Doomed to Fail - Ep 66 - Volcanoes Part 6 - George Vancouver, this is it!: The Eruption of Mt. St. Helens

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

In our penultimate volcano episode, we explore the 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in Washington State. It's lucky that it was a weekend and lucky that the land was mainly used for foresting, otherwise, the devastation could have been in the tens of thousands of lost lives like we've seen. It's a story of forestation, preservation, and vulcanologists doing one of the most dangerous jobs out there. We're proud of you guys! Thank you for your service and please email us we'd love to ask you a million questions!Pics via AI and the CC. (that old guy is Harry Truman)Sources George Weyerhaeuser kidnapping - WikipediaMount St Helens Eruption FatalitiesEruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. HelensInstagram: 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] l 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] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do your country. On Wednesday. Woo! With Dune to Fail, with Farrs and Pod? Wait, no, Taylor and Fars.

We're doing a podcast. Me and Taylor are doing a podcast. Oh, my God. It's all Dune to Fail. Perfect. 10 out of 10. 10. 10.

but yes we are back and it is taylor's turn to take us on a riveting tale of love and joy and terror and probably feminism i'm sure that's in there somewhere but um yeah all right let's do it um i'm excited that you did your second one on engineering disasters because i'm doing oh my god my number number six for volcanoes. Let's just get this done. I'm going to finish before the end of the year. No, there's seven. So this is number six. This is Mount St. Helens that erupted in 1980. I love that one. That was my favorite. So, great. So Mount St. Helens is a strato

volcano erupted in 1980. It killed 56 people. It was a volcanic explosivity index of five, which is cataclysmic plenian. So I know we talked about our, like, you know, the, we're looking at the VEI index. This is actually more powerful than the one that was in Mount Pallet, the last one that we talked about. But less people died because less people lived around there. In Mount Pelle, people lived at like the bottom of the, you know, it was like on a Caribbean island.

They lived on the bottom of the hill as you would. But this one's in like Washington State. So it's in the northwest of the United States. and the land all around it was being used for logging. They were in the middle of cutting out all the forests for logging. So this is also a logging story. So we will talk a little bit about that history as well. My main source, I read a book called Eruption that I'll put in the notes.

And I also found this freaking incredible Google map that someone made, and it shows where each person who died and survived was found. And then the pictures that they have of them. like some of them had their cameras like pointed towards it when it was happening it's really interesting so i'll share it it's fun to look around how would you search for that well don't look at it yet because it's like fascinating you're going to look at it for a and not listen to me so just wait um so there's this stupid there's a couple layers pun intended because that's what a strata volcano is it's layers of earth um to this story so there's logging there's preservation there's um you know the american freedom to go wherever the fuck you want to go. And then there's volcanoes. So like all those things are happening kind of at the time. So starting with the land itself, most of the land around Mount St. Holland's in 1980s was

owned by the Weyerhaer-Temberland Company, Voyerhauer, W-E-Y-E-R-H-A-E-U-S-E-R. It's a German company founded by a German immigrant named Friedrich Weyerhaeuser in the 1800s. In the 1800s. In the the book that I listened to Eruption, the guy did a great German accent when he was talking as him. It was delightful. But he, you know, he was a hard worker. He moved Pennsylvania from Germany in 1852. He worked at a brewery, but felt like the pressure of being around booze. He didn't want to do that.

So he found a job at a timber company. And he just worked away at the ranks. And he started to, like, know a lot about logging. And he saw that things were changing. And, like, I saw this, like, being on Instagram that was a joke, but it's like 100% true that when you like take someone to your hometown every time you're in a corner you're like this used to be the woods and now it's Walmart and this used to be the woods and now it's of this you know what I mean yeah I mean that's kind of everything like it's everywhere like it used to be the

woods like when I was little this was the woods and now it's not this room this room was the woods and now it's not now it's my office now it's not so that's just like you know it happens all the time and in our lifetimes we've seen a lot of forest like disappear but the United States had an incredible amount of trees, like more than people were used to. So, like, in Europe and places where, you know, these people came from, a lot of the buildings are stone, you know, and you have like a wooden roof. Like, you don't have a wooden house if you're, like, living in, um, living in Germany at this time, you have a stone house because stone is more like plentiful and around and you

don't have that much wood. But in America, there's so much fucking wood and they were like, oh, it's all free. So they just, you know, and they just cut it all down. And they could do things like build houses, build railroad tracks, build, um, boats. They could have, um, wooden roads, wooden bridges, just like things that you can ever have before. And then also there's an opportunity to like, do it all again when it all burns the fuck down, you know, makes sense. It all comes back to because you just regrow the trees. Mm-hmm. And there is a part of like, this is like regrowing. People would have like places to

regrow, but it takes, you know, bucking forever to have a tree grow to be huge. The Voyerhauser is still the nation's largest timber company today, so it's still, like, a huge thing. Is it spelled Voyer? Boyer, W-E-Y-E-R-H-A-E-U-S-E-R. Ah, there it is. Yeah, okay, I've seen, I've seen this logo. Yeah, totally, and you would have.

because they're everywhere still. So it's like a family business. A fun, interesting story that just kind of like happens during this. It has to do with that family is in 1935, the family lived in Tacoma. So they started to go west where there was like, you know, a shit ton of trees. As we know, the northwest has a lot of forests. And they're obviously very rich and they still are very rich. They're like, you know, the people who own this big timber company.

May 24th, 1935, George Vierhauser, who's the grandson of Friedrich, he was nine years old and he got out of school early. And instead of waiting for the chauffeur like you do when you're a rich kid, he decided to walk home and he was kidnapped. So he was nine years old and it was peak kidnapping time. The Lindberg baby had been kidnapped in 1932. So it was like just like the time that was happening. They took him to the woods and like tied him to a tree overnight.

He was in the trunk of a car a lot. The family noticed. right away that he wasn't home. They called the police. A few days later, they got a letter for asking for $200,000 in ransom, which is several million dollars now. And the family paid it. They got it in cash. And they had, there were unmarked bills, but all the serial numbers were written down. And that's how they ended up finding the people eventually. But they did like an awkward handoff in the woods where the dad like had a good. suitcase of cash and like dropped it and a dude like ran out of the woods and grabbed the cash and ran away and they like got the money and like went away with it and another thing that that um george the kid did that was really really smart and this is for you in case you ever get kidnapped is remember like how many steps it takes to get from a spot to a spot when you're blindfolded you know if you're like they took me out of the trunk they picked me up and they walked 10 steps to a porch and I could feel them walking on the porch like stuff like that that makes it really helpful to find out where you're like you're like

you were so he did that which was great great job i i do that with planes so whenever i get on a plane i always count how many seats in between me and the exit in case the plane's on fire and i can't see i can just touch what's in front of me to count my way up yep keep in mind the closest exit maybe behind you oh yeah there you go see i've been on a plane you know the you know the world that's i'm going to probably do that forever now so cool right good to know um thank you um So on May 31st, they let him go. So they let him go, like, six days later. He went to a small house.

They let him go near a small farmhouse. The farmer knew who he was because he had, you know, heard it on the radio or whatever. And the farmer, they cleaned him up and they gave him some food. And then they started drive him back to Tacoma. On the way there, they were intercepted by a reporter who said, I'm here with the family. I'll take him all. I'll take him the rest of the way. So essentially he was kidnapped again by a reporter so he could get all of the information from him

before he saw the police or assembly dude i was going to say if you were that farmer just keep ransoming this kid like he's the gift that keeps on giving just like like half-hundred kid but i already fed him and give him clothes i need like at least 50 bucks for i should i'm sure they gave him something it sounds like they would have um they there were four people that were involved in the kidnapping there was like the wife of one of them and then like a fourth person but the two main guys were Harman, Wally, and William Dynard, and they were arrested. They were found because they were spending the bills that had the serial numbers that they knew were part of the ransom money. When they found them, they were trying to burn the money in the stove, which is hilarious because they were like, it wasn't us.

They're like, you're trying to burn money. Like, no one does that. Obviously, I do. Eventually, Harmon, Wally and William Dignard were both arrested. Wally went to Alcatraz and Danart went to Leavenworth. So they both went to, like, big prisons. Wally kept writing letters to George, who was the kid over the years, apologizing, and saying, you know, like, it was just a couple of days. Like, I'm sorry.

Like, you know, we were, whatever he was apologizing. You can't take that back. Well, when he did get out of jail, like 35 years later, George gave him a job, which was very nice. He said, you know, he paid his time and I'm going to help him get back on his feet. And he gave him a job at the timber company. George was like, yeah. George was like well shit happens and boys are tough so it sounds like he never went to therapy and he maybe should have because of that's a really harrowing thing to happen to a child but that's just an aside story but anyway George the kid who got kidnapped was president of a company in 1980 when Mount St. Helens erupted so he doesn't do anything bad but he was just like how about life um so Mount St. Helens is in the ring of fire somehow because everything's in the ring of fire really kind of made you the whole world. because there's so much that doesn't make any sense at all it's like at the because the ring of fire kind of

goes around and then it goes like through under mexico and like because it hits the Caribbean but then it goes like back around south america i don't know i feel like it's it's a loose term it's not like a perfect circle wow you're right yeah it's like right on the cusp it's like wow interesting yeah so it is and that makes sense because there's like it's alaska in the ring of fire I feel like that makes sense. Yeah. It is. Yeah.

So the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest called it Lawatala. Yeah, I know I did that wrong. Or one from whom smoke comes. So they knew it was a volcano, you know, from the native people who lived there. It was part of the Howlitz Indian tribe and confederated tribe and bands of the Yakima nation when, you know, in the beginning, the modern name Mount St. Helens comes from an explorer named Captain George Van, wait, Vancouver. George Vancouver was an explorer. He named Mount St. Helen after his friend Fitzherbert, who was the Baron of St. Helens back in the UK. So that's

why it's called that. He named after his friend. And that was he named him that in 1970 or 1792. also i just incidentally um i know we say that vulcan is the greek god of um of fire but the roman oh no hold on yeah vulcan is the roman god of fire so it's like volcanoes we get the word from you got bad the haphestis haphestis is a greek god of fire um he's like the counterpart to vulcan and he's the Greek god of fire and blacksmiths, which is fun. So anyway, that was the one before them. Harder to say this Hephaestus erupted and this volcano erupted. So that's part of it.

So everyone knew it was a volcano. They'd known for centuries. The native people knew was a volcano. Everybody knew it was a volcano. Mount St. Helens had erupted in the 1840s and 50s, but had been dormant since then. So it had been a long time since it had been active. There were like cabins around it and like little places where people could like like little um like gosh i imagine it a lot like a place where you got married i was going to

say like so much of the story reminds you know that because even as you were talking about the woods i was like because that town that we drove through that was like a former logging yeah that's probably one of these weimar heisen exactly companies yeah yeah i'm sure yeah so yeah it's just like there's lakes and there's trees and it's beautiful so you can have a cabin there um in parts that are protected a lot most of it is owned by you know a logging company and there's like lakes and and all that stuff it's a beautiful it's like a beautiful space um on march 15th 1980 there started to be earthquakes so shit starts shaking and you live next to a volcano get the fuck out of there you know um people are like we should leave um so some people were leaving some people were like

not able to go back to their homes and then some of them were like their summer homes and they weren't able to go to them um the government at the time was a woman named Dixie Lee Ray, and she was a bit of an eccentric. Her name wasn't Dixie Lee. She changed it to that to sound more Southern. She was a Democrat in a time when it was like really bad. Jimmy Carter was about to be

about to lose his second election. And you know, they were dealing with the around hostage crisis, the energy crisis, like it's all crisis, crisis, crisis. And Dixie Lee is kind of like having a great time, but not really like taking her job very seriously. It sounds like. Taylor.

From this book. going back to the wedding so that town that i just referenced was called grace harbor uh-huh uh-huh guess who named it grace harbor the verheimer where was the george vancouver george vancouver he just named everything named everything had a flag the mission of everything i didn't know there was a george vancouver but sure there we go sounds to me um so So the governor could have done more to ban people from going to certain places, but she didn't want to do that. She wanted to let people live their lives and go and have the freedom to go to their houses if they needed to.

There was an executive order on her desk the weekend that it happened that she hadn't signed that would have expanded where you couldn't go around the volcanic peak. But she never signed it. And who knows that that would have helped save some lives, a remarkably small amount of people died, all things considered. But, you know, they could have had even bigger space people weren't allowed to be in. There were teams that were trying to protect the land around Mount St. Holland. They were trying to get it on the historical register, trying to get it to be a national monument. Like Joshua Tree is a national monument and a national park. So like that gives us like a little bit more protection in different ways.

They're trying to make it a monument while at the same time people are like, but we need these trees. So all this stuff is happening. And then eventually like the land they tried to protect is gone. So they have to like pivot and try to figure out what. to do next after the eruption, but they were trying to save it. So most of the people that lived there did leave. Eventually, the day before the eruption actually erupted on a Sunday. On the Saturday, they let some people go back to their houses and get stuff.

So they let 50 cars of people go in like a caravan with the, with like the Marines or whatever, go to their houses, get some of their stuff, get their pets. Some of them like left food for their cats that couldn't find. They're just like, hopefully we'll be back in a few days, but they never went back. There were also people that worked there, and they didn't really stop working. They kind of kept working in that area and places where they were like, well, this area is probably safe because it was like, you know, 15 miles from. Why risk? It turned out those places weren't safe.

Yeah, who gives a shit? Just don't go. Like, it's like, what are you, what are you splitting hairs for? Well, it's like, well, for people who work there, it's like, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars for the company. and what are they going to do the new jobs? It's just like everything else. But they weren't there because it was a Sunday. So they're actually fine.

Right. If it would have erupted on a weekday, at least 300 more people would have died because they would have been working there, but they weren't. So like that's the good news. This happened on a Sunday. And that Sunday happened to be in May.

So on the way, so from March to May, it's rumbling, weird shit's happening. The volcano's getting bigger, like a balloon, about to pop you know you're like holy shit like we gotta get the fuck out of here like it's like getting bigger um some people were allowed in because they were like scientists one of those scientists was john void's brother it's not weird that john's brother is a volcanologist is weird because john boyd also lost his mind yeah he's also a crazy person yeah this guy's not crazy he's just a

volcanologist. So he would just have any one of the people who did that. There's some other people who didn't leave. There was a man named Harry Truman, which is cute. And he was like an old man who owned like a little lodge near the base. And he was like, I'm not going to leave. Like it's my right to stay here. This is my property. And then he started to like be on the news across the country. And people were like, yeah, good for you. Sicking up for what's yours, blah, blah, blah. And they did say that someone saw him, like, at a bar, a day or so before being like, I really want to leave, but I can't now this person, you know, like, now everybody thinks that I'm being so fucking brave, I can't leave. And he 100% died and died pretty quickly, hopefully. But he definitely,

you know, I think he was second guessing it. But so it was a Sunday when, when Mounted Helens erupted, it was May 18th, 1980 at 832 a.m. It is the largest landslide in recorded history. So the first thing that happened was a landslide of like that hot mud that comes out. It traveled at one up to 155 miles per hour and moved across the lake and across part of the mountain. One thing that it did is it exploded sideways, which is not what anyone could have predicted. So like you were safer on one side than you were on the other, but there was no way to know which side of it. Yeah. Yeah.

There were glaciers at the top of the mountain that started to melt. which caused like that hot, wet mud to landslide everywhere. The rivers were surging with this warm water. And what that was also doing, which is even more dangerous, is the logs that were there. So like imagine like a log from a tree that's like two feet in diameter. Like you couldn't move that whatever. But if it's in a river that's like surging on a mountain, that's going to be like a toothpick and a bathtub.

You know what I mean? Like this huge log, that log is going to crush everything on the way down. Yeah, of course. So it's not just water. It's water in these really, really, really, really heavy logs. And they went back to get them for, like, years and years and years. They couldn't really gather everything back together because everything was in these piles. If you're stuck under a log, you're dead, you know?

This is crazy. It doesn't even look like a mountain anymore. It looks like, it was the fifth highest mountain in Washington State. Yeah. And that was the 11th tallest mountain. It was the fifth tallest in Washington State. It lost its, like, thing. The landslide was taken over by the pyroclastic flow, which always happens, and it lasted about, like, obviously it was super fast, but it went about 23 miles across and 19 miles long. The flow. The flow overtook the landslide. So you're like running from a landslide and it's overtaken by the pyroclastic flow. The ash cloud went 12 miles into the sky. It went as far as like Wyoming, like the middle of the United States. And so a lot of things were like covered in ash.

even after that it lost 400 feet in elevation yeah that's so much mountain and it's interesting because like mount pelle that we're talking about like it got taller after it was over it like crystallized harder and like has like a taller peak now it's not even a peak it's just like a rock top of the top of it it was plugged by like a mine supper um many of the bodies were never found obviously because they were just covered in the flow. So you might ask yourself who was there and why and how many people died. Some people were in camping zones that were deemed safe. Like they were told they could go there. No one told them they couldn't go there. And some of them were there to study, which definitely is why being a vulcanologist is a very dangerous job,

you know. Yeah. I saw that picture of that one guy who looks like the coolest dude that ever died on a volcano. know. Yeah, let's talk about him because I'm going to go through this list and pick out some stories to tell you of the people who died there. But before I do that, just like after it's over, you know, they do some more conservation. They really work to make it part of like a national park so you cannot overly forest the area. Another thing is Jimmy Carter did go a few days afterwards because presidents, you know, always go to where there has been a disaster. It was the biggest volcano eruption, you know, on U.S. soil. And he was in a helicopter with Dixie Lee. the governor who was like asking him for money, you know, like you do. And Jimmy Carter looked out the window and said, I have never seen this much devastation in my life. And the helicopter pilot said, sir, we're not there yet. That's the clear cut. That was just where the timber companies had cut on all the trees. Poor Jimmy. Poor innocent Jimmy. So, and then it's still kind of rumbled that has kind of done things up until 2009.

So it's definitely not, like, dormant forever. There's still other stuff going on, like, inside of it. I would not live next to it if I'm not given the chance. But 56 people died potentially more, depending on, you know, some people may have been there that we don't know about. Some people who are, you know, maybe like a loner by themselves out there. I know one never, you know, said that they were there. So we do have these handful of confirmed death.

And like I said, we're very, it's very fortunate that it was a Sunday because if it had been a Monday, at least 300 more people would have been there working in the area. And they would have been, they would have been, they all had been killed. The person that you're talking about whose picture you've seen is David Johnston. David Johnson was a volcanologist who was there as a favor to a friend who had to take the night off, which is sad for the for the friend who like didn't know. But there's a picture of him and it's always listed in like, creepy pictures that you've like never oh, yeah, yeah. You know, he's sitting on like a folding chair. He looks super nice. He's wearing jeans. He's next to a camper. And he was there to study landslides particularly. A lot of these volcanologists had been in Hawaii

where we've learned like a Hawaiian volcano eruption is like a slow lava eruption. So it's not as like, you have time to get away. It's not violent. Yeah, like these, yeah, exactly. These are we're more violent. But he, so he's there. there. His final transmission was Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it, is the transmitter on? And they think that maybe he was telling them that a landslide was coming and he didn't even know that the whole volcano had a ruptych because it felt like an earthquake and he may have not even seen it. But he's never, but he is, he was gone immediately. His remains have never been found. They think he didn't even know that a volcano happened or he was hit?

Who knows? He was like, this is it. This is it. is it because he was there to see what happened when the landslide came. So, like, maybe that was it or whatever. Either way, he knew it was happening enough to pick up his radio, radio to the base in Vancouver,

Washington, and be like, this is happening, and then he died. And that was it. I never heard from him again. Yeah, super sad. There was, obviously, we learned that poor Harry Truman died. Hopefully that was super fast for him. There was a photojournalist

named Reed Blackburn. They found him in his car. His pictures were too damaged to be developed. But some of the people, their cameras did come back. We were able to get really close up pictures, especially to the flow

that we haven't seen before. Joel Colton was another photographer. There were some people who were camping together. There was a couple named Terry and Karen, and they look so super cute in their picture. and you can look at the map when I give you the map unless you're looking at it now. But Terry and Karen

were with their friends and they died immediately because a tree fell on their tent because of the earthquake. So they died immediately and their friends went their friends that got away but they were like very severely burned and they went back and tried to find them and

the government wouldn't let them in so they took a news crew and the news crew was like if you don't let us in to go try to find these people then we will never you know we're going to put it all over the news so they let them in and they found their bodies in their tent crashed by the tree, but you'll like this. Their puppies were okay.

Good. Two puppies and they were fine. We are dog people. So the puppies got out. There was two men named Clyde Croft and Al Handy were horseback riding, and they survived initially and hiked eight miles before succumbing to ash, which is terrible, but like you made it that far, and you're burned, and everything's terrible.

There was a worker named Hoeyton. Jose Diaz, him and his crew, it was like a weekend crew. There were like five guys who were working, logging in one part to get it ready for the week. And it was Sunday, and Jose was a Roman Catholic, so he didn't want to work on Sundays. So, I mean, whatever, he didn't work on Sundays. So he was in the car when it happened. And everybody, a couple of other people died instantly.

And then he ended up getting rescued when he was caught like on, like a lot of guys were found like on logs, like floating through this like surge. But he died a few days. later in the hospital, which is very sad. There's a couple, like, older couples who were just, like, out in their, in their, like, RVs hanging out. And they were, like, like, William and Ellen Dill, they think that they stopped and looked to take pictures, and they were never found.

And their RV was never found. So a lot of these people, like, just absolutely were, like, died almost immediately or, like, a couple minutes after from, like, Burns, obviously, like, we've heard. It happens a lot. so another one that is a couple other geologists died and there's Bob Kesevetter and Beverly Weatherheld they were at an observatory near Spirit Lake and their location has been buried forever over the cabin that they were in is gone and they'll be there they'll be there forever there was a sweet couple named Christy and John Killian who were camping by themselves

and John had gone out fishing. So Spirit Lake is like this lake that's like at the base of the volcano. And John was like, we can go there now. Like it's like not allowed to not go there. And he was like, let's go because it's full of fish because it was fished there in three months since they shut it down in March. You know? So they were excited. The way that they found them, they found Christy like by their campfire with like, like near like a coffee pot.

So she had probably gotten up to like make coffee. And they found John like the. the guess is that he was fishing and his last moments would have been his boat like kind of floating through the air on like the landslide before he died which is crazy that's like where they found him they found like pieces of his boat um the sweet older couple is edward and eleanor murphy they were um driving their motor home and some people um she was eleanor was at their campsite and Ed went to somewhere else to like get some supplies and people reported seeing the motorhome going back up the mountain so he was like going back to go get her and they never found either of them which is so sad there are a couple children were part of a family that was killed because people thought it was safe they really did think it was safe they thought it would be fine to be out there and a lot of people were you know found like in their cars one guy I can't find exactly which person that says.

One person was on his radio and he was like, gentlemen, it's coming for me. And then he died because then he was gone. And he just like succeeded in his car at the plastic plastic flow over, over did it, overtook his car and he was gone. A lot of people survived. So there were some like loggers who got out. There were people who had been camping with their friends who died who got out.

But they were so badly burned. Like some of them, you know, walked out with, like, bare feet. Because if something happens at, like, 8.30 in the morning and you're sleeping, you just have to, like, run. So their feet were burned, their hands were burned. A lot of people had, like, been, like, on, like, the rivers that were created, like, floating on these logs, which was obviously super dangerous. Because if the log flips over, like, you're dead. People were just, like, trying to, like, stay on them and, like, stay alive. And also, like, there's ash in the air.

You can't breathe. So some people, like, were found underneath sleeping bags, probably similar to what you were saying before with, like, wet cloths, like, trying, just trying to breathe, and they found them in those places. There was a family called the Moore family. It was a little girl, her parents, and a baby. And they ended up getting away, walking like eight miles until the helicopter found them. And the helicopter was getting really full. And the helicopter pilot was like, you can't take your backpack. And the mom was like, there's a baby in this backpack. Because it was like a baby backpack. And he was like, okay, take the baby. And generally the backpack, which is hilarious. And the husband had $800

dollar binoculars they went back and found also tough much work for that family um some people were fishing and they were able to um to like just you know kind of walk out or run out if their car kind of went faster they were able to get out um a lot of people you know you pass people on the way down and those people didn't make it you know and you just like keep going um it's pretty crazy there's some really beautiful pictures that people took because people were They didn't know it was going to happen that day, but they knew it was going to happen. So they took pictures of like the flow and it's things that, you know, people saw their last day in Pompeii that we've never seen before. So that was super interesting.

And that's it. I'm going to show us that with you. I'll share it with everyone. It's really cool. You can see the pictures people took and the pictures that people found of the people who, you know, the places that they were. And you can kind of like watch it explode, which is really fucking scary. um i don't think i want to be a volcanologist no now that i think about it is very dangerous because there's these pictures on because you have to be you have to be up next to it yeah well

there's these pictures of david johnston and they're like the final pictures of him and they're all taken from inside the crater about st helen where a lake he's doing sampling of the lake which i assume is because like some of the water picks up what's underneath it um it looks horrible like he is spulunky inside the mouth of a fucking like it isn't like okay when i say lake it's not a lake like sure it's water captured in a natural reservoir but around it it looks like the moon it looks like an alien lansky where nothing could possibly live and you shouldn't be there like so that's your job as a volcanologist and you have to be there for the most part which is very very scary

it is it really does look like an alien landscape the post pictures so there's on on johnson's wikipedia page there's a before and after one day before the eruption which um was taken at the observatory that he was in and then one a few months after the eruption and the second one looks like someone just torched the entire area. Yeah.

He's only 30. I mean, he went out the way he wanted to, I guess. Exactly. I guess you have to take the rest. But yeah, man, these pictures of the before and after, I mean, the mountain is gone and all of that just decimated the sides of the mountain.

And, you know, obviously luckily didn't kill that many people but the people that died died in that fucking terrible way that you die when you died in a volcano eruption it's really crazy

and if you survive you survive was very bad burns I feel bad for Harry Truman because he didn't want to be there but he was like kind of peer pressure himself into being there I mean he did to himself he did but then like

he should be able to change your mind when it comes to saving your own life you don't have to die in that hell literally It's saying that he became basically a town celebrity in the months before the volcano exploded. I know, but I feel bad for him. And also on this whole crypto dome thing, the fact that it's a lateral blast, like it looks like a pulsating massive thing. Like, you know, you knew something was happening. It wasn't going to be good.

Right. They knew it was like just, it was a matter of time and you just don't know. I don't know. I guess maybe I'll figure this out for for next time or I'll look out to it like how much can we know about a volcano right now you know like how much can we know if we know when's going to erupt obviously like none of this happens without signs you know there's like earthquakes for a couple of days before you know the mountain is like getting bigger and pulsating you're like okay maybe we should maybe something's going to happen you know and whether it's like you know a thousand years ago where you think it's because like the god Vulcan is mad or it's today you should leave if you can yeah it's This guy, this guy Truman apparently had like a redundancy where he'd go into like this abandoned mine shaft and he'd stock with food and water, but then I was reading about like how fast this thing moves. It said that when it exploded, it exploded at 650 miles per hour.

Unless you were like tens of miles away, there's zero chance you would have had the time to actually register what's happening in escape. Absolutely. Absolutely. I do like that his name was Harry Truman, just like incidentally. I know. He was like, ugh, the president happens to be needed that for me at one point, you know. He was in, looks like he was in World War I. Yeah. He, this picture of him is great. He's like drinking a, drinking a Coke with ice in it and looking up at the mountain.

Being like, fuck me. Three ex-wives. Hey, he lived a, he lived a full life. Yeah. Yeah, and we know about him. So, there you go. All right. He's in Wikipedia.

yeah I'm on cool well yeah thank you that was okay that was number six we got one more to get into Wikipedia we have one more and I will be doing what will happen when you know somebody Yellowstone

Yellowstone explodes I've been preparing by watching disaster movies and it's pretty scary this guy was cool I like Harry Truman me too So, I like his vibe.

I'm killed by a pyroclastic flow. Crazy. It's just like, so scary. Just like, this, here's this murder cloud coming at you faster than anything you ever seen before. This is funny, Taylor. Hold on to meet this real quick. So he loved discussing politics and reportedly hated Republicans, hippies, young children, and the elderly. So he hated everybody.

I love it. He once refused to allow Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to say at his lodge, dismissing him as an old coot. He changed his mind when he learned Douglas' identity, chased him for one mile to a neighboring lodge, and convinced him to stay. I love that. I like that you hate old people, but

you live to be 83, and potentially longer because you died in a volcano. It's also weird because you say Republicans, hippies, young, and old people. It's like, who's left? Like, who's literally who's left? Democrats and Goths. I don't know.

that's so funny those are the hippies though i know of the day um of the day fun taylor that was a fun one i uh yeah it's crazy i mean growing up you know like in elementary school we're all taught about mount st helen and then we're given my associations with washington state i've seen it a bunch of times but it's always fun to reexamine it yeah i mean i guess you people still you know like live near it and it's also i guess also something else that i won't trying to figure out it's how do you you don't know what's going to happen well you don't know where which direction is going to go in you can but like how do you know what's happening underneath it you know just leave will we eventually know more i don't know man yeah just go it's a dangerous

job someone's got to do it i guess uh you got to do it but it's not going to be us thank god um but speaking of washington state and in volcanoes um my friend christine sent me some pictures she was hiking in washington state she lives in oregon or in oregon whatever that area and she was hiking and sent me a picture of like a thing that showed how like the land had you know over time like the strata volcano like the you know beast by piece the layers were in it and kind of going back in history which was very sweet she said I'm thinking of doom to fail on my hike she's learning about how mountains are formed and I was like I've learned so much this year and she was like me too so I love that thank you christie thank you um sweet uh well thanks for sharing that taylor and per usual please find us on all the all the socials dune to fail pot or write us at dune to fail pot at gmail.com we are always interesting things suggestions yeah and like for i don't know i had a goal of a certain number of downloads by the end of the year that i don't think we're going to make and i'm a little frustrated by our slow growth which i feel like is just like the way of the world in these

things um but if you if you haven't shared this with anyone please share it'd be really great to like that's how we're going to grow so we'd be very appreciative That'd be awesome. Yes. Super appreciate it. Yes. Or just grab your friend's phones and subscribe them against our will. 100%.

Have a party where you make your phone in like a lockbox and then break into all their phones and then describe them all. It might be harder than then. You'd have to like have a bunch. No, it's a bad idea. I don't know how you do that. Whatever. Yeah, I don't think that would work. Tell your friends, please.

Just all your friends. That's enough. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Paris. Yeah, thanks so.

it up and