece, even for normal length movies, they have an intermission. And someone comes into the theater and sells you more food. And you can go outside and soak a cigarette and then come back in. And I'm like, that makes a lot of sense. That should be the way they do it here. know? Yeah. Like, I feel like that'd be great. Me and Rachel were trying to take bets on how many times we're going to get up and pee. I think we settled on at least four times. Yeah. I mean, there used to be an app called RunPee. Do you remember that? And it would tell you when you can go when you should go? That's brilliant. That's brilliant. You'd be like, oh, I went at like hour 15 and then it would tell you this is what you missed. You know, and then you can run back. That would be, that'd be really cool. Well, can you tell me, like, when should I go? Like, is there some, is there some crescendo I should be paying? attention to so that I don't go pee then?

I don't know. It's sort of like a time vortex. Okay. You know, like I couldn't tell you when stuff was happening. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to have to learn.

You know what, with Chris for Nolan movies, I always watch them 17 times. So like, whatever. If I miss it this time, I'm sure I'll see it again. Yeah. You'll see it again. I like it. Taylor, you are going to share your story with us today.

I am. Are you ready? I am. Okay. So remember last week or whatever when you couldn't go outside in the north, the Midwest because of the air quality? Right. So just to put us in space and time, we're in July 26 and there was there is probably still some terrible wildfires in Canada, which made the air in like New York City and Chicago like really bad in a lot in a lot of those areas like so bad in a way that like it reminds me of.

of Chernobyl because that, you know, the air quality index on your phone goes to 500. So I heard several people say like the air quality was 500 beds. Like right now mine is 64, which is fine. Um, but it was way more than that. It was like in the thousands, but the monitor only goes to 500. You know what I mean? The member in Chernobyl when they were like, oh, this has like this much radiation, but like it was so much more, it's just that the thing used to measure it didn't even go that high, you know. So it was, it was really bad in a lot of America and Canada this past a couple weeks and a lot of people like couldn't, couldn't breathe, shouldn't go outside, stayed inside. It was like, you know, you couldn't see the sun in Chicago for like a day.

All sorts of crazy stuff where it was happening because of the smoke. It smelled like a campfire everywhere, you know, really, really bad. So I have a story about a time when you couldn't breathe in a city. and a lot of very bad things happened. Sweet. This is the chlorine thing in Texas? No, it is the great smog of London from 1952. All right. That sounds equally bad.

So it feels like, I feel like it should be older than 1952 because when I think of London, I think of like Jack the Ripper Victorian times in very smoggy and foggy and foggy and coal stuff. But it, you know, extends obviously like throughout like the 50s and 60s and into, you know, more recent times. But this is post-war London. It is December 1952. And as a direct result of this incident, about 12,000 people are going to die from it. Wow. Which is a lot. It is one of the deadliest air pollution disasters in world history. So it definitely like made its mark. So let's talk about cities and how smoky they are. So obviously like if you could go back in time to like like a city of any time.

I feel like the smells would be like the first thing that you noticed. You know, you'd be like, oh my God, there's like horse poop everywhere. There's like burning fires. There's burning coal. There's just things that like,

right and bodies in the river. Yeah. Yeah, people are pooping everywhere. You know, they're throwing their chamber pots out the window. Just like, just like smells that like you don't get in a modern American city for sure,

like a modern European city. So London had been, using coal as a source of like energy and heat since the 1200s which I would have thought it would be later. I don't know why. I don't know when coal was like invented or found. But they used it in like the early 1,200s. It was called sea coal because it was like imported from other places. So it came in on chips. And then there were they were the coal. They'd use the coal. They'd use it for not as much domestic things. Like I feel like you have seen like in media in like movies or TV or something like someone getting a coal delivery, right? And they, like, open up the thing on the ground and then, like,

a truck pours up with your coal in the other go to a coal in your basement. Can you picture that? Like, do you know? I can picture it. But the, the thing I think about is the ice man delivering your ice. That's actually the thing that I go to, which is like a weird thing that people need it all the time that they don't anymore. Yeah. Yeah. My aunt, Luanne, had this old house in Chicago, and it had a milk door that was like a little door you could open on one side. It was kind of insulated, and the milkman could put the milk in it, and then he would close it and you'd open on your side and take the milk out. It's so cool.

You know? But yeah, so yeah. So the people were using coal in like the 1200s, but for really high heat activities, like smelting iron and kilns for like making ceramics, things like that. And then by the 1280s, there are recorded complaints of there being too much coal smoke in the air and people not being able to breathe. So that's like pretty early and the coal, it was already a problem. In 1306, King Edward I first issued a proclamation to stop burning coal, but people were still going to use it.

And by the 1500s, it's the main fuel in London. So London is like exactly what you think it is. It's like smoky and foggy and foggy because of the water and then smoky because of the coal and all the things. Gas started to have like gas lamps and things like that in like the 1800s. And then in like 1882, there were coal-fueled electricity. city plants. So it's not just people like burning coal in their house. It's also like these huge industrial places burning like a shit ton of coal, you know, and that that creates a lot of pollution. And also this is like, in 1952, I imagine there's still like a fair amount of like reconstruction

happening in in London. You know, they're still like they're building new things and there's all kinds of stuff happening because so much of it was destroyed. So people are used to it. It's foggy because like, Duh, London's foggy, that's its whole jam. There's songs about it. Sweeney Todd, you know. And then there's the coal. So people are used to it.

It's like, this is the way it is. But it's Friday, December 5th, 1952, and people wake up and it's foggy, per usual. It's cold and it's foggy. They light the coal fires and they go about their days. And it's been a cold winter, which I'll talk about in a second because I have some weather things to tell you. but it's been a cold winter, and the coal that they're using is not the best coal.

Because another thing from World War II is they obviously have a lot of debts to pay. So they are mining coal in England now, up to like 700,000 people in the UK work in coal mines. So it's a big thing that they export, but all of the better coal, they're selling and exporting to help pay off the war debts. So people in their homes are using like crappier coal, even worse for you. Really pain. Probably like us. Because I remember like getting all the shifts or before we got in and all of that. And like, you know, we set a bunch of our young men over there.

So I'm guessing us. Right. Yeah. Maybe France. A little bit. So what the coal is doing and putting into the air is like chemicals and things that you should not breathe. And like I'm obviously not a scientist, but things like hydrochloric acid and sulfur dioxide, like stuff that like you know better than to breathe. is like in it's like hanging in the air from this coal that people are burning.

So um, another thing that is different around this time. So it's like we're burning shitty coal. It's really cold. It's colder than usual. And there's no wind. So we've talked about like, we talked about like the great fire of London and like the great Chicago fire and those, those things like there was a lot of wind. And this is no wind.

So like the stuff is just kind of hanging in the air. Um, there's also other things like there's diesel buses. they had an electric train around London, but they abandoned it. Like they couldn't afford to like keep it up. So they had big diesel buses and then cars and industrial chimneys and just all this stuff. Just like the air is just poison pretty much. They were used to it again and it was called pea soup because it was a green. Yeah.

Like it couldn't like you just nothing good is going to happen when it's like a really thick, dense green smog literally everywhere. So things will happen where like you cannot see very far at all. So the buses that were moving on this first Saturday, they had to have like a guy stand in front of it with like a lantern to tell the bus where to go because you couldn't see anything. Like it was just so thick and so dense. And they were waiting for it to lift because it usually lifts by like if you live by the ocean, you know, you wake up and there's fog.

Like how San Diego has a great PR firm who makes people think that they have nice. weather, but they really don't. They have fog until like 3 p.m. and then it's sunny. I kind of like that. Well, if you, that's what you're expecting, then great. But if you've sold the lie that San Diego has nice weather, then you'll be disappointed. But so you can see like maybe a meter in front of you. So this also was going to cause a bunch of car accidents, obviously. You know, you can't see anything. And like the way that it works also, like the light doesn't travel in that kind of smog.

Can you picture like any kind of light in smoke? No, it's not illuminating anything. You just can kind of see it in its ball, but it's not helping you do anything. So people are trying to get into car accidents. They can't really see you. They're like, okay, what's going on? And so because it's been so cold,

here's what's happening. It's called an anti-cyclone. Have you ever heard of that? No. So an anticyclone is heavy air, hovering over a place, and slowly sinking down and spreading. So usually, you know, hot air rises.

Like, I feel like that's everyone that's at. So hot air rises. But in this case, because of the anticyclone, the hot air, which contains all the smog, which is at like street level, cannot rise because this really heavy layer of air is on top of it, like kind of cushioning it on top of it. So because of that, all of that stuff is going to get stuck underneath it. And they estimated that it's like 100 to 200 meters high of fog and then this anticyclone heavy air above it.

So you really can't, you can't like go up to get away from it. It's just like it's really high. Does that kind of make sense? It does. I was picturing the scene in the fog when it first goes into the city. Yeah. And it just kind of goes low and spreads fall. Like that's the atmosphere.

Yeah, it's exactly like that. And if you have an anticyclone and you don't have. have like the fog and the smoke, it's actually like a pretty nice day because it, what it's doing is it pushes the air down. So it's not very windy. And there's no clouds because the clouds are like the heavy thing, you know. So the cloud, the air that would make clouds can't rise any higher. So you just have like a temperate kind of fine day unless there's something bad to be

trapped there. Right. Right. So all of us trapped there and it's not going away, which causes a loop where people are burning more coal because they're colds and they can't see anything, you know? Yeah. So like you're not going to think and or want to do anything that's going to dissipate the smoke in the area because you need to be warm and you need to cook food and you need to do

these things. So you can't stop doing that because you need it to live. And it's making it worse also at the same time. So again, just like there's smoke, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrocric acid, acid. more like, it says, 14 tons of fluorine compounds. It's nothing that you want to, nothing that you want to breathe. Like just so much bad stuff in the air.

Is that just stuff that's always in coal burn off? Yeah. Like, you don't want to stand in front of like a coal thing and like breathe there. Yeah. Got it. But good question, because it's worse also this day because of the fog, because it's going to bond with the wet particles. And like breathing in wet.

poison is always worse, you know. So that makes it much worse for your lungs and for like all of the things that are, um, that are going on. And it's not going away. So Friday, December 2nd, it's foggy, but it's London. So people are like, okay, it's a little weird. Like we can't really see very far, but like it'll lift eventually. By Saturday, the smog is in people's houses. Like, it's coming like through like, people are still going places. So they're opening the door and it's coming in. Like they are people who are going to the movie theater and they can't see the screen because the swog gets there, you know, um, um, I mean, it every time I burnt something in the house.

I was going to live with this now now for the next two days. Exactly. And you can like see it hanging, you know? Like it's like that. So it's literally everywhere. People are wearing masks. You can see them in pictures. People wearing like, you know, masks to kind of breathe because it's still trying to move around.

But it's getting worse. On Sunday in East London, people can't see their feet. Like you just can't see anything. Like you're just absolutely enveloped in this smog. Taylor. Yeah. Can I tell you something that you probably haven't thought of that's kind of crazy? There were still probably half those people who were inside or outside, probably inside, given the year it was, smoking cigarettes.

Oh, you're right. I haven't thought about that. A flammable liquid inside your lungs, you're just like... A thousand percent. That's... Yes. I used to... There was a couple times in my life that I went to a hookabar and smoked cigarettes at the same time, and I feel like that's probably a similar feeling.

It's like, why am I soaking hookah and cigarettes at the same time? What is wrong with me? Yeah. Yeah, I didn't even think of that. And because of that, people are getting, like, obviously sick. Like, they're coughing. They're getting sick. And they cannot get help because the help cannot find you.

You know, like emergency services cannot get to you. Like, no one can get to your house to help you. Police are, like, trying to do some stuff. They're, like, riding their bikes around. But, like, if you try to drive, like, an ambulance, you'd hit a bunch of things on your way there. You just couldn't do it. It finally lifted on Tuesday, December 9th.

The smog was from Saturday to Tuesday. When it lifted and they were able to assess the damage and see what happened to people, they estimated that immediately there were about 4,000 deaths from it. And that's mostly from people who had influenza or pneumonia. And that just made everything so much worse. and they like, exfixated. Like, there are, there were reports, like, during that weekend of cows exfixating in, like, nearby farms, you know? Like, tons of animals, I'm sure died, like, just like on the streets.

Like, I'm sure of your rats died, you know. And so people, you know, died because of that. So they get that number because, like, the weeks before that, about 2,000 people died in London because people are dying in London all the time, you know. Like, in every major city, you have, like, thousands of deaths a week just because that people are doing all sorts of things, like getting old and dying. But there were just like so much more after after this, people who died like directly from these lung infections.

And they were the people who you would like imagine like older people, infants and babies, people who had like asthma and bronchitis. Like they just died in their houses because they couldn't breathe. Anyone who, you know, a lot of people couldn't even leave like the really bad places because even if you have the means to leave, you can't see anything. Yeah.

You know, so you cannot leave. So that's what a lot of people died from, from that as well. You know, it would, you know, just like basically you're just like exceasing in your house. The 12,000 people dying number comes from the Ministry of Health from December 1952 to March 1953. There were 13,500 deaths above the expected level of people who are dying, like, of these things, like chronic bronch, which is a terrible way to go. You know, we're just going to cough for four months until you die.

So a lot of people will have that. So the Ministry of Health was like, okay, what do we do? It's a lot of things. And so they decided to like spread their responsibility, you know, and be like, you know, it's these industrial things. It's like, you know, it's the weather, but it's also like you're doing it in your house. But you can't just like stop people from burning coal. It's part of the economy.

And it's like cheap and people need to be warm and all the things. So it was going to take a while for things to like fully change. They did do things like we'll do little warnings and try to make people feel like we're doing something, but there really wasn't much that they felt that they could do. Two years later, they had a committee chaired by Sir Hugh Beaver called the Beaver Committee. And he basically talked about like what the damage had been. And there's a lot of people who had died obviously. But another really like important like note is that smoke damage was costing the UK 250,

million pounds a year in property damage in general, just because there was so much of it, and it was like eroding things on top of everything else. So in 1956, Parliament passed the Clean Air Act, which prohibited dark smoke, which is like dark really like shitty coal, new controls on grit and dust, new furnaces to operate as smokelessly as possible. And then like local smoke control areas. And it reminds me a little bit of like, you know how like in California, every new house by a certain day it's going to have solar power, you know? But it's not easy to get everybody to just like

convert the way they do their power. So it's kind of like a similar thing. Yeah. Every house has to have solar power in California? No, every new house. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? So it's kind of a regulation like that where you're like,

okay, well, if you're building a brand new house, you need to have a better stove that has less like emissions. But if you have an old house, it's harder to make people change, you know? Yeah, of course. So it's like slow going. In 1962, there was a similar fog in London where hundreds of people died. So a little bit of less. It was slow progress, but definitely better than, you know, than it's been.

And one thing that it did that has been helpful is it led to some long-term studies on, like, pollution and atmospheric health for, like, kids, you know, like kids who grew up in an area, like in a city, like, you know, kids who grew up in in the middle of a city have higher cases of asthma than kids who grow up in farms, you know? Yeah, I would assume as much. And like, but like that hadn't really been like more allergies. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of like people who were kids during the great smog of London who like later developed like respiratory problems probably because of that. Just like after 9-11 and all those people have cancer, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Like very like a very similar thing that you have like in your lungs. Um, there is one more thing is there is a book that I did not read, but is sounds fun called death in the air. It is about a serial killer. And he was active during the fog, but like, not primarily during the fog, but, um, like, in like the 40s and 50s. And what he would do is he would bring women to his apartment and he would gas them in like one of the women that he did it to. He like, she, she like had a cough and he was like, oh, I have this like new medicine that you can breathe in like a inhaler. You should try it. She came into his house and it was really just like coal emissions and like household gas. And then she would, they would pass out. And then he would pass out. And then he would. And then he would pass out. And then. And then. he would actually assault them and murder them. Would you pass out if you just breathe in coal? I guess you would.

Yeah. Because oxygen wouldn't get able to get through your lungs. Yeah. I think it's just a way to kill someone. Yeah. I think it's just like carbon dioxide, just like breathing that in and it's bad. You're reminding me of how, you know, I have that cowboy pool that at this point is just a mosquito hatchery in my backyard. I every now and then would go out there and put like this like shock thing inside of it,

which was like this chemicals to kill all the algae and clean the water and all that stuff. But it's like really, really bad. Like it's like super, super toxic and high quantities. And every small time I pour it in, like to this day, if I pour it in, I'll pour it in. And I can see the wind catching some of the dust and going into my nose. I'm like, oh my God. I just feel like all that in. Exactly.

You feel like throw it in there and run like a grenade, you know. Nothing to do with this. So bad. Let's start. thing very fun yeah uh it will be fascinating to see how yeah it's human progress right like you burn cold and you adapt to something new and you hopefully move hopefully move past it so yeah yeah and i just i mean i just the stuff that in the with those forest fires it's just so scary too because it's like you can't you can't go anywhere you know you just you just have to rid that in and

like, you know, what is that doing to you? That's always been my most pervasive fear in life. One of them, I mean, I have a lot of fears. Actually, I'm scared of a lot of things. I think about it. But one of them is, man, what if I'm ever not here? And it's as hot as it is now. And like, something happens and something goes up, like some trees or something.

And like the dogs are here. Like, it's an ongoing fear of mine. But whatever. No, I mean, that's so scary. And like, even like after the fires and Alice, L.A. like last year, I was like trying to understand it. I was talking to my friend Margo and I was like, I don't understand like how a high school can burn down. Like a whole house can be like nothing. Like where is everything? And she was like, it's all in the air. I'm like, I know, but that's just so crazy, you know? Like, it's hard to imagine like everything just turning into smoke. Yeah. You know? And then breathing that in and then how how bad that is. So I'm sure like there will be studies about that. And. and other like big wildfire incidents and stuff, like ongoing now to be like, you know,

what happens to the kids who grew up around that, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I would assume, I don't know, you guys were doing it right. You're kind of out of the city doing your own thing. Like, that's probably the best way to have kids or raise kids at least. Yeah, I mean, like we, it's like, you know, there's still, but I mean, like the pollution is still, like city pollution.

Because Florence absolutely is better with her asthma. that she's not in the city. Yeah, of course. Because, like, you remember, we lived, like, on that big street, which is, which was, like, cool. Yeah, which was cool, but also, like, there were cars going by constantly, you know, and, like, all of that.

So there's, there's, you know, she's, she's much better being out here. But then we do have, like, go outside and it smells like fire. And she said they've had a couple days off school because of smoke. She feels like a more, going to be more of a new normal in, like, a weird way. Yeah, it was, like, right before we moved to L.A. I think L. had this reputation of like this insane amount of smog um yeah but i i feel like that was like done with by the time we got there i think it was like yeah i think it's been worse yeah i think it's like a

i think it might be like a leaded gasoline thing you know and like yeah and yeah i think you can sometimes so when you if you drive from my house to l.a you kind of like go over a hill then you can see it see like downtown l.a like for over the head you're hill and sometimes you can see the smog just like sitting on it yeah you know but but i do think that like the image i have in my head of la in like the 80s is worse yeah yeah for sure i mean of every city rightfully um well that's cool that's fun how did you go with this topic um god i have no idea i don't know how i got here i think i was thinking about like because i was thinking about like the fires and then similarly like vulc I was looking up like other like big change disaster things and I was actually okay I remember I got here because I was looking up the odyssey because I was like okay like what happened around this time because then you know it's like a transition between like different ages of the world and like something that happened that might have made like some big global changes was of course a volcano and I was like no one wants to hear any more volcano stories from me so I

So I was like, what else like blocks the sun, you know, and makes it hard to breathe? And I think that's how I got here. Sweet. That's fun. Well, thank you for sharing. Do we have any listener mail? I did. Morgan is going to try to join us in Lerner League.

So that's exciting. Oh, I mean, I forgot to say, and I haven't said it in a while, but like if you email us your address, I'll mail you a sticker. I just did some cleaning. I have a ton of them. So doomed to fell pod at gmail. com. So send me your address and I'll mail you a sticker for free. I don't care.

WDWFod at gmail.com, free sticker. What if they send hate mail? I'm not accepting email. Ah, there you go. It's already, it's already filtered out. So don't even try. I'm not accepting any criticism constructive or not. So it's healthy.

Very, very healthy. Not accepted. Well, yeah, write to us, student at fault pod at gmail.com for a fun sticker and a note or find us on the social at Doom to Fall Pod. Tell your friends, so your family, so your loved ones.

And that's it, Taylor. Anything else? Yeah. Great. All right, we'll go out and cut it off. Bye-bye.