Futility Closet - 154-Spared by a Volcano

Episode Date: May 22, 2017

The worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century struck Martinique in 1902, killing 30,000 people in the scenic town of Saint-Pierre. But rescuers found one man alive -- a 27-year-old laborer in a dungeon-like jail cell. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll meet Ludger Sylbaris, who P.T. Barnum called "The Only Living Object That Survived in the Silent City of Death." We'll also address some Indian uncles and puzzle over a gruesome hike. Intro: The French newspaper La Bougie du Sapeur is published only on Leap Day. When a vat burst in 1814, 323,000 imperial gallons of beer flooded a London street. Sources for our feature on Ludger Sylbaris: Peter Morgan, Fire Mountain, 2003. Edmund Otis Hovey, The 1902-1903 Eruptions of Mont Pelé, Martinique and the Soufrière, St. Vincent, 1904. Ludger Sylbaris, "Buried Alive in St. Pierre," Wide World Magazine, November 1903. Matthew St. Ville Hunte, "Inside the Volcano," Paris Review, Sept. 16, 2016. "Prison Cell of 'The Man Who Lived Through Doomsday,'" Slate, July 31, 2013. Brian Morton, "There's No Smoke Without Fire," Financial Times, Feb. 13, 2003. Tony Jones, "Lone Survivor," New Scientist 177:2382 (Feb. 15, 2003), 48-49. "[front page -- no title]," New York Times, Oct. 13, 1906. Listener mail: Kate Connolly, "He's Hired: Belgian Lands 'Dream Job' as Hermit for Austrian Cliffside Retreat," Guardian, April 19, 2017. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener David White, who sent two sets of corroborating links -- these contain explicit photos, and these don't. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a quadrennial newspaper to a flood of beer. This is episode 154. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1902, a volcano erupted on the island of Martinique, killing 30,000 people in the scenic town of Saint-Pierre. But rescuers found one survivor, an isolated prisoner in a fortified jail cell.

In today's show, we'll meet LaJour Silbaris, who P.T. Barnum called the only living object that survived in the silent city of death. We'll also address some Indian uncles and puzzle over a gruesome hike. Between Dominica and St. Lucia in the eastern Caribbean lies the island of Martinique, an overseas region of France of about 1,000 square kilometers. The island's official administrative capital is Fort-de-France, but in 1902 its cultural center was Saint-Pierre, a city of 30,000 that was known as the Paris of the West Indies. It had civic fountains and a botanic garden set amid a lush tropical forest that the writer Lafcadio Hearn said was the color

of green fire. The French artist Paul Gauguin had spent several months near Saint-Pierre, and he's finished 11 paintings there, and these show the bright colors and exotic life of the island's residents. And rising above everything, you can see a dark mass, which is Montpellier, a volcano at the northern end of the island. At 4,428 feet, Montpellier was the highest mountain on Martinique. The island's origins had been volcanic, and the local Carib people still referred to it as Fire Mountain, but for 350 years it had been quiet, with only minor steam eruptions in 1792 and 1851 to show that it was even still alive. On June 22, 1901, newspapers began to report that Pouilly was showing signs of activity.

Steam and gases were emerging from openings in the crater, accompanied by a nauseating smell of sulfur. But at the start of the 20th century, very few people understood how volcanoes worked or what makes them erupt, and the few experts there were lived in Europe and North America. It was thought that if any eruption occurred, then the debris would fall on the mountain's northwestern slopes, which were miles away from Saint-Pierre, so the city was in no direct danger. That's what they thought. One resident who took no interest in this at all was a 27-year-old laborer named Luger Silbaris. In the spring of 1902, he was confined to the city jail, which was a squat brick building next door to the theater in the middle of the town. He'd been sent there in mid-April

for reasons that aren't really certain anymore. The story goes that he slashed a friend with a cutlass during a drunken brawl. If that's what he did, it was actually a fairly common crime. There were often street fights on Saturday nights among the city's sailors and plantation workers. So his sentence was only one month, and if he behaved well, he should be out in early May. On April 23rd, the town was shaken by earth tremors. Clara Prentiss, who was the wife of the American consul, said she felt three distinct shocks. She said the first was quite loud, but the second and third were so great that dishes were thrown from the shelves and the house was completely rocked. White smoke rose up from the mountain summit and ashes and cinders

fell on the town. One resident later described this in a newspaper. Quote, the atmosphere darkened and almost immediately it turned as if into an eclipse of the sun accompanied by a deep growling. All of a sudden, a loud detonation like the firing of a cannon was heard. The sky appeared to places to be on fire and there was a continuous fall of fine and white ashes which the volcano was vomiting out. These ashes were so abundant that at two meters distance, people were unable to distinguish each other. That rain went on for two hours as the mountain threw out hundreds of tons of smoke and debris and sent clouds of ash a thousand feet into the sky. But the city residents still didn't believe they were in serious danger. Several of them set out to visit the crater, which they found had

cracked open and was filling up with boiling water and emitting a smell of sulfur. On Friday evening, several loud explosions were heard. The island's vicar general wrote, as if we were standing on the brink of hell. Every few moments, electric flames of blinding intensity were traversing the recess of black and purple clouds and casting a lurid pallor over the darkness that shrouded the world. That must have been really scary, especially as you say that nobody really understands volcanoes and what they do.

Yeah, all they know is it's the newspaper, the local newspaper actually organized a picnic up on top of the mountain, which it hastily canceled soon afterwards. That shows just how— Oh, so they weren't scared. I mean, because I would have taken this as very ominous and scary, but you're saying they thought, wow, isn't that just interesting? Let's look at that.

Well, it gets—in hindsight, it's really unfortunate. There was an election going on at the time, and the city fathers were sort of trying to quell people just to keep the election moving forward, just because France wanted it. Sort of the contest decided. So they were trying to calm people down just so everything could keep moving along for that reason, if for no other. But people did start to get nervous. Schools and shops began to close. Some people fled for Fort-de-France. Others crowded into churches seeking absolution.

The town was surrounded with scenes that really began to seem apocalyptic now. The carcasses of dead cattle floated past the harbor. Tens of thousands of ants and centipedes invaded a local sugar mill, and hundreds of snakes slithered through the streets, killing dozens of animals with their poison. The sea was covered with dead birds. Hundreds of people fled, but tens of thousands remained, reluctant to leave, and they were joined by about 2,000 refugees from outlying villages who felt safer in the city. News of the danger apparently failed to reach Luger Silvarez, who was still in jail. In fact, he slipped out of his communal cell and committed another offense at around this time. So the prison governor, who was angry, put him in solitary confinement in a sturdy cell in a corner of the old jail yard. The cell is still there. It looks like a miniature log

cabin with a curved roof, a tiny window, and an arched doorway. The wall is more than two feet thick, and there's a little ventilation hole in the roof. He was ordered to spend eight days there. On May 6th, police rumbling could be heard on Guadalupe, 100 miles to the north. At 4 a.m. on Wednesday, with a roar, two glowing craters appeared on the summit. Lightning flashed above them. The harbor was covered with ash and pumice stone, and debris covered the water for miles. One sea captain insisted on leaving, even though his bark was only half full. He was from Naples and had seen Vesuvius erupt.

He said, I know nothing about Montpellier, but if Vesuvius were looking the way your volcano looks this morning, I'd get out of Naples. On May 8th, just before 8 a.m., a telephone operator in Fort-de-France called Sampier alarmed about a hail. They were getting a hail of stones out of the sky and the world was going dark outside. So he called quickly. He shouted hello three times into the phone and heard the word hello after the third try and thought the voice sounded greatly troubled. He wrote, no sooner had my conviction formed when the cornet to my ear and waiting for his reply, I heard a cry of great pain. It was a prolonged, ah. At almost the same time, I heard an incredible sound like that of an enormous block of iron falling on a metal roof. At this point, I too received a violent electric shock, which made me drop the phone. What had happened was the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th

century. The top of the mountain had exploded, and thousands of tons of superheated steam and hot dust drove down onto the town at 100 miles an hour. It arrived at 7.52 a.m. We know this because it welded together the hands of the clock on the wall of the town's military hospital. In the words of one writer, as if to mark for all time the instant at which the justice of God was meted out. Within seconds, a second wave hit, this one of incandescent gas so hot that it set fire to trees and houses. The entire city, two miles long, was set ablaze. Of the 18 ships in Saint-Pierre Harbor, all but two were destroyed. One survivor wrote, the wave of fire was on us and over us like a lightning flash. It was like a hurricane of fire. I saw it strike the

cable steamship Grappler broadside on and capsize her. From end to end, she burst into flames and then she sank. A deckhand on an Italian bark wrote, On shore, I saw men and women rushing back and forth amid the flames for an hour. They would not run long. Then came that choking smoke and they would drop like dead flies. The explosion smoke and fire all came and went in three minutes, but the city burned for three hours. Rescuers approached the town that morning, but it was so hot that they actually had to stay away for an hour or two. They just couldn't bear it to get into the city and try to find people who may have survived.

The island's vicar general wrote, Its ruins stretch before us, wrapped in their shroud of smoke and ashes, gloomy and silent, a city of the dead. Our eyes seek out the inhabitants fleeing, distracted, or returning to look for the dead, nothing to be seen. No living soul appears in this desert of desolation, encompassed by appalling silence. When at last the cloud lifts, the mountain appears in the background, its slopes formerly so green, now clad in a thick mantle of snow, resembling an alpine landscape in winter. Pouilly had produced a gas cloud that behaved like a lava flow, which confused everyone at the time. People were used to volcanoes either sending debris straight up into the sky for thousands of feet

or sending lava down the slopes, but this sort of seemed to combine the two. And it wasn't clear how the dead had died. Some of them had clearly burned alive, but others who had also burned appeared to— the cause of death seemed to be suffocation. The disaster was eventually understood to be what's called a pyroclastic flow, which is a mass of hot ash, lava lava fragments and gases that flows downhill at high speed And unfortunately the mountain slopes had funneled this torrent right onto the city Exploring the town was like a horrifying dream

Funeral vaults had cracked open in the heat The town's cathedral had collapsed except for one tower The American George Kennan entered a pretty two-story country house in an outlying village and found nothing alive in it except a huge black tarantula four or five inches across. Rescuers could find no trace of St-Pierre's market hall at all, and it had been built entirely of iron. One wrote, we looked, searched for two, three, four kilometers from its site, nothing. The mountain would go on expelling gas and ash for weeks. There was some anarchy and looting, so the troops were dispatched to patrol a region of three miles long that became known as the Zone of Annihilation. The first estimates of the death toll went as high as 40,000, which would have been a quarter of the island's population.

It's now estimated at about 30,000. And the blast had been detected from Athens to Honolulu and even in China on the meridian directly opposite Saint-Pierre, in other words, literally on the opposite side of the earth. The 1883 eruption of Krakatau had barely registered on that station's instruments, just for comparison. On the afternoon of Sunday, May 11th, so this is four days and three nights after the city had been destroyed, three young men were walking through the streets when they heard a cry for help. It came from a pile of ruins next to the theater. They recognized this as the Saint-Pierre jail. The voice called, gentlemen. They climbed through the ashen rubble to a solitary yard at the back of the prison where they found a concrete shell that was coated with ash but not burned. The voice called, gentlemen, save me. For the love of God, come and save a poor

prisoner. Evidently, the man had heard their voices as they had passed by. The prison door was sealed with two heavy padlocks. They smashed these and dragged out a heavily built man in his mid-twenties with the worst burns they had ever seen. He was horribly burned across his back and legs, feet and hands. He said, gentlemen, I do not know what has happened or where the other prisoners have gone. They told him what had happened. They said, there's no more jail.

All of Saint-Pierre is burned down. He said, then take me to Précieux to my family. That's another town. They said, there is no more Précieux to my family. That's another town. They said, there is no more Précieux, no more Carbet, no more anything. Father Jean-Marie, a parish priest of Montrouge, returned home at 6.30 p.m. that evening to find an excited mob on his doorstep. He wrote, a man of about 25 years is artlessly retelling his story to the crowd which surrounds him. The man who the priest said was covered all over in burns was Luger Silvarez. Father Marie listened to his tale.

Silvarez said that on the morning of May 8th, he'd been lying in his cell waiting to be fed, and the priest recorded his words. It was eight o'clock, he said. No one had yet come to give me my daily food ration when suddenly an appalling noise broke out. Everyone was shouting, help me, I'm burning, I'm dying. After about five minutes, no one was crying anymore apart from me. Smoke was rushing in through the little window in my door. The smoke burned so much that for a quarter of an hour, I leaped about from right to left, anywhere to avoid it.

After a quarter of an hour, there was a ghastly silence. I listened. I cried out for someone to come and save me. No one replied. All of Saint-Pierre must have been destroyed in the earthquake and the fire. Within days, Montrouge was swamped with journalists, many of whom were trying to find holes in this story. Some of them thought Silvarius was a fraud, maybe a thief who'd been scavenging in the empty houses when the eruption happened. That's a bit

hard to understand because it didn't explain how he would have survived the gas that had suffocated everyone else, and it didn't explain how he had got into a padlocked cell after he'd been burned. Yeah, that would be quite a feat to be able to do that. The American geologist Edmund Otis Hovey saw Silvarius on June 18th. He notes that the cell was entirely above ground but partly protected by the bluff behind it,

though he said the main portion of the structure caught the full fury of the explosion. After interviewing Silvarius, he wrote, all he knew about the eruption was that the prison had burned and that red-hot dust and sand sifted into his cell, burning him terribly. The American George Kennan, who had been skeptical of the story, visited Silbaris and wrote, He had been more frightfully burned, I think, than any man I had ever seen. In their interview, Silbaris stuck to his story

and added only the fact that he'd been wearing a hat, shirt, and trousers. But there were some oddities. It wasn't clear how his back had been burned when his clothing had not caught fire. Also, he said that hot air and fine ashes had entered through the grating in the door, but he'd heard no noise and saw no fire and smelled nothing except what he thought was his own body burning. He said he'd held his breath during the few moments when the heat was greatest. Newspapers still scoffed at his story, but Kennan wrote, he answered all our questions simply and quietly without making any attempt to exaggerate or to heighten the effect of his narrative by embroidering it with fanciful and marvelous details. In 1904, a French geologist named Alfred Lacroix studied all the evidence

and concluded that Silbaris was telling the truth. The president of Martinique's court of appeal, Monsieur Lacroix, confirmed that Silbaris had been in the jail, that the grill had faced south away from the volcano, and that the cachot, the cell he was in, was still intact. Lacroix wrote, there is therefore nothing improb the disaster had been the most miraculous, but there had been other survivors who had been farther from the danger. One of these was a 28-year-old sho leon compare leandra who said he had hidden in his room and then run to a nearby town his story i think is actually harder to believe because he was just in a house and saw other people dying there he said he just hid under a table and then

ran out of the house and the table somehow protected him but he said too in in his uh in compare leandra's tale he says he saw people actually die who were wearing clothing and were burned terribly underneath them so it if that's an oddity it's at least repeated by two different people yeah the third uh person who which is somewhat disputed is a little girl named javiva daifriel a young girl who was said to have been taken a small boat to a cave down the shore. She was later found to drift unconscious two miles from the island. The details of Sabara's escape appeared in every American newspaper, and it's not clear what happened to him immediately afterward. Eventually, he turned up in the Barnum and Bailey Circus, where he toured America, exhibiting his scars to curious spectators.

Barnum's poster billed him as the only living object that survived in the silent city of death. Audiences saw that his face was clear, but every inch of his hands and feet were covered with scars. Those who spoke French were allowed to speak with him, and they could ask him about what had happened. Barnum and Bailey made their own independent attempts to check the story. Barnum had a birth certificate and a letter of authentication on file from John F. Jewell, the American consul in Martinique, attesting that Sylvarez had been the only survivor of the Montpili eruption. They also had affidavits from two of the men who'd rescued him from the ruins of the Saint-Pierre jail, and photos of Silbaris as he lay in hospital recuperating from his wounds.

On June 3rd, 1903, the circus arrived in Albany, New York. At this point, they were overworked, behind schedule, and beginning to cancel shows. Silbaris got drunk and wound up stabbing one of Barnum's night watchmen, and the circus severed ties with him at that point. And it's not really known what happened to him after that. Local legend says that he won a pardon for the stabbing and went to work on the Panama Canal. But no one really knows what became of the sole survivor of Montpellier. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us. Thank you. like to make a one-time donation to help us out, you can find a donate button in the supporters section of the website at futilitycloset.com. And if you'd like to join our Patreon campaign, you can get access to our activity feed, where you'll find post-show discussions, outtakes,

and extralateral thinking puzzles, and learn more about Sasha, our very special podcat, and what else she likes to do besides trying to get herself recorded on our show. You can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link at the website. And thanks again to everyone who helps support the show. We wouldn't still be here without you. In episode 139, I discussed avoidance speech, which is a restricted form of language that is culturally required to be used in the presence of or in reference to certain relatives. And this reminded Morley Ravi of some naming conventions in India. He says, and in private. This is a pattern observed pretty much across India. Instead, spouses would usually use a respectful pronoun in both the second and third person speech, sort of the equivalent of

the German sie. The difference is that in German, you use du with people you are familiar with and sie for formal relationships. In the Indian spouse context, it's not about formality versus informality, but about respect versus non-respect. Some spouses would also address each other as Angela's father or Angela's mother, assuming their child's name is Angela, as in, can you come into the kitchen, please, Angela's father. And I was thinking that Sasha would probably think it entirely appropriate for you to start calling me Sasha's mother.

I'm sure she would like that. Morley also said, in some places, the taboo against using the spouse's given name used to be so strong, especially for wives, husband's usage was tolerated.

Funny how that works out. That superstitions built up around it, such as that using one's husband's name could cause him to fall ill or die. A lot of this has quickly disappeared in the last generation or two, depending on what part of the country one comes from, what social class one belongs to,

how well-educated one is, etc. My parents have always used each other's names. One of my uncles uses his wife's name, but she doesn't use his, and another uncle-aunt couple do not use each other's given names. Most people of my generation, I am in my late 30s,

would never dream of following this convention. Morley goes on to say, children never use their parents or any older person's given names and use a title instead, even when introducing them to some third party. If I were to introduce my older neighbor to you, I'd say, uncle, this is Sharon. Sharon, uncle is our next door neighbor. This can lead to hilarious inner struggles for Indians who meet older non-Indians for the first time in a social context. How can I possibly address her by her name but

she'd be bewildered if I call her auntie. In a business context you'd simply use their surname. And this actually explains something that we had seen in a movie called The Lunchbox which is set in India. In it a younger woman is always calling auntie out her window to get the attention of a neighbor

in her apartment building. Yeah, for most of the movie, I thought they were actually related. It was confusing me. But it makes me wonder, how would the right older woman know that she's the one being called, right? If there are several older people in earshot,

how do you know which is the right auntie or uncle? Because they can all be addressed that way. Yeah. And lastly, Morley said, Sharon, I recall a listener telling you that you should let Greg suffer a bit longer when he doesn't get a puzzle. I agree completely. You are so good at solving puzzles quickly that perhaps you can't bear it when Greg can't. I'm not suggesting that you let him suffer out of sadism, but because I'm just as slow as Greg and enjoy the opportunity to try and puzzle it out without getting hints and clues too soon in the game. And I would like to point out that Greg gives me hints and clues too.

It's not really a question of how long anyone should suffer or not, but rather that we are trying to keep the show to a reasonable length. We used to do lateral thinking puzzles years ago just for entertainment or to while away road trips, and some of them could take hours to solve without hints. Yeah, there are some famous, impossibly hard ones. But even the moderately hard ones can take some time. So in the interest of the podcast staying a reasonable length of time, I think we'll need to keep giving each other at least some hints. But speaking of needing hints or not to solve the puzzles, Paul Campana wrote in about the puzzle from episode 150. Spoiler alert. Hi, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha from Northern Michigan. Love the podcast. Been listening

since the beginning. Our family loves the lateral thinking puzzles, and we challenge our five-year-old twins at the dinner table with them. I have to tell you about how our daughter solved one with one question. It was the one about the country changing its flag. We presented them with the puzzle and our daughter asked right away, did their flag look like someone else's flag? We sat there in disbelief until I finally said, yes, honey, you got it. We were all so proud. Keep up the great work. So there you go. No pressure on us. But five-year-olds are solving the lateral thinking puzzles faster than we are, apparently. That's like a hole in one, too. That's getting on the very first question. Also from episode 139, I had mentioned that a few of our listeners had let us

know that there was a new opening for a professional hermit in the Austrian town of Saalfelden. Alex Wood wrote to let us know that the position was filled. So one of Central Europe's last remaining continuously occupied hermitages will continue to be occupied. A Belgian man named Stan van Utrecht beat out 49 other applicants for the chance to live without pay in a 350-year-old Spartan dwelling without electricity, running water, or the internet. An article in The Guardian says that Van Utrecht had long dreamed of becoming a hermit, but the opportunity had not arisen. But if you'll recall, this position actually requires a sociable hermit who doesn't mind being separate from most of the world, but is also willing to chat with and provide hermit-type counsel to the many visitors who come to the area. The previous hermit had lasted only one season, from April to November, and when asked about his experience, he said that he was frequently asked by the visitors why he didn't have a beard. asked by the visitors why he didn't have a beard. It was unclear to me if this was the main reason that he chose not to return to the position, but Van Utrecht, it is reported, has both a beard and a pipe, so maybe he will enjoy the position more than the last guy. I was going to ask how they,

it's someone's job to, I guess, interview all these people and make some decisions. Yes. Maybe that's how they do it. Do what? If you have a beard and a pipe, you can push it to the front of the line. Otherwise, that's a hard decision to make. Well, thanks to everyone who has been writing in to us. We appreciate all the email we get, even if we can't always read it all on the show. And if you have any feedback, comments, or updates for us,

please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I am going to give him an odd sounding situation and he has to try to work out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from David White. Oh, good. A husband and wife were out on a hike together one day when to their shock, they came across the body of a dead policeman lying on the trail. I know, fatal already.

Not far away, they saw a man and woman also lying on the ground, dead. Horrified, the couple returned home and told their friends about what they had seen. The police did not investigate the matter, however, and the dead bodies were left on the ground. Why? This is true, I guess. Yes. A man and woman discover the dead body of a policeman and then of another man and woman. Yeah.

Is the location important? You said it's on a trail? Yes. Were they really dead human beings? Yes. And the policeman really was a policeman? Yeah. It's believed so.

Okay. Do I need to know more about the couple who discovered discovered them no nothing about them nothing about them so just three dead bodies were discovered on her child we need to know when this happened uh no do we need to know where yes uh is it in the united states no oh um okay is it in an english-speaking country? No. Is it in Europe? No. Is it in Asia? Yes. Is it in, I don't know, China? It's not the country specifically that's so important. It is in Asia. Like the geography?

Yes. Okay. Like, was it on a mountain, for example? Yes, yes. All right. An Asian mountain, three dead bodies were found. Were they the victims of an accident, like a plane crash? No.

Did they all die, the three dead people, did they all die at roughly the same time? I don't believe so. Did they die of the same cause? Yes. This is really morbid. All right. I will agree to that. But they may not have died at the same time.

Yes, that's correct. Is the policeman's occupation important? Does it matter? Okay, so he's just another dead guy. Yes. Three dead people. I'm sorry, I don't remember what you said. They didn't die in an accident?

Not like a plane crash or, you know, that sort of thing. Were their deaths deliberate? No. They weren't suicides? Oh, no, they weren't suicides. Was there some crime involved? No. They hadn't been murdered?

Correct. So they didn't die of their own hands, they weren't murdered, and they didn't die in an accident. Right. Is their age important? No, but the location is very important. Is this related to some cultural tradition?

No. And you say the fact that it's on a mountain is important. Yes. Was the fact that it's on a mountain related to the manner of their death? Yes. Did they fall to their death? No. Is it a volcano?

No. Did they die of, does it have anything to do with the altitude? Yes. Was it cold? Probably, but it's more... Lack of oxygen? Yeah. That's basically it.

Do you want to guess what mountain it is? Mount Fuji? It's Mount Everest. Oh, my gosh. Yes, it's Mount Everest. And David explains, the hike in our story takes place on Mount Everest at an altitude of over 27,000 feet.

At this elevation, the trail is deep enough within Mount Everest's death zone, the region where your body cannot get enough oxygen from the surrounding air to survive, and where even supplemental oxygen can only keep you alive for a matter of hours. As terrifying a place as the death zone is, many climbers of Mount Everest have encountered something even more unnerving, the Rainbow Valley, whose cheerful name becomes far less cheerful when you discover it refers to the colorful clothing on the bodies of over 200 dead climbers,

both men and women, still lying on the ground where they died. The most famous of these bodies is Green Boots, you can figure out why he's named that, which is thought to be the corpse of Sewong Poljar, an Indian border police officer who died on the mountain in 1996. Since retrieving the dead body of a hiker in the Rainbow Valley is extremely dangerous, the bodies are almost always left to lie where they fell and to be mummified by the sun and dry air, turning them into reliable, if deeply unnerving, landmarks for the trail. I hadn't thought about that, but obviously it'd be hard to retrieve, but I hadn't thought there's nothing up there that's going to help them decompose.

Right. So David said, of course, it wouldn't be a lateral thinking puzzle without death, grisly, horrifying death everywhere. And he sent in some links, including photos for anybody who wants to actually see this. It's pretty different. It's pretty different. I hate to say it, that's only going to get worse as time goes on. Yeah, yeah. So thanks to David for that puzzle. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to try, whether anybody dies or not, we don't require that people die. Please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 9,000 regardable cantlets. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics in today's show. If you like our podcast and want to help support it, please see the support us page of our website.

You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by leaving a review on your favorite podcast directory. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the superb Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.