Doomed to Fail - Ep 59: Volcanoes Pt 5 - Mud, Fire, and Ash: The Mt. Pelée Eruption

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

We're back on Volcanoes! Join us for the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelée on the Caribbean Island of Martinique. An "important" mayoral election is scheduled in St. Pierre ("The Paris of the West Indies") for May 11th, and the Government wants it to go off without a hitch. Unfortunately, Mt. Pelée has other ideas. Starting on April 23rd, ash starts falling from the sky. Over the next few days, boiling mud barrels down the mountainside, along with giant centipedes, snakes, and ants. The election never happens, as almost every one of the 30,000 people in St. Pierre will die by 8:02 am on May 8th.This is actually the eruption that helped scientists understand pyroclastic flow - before this, we didn't really know what had happened in places like Pompeii and Herculaneum. It's beyond horrible. The Day the World Ended: Thomas, Gordon, Morgan-Witts, Max: 9780812885101: Amazon.com: BooksGeology Scene Investigation: Death by Volcanic Fire - Scientific American Blog NetworkThe volcano that destroyed St. Pierre 1902 - Doyle GuidesInstagram: 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] ly 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 a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A. 097. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast where we cover a historic and or true crime episode about two things that were brought together that were doomed to fail. Although the format of this show tends to pivot and change based on the whims that Taylor and I have, but we're glad you're here. I am so whimsical. We're very whimsical. So I'm far just joined here by Taylor. We're recording kind of late on a Sunday

because I've been gallivanting around the town and Taylor's been working on her outline. How you doing, Taylor? Good. I am good. I am tired. Yesterday was a big day. It was Florence's birthday. She turned nine and we had a big party.

It was super fun, but it was a lot of work. But nice to see all of her cute little friends. and they had a great time nine years ago I came to your apartment on in Los Feliz with Adam Stone it was right when you came home with flow and I had just gotten back from my Australia trip oh so you can give her that little key yeah actually it wasn't when you all had just gone when you all just got in full you had flow back for a couple weeks I forgot that trip to Australia was like six seven weeks long and so I was kind of like the last one

to see her but that's crazy of nine years ago wild yeah it's bananas um I apparently have adopted a geriatric oh yeah you texted me what happened so I've been texting with Blair so I like about five six days ago I was driving home and I saw this dog and it looked like an old chihuahua that was having a hard go of it and it ran across the street and I saw my car but my windows were down and Luna was in the car and i was going to try and coax the dog towards you to figure out if i had a tag or whatever else and then started barking and scared the shit out of the dog and sent her running and so i was like well so whatever i took a picture of her and posted to all the socials and was like whoever is

missing a dog i found it here i don't have it so and so forth yesterday i was driving the exact same route home and the dog ran across the street i was without luna and so i got out and got the dog And so I messaged with Taylor's sister Blair, who works for Austin Pets Alive, which is an amazing nonprofit that takes care of animals, a no-kill shelter, an adoption agency. And I was like, what do I do with this dog? And she basically recommended a nice poster wherever I can. And also, you know, to hopefully try and find the owner. I got a text this morning from someone saying that five weeks ago their dog went missing that looks just like this one. and then the more i looked at the markings on it i was like and i ran by blaring she was like

this isn't the same dog like they look very similar but it's clear that like there's like parts or marking that are off and we're okay and she was also like five weeks a dog like that isn't going to survive for five weeks so on its own yeah so yeah um so i don't know i have it i went and got a groomed today because it smelled awful and this thing's been glued to me all day long so that's where i'm out well that's nice of you so yeah we'll see we'll see what happens Do you want a dog? It had, I absolutely do not want a dog, no.

Okay. I thought I'd try. Blair does enough animal stuff for my family, and so I feel like that cancels out my like, you know, I definitely, like, got mad at work this week because people were talking about, like, jokingly having cats in the office,

and I was like, that's dumb and also having dogs in the office is gross. And people hate when I come up with that hot take, but like, it's gross. You're going to let a dog walk outside in Culver City and then in the office and then in your home. you there's um besides the fact that i'm allergic to them not every opinion has to be shared

like there are thought like i don't share every opinion i have i know um but i just i feel sometimes that i need to share it because people just like assume that you'll be like super excited to have a dog in the office and i'm like no that's gross and i need to know because i'm going to get sick if i'm in the office with a dog you know okay the allergy thing is real the allergy thing i wouldn't take to the office not because i think there's anything wrong with taking your dog into the office i wouldn't take luna to the office because luna's a fucking huge monstrous freak who would just cause mayhem and would distract everyone from work so oh my god and then there's like sometimes there's like more than one dog and they bark at other i'm just like whatever doing it's a thing we're

grown up so you should leave your pets at home anyway it is a thing um hot takes by taylor dogs are terrible apparently but that's how i feel about it but you know whatever but my sister you know where does enough and takes care of talks yeah blare does enough for this is the entire story clan so let's go ahead and dive right in um i think you go first this time taylor so i'm going to right what you do go first i didn't hear you what you say i do go first yeah yeah okay okay so my drink is obelum obelon obelon obelon which is the most popular beer in Ukraine. Which is where my story takes place.

Cool. But I'm actually drinking a voodoo ranger right now because I don't, I'm not in Ukraine. I know it looks like I'm in Ukraine, but I'm actually in the best. Yeah. Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool.

I want to open up my canned water first. What kind of canned water is that? I have, it's from Tanner Joe. It's not that good. Is it flavored? No, this one's just plain. actually physically drinking some honey whiskey because my claim to fame at Florence's birthday party because her birthday is in October. And last year it was freezing. We tried to watch a movie outside for her party and we couldn't do it. It was so cold. And this year it was hot.

Like I got kind of sunburned. I have a little bit of a tan. Like hot as balls. But either way, both years, I made spiced apple cider for the grownups and they fuck people love it. And it's just like really fun. So we drank it even though it was hot yesterday. And so I'm drinking some honey. whiskey that I have left over from that. But for the sake of my story, we're going to the French colony of Martinique in the early 1900s. So I looked up a martinique cocktail,

and nobody can agree what is in it, but let's just drink rum and say it's rum, and it's also light that rum on fire because we're returning to the ring of fire for volcanoes, part five. Whoa. Exciting. know this one. I don't know what, I mean, you're, you're getting out of my zone of knowledge on

volcanoes at this point. I know. And oh my God. So I also, so I know that it's Halloween and I was going for spooky things. So I did start doing the research for an episode on Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley because I think it's really fascinating. I don't know if it's spooky. I can't really figure how to talk about it yet. So I'm putting that on the back burner and just went to this one because this one is creepy. We're talking about the 1902 eruption of Mount Pele in Martinique. It killed 29,000 people in St. Pierre, which was at the time the Paris of the West Indies. And it's creepy because there's a lot of politics involved, which is actually the doomed part. There's the politicians doomed these people to death. And there are bugs.

There's a lot of bugs, like terrifying bugs. So we're going to get to that. But Politics and bugs are my creepy things for a spooky season. Sweet. Sound good? I'm in. Okay. So let's recap our volcanoes. If anyone's just like picking it up here, I'm inexplicably doing a seven-part series on volcanoes,

and we've learned so much. And so to kind of recap the volcanoes that we've gone through, part one was Mount Toba that erupted 70,000 years ago. It had a volcanic explosivity index of eight, which is ultraplenian. mega colossal the world was destroyed so that's the whole yeah the whole point of that one is only like a handful of humans survived and we're all from those humans that's where we learned a lot about human evolution then we learned a lot about the roman empire because we went to vesuvius in 79 a d um that was a vei of five which is a plenian cataclysmic and as we know about like

3,000 people died in the city of pompey more in herculeanium um and because there were covered in the ash and preserved we get to see a lot of color of the roman empire so we actually get a lot of really cool things from that from that disaster then we went to mount tambora in 1815 that was a v.e i of seven an ultraplenium ultra colossal and that one was a year without a summer where the mary shelley there was yeah mary shelley wrote Frankenstein there was no sun the next summer the whole world saw it i mean didn't know what was happening because it didn't have any way to communicate. So just like the sky was red in places and it was weird.

Like they didn't really know why. And that kind of affected art and the way people and lived their lives. Next, we had Krakatoa in 1883. That was the VEI 6, which is a plenian slash ultraplenian colossal. Like very similar words, but whatever. But that one was really big as well and affected the weather. And a lot of people died in that one from like residual effects like tsunamis and not being able to grow crops.

also something with Tamblora as well. So this one, we're actually all over the VEI index, which is very exciting. This one is a VEI4. Mount Pellet erupted in 1902, and it was a plenician subplenian catastrophic. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So it's not the one that can destroy the earth like the like Toba. And it didn't affect the weather all over the world, the Krakatoa or Tambora, but it did obviously kill a shit ton of people on this island. It's recent. It's kind of recent. Yeah, kind of recent. So Mount Pele is on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

And when I was first, I listened to, my main source I listened to is a book called The Day of the World ended. And by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts and also a couple articles that I'll share. But when they first talk about it, this part of the Ring of Fire, which is the Ring of Vol, volcanoes that kind of goes around from like Australia, Indonesia, up Asia, around Alaska, down to the bottom of South America. You know what I mean, like this side of the earth. And it ends with Mount Terror in Antarctica. Crazy. Just everything that I do is connected. So that's cool, right? The end of this line is Mount Terror. We talked about last week. I know. The H.M.S. Terror, yeah. Yeah. So in 1902, Martinique was a French colony. France was in the midst of the French Third Republic, which was from 1870 to 1940. In 1902, the president of the French Republic was Emil Lube and the prime minister was Emil come. It doesn't really matter, but like just they were kind of they're being colonial and that was what was happening in France. There were huge racial divides in Martinique, obviously, and they were still pretty strictly governed by France. Obviously, like slavery had been abolished, you know, 50 years before this, but there was no equality, obviously, that's the whole thing. Most people on the island are very religious, they're Catholic, and a little bit of, like,

African religions that came over during the slave trade. So some people are, like, what we would call Creole, you know, they're like, black people who speak French, they're a little voodoo-y, they're also, like, kind of Catholic. So kind of all of those mixtures of religions and superstitions are, like, mixed into what people are like going through at this time. So yeah, just to say like some of the other volcanoes that we've talked about and all volcanoes of all of history that we don't know about and the future, there's going to be a lot of praying and a lot of like trying to make the bad things stop happening. Oh, I meant to say, I went to look it up, but I think Pelle is the Hawaiian

god of volcanoes. He's also like a really famous soccer player. I know I'm really having a hard time not saying Pelae, but I'm pretty sure it's Pelle. He just died, didn't he? Um, Pele god of... Oh, yeah, it's all differently than Pele. Yeah. Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire. She created the Hawaiian island. So that's where it gets the name.

And that's a pretty like standard volcano, you know, person that you people think about. So anyway. Martinique looks like absolute paradise. I mean, yeah, all Scrabyan Island. are so beautiful. Yeah. So nice. Wow. Yeah. So pretty. So, oh, also I was just going to say that before this, before the French got there, the native people were the Caribs, which we should probably talk about someday because I don't know anything about them. Like, I don't know anything about the people, the indigenous people of the Caribbean, but maybe we'll get there someday. But those

people remembered that Mount Pele had erupted in the past, like ancient past. That was like in their in their storytelling. But the people who lived there in 1902 also knew that there had been minor earthquakes in 1792 and in 1851. So it had like kind of rumbled before and like potentially a little mini eruptions, like stuff had happened in the past, like recent past, but they weren't expecting it to like erupt, erupt anytime soon. And this was this was at the point when that one guy that you already covered had not talked about tectonic plates having being a thing, right? Okay. So nobody knew what was happening. Yeah, no one knew what was happening. We don't know why I think my titan

played officially until like the 1960s. So we're like, we're pretty before this. Um, yes. So the book I read had some really good stories. I think that might be a little bit out of order, but they're like fun little anecdotes that I'm going to get to. But the eruption technically started in on April 23rd, 1902 and didn't actually stop until 1905. So there were like rumblings in the volcano for like two years. so it was like a whole thing but the really really really bad thing happened on may 8th 1902 so before we get there on april 23rd 1902 it started to ash and the ash smells like sulfur so you know like it's scary ash coming from coming from the sky like two years ago when there were all of those really really bad fires in california and like the sky by me was like bright red and we thought we might have to leave it rained ash here like very lightly but it was weird because it's like weird snow but it's like ash but it's like ash. and that was happening a lot

coming from the volcano. It starts to choke people. The first things to die are animals because they're around outside all the time, you know, and they're not really protected from the elements. So the first living creature to die from this eruption was a horse. Oh. Oh. So poor thing. The government doesn't worry yet. They're like,

you know, it's a volcano. It's going to like spit up some ash sometime. It's probably fine. And they don't do anything. They do eventually send people up there on the 27th. And they went, kind of go up to the top and they're like, you know, we hear this bubbling, it sounds like boiling water and it smells terrible up here. Like, yeah, dude, it's a volcano. You should leave, but they don't. They're like, it's probably fine and they leave. Ash continues to fall more steadily. There are some villages that are like closer to the volcano and then there's a big city, the city of St. Pierre,

a little bit further away. But like the villages are like covered in ash. It's like a light white powder kind of all over everything and it's hard to breathe for everyone, all animals and all people. Taylor, what would you think about an office policy where you don't, you're not allowed to bring dogs, but you are a lot to bring miniature ponies? I don't know. Can you put stuff on the ponies like seltzer water carts? Could they pull out like a seltzer water cart on the office? Yeah. Hey, who told me about the wedding they went to where they had like donkeys walking around and they had like tequila shots on the saddles?

That wasn't me, but I love that. No, but I think that's great. Yeah, okay, so we're pro- Also, maybe we can McDougal do that. So then I would feel maybe that they were a little more, more totalitarian than titilitarian? I think utilitarian is a word. You're so close.

So close. Yeah. Then maybe yes. I like it. I like that. Okay. I'll get it somewhere. Yeah, I think I always squared that away.

Me too. So we're to stop the timeline for a second. and talk about politics. So, like, why didn't people just start leaving? Like, first, it's like, yes, it'd be hard to totally evacuate a city. There's 30,000 people there. You know, it'd be hard to totally evacuate. But the governor of Martinique specifically wanted people to stay. So the governor's name was Louis Moet, M-O-U-T-T-T-T, Mote, probably. He was a left-wing progressive. Basically, he was a white dude from France. And what that really meant at the time was that he wanted to maintain the status quo like he wanted france to continue to like be in charge of martinique and he wanted to really keep

that happening so again like i said that liberal that's what they were called at the time and then the radicals were the people who wanted like the um the black population to have more rights things like that that's the way they were called it just at this time um and there was an election on may 11th it was to be for the um like technically the mayor of st. Pierre and it was a runoff election there were there was a three way three way race that ended up with two people so there was two plantation owners running for running for mayor there was a man named amadee knight he was a black plantation owner and he was the first black man to hold those kind of posts and he was the one who was like more of the radical quote unquote like

trying to get more power for like the largely like black and mixed population. And then there was also Ferdinand Clark and Clark was a member of the Progressive Party. And that progressiveness means like more France. He was a rich white owner, a very proper man, church member, Wikipedia, I think, or the Arclare Red said he's like really straight-laced, you know. So there's these two men kind of different, but it's a really important. and that's why the governor martinique doesn't evacuate the city because he needs the election to happen it's really stupid that's a really really like you can you can you can call emergency elections like it's not impossible to do yeah and so the governor also told the newspaper that was called

lay colonies um that everything was fine and so they were printing articles that were like we don't need to leave everything's fine you know like there's no there's no volcanologist there's no scientists who are actually like there's no volcanologists at all at this time in existence but also like no scientists being consulted the governor's just like it's probably fine and we've really need people to stay to do this so some people did leave and they did they did manage to get out because they were worried but those are the people who like had the means to be able to do that you know and the foresight and like weren't afraid and were afraid enough to leave you know and weren't afraid to get in trouble for leaving all that and um They, in some cases, they physically stopped voters from leaving with, like, armed guards. They wouldn't let people leave into the election on May 11th. And the city does not survive to May 11th. Like, there is no election. The governor goes to St. Pierre with his wife just to prove how certain he is, that nothing bad is going to happen.

And their bodies are never found. Like, they don't make it. Like, no one makes it. So it was just terrible, terrible decisions. But before we even get to May 8th, which is like the really bad day, there's some stuff that's happening. the rivers that are coming from the top of like the volcanic mountain are boiling and bubbling over and there are boulders in dead animals and like carcasses of humans as well just like flowing down from the mountain from the top of the mountain there's a woman who watches how early before the

explosion was this a couple days see remember that whole thing that you and juan agreed to where it's like Juan there were human teeth falling in the kitchen we need to leave it's like this is like one of those things like you don't have to understand you don't need to be a volcanologist it's like dude the water we drink is boiling and like there's corpses everywhere like I don't know what's happening and I don't really need to know I need to get the fuck out of here yeah I know it's just like really really bad so people did start leaving those time they're like little villages that were closer to the top and they left they went to St. Pierre as a big town for help and we'll talk about that in a second like what that what that looks like so um one woman reported watching her father trying to like get the horses to safety in their village and then her father and the horse just get swept away in this like boiling mud river and she never sees them again so just like horrible like just like little villages being totally destroyed all the refugees from those places are headed to st pierre which is like the big the big town there's a story of a young couple planning their engagement party and she's like very posh and she won't leave because there's supposed to be a big governor's ball on may 7th and she really

wants to go to it and so she's like he's like we need to leave and she's like he's like we need to leave and she's like no I'm not going to leave like and if you loved me you would take me to this governor's ball and her parents are like telling him that he has to stay and he's like I can't like I have to go he and he leaves like they're not um it's like a weird like engagement time where she's like thinks of the engagement is called off and she's being so dramatic and all these things and he leaves and eventually he gets off the island he's like one of the only people to leave like before it happens and he never sees her or her family again like they obviously die and he remained a bachelor until he died in the 1940s.

That's sad. I was actually hoping that he ended up marrying someone much smarter than his fiancé. Him and his fiance should have had the conversation you and Juan had. Yeah. Totally. So there's also a funeral procession for a man. This is a couple days before when the rivers are overflowing and boiling. And as the funeral procession is carrying the casket over a bridge, the bridge gets washed away and 40 people disappear, including the casket.

So 40 people die in that at a funeral, which is terrible. And so these things are happening all over. And it's not really being necessarily communicated with everyone on the island that this is happening. But the people who are seeing it are walking, like the miles over to St. Pierre. Keep in mind, there's a man in a jail cell awaiting execution. He can hear and smell that things aren't quite right. And you can hear the gallows being constructed. We'll get back to him.

But there's a man in jail. Around May 5th, the heat at the top of the mountains is getting so intense that the animals and the life at the top of the volcano need to escape. And guess what comes with that? For droppings. No, it's bugs. It's so many bugs. So we have a record of, I'm going to tell you. It's terrible. So there's a, there's a sugar company, a sugar factory. And then some stuff I read said it was a rum factory. It's probably a little bit of both called the Guerin Sugar Works had a family living there and all of their servants. And then the people who were working at the sugar factory, it was like a little bit up the mountain. There's some internal stuff going on on the morning of May 5th. There's the men are about to go on strike because they don't, like, they're not sure if they should be working because there's like ash falling from the sky it's like that

thing that we're talking about before last week with the terror like if you're at work and a disaster happens you like don't know what to do but like you should leave you know like who cares if you're in trouble at work like you should go but people aren't sure what to do um there's servants kind of running around there's about 150 people there so first the bugs come millions of ants huge and mean ants come streaming down the hill. And this had actually happened in 1851 with like the little tiny eruption that happened before. And people reported huge balls of ants just like barreling down the mountain. They had like all congregated together and they were like rolling down the mountain. Back in 1851, they literally ate babies. Like the ants would like get into people's

houses and like eat their babies as they're trying to escape the mountain. So it's these same ants coming down. They're in the sugar, sugar factory. They're in the main house. And then with the ants come foot-long centipedes. Okay, now you got me. They're poisonous. Yep, you got me. They're a foot long, they're black, they're poisonous. They're running and they're terrifyingly creepy, weird centipede way all over.

They're in the house. They're running up people's clothes. They're hiding in beds. They're in the closets. So the servants in the house are like hitting it with pans in the sugar factory. They're pouring boiling sugar on them. They're putting oil all over the ground, trying to get them to slip around. they are everywhere.

So they're just anything that they get their hands on, they're fighting back. Eventually, the bugs, you know, the bugs keep going and the bug problem dissipates. And I think it's the owner of the sugar plant leaves. Or like someone leaves, which is how we know this happened. But as soon as they leave,

then the boiling mud comes. So these people who just fought off these like horrendous, horrendous bugs are now fully, covered in boiling hot mud 120 feet of mud covered the whole factory. The only thing that's left is a little bit of the chimney putting out of the top. So you can only hope that those people died instantly

because 150 people died there on the worst day, fucking ever. Yeah, it's awful. Those centipedes are terrible looking. I'm not going to look at them. I hate my kids, no, I don't like centipede, so my son will throw this like fake centipede at me sometimes and I hate it. It's awful. I hate the same thing. in in when we live in queens we had house centipedes which is like really long legs everywhere and like oh my god

they like run so fast and i just hate everything about them i can't even imagine those are scary looking but they're not going to hurt you the the giant desert ones or the ones that are martinique that i saw so those the ones that'll they'll ruin your month like some people can die from them it's like yeah it's terrible so yeah imagine you just fought those off and then you get killed with a bunch of like boiling mud like five seconds later just absolutely the worst um in the meantime there's also a shock wave the shockwave that comes from like i don't know the internal stuff happening underground kills a ton of fish so dead fish are like coming up on the shores they don't really know why that's happening yet and the shock wave also breaks their underwater cable do you know how we talked about the underwater

cable yeah do you think during this time someone's doing voter registrations door to door yes i do the whole time because they're printing out they're printing out um like flyers that say everything is fine don't forget the election is on the 11th like they're literally doing that like the newspaper is printing out things like on behalf of the governor so yes someone is doing that um so yeah so their underground cable breaks so they're cut off for most of the world because of this um and because we talked about the underwater cables last time like that was how we knew about Krakatoa so that's how we would have known more about this but we didn't because the cable is broke so now some of the villages that are are the people who are like closer who are

seeing these boiling mud slides who are you know seeing these bugs seeing these terrible things covered in ash the animals are all dying some of the people leave some of them don't so there's like one town where or a couple towns that got like the avalanche of the boiling mud and they went on a rescue mission to go find them and the people were so badly burned but they were still alive they were just like goo in the corner of their houses you know like people were just like absolutely destroyed homes are burnt to the ground people and animals were just like dead and dying everywhere in these small villages and everybody who was able to escape went to st pierre so more people are going to like the big town but like all the villages that are close to it have all been destroyed and the

people have been like burned to death lovely yeah so now st pierre It's overrun with people. Like, there's too many people in the town. So because thousands of people have come from the villages, it totally makes sense because they're trying to find safety somewhere else. So the government does, like, bring in food carts and, like, try to get people food, but they don't have enough food to survive for, like, much, for, like, the long term like this. And people are, like, sleeping on the streets.

They're, like, more than people are overcrowding hotels and houses and stuff. They're just trying to find somewhere to go because they can't go to their villages anymore. The infrastructure is, like, about to crack. There's a story of, like, a. bull got free so a bull was like charging around the middle of the town and then someone finally shot it and got it to stop and as soon as they shot it like people just like swarmed it and hacked it up and took the meat away like really fast because everybody was starving because like they didn't have food you know so that's happening in the midst of the ash and the sulfur and these boiling mudslides that you know are coming and then guess what else comes from the mountain uh lava snakes jesus So doesn't stop, does it? There's a, no, there's a snake called a fur to lance. It's venomous and it's everywhere.

They're pit vipers. And they normally give off 100, I like read this and then I stopped reading it and I lost where I was reading it. But they give out like 150 pieces of poison, like mill liters or whatever, a poison with each bite. And it only takes 50 to kill you. So while this is happening, people are getting, are dying because of the snakes. because they're getting bit by all these snakes are coming down from the mountains. Yeah, this is a scary looking snake.

And they're, so these snakes are invading to the city and then guess who comes to the rescue? Quiz for Columbus. Elan Moss. Cats. Oh, cats. Of course. Of course, cats. So cat, then there's all these battles between cats and snakes and the cats would like pretend to be dead and the snake would come over and then the sack would be like,

the cat would be like whirr and like grab it did you see yeah i saw yeah exactly i saw an insta video of cats fucking with snakes because apparently the reflexes of a cat are like it's crazy it's like point one is like point zero zero one second it can react there's point zero zero nine and so cats fuck with snakes because they know they'll never catch them because a snake lunging at it and trying to bite it will it'll always be able to react fast on that they're crazy wow that's crazy yeah so yeah so the snakes were killed by the cats which is horrifying um it must have been like just like just horrifying kids can't even imagine that what that looks like but um so that's happening in town overcrowded

all these crazy things are happening and in the meantime there are some ships in the harbor trying to figure out what to do so they're like telegraphing like you know france in ways that kind of through America, someone telegraphed Teddy Roosevelt, he's a president of the U.S., and is like, we think something weird is happening. But in France, they're like not doing anything about it. They're like, let's just see what happens. It's probably going to be fine, but like for absolutely no reason. And. But what are you supposed to do about it? It's a, well, you're supposed to get everybody out. That's what you're supposed to do. I know. Can they go to the island? You're supposed to be like, um, the ships? Yeah. Can anybody actually go? Yeah. At this point, yes.

It's like May 5th and 6, like people could have technically gotten some people out. And some people do. So like all the steamerships that were in there, like they were all totally full. Like the people who had the means and the opportunity were able to leave. Same thing in Pompeii. You know, same thing with like all disasters. If you, if you have somewhere to go, you can go. But most people didn't leave.

Like because they, you know, were told it was okay because like at some point, like I said, like people wouldn't let voters leave. You know, so things like that. But some people did get to go, but not enough. but they should have tried to get everybody out, but they didn't. And that would have been really hard, but they could have at least tried. That's what they didn't do. There's a little bit of water, like mini tsunamis and like waves happening. Unfortunately, there's like an orphanage that was in the path of like another big water

and all the kids drowned, like super sad, like a bunch of things like that happen. In the meantime, the governor and his wife, they come to St. Pierre on May 7th, and they're like, everything's fine. They plan to have a governor's ball on the night of the May 7th, but they finally cancel. it because things were so crazy in town but they should have just had it they should have just like had a banger because no one lived until the next day you know that was your last night on earth you should have had the ball just spent all the money done all the things so that's may 7th a lot of people in town a lot of people have died so far ash everywhere there's rumbling all the things

and then the big thing happens on may 8th and what's the big thing that kills people Oh, it's the ash falling down in burning everyone to death. Yep, it's pyroclastic flow day. That's the day that everyone dies. And this eruption is the reason that we know what a pyroclastic flow is. We didn't know what they were until this because no one had actually seen it before and like written it down. So they knew that Pompeii was there and they had been excavating it since 1700s, but they didn't know what. had happened. Like, they didn't know about the hot ash. They didn't know that the people were

burned the way they were burned. Like, they didn't know any of these things until Mount Peli erupted. Like, there were bodies and bones in Pape, but we didn't know what had happened because of this we know. And it is awful. Just absolutely fucking hell awful. So it's May 8th, 1902. It's Ascension Day. And many people are at church. It's just before 8.m. and Mount Pelley erupts. The pyroclastic flow comes barreling down the mountain at 100 miles per hour. It sped down toward the city of St. Pierre, black, heavy, glowing hot. It had superheated steam, volcanic gases and dust.

The temperatures exceeded over 1,000 degrees. And under a minute, it covered the city and instantly everything that could be on fire was on fire, and everyone who was alive was either dead immediately or horrifically burned. there were some ships in the harbor that watched this happen at 802 a ship sent a telegraph like offsite to whoever would listen that said St. Pierre destroyed by Pelle eruption send all assistance so in two minutes the city's gone and everybody in it is gone some of the ships that were in the harbor immediately sunk because they didn't stop when it hit the water you know it kept going so the ships caught on fire sunk immediately everybody

he died. Others have stories where they were like on their boats and they were so badly burned they couldn't recognize each other. One guy was down in the hall. He had like kind of covered himself with like blankets and like tried to hide from it. But the heat was so intense that everything that wasn't covered with like clothing was burned. So it's all the skin on his hands were burned off. And he had to steer the boat out of the harbor using his elbows. Because like he couldn't and there was, and he was the person who could do the most because everybody was just so badly burned. One sailor saw someone he couldn't recognize, realized it was his kid. captain went to get help and never saw the captain again he presumed the captain just jumped overboard

because his burns were so intense that you couldn't oh my god you imagine going into salt water fucking with your skin peeling off nope i would just i would just watch myself to drown i would literally just breathe water immediately yeah the city was it developed in fire the city of st pierre there was hot mud raining from raining from the air there's ash and smoke everywhere because there's also tons of fires after the flow. When Rescueers did get there, people were so badly burned and people that were still alive,

they had like no eyes, no tongues, no hair, no clothes, everything was burned off and their skin was just like absolutely as burned as humanly possible. A lot of people were like

moaning and screaming for water, but they couldn't drink water because their throats were burned closed. So they could like kind of like make noises and like breathe out of their nose but like they couldn't drink anything. And so they would, put, they like, would bring, brought like ice chips from some ship and would put ice chips in

people's mouths until they died because they couldn't help them and they, the thing that they could do, but they were like moaning and like desperate for water or for anything. And in total, anywhere from 28,000 to 30,000 people died. So that was mostly everybody in the town. A couple of people that they talked to who like, what happened? What do you remember? They were like, I felt a wall of heat. And then that's all they remember. And then they would die. Like they just like didn't, that, that was it. It was. It was. It was. was just like the heat just like incinerated everyone so fast it was so awful um there was a survivor do you remember the dude that was in jail i talked about oh yeah he was about who's the gals were

getting built uh yep so he on may 7th the night before this he had got into a fight at the at a bar and was in jail and all through by 7th they were trying to figure out whether or not they wanted to execute him because it was like would affect the election in one way or another probably because he was like a black guy who had stabbed someone allegedly and you know all this tension because the election and also the volcano is erupting so they had him in jail in like a subterranean jail cell he had like a um so he didn't have any windows or anything he heard the boom oh his name was ludger silberus and he heard the boom he saw the smoke he stuffed took off his clothes and stuffed them under the door and this is super smart he peed on them to try to make

sure the ash didn't get through so he like made them wet which is what you're supposed to do put wet towels underneath the door if you're like in a place from the windows you know I think that was smart but he still got really badly burned like it's still the heat itself because not even the fire is just like the heat like still burned his body they found him four days later he was like yelling under the rubble and he was like the only person that they found he ended up um he ended up becoming a celebrity and traveling around the world with Barnum and Bailey. And he lived the rest of his life in that, like he would, his job was to be in a cell that looked just like the cell he was in in Martinique and tell people what happened.

He was known as the man who lived through Doomsday. And he spent the rest of his life as like a circus performer, which is wild. So the best thing that ever, that he ever did for himself was stab that man in the bar. Yep. Go nuts, guys. Follow your passion. That saved his life. Yeah. So the city of St. Pierre was gone. There's another city that is now the capital of Martinique, and they did a little bit of rebuilding, but that city itself was never rebuilt. And really, like, that's it.

And I think it's a doomed story of people wanting to keep up appearances, wanting to go through with work stuff, you know, like the election. And I'm sure people were like, I can't take the day off. Things like that that I feel like are such human of things. You're like, what if this person, mad at me if I leave town and you're like literally who cares just leave but it's hard to do that like in the moment you know so um and all caps don't stay don't stay at work when terrible things happen but it's one of the one of the most devastating ones directly from the volcano explosion itself

because like the other ones a lot of people died from like climate change and like not being able to make enough food and tsunamis but this one was just that that flow that hot ash the volcano destroying the city. Eventually, it was kind of erupting for two years and it erupted kind of up. So now it has like a spike coming out of the top of it somehow from like the way that the lava like kind of dried and froze at the top because it was like a little bit of lava. But mostly it's like that heat and that ash from these. It's not going to like go 100 miles and hit into the air and hit the trade winds and, you know, be seen at other places. But if you're close enough to it, like you're going to die an absolutely horrible death.

I mean, at least it's quick. That's it. That's where I'm ending that. At the very least, it's fast. At the very least, like, you're not suffering through it for ages. For some people, I mean, some of those people that, like, we're still alive, like, that's kind of what you hear after, like, the atomic bombs, you know, where there's people who are, like, just like their skin is melted off, you know, and they're like, they don't

know what to do and walking around, like, dazed and afraid, you know, and then they die eventually, but, like, in the meantime, yeah, all those. is like, it's so terrible. So, yeah, that's a big one. And I hadn't really, I hadn't heard about that one. And I guess in my pre-volcanologist life, I hadn't heard about that one. And now we know. I have two more volcanoes.

I'm going to do mountains and Helens from the 1980s. And then I'm going to do a real intense one on what will happen when Yosemite finally erupts. Oh, that's the one. I think the world's, I'm most excited for. I'll be awesome. So I'll finish it before the end of the year, for the end of the year. But I figured we could fold us into October because of the bugs, of the big centipedes and the snakes.

Giant snakes, giant centipedes, they count for a lot. I, in the middle of your well-research discussion about this volcano was looking up the foods in Martinique. And man, they look good. They look good. Oh, I bet. Yeah. It's like, it's very like, it's very like sauce-based, rice-based. It is a little Louisiana-viby, but with like a tropical flare given all the seafood excess.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? I'm a fan. In 2017, Martinique was cited as the safest destination in the Caribbean. It makes sense. What else? Do I need to know? I'm looking at a travel guide.

Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, it looks beautiful. it's all most of these volcanoes are in these like beautiful tropical places I mean and yeah it's like the price you pay right like I mean LA is awesome but the price you pay is earthquakes and I guess now more consistently it's wildfires which really sucks but still that's true yeah yeah um yeah so that's it I'm yeah I'm yeah that was very educational we learned a little about politics we learned a little about island life we learned about volcanoes and we learned about sinks i really can't believe that this is that we didn't

know really what had happened in pompey until this happened but like that may make sense when i think about it because like how would you know what caused the people like everything to be covered in that you know pumice stone and all that unless you like knew like who knew like i don't know what they thought it was they didn't know that there was like a hundred mile per hour cloud of ash and smoke. And I couldn't figure out if anyone, for the volcanologist listening, can you please tell me

why Pompeii was like buried in the ash and St. Pierre wasn't. I feel like it might have to do with like the density and like the speed or something, but I just I think St. Pierre as I am seeing it was like burned and like destroyed but not

like buried the way that Pompey was. I don't, I can't figure out why. I couldn't figure out the right phrase to Google that and to figure it out some like the things that I was reading. I found like one like thing that compared how hot it was in both of them and that didn't really answer my question either. So if anyone knows, I'd love to understand that a little bit more. But it sounds like Pompey was. Yeah, for it to please. It sounds like Pompeii though was, um, was just neglected and forgotten about. So like it might not have been all ash that very. It could have been like time. That's true. That's true. But I'm not a volcanologist. Can you can you go to remote school to be a about volcanologist. Remote degree in volcanology. I'm going to look, I'm going to do some research on this. Oh, University of Arizona online. Um, I probably have to do a little bit of science. Oh, yeah. Best online volcano courses of programs. Anyway, um, I need a PhD. God,

just start over in life to get there. I'm too old. start to become a volcanologist like yeah i'm i'm good with my sans phd life uh awesome deal well thank you for sharing the volcano ones were always really really exciting for me because like i'm like really into like i don't know what the word is geology no geography geo the earth i'm into the earth and like knowing where things are or like what it's made of because that's what those two are okay i'm into earth sciences let's put it that way So like tectonic plates, tsunamis, all that. That's what we're learning about.

It's cool. I love learning. It's super cool. We should go to museum. We should. I love it. I love it. Fantastic.

Do we have any guests letters or emails or anything like that? Nope. No. I feel like I had something, but if I remember it for next time, I'll add to the next one. But no, but thank you. All of our new Instagram followers. Instagram followers and our new listeners, we super appreciate you all. And if you ever do have any ideas or suggestions or feedback, please let us know. Oh, I did, oh, I did post me to get

an Apple review from someone that says I talked to you fast, which I thought was funny because I know that. But also, that wasn't a reason to remove a star that our stuff was fascinating, so awesome. I love it. Thank you. I think it was Donna. I think it was on Apple. Yeah. Thank you, Donna. We, we actually, if you write us, we literally, like, we love getting those and reading those. So please tell us. Good, bad, and ugly. Like, even, like, Fars is being too funny. It's distracting me. Like, let us so. So we can improve. We've actually gotten several of those. That's true. Yeah, yeah. It's working on it. Dumpeterfell pod at Gmail and at all the socials. Yes. Awesome. Cool, Taylor. Well, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and cut this off. and we will rejoin you all on Wednesday. Bye, all.