Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 346 - The 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 AM local time, a major explosive eruption took place at a volcano in southwest Washington State. After months of earthquakes and smaller eruptions, Mt. St. Helens exploded. Over 1,000 feet of mountain was gone in just a few moments. And 57 people quickly died as hot volcanic ash, mudslides, and a fast-moving, incredibly hot cloud of death and destruction tore through miles of forest.  Why didn't many of these people heed warnings that a deadly explosion was imminent? Today we look into what geothermal activity led up to this eruption, how various government agencies, private companies, and everyday people reacted to months of conflicting reports, how volcanos are formed, why the explode, and much more! Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp tickets are ON SALE!  BadMagicMerch.com Get tour tickets at dancummins.tv Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SzBBr8L2E8sMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits

Would you ever live next to an active volcano? You might already. One research paper estimated that almost 9% of the world's 1990 population lived within a hundred kilometers, roughly 62 miles, of a historically active volcano and 12% within the same distance from a volcano believed to have been active during the last 10,000 years. A paper from 2019 would specify that over 29 million people live within just 10 kilometers, just over six miles, from volcanoes labeled as technically active, and around 800 million people live within 100 kilometers.

If you're thinking why the hell would anyone live by an active volcano? I do have some answers. A lot of people fantasize about burning life. It is the number one most popular sexual fetish on Pornhub right now. Uh, no, no, of course that's not it. Thank God. Soil near active volcanoes is often rich

and mineral deposits and provides excellent farming opportunities. And so people are gonna farm that land and make that fertile land farm money. A lot of people visit volcanoes each year. So the demand naturally pops up for hotels, restaurants, gift shops, tour guides and more. And some people, many people, actually, born near volcanoes simply don't have the financial resources to move.

And they don't really need to, given that most volcanic eruptions so infrequent and not that disastrous. About 50 to 60 volcanoes erupt each year somewhere on Earth, but an eruption can include everything from lava spewing deadly blasts to eruptions of ash and steam that don't really cause much damage if at all. Volcanoes kill about 500 people a year on average, which may sound like a lot, but that's only six and every 100 million people. Not really something to worry about compared to so many other ways you can die.

Literally just falling over in an accident and dying, a more likely cause of death. Even if you live within six miles of an active volcano, the odds of you dying and eruption still less than two out of every hundred thousand people. Most of the time volcanoes, not that dangerous. I was in Iceland last summer with Lindsey, Kyler, Monroe, hiking on top of an active volcano that had started to erupt about 30 minutes after we finished our hike. And the tour bus we were on turned back around at our request to return to the volcano. About 30 of us went up and got close enough to the fresh lava flow as we could to get some decent picks.

If it had erupted further, I would have been condemning my family to be written off as just a few more Darwin awards. But of course, we weren't in all likelihood in that much danger. Again, the overwhelmingly majority of volcanic eruptions, not deadly, not terrifying. Beautiful, actually, powerfully beautiful. And perhaps one of the most beautiful volcanoes in the world is Mount St. Helens, a six and a half drive from where I am recording right now. Before 1980, Mount St. Hel, sometimes referred to as the Mount Fuji of America, towered above the landscape around it at 9,677 feet, roughly 3,000 feet higher than any peak in the US, east of the Mississippi.

The fifth highest peak in the very mountainous state of Washington, and today it's still towers, just at 8,330 feet, over 1,300 feet of mountain blew off in 1980. The volcano is almost 33 miles due west to mount Adams, approximately 50 miles northeast to the Vancouver, Washington, Portland, Oregon, metro area, meaning a potential eruption could change miles and miles in nearby areas as well as hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. In 1980, an eruption would do just that. On March 6, 1980, the first signs

of activity at Mounts and Hellens occurred as a series of small earthquakes. 11 days later, March 27, after hundreds of additional quakes, the volcano produced its first eruption in over 100 years. Steam explosions blasted a wide crater through the volcano's summit ice cap and covered the snow-clad, southeast sector of the peak with dark ash. Over the following week, the crater grew to about 1,300 feet in diameter and two giant crack systems now crossed the entire summit area. Many eruptions occurred on average from about one hour

in March, to about one a day in April second before things abruptly quieted. And now many thoughts of fireworks were over. Fireworks that had hurt no one, just like most eruptions don't. But then small eruptions resumed on May 7th continued to May 17th, and the earthquakes returned so so many small quakes. By May 11,000 of little earthquakes had shaken the volcano. Earthquakes caused by lava moving a massive amount of earth around inside this mountain, and pressure from molten magma that caused the northern flank to bulge outward about 450 feet.

Still, many were not worried about something major happening. Many thought at any moment, all this activity might just go away. Others were worried that this was all to build up to something terrible. Everyone from geologists to homeowners to businesses were trying to figure out what was going to happen next, if anything, and what they should do about it if anything. In the end, something happened that only a few predicted what happened. Something that almost no one prepared for it had just seemed so unlikely, but here it was. The deadly explosion of Mount St. Helens, the most destructive volcanic eruption ever to occur in the history of the US this week. On an awe-inspiring mother nature can really drop the mayhem hammer down upon us whenever

she wants to audition of TimeSuck. Well, happy Monday, meet sacks. Welcome to the cult. The curious Dan Cummins, it's Suck Nasty, Rooster Buggles, Parallegal, and you are listening to time suck. Two club dates left this spring by the time this drops. If you want to catch some stand up, Bloomington, Indiana, May, four, fifth, and sixth, Madison, Wisconsin, May 11th, 12th, and 13th. You can check out all the dates, Dan Cummins, .tv. I'll be posting more soon. Recording this, just have to wrap up the Burn It All Down theater tour and a huge thank

you. Everyone who came out made it such a success out of blast. And I can't wait to do something like that again. You supporting the tour makes that possible. Looking forward to releasing the comedy special, I recorded back in Minneapolis in December featuring the material I toured with and more. I'll let you know where that baby will live

when it'll come out, when I know. Just finishing some of the editing finally just put in the last little polishes on it, shop it around and see what happens. And now for this week's merch announcement, uh, hello everyone, it's me Andrew Holt. Not that I can't remember right now. I'm Andrew Holt of A Holt's Air Banjo Academy.

And I'm extremely excited to announce the 2023 Air Banjo Academy Jamboree and see it downtown Gary, Indiana. We're going bigger and better with a new elite instructor, roosterbogal, and he's just got paroled again, Gary Indiana. We're going bigger and better with a new elite instructor. Rooster Bogle. And he's just got paroled again, Bogle Family Quartet. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, and Roman is now open. So head on over to badmagicmerch.com, reserve your spots today by purchasing the official

2023 Air Banjo Academy T-shirt, same old design, fresh new colors, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, yeah, you can fucking learn how to play that too. And that's topic time. It's hard to think of something more awesome, that a volcanic eruption, and I mean awesome in its original sense. Defined as being extremely impressive or daunting, inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear. Volcanoes inspire all of those things. They're giant fucking mountains with fire inside

of them. Capals of wreaking havoc and destroying whatever happens to be in their path. But also some of Earth's most constructive forces created Newland with magma cools and literally reshaping the surface of the Earth. Volcanoes have made some of my favorite places on earth. Thanks for Hawaii, volcanoes, such a chill, serene place, ironically created from fire and explosions. Volcanoes have created much more than Hawaii. The majority of Earth's entire surface is volcanic rock. The ocean sea floor created by a basalt coming out of mid-ocean ridges, basically undersea

volcanoes. Over millions of years Volcanoes have created much of the water we drink and the air we breathe and that process of creation has come with significant chaos Dern interruption lava can pour out eliminating whatever lies in his path And now I think of the game that myself so many of you played his kids Floor is hot lava touch the floor and you're dead Because you don't fuck with lava. We learn that early on. It's gonna melt you so damn quick.

Molten lava, while the temperature varies, is about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, 1,250 degrees Celsius. Not quite hot enough to melt steel, but plenty hot enough to disintegrate your ass. Even more terrifying, the lava might be what are called pyroclastic flows, fast moving currents of very hot gas and volcanic matter, which contains a high density mix

of hot lava blocks, pumice, ash, and volcanic gas, which is one of the worst kinds of gas. These bastard speed down volcanic slopes at over 400 miles an hour, up to over, at temperatures of up to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, typically following valleys, they quickly, seriously fucking redecorate. You wanted way less trees and a lot more exposed rock, right?

Ha, you got it. They can also create layers, deadly mud flows that are capable of suffocating and drowning people who haven't been fucking flash fried yet and obliterating infrastructure. And then there are the massive amounts of ash and gases released into the atmosphere and spread around the world that can also be deadly. A volcano's two powers destructive and constructive.

My explain while volcano's 10 to feature so prominently in many cultures myths and legends. Today we'll explore some of these myths and legends briefly, basically exploring how cultures before science thought of volcanoes before heading into what modern science tells us about how volcanoes work and what kinds there are. Next in the timeline, we'll get into Mount St. Helens and the many factors, science and its limitations, humans and their desire for stability and to make more money and conflict between government agencies and corporate interests, the shaped how a possible and pending disaster was managed.

And of course, we'll talk about the explosion itself, and those and those unfortunately caught up in its complicated and destructive wake. Let's begin. The word volcano comes from the little volcanic island of volcano volcano in the Mediterranean sea is off Sicily known for years of activity and numerous calderas. Ah Sicily it's been too long since I've spent a summer there. Mamamia, pascotero aluminare la cosonostra brick bata panna jane torre venderes. I fucking never been to Sicily.

A thousand years ago people living there uh... believed that volcano was the uh... volcano was the chimney of the forge of vulcan the blacksmith of the roman gods they thought that the hot lava fragments and clouds of dust erupting from vulcano came from vulcans forages he beat out thunderbolts for jubiter king of the gods weapons from ours the god of war

scientists now know that those ancient romans were complete fucking idiots Thunderbolts for Jupiter, King of the Gods, and weapons for Mars, the God of War. Scientists now know that those ancient Romans were complete fucking idiots, and that the emissions from volcanoes once attributed by poets to be from Vulcan 4 just actually volcanic gas naturally released from both active and many inactive volcanoes. Long before that scientific knowledge was available to us dingolinks, who've never studied these firemounds, many societies came up with their own mythological ways to explain volcanoes. Kind of like how dingolinks today still think that the earth is flat. Kitty, today's dingolinks are way fucking dumb.

The ancient ones today, people have the option to embrace science and forego, disproven myths, and they just choose not to do so. So that's fun. Anyway, old Hawaiian legends tell us that the eruptions were caused by Pale, the beautiful but tempestuous goddess of volcanoes during her frequent moments of anger. Those of Vina, was that you? Pale was both revered and feared. Her immense power in many adventures figured prominently in ancient Hawaiian songs and chants. She could cause earthquakes by stamping her feet, volcanic eruptions, and fiery devastations by digging with her magic stick.

One legend describes the long and bitter quarrel between Pele and an older sister whose name I will not even fucking attempt to say, that led to the creation of the chain of volcanoes that formed the Hawaiian Islands. On the side of the Pacific, fiery avalanches once interrupted the lives of Native American peoples near volcano. Mount Mazama, more than 6, 6000 years ago in modern-day Oregon. These people interpreted Mazama's violent eruptions before the collapse of about a mildest mountain as a war between two gods, Lao and Skell.

Lao was the chief spirit who occupied the mystic land of today's crater lake under his control where many lesser spirits who could change their forms it will. Oh, fuck yeah, bro Must be so fun to be a shapeshifter Many of them were monsters of various kinds one was a giant crawfish or dragon who could reach up his mighty arms to the tops of the Cliffs and drag down anyone he chose Skelling the other hand was a mighty spirit whose realm was a clamoth marsh region His capital being near the Yamzy spring on the each and side of the marsh, he had many subjects, the Antelope, the Bald Eagle, the Golden Eagle, and tons of others. And comparatively I gotta

say, Skales Army seems weak as fuck. I mean, Eagles are cool, sure. Antelope, yeah they're fine. But not exactly dragging the shape-chipters. A fierce war occurred between Skull and Laugh and their followers was raged for a long time. Finally, Skull was stricken down in his own land of Yamsy, and his heart was torn from his body and carried in triumph to Laugh's mountain. Of course, he ended up losing. Dragon beats Anilope every fucking time. All the people were then summoned for a great celebration of the fall of Skull. Even the followers of Skull were invited, and the course of the festival,

scale's heart was tossed from hand to hand in a weird fucking game of ball. And now some of the scale's former subjects thought about resurrecting him. The men of scale knew that if the heart of scale could be restored to his body, he would live again. And they awaited the right opportunity. Finally, when scale's heart reached the hands of the anilope, he sped away, eastward, swift is the wind. When nearly exhausted, he passed the fucking heart to the bald eagle and in turn, the

heart ball got tossed to the golden eagle and so on. And all the men of Lao pursued them. They failed to overtake the swift bears of Skull's heart. Damn it! I forgot how fucking fast Antelope were. Was that crawfish dragon doing all this? What was the shape shifters? Shape shifters do a super fast analog, already dumb shits?

Maybe dragons don't beat analogs every time. At last they heard the far away voice of the dove, another of Scales people, and loud subjects gave up their useless pursuit. Scales heart was returned to his body, he lived again and the war was resumed, and now loud was overpowered and slain. Did not see that coming. Maybe his shape shifters had the day off or something. This time, Skell took Laos body to the top of the mountain where he did something tricky.

A false message was conveyed to Laos monsters in the lake that Skell had been killed again. Laos body was then torn to pieces hurled into the water. As each part of the body was thrown to the lake, the monsters of Laos devoured it. When the head was thrown in, they recognized it as the head of their own God, loud, and they refused to touch it. So that remains today as wizard island, a big volcanic cinder cone at the top of crater lake. As you can see in Roman, Hawaiian, Native American stories, volcanoes are connected with gods. Some cultures once viewed volcanoes as gods themselves.

In Africa, the still active volcano, Oliyingo Lengai, literally mountain of God, still venerated by some of the Messiah people in modern day Tanzania as the giver of all good things. In gratitude for an eruption in 1917, young mothers, many young mothers went to the volcano and expressed their breast milk onto the ground, in they escorted it out onto the dirt Wow That would have been That would have been quite disrespectful

Especially of a whole bunch of lactating women did that all the same time I mean imagine if you were just fucking chilling near the volcano after an eruption unfamiliar with this practice Just checking for lava flows whatever and then dozens of topless young women approached the volcano, start dumping breast milk all over the ground, just whipping out squirt gun titties. Hail is a phina? I don't think so.

I think I would for sure start to worry about my mental health in a life moment like that. I would assume I'd inhaled some kind of toxic gas and now I was hallucinating and probably dying. Another culture is the volcano has been viewed as a symbol of justice For the Aztecs while they were suffering under a new onslaught of Spanish conquistadors Momotombo a high volcanic cone located at the edge of a large lake in Nicaragua became a symbol of defiance It was said that the ground shook and the volcano roared whenever a Spanish priest tried to approach it and I fucking doubt that happened, but it's a cool story and

The it's an indigenous people living on Luzon and the Philippines considered the 1991 eruption of Pinotubo as nature's rebellion against the government's granting a permission for geothermal drilling and for jets from nearby Clark Air Force base Then the largest US military base overseas used in the area for bombing practice. Many cultures have viewed the volcano as an instrument of divine warning. 1951 village elders said that the explosion of Hibakibak in the Philippines,

which killed hundreds of people and thousands of farm animals was an indication according to a time magazine article. The God have been displeased by the young who grew laks in their church going. Forgetful of the feast days, and a gleeful of the sign of the cross. Okay, ideas like this, not always great ideas,

have persisted into the modern day. In 1980, in Mount St. Helens, two Christian priests in Longview, Washington told their parishioners that the ongoing volcanic activity meant, obviously, that people should be more charitable and more caring to their families, that it was directing the community to get back to its spiritual morons.

Uh, uh, huh? Yeah, mysterious ways and stuff. Uh, while you can, of course, still believe whatever the fuck you want to about volcanoes and why they erupt, unlike in agent times, uh, now we do actually have a scientific understanding of volcanoes and what they do, at least, uh, at least a fo do actually have a scientific understanding of volcanoes and what they do. At least a foothold of a scientific understanding. Now we have volcano scientists, AKA volcanologists, to tell us how volcanoes work.

Volcanoologists, that's a cool sounding job. Can't be many paid volcanologists around the world though. Like if you really wanna become a paid volcanologist, good fucking luck. I feel like want to become a paid volcanologist, good fucking luck. I feel like wanting to become a professional YouTuber or Instagram model is probably a more practical aspiration. Definitely got to be more professional only fans porn models than volcanologists. If you are a volcanologist, please write in how the fuck did you get your job? But I digress often, refocusing now. What is a volcano?

How does it form? How does it erupt? Let's head back to a fifth grade science lesson for comparison. This is not going to be some PhD dissertation here. Painting very broad strokes, ignoring some variations on the following, so it doesn't get too confusing for people like myself. A volcano is like a massive version of a bottle of soda with molten lava inside instead

of, say, delicious and refreshing root beer. And sometimes it's like a bottle that some dickhead has shaken the ever loving shit out of. Now it's going to blow. A bottle of soda, if you shake it really hard, will start to form gas bubbles inside. Then if the cap is released, pressure built up inside of the bottle will cause soda to shoot everywhere. A volcanic eruption works in much the same way.

Most volcanoes form at the edges of tectonic plates. There's large puzzle pieces that make up the earth's crust. These huge solid rock plates are constantly shifting as they float upon the earth's mantle. A really thick layer of hot flowing rock. These rock plates, they are the dickheads, shaking up the soda. Even though plates move very slowly, their motion called plate tectonics has a huge impact on our planet. Plate tectonics form the oceans, continents and mountains. Sometimes when the plates pull apart, or when they slide into each other magma, especially a basically hot liquid rock and gas, rises to fill in the

space. And this rising magma, forming lava as the services can form volcanic mountains. And then these volcanoes can explode. Some volcanic eruptions are explosive, meaning that lava shoots up into the sky, gas, hot pieces of rock and ash also released. Other eruptions are what's called effusive lava oozes slowly from the volcano. These are the the Whipple chill of eruptions. Eruption, a chill. These are the kind of eruptions you've probably seen

in a video footage of, like from Hawaii. This was the kind of eruption I hiked back to get a closer look at in Iceland. The intensity of an eruption depends on a few factors. One is the magma's temperature, another is the magma's thickness. The amount of gas trapped within the magma, also an important factor,

because the magma has a high viscosity, meaning it resists flow very well. The gas bubbles will have a hard time escaping from the magma and they'll push more material up causing a bigger eruption. If the magma has a lower viscosity, the gas bubbles will be able to escape from the magma more easily. So it won't get all fucking pen up and angry. The lava want to erupt as violently. Of course, this is balanced with gas content. I don't know if the magma contains more gas bubbles, it will erupt more violently.

If it contains less gas, it will erupt more calmly. Both factors determined by the composition of the magma. More gas equals essentially more violence. In that way, a volcano is a lot like a butthole. If you're a teacher, especially an elementary school teacher, please use this following analogy. Just say something like, hey kids, volcanoes are a lot like buttholes. The more gas inside, the more violent the eruption. As a general rule, the most explosive eruptions can come from magmas that have high gas levels and high viscosity.

While the most subdued eruptions come from magmas with have high gas levels and high viscosity, while the most subdued eruptions come from magmas with low gas levels and low viscosity. If there is a good deal of pressure, however, volcano will begin its eruption with an explosive launch material into the air. I don't know why I said however there. Keep the rest of that. Typically, this eruption column is composed of hot gas, ash,

and pyroclastic rocks, volcanic material, and solid form. There are many sorts of explosive eruptions, very significantly in size, shape, and duration. There can, for example, be a lot of small, short explosions, or one big explosion, followed by a bunch of little ones, or a little one that leads to a bigger one, etc. You get the idea. However, scientists still can't always predict, winner what kind of explosion will take place. Kind of like and again teachers, please feel free to use this. We humans can't always predict what kind of poop and gas is going to come out of our bottle. Is it going to be some kind of soft serve chocolate ice cream kind of poop? Is it going to be strawberry

ice cream? You definitely want to go get that checked out. In that case, is it going to be creamy, gentle, quiet, or is it going to leave the toilet bowl looking like terrorists? Just try to destroy it in a suicide bombing. Your principal and the students, parents, fucking love that one. But seriously, it's hard to predict what will happen with the volcanic eruption. And it was harder back in 1980 than it is now when Mount St. Helens went off. Active volcanoes don't run on a timetable, like a train. This means it's impossible for one to be overdue for an eruption, no matter what news headlines say. And of course, not all volcanoes are active.

Active, dormant, extinct, or dead. They can be subjective categories. Scientists generally say that if the volcano is erupting or demonstrating activity in the form of earthquakes or gaseous emissions, it is considered active. Mountain Helen is still considered active. If the volcano is not showing any signs of activity, but has erupted within the last 10,000 years and has the theoretical potential to erupt again is considered dormant. Shortly before the 1980 explosion, Mountain Helen was considered dormant.

If the volcano is not erupted in 10,000 years or has clearly exhausted any magma supply, the volcano is considered extinct. Finally, before the timeline, what kind of volcano is Mount St. Helens? Is it a sweet good girl volcano who goes peeping the potty? Or is it a naughty girl volcano who goes poo poo and a diaper? Sadly, those descriptions are not volcano types. Different geological institutions have classification types that vary a bit. Here's my favorite description of the four types I like most.

Cinder cones, fissure, shield, and composite volcanoes. This seems to be the most agreed upon group of four types. Cinder cones are simple volcanoes which have a bowl shaped crater, the summit, and steep sides. They only grow to about a thousand feet, the size of a hill. They usually are created from eruptions, from a single opening, unlike a shield volcano, which can erupt from many different openings. Cinder cones are typically made out of piles of lava, not ash.

During the eruption, blobs, aka cinders of lava are blown into the air, breaking the small fragments that fall around the opening of the volcano. The pile forms an oval shaped small volcano. Fischer volcanoes have no central crater at all. They fucking hate craters, like really despise them. They wouldn't stop and piss on a crater if they passed one on the side of the highway that was on fire. Instead of a crate or crater, giant cracks open in the ground and expel vast quantities

of lava. This lava spreads far and wide to form huge pools that can cover almost everything around when these pools of lava cool and solidify the surface remains mostly flat. Since the source cracks are usually buried, there is often nothing volcano-like to see only a flat plane. Shield volcanoes are tall and broad with flat rounded shapes. They have low slopes and almost always have large craters at their summits. The Hawaiian volcanoes exemplify the common this common type of a shield volcano. They are built by countless outpoints of

lava that advance great distances from a central summit bent or even a group of events. The outpoints of lava are typically not accompanied by pyroclastic material, which make the shield volcanoes relatively safe during eruption. They're the f**k- they're the cool volcanoes. The volcano version of some handsome surfer dude who seems to have life all figured out, not a caring world. Just hoping to catch some sick waves, brah, it's all good. And they talk way cooler than that by the way.

I don't even know what they say because I'm not that cool myself. And finally, the most majestic of the volcanoes are composite volcanoes, also known as strato volcanoes. Compositive volcanoes are tall, symmetrically shaped with steep sides, sometimes rising 10,000 feet high, built of alternating layers of lava flows, volcanic ash and cinders. They are the big fucking deal, bad motherfuckers of volcanoes. Mount St. Helens is a composite volcano. Compositive volcanoes tend to erupt explosively and pose considerable danger to nearby life and property.

Mount St. Helens' most active phase was 28 to 18,000 years ago. That's when this sexy lady was in her destructive prime. At that time, the volcano produced explosive eruptions that ejected large volumes of ash, lava domes, lava flows, pyroclastic flows, a debris avalanche, and Lennar is probably much larger than the huge debris avalanche that triggered Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption. And when it went off in 1980, by the way, the landslide, as part of the Mount just sloughed off, the biggest such landslide in recorded US history. And that was long before any human beings lived in the area when that stuff happened. This is an interpeak. The first humans began to settle in the area of

Mount St. Helens between what geologists called the Swift Creek stage and the spirit lake stage around 6,500 years ago. Work by archaeologists has shown that a massive eruption 35,500 years ago buried several Native American settlements with a thick layer of pumice as a result people have been in the area for nearly 2 nearly 2000 years, which fucking makes sense. When most of your people get suffocated or burned alive with hot ash, lava, probably feels like a good time to maybe mosey on out of the area. Around 500 CE, Native Americans return to the site, various tribes. We know that there were at least some explosions during this time because Native American

oral traditions have contained numerous legends to explain the eruptions of Mount St. Helens and other cascade volcanoes. The first European accounts of Mount St. Helens, very recent. The first time Mount St. Helens was spotted by Europeans, it occurred on May 19, 1792 by George Vancouver, as he was charting the inlets of Puget Sound at Point Lotton in their present day Seattle. Vancouver did not name the mountain until October 20th, 1792. What he came into view is his ship passed the mouth of the Columbia River, named it after a diplomat back in England.

First modern eruption would occur in 1800, and then there would be other bigger eruptions from 1831 to 1857. But they consisted mostly of ash, the last significant big, big eruption Mount St. Helens before 1980 thought to have occurred in 1857. On April 17th, 1857, the Republican, a Washington newspaper reported that Mount St. Helens or some other Mount to the southward is seen to be in a state of eruption. Minor explosions reported in 1898, 1903 and 1921 were probably steamed driven and did not involve any magma being delivered to the surface. So by 1980, Mount St. Helens had an erupting significantly for a long time. You know, at least since

1857, and even that eruption didn't see large flows of ash, pyroclastic flows, or other major hazards. For those who knew it in the first eight decades of the 20th century, Mount St. Helens was a paradise. Placed a vacation, go to a Boy Scout camp, mountain climb, live and work. When Mount St. Helens erupted, big time, May 18, 1980, the entire county was only home to 7,919 people. But this number would swell during the summer, even during the work day as loggers came from nearby areas to cut down old growth trees, all of these people would be put at risk during the explosion. And it was sheer luck that the explosion happened on a week, weekend, not a week day, when more people would have been around.

As it stood, the explosion would claim 57 lives. Some of them were standing in the area recklessly, having not heated multiple warnings to evacuate, but in fairness to them, many of them had spent the last several months listing to a lot of conflicting advice. Local businesses wanted the area to be accessible so they could profit off volcanic activity. The barriers drawn around danger zones seem pretty arbitrary. Sometimes they were. Geologists had no way of knowing for sure what would happen and then there was a whole private versus public land, a little problem.

Danger zone maps were often, you know, comprised between the scientists or compromise between the scientists predictions and the interest of private individuals, leaving a lot of area open that probably shouldn't have been. Furthermore, scientists believe that they'd have a little lead time to get people out of the area. In this day and age, with modern technology, they would, but when Mount St. Helens erupted, nobody was ready. Chaos quickly rained. Here, quickly reigned. Here comes this crazy story. Right after our mid-show sponsor break.

Thanks for listening and hope you heard some deals you liked. And now let's jump into the timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time, some time, line. On March 16, 1980, at 3.47 in the afternoon, in the basement, the geophysics building on the campus of the University of Washington, seismologists and data analyst Linda Nassen was tracking an earthquake. Another job that has to be hard to land, seismologists. Another job that has to be hard to land, seismologist. According to salary.com, the salary range typically falls between $62,156,75,245 dollars. For something so specialized, I thought it would be more than that.

But I guess it's not really a position that can be monetized. No real money being able to tell everyone how big an earthquake that just happened was. If you can very accurately predict earthquakes in the future, you know, like Wayne advance, holy shit, there'd be a lot of money there, but you'd have to be a real piece of shit to get it. Right, you'd have to let a lot of people die. Like, to get the most, to get the most from it.

Like, you have to really prove to people that they should pay you before you get a big payday. Like, you'd have to tell an area that a really bad earthquake is coming in like five years. Like you know exactly when it is, but you just kind of keep it like a little bit vague. Keep it like you know like the week, but not today. And but let them know it's gonna be catastrophic,

but don't talk about it too much at the time, but make sure you get your prediction out there in the press. Then the week before it happens, tell everyone exactly how bad it's gonna be, exactly what area will be affected and the minute it's gonna hit. And do all that knowing that people aren't gonna listen to you in time.

Then after a whole bunch of people die, have your publicist? Remind a bunch of media outlets that you fucking called it, you called it. And then you called it the fucking second. And you knew exactly how bad it was gonna be. Then you tell the public that you know for a fact when the next terrible earthquake is coming,

right, it's gonna be hitting somewhere in blank country, right? Certain point in the future is gonna be fucking really bad. You're happy to share all the details so everyone can prepare for price $50 million or they can suck your earthquake predicting dick Outside of that horrible never gonna happen. Why do I always think about shit like that scenario? I don't know how you make a lot of money with this job, but I'm glad people do it Back now to seismologist Lyndon Nassen March 16th 1980 347 the afternoon campus you dump Display of the seismic recorder in front of her measuring an earthquake taking place somewhere south as Seattle in the cascade mountains Registers at least a four the biggest earthquake in the area for almost a year.

She went upstairs, where Steve Malone and Craig weaver were talking, and she told them to shut the fuck up and listen to her, maybe. She did talk to him. She told them that she just got a four from the Mount Rainier station. And what does a four mean? Well, let me share a quick earthquake magnitude Richter scale chart. A seismic reading of 2.5 or less to notes in earthquake usually not even felt millions of these occur

around the world every year. A reading of 2.5 to 5.4, to notes in earthquake that is often felt but only causes minor damage. There are roughly half a million of these felt around the world every year. Still on a big deal, in most instances. 5.5 to 6 equates to slight damage to buildings and other structures,

and these happen about 350 times a year. A quake of 6.1 to 6.9 might cause a lot of damage in very populated areas. Might. It's only happened around 100 times a year. Major earthquake, 7 to 7.9 will cause serious damage and only 10 to 15 occur each year. And a quake of eight or greater will fuck your whole world up. A great earthquake that can totally destroy communities near the epicenter. And these happen only about once a year. February 6, 2023 very recently, 417 AM local time, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, rock Southeast Turkey near the Syrian border, and at least 56,000 people died. Fucking insane. Over 125,000 additional people injured, over 2.5 million people displaced due to massive structural damage. And that one wasn't even quite an age or greater.

Again, back in 1980, Linda, Craig and Steve, they're looking at a four. Back downstairs, the three scientists peered at the jagged line at the seismogram. Craig thought that the earthquake came from Mount Hood, an area of 158 miles south from UW, not Mount St. Helens. Steve thought it was Mount St. Helens, which is about 100 miles south of where they stood. Linda didn't care to speculate. She took a ruler from a desk, measured on the printouts the exact moments when the shaking arrived at each of the seismic stations in the area, ended the results and do some computer punch cards. This was

a long time ago. Took the stack upstairs to send the data to the campus computer center. This crazed like they had to do all this work. We're now that you just do it on her phone. A few minutes later, she walked back into Steve Malone's office and he was right. It was Mount St. Helens. Unthinkable because it had not been active for 123 years. So how are earthquakes and volcanoes connected? Both occur due to movement of the Earth's tectonic plates. But earthquakes do not always indicate coming volcanic activity. Not at all. A lot of seismic activities centered around a volcano, though, that does create reason to be concerned. And after that first earthquake beneath Mount St. Helens, the earth did not quiet down. On the contrary, it got more agitated.

By the following Tuesday, five days after the initial quake, hundreds of little earthquakes had occurred beneath Mount St. Helens, often following one another so closely that they ran together on the seismometers. None of them substantially larger than that first one, but a lot of activity, so something's happening under the earth around Mount St. Helens, but what? That day, the Forest Service closes the mountain above the tree line to climbers and skiers, so they won't be buried by snow avalanches that could be caused by these quakes. But overflights during rare moments of good weather show the pristine white cone of the mountain

still to be unsullied, doesn't look like an active volcano is brewing in there. What was going to happen? No one knew. The potential eruption of Mount St. Helens posed risk to everyone, but especially to the warehouse company. One of the largest wood products businesses in the world. And a company founded in Tacoma, and now headquartered in Seattle. They'll become a major player in the story.

Let's talk about them. Warehouse are on nearly six million acres of the US at this time, an area larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, also had the rights to log even more land than that in Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other countries. It's fucking wild. They own around 12.4 million acres of land right now in the US, more than all of New Hampshire and Vermont combined. And they made over $10 billion in revenue just last year. Rumored now to be a subsidiary of Bear Evo, Inc. On the basis of its extensive timber holdings, Warehouse was the richest company washed in state of the time.

Worth more than even Boeing had a higher market valuation than Ford, mobile, Xerox, so many others. By 1980, where housing was the United States fifth largest home builder and its mortgage subsidiary was the fourth largest mortgage banker in the nation. Company also ran a salmon ranching business in Oregon, fresh water shrimp had some farms in Florida and Brazil, wholesale, nursery supply business and more. Warehouse was a Forbes 100 company in the US and a force to be reckoned with anywhere in the world.

George Warehouse was the man responsible for much of that success. George actually just recently passed away last summer, age 95. He had become President and CEO in 1966 to age 39 and had shaken up the company and weighs his dad and granddad never would have tried. As a boy born into the warehouse or legacy, he'd grown up in the area around Mount St. Helens. And this next part of this little story of his life, moment in his life, crazy diversion, but worth it.

When he was just nine years old, 1935, George was kidnapped, walking home from elementary school. A man forced him into the car, drove him to a forest east of Seattle, where this guy was joined by several other mass men. They let him to the woods, had him sign a piece of paper, then lowered him into a pre-dugged pit, hand-cuffed into some plank, so he couldn't escape. Then they covered the pit with a piece of tin through dirt and twigs on it, and just fucking left him down there in the dark. Why did this happen? It's fucking wild. The week before his granddad, John Warehouseer, died in his Tacoma mansion. The day after his death, 19-year-old Margaret Thullen, read John's obituary to her husband, Harmon Waley.

Waley was a petty thief who, with some old criminal pals, now developed a plan to kidnap one of the wealthy warehouses. After a friend excerts by the family and the police for the missing boy, Phil and Helen Warehouseer received a ransom note in their home on Fort Street, North to coma. The kidnappers demanded $200,000. The equivalent of roughly $3 million today in small, unmarked bills. As soon as the money was collected, the family was supposed to send the message, we are ready. In the personal column of the Seattle Post Intelligence, post-intelligence, under the

name Percy Mini. We don't want to hurt anyone if we can get out of it." The note said, so if you just follow the rules as they're laying down by us, you will have the one you love back home in a week's time. If you care about them, $200,000 worth. So just remember, a slip on your part is a slip by us. Don't do it. The note was signed, egoist. Weird. A Georgia abduction was front page news across the nation. And after George's first night in the pit, wailing his associates, including his wife Margaret, knew they couldn't keep visiting the pit without drawing suspicion. So they moved George to a second pit where

he was left out again overnight. Again, this is, this is a nine year old. Third day, they locked George in the trunk of a Ford coupe. Drought 300 miles to just outside of Spokane, Washington, about a half hour from where I sit here in Cordelay, Idaho right now. Keeping George's chain to a tree in the woods while they figured out a better plan. That afternoon they rented a furniture department telling the land lady that they were salesman. Then they went to a store, obtained a large box, smuggled George inside the house in that box. The two men made him write a letter to his family assuring them that he was still alive.

After that, they locked him in a closet with Waley on guard. Here George came to actually like his captor, Hey, Harmon Waley. Harmon would play songs and as you could layly outside the closet, which George would lock to and would keep him company. Meanwhile, within a few days, the warehouses had gathered the $200,000 from relatives in various bank accounts. The FBI, which had dispatched more than a dozen agents to Tacoma to work on the case, recorded as many of the bill's serial numbers as they could.

And the 10 page list was distributed to railway depots, hotels, banks, post office, post offices, and more. Georgia's father received a letter from the kidnappers and struck in him to register at the ambassador hotel in Seattle. And at seven o'clock under the name James Paul Jones. Later that day, a taxi cab driver delivered another note, told warehouseer to drive a loan in his car to an intersection near a brewery between Seattle and Tacoma. Their warehouseer found further instructions along the side of the road in a tin can bearing a white cloth. As directed by the

note, he drove down the road looking for another white cloth, but didn't find it. Maybe somebody else grabbed it. Set in his car for hours, nothing happened. Eventually, he gave up, drove back to Seattle with all the ransom money. Next morning, where a house received a telephone call from a man demanded to know why he had failed to follow instructions. And the second note, where a house was like, I couldn't find the fucking second note you idiots. And the kid now foretold him that he had one last chance.

This is reminding me now of Leopold and Lope. But dude, make your fucking ransom instructions. Easier. You make him too complicated and you're never going to get the ransom. Well that night, trying again, Phillip Warehouse, her drive down a dirt road as instructed. Follows a procession of fucking tin cans, each having a note in them. Final note tells him to place the money in the front seat, leave the car running, dome light on, and the driver's door open. He'll base the orders. After walking

a hundred yards down the road, sees a man leap from the bushes, hop into the car and speed away. Where house or walks back to the highway, catches a ride to Tacoma, they actually pull it off. 3.30 a.m. after eight days in captivity, the kidnappers now release little George onto a dirt road, right in the middle of the night in the woods, east of Seattle with two dirty blankets and a single dollar bill. How much of fucking assholes? Uh, George, they just got $200,000. George wandered six miles down the road until he finds a Lewis P. Bonoffa's farm walks

the back of the house knocks on the door says, you know, I'm George Warehouse. Uh, Bonoffa's calls the police department to inform him, uh, them that George is safe, then they begin to drive him to Tacoma On the way a sports writer for the Seattle a sports writer for the Seattle Times John Draher intercepts the car Draher Miss Leeds almost admisaled again Miss Leeds Bonovus into believing that he was a police officer just so he could get an interview Bonovus hands the boy over on the way back to Tacoma,

warehouseer's second kidnapper, technically, conducts the interview of a lifetime now and what a piece of shit he is. Let the scared kids go home already. Finally, at 7.45 AM, Georgia arrives at the warehouse of residents, press swarm the house, waiting for a reaction. Finding the warehouseer's spokesman emerges as if the coverage come to a halt

to reduce any bad effects on the boys' future life. Well, too late for that. Thanks, John Dreyer. In the days of follow, the ransom bills began to surface in Salt Lake City stores, and Margaret Tholen is arrested at Woolworth, where she paid for a 20-cent purchase with a $5 bill. After interrogation, she finally gives up, gives the police her address in the home. They find $3,700 of partially burned bills in the stove, both Waley and Thullen signed confessions admitting to the kidnapping and they lead the FBI to $90,790 of the ransom

money buried near an ant hill in a place called Immigration Canyon. Harmon Waley receives a sentence of 45 years in prison for kidnapping ends up in Alcatraz. Margaret uses the defense that her Mormon faith required her to obey her husband. Just follow the orders. And she was sentenced to 20 years at the Federal detention farm in Milan, Michigan, or Milan. And here's a really crazy part. During Waley's time in prison, he sent George Warehouse her letters, apologizing for his actions and asking for forgiveness when

he was paroled on June 3rd 1963, almost 30 years after the kidnapping, he wrote Warehouse or another note and asked for a job in the company. Really, you can't work anywhere else in the world than for the company whose CEO you once kidnapped, put in a fucking dirt pit for two nights out of what? It's nuts. And then even crazier,, put in a fucking dirt pit for two nights out was it's nuts. And then even crazier, George gave him a fucking job. Put him in charge of kidnapping. Yeah, he was the president of the kidnapping division. No, but he did give him a job. He found him a place at a warehouse or plant in Oregon. And when asked why he helps someone who had caused him

and his family so much pain, warehouseer said, I went through all sorts of sensations when I was kidnapped, from fear and concern to the point where I felt sorry for him. I guess he thought, I guess I thought he had paid his debt and a dude really made peace with all of it, which is very cool actually. It appeared that the kidnapping did not have much of an effect on George, not outwardly at least. He went on to Yale, graduated in 1948 after being classmates with future president and sculling bones, Illuminati confirmed member, George HW Bush, probably

why he was never hurt when he was kidnapped, right? George Warehouseer, probably an Illuminati dude, just like Bush. I know Warehouseer married the daughter of a prominent lumberman, they had six kids. Then in 1966, he took over the company, made some radical changes. As president CEO, he accelerated the amount of timber cut on company land and invested the profits back into land, saw mills and paper plants. He purged numerous top executives. He felt were dead weight, diversified into new business ventures. The non-traditional CEO even had a non-traditional appearance down to his off the rack clothes

and shoes and his untidy curly brown hair. He drove himself to work and took the company van with his employees. For vacation, he put his six kids in the car drove into Disneyland where they stayed in a modest hotel. All in all, he was a disciplined man with a no nonsense, honest but confrontational manner. Did not shy away from a challenge and he was about to face his biggest challenge yet. The potential eruption of Mount St. Helens could not have happened at a worst time for his company. The housing market was collapsing in 1980. A few months earlier, President Carter had appointed Paul Volcker, the head of the Federal

Reserve, and Volcker had vowed to do whatever it took to squeeze inflation out of the economy. And it was real bad. With the prime interest rate hovering around 20%, which is crazy, it's 8%. As I work on these notes and people are freaking out because it's higher than it's been in years and years. And housing starts had dropped by almost half from the year before with no upturn in sight. The timber industry was headed towards a massive contraction which meant huge income losses

and layoffs. George felt he couldn't afford to stop logging around Mount St. Helens. It was the best land his company had ever bought, purchased by a purchase by his great-grandfather. For almost 80 years, the warehouse or company had been logging in these woods, extracting billions of dollars in top shelf timber. Warehouse was also afraid that the eruption would act as a rallying point for environmentalist causes that would further damage his business. He was floating some plans and take logging to areas of some national parks.

And he was worried that if the environmentalist gained some political traction they would kill those plants and hurt his bottom line that much further March 20th, 1980 four days after the first quake Shortly afternoon people near Mount St. Helens here allowed bang originate from the cloud covered volcano a Few hours later reporter from a Portland radio station was flying over the mountain when the clouds suddenly parted and Revealed a plume of steam and was flying over the mountain when the cloud suddenly parted and revealed a plume of steam and ash rising from the mountain summit. There was no question at all. He radioed to his listeners.

Volcanic activity has begun. You can see smoke and ash pouring from the top of the mountain, especially the north side of the mountain. A blackened crater 250 feet across, hit open on the top of the mountain and was showering ash on the mountains northeast side. Officials from the Washington Department of Emergency Services told everyone within 15 miles of the volcano that they should leave the area.

Immediately, warehouse or evacuates 300 employees from the area. Most of them retreat to their favorite bars and then you're by little towns at Toledo, Vader, and Castle Rock. One of their girlfriends was quoted in a newspaper saying, the mountain is blowing and this tavern is going. She had been pretty proud of herself for that one. That was a good one. Six days later, Wednesday, March 26, 1980, approximately three dozen people squeezed

into the conference room of the U.S. Forest Service Building in Vancouver, Washington. It was nine in the morning when Bob Tegarsik, called to meeting to order. He was a supervisor in charge of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, an area of forest that surrounds Mount St. Helens. There were also law enforcement officials from all three counties bordering the mountain as well as representatives from the Department of Emergency Services and the Department of National Resources. As by far the largest landowner and employer

in the area, George Warehouse, had a representative at this meeting. County commissioners, state patrolman, fire district personnel, reservoir operators, state geologists, they all sit at the table. And around the edges of the room are an assortment of television, radio, and newspaper reporters listing closely. Bob introduces Donald Mullinow, who was a 55 year old geologist

within the US geological services who worked out at the Denver area office, even though he worked in Denver, nobody knew Mount St. Helens like Donald. It's Donald or Donald. For two decades, he and his colleague Dwight Crandall have been spending their summers driving and walking around Mount St. Helens, looking up at the mountain and trying to discover and document everything they could.

What they discovered was that the volcano was relatively young, having formed about 40,000 years ago. They'd divided his frequent eruptions into four periods and dated the cone of the volcano was relatively young, having formed about 40,000 years ago. They'd divided its frequent eruptions into four periods and dated the cone of the volcano back 2,500 years. They also learned that over the last four millennia, Mount St. Helens, had been the most active and explosive volcano in all of the United States. These two rock and lava nerds, they knew their shit, but when anyone else listened to what they were going to tell them.

Two years before the meeting in Vancouver, Moleno and Crandall had published a report entitled, Potential Hazards from Future Reptions of Mounts and Hell in Zolcano, Washington, an assessment of expectable kinds of future eruptions and their possible effects on human life and property. In that report, they described the evidence they had found documenting the volcanoes of violent past. They had uncovered a foot-thick layer of white pumice blown from the volcano to a ridge six miles to the east around the year 1500.

500 years before that, a strong, laterally directed explosion through what are known as lava bombs. That sounds fun. More than three miles from the volcano. That is fucking terrifying. Fucking lava bomb. And there travels over the countryside, Mullenow and Crandall found thick layers of ash from Mount St. Helens hundreds of miles away.

Over the past millennium, the mountain had erupted about once every 100 years. Mullenow and Crandall wrote, the last eruption was 1857. At times over the past 4,000 years, the volcano had gone dormant for a few centuries, but it did not appear to be an adormant period anymore they argued. According to their predictions, the next eruption would be soon. They concluded, in the future, Mount St. Helens is probably going to fucking destroy every mother fucker in this room. Your kids, your grandparents, you're all fucking dead! And you started screaming and fucking punching people in their faces.

No, it wasn't that dramatic. They said, Mount St. Helens will probably erupt violently and intermentally. Just as it has in the recent geologic past and these future eruptions will affect human life and health, property, agriculture, and general economic welfare over a broad area. In fact, an eruption could be expected, perhaps even before the end of the century. If only they could have been way more specific. Perhaps in the next 20 years, doesn't really help anyone form the pressing plan for evacuation. At the meeting, uh, Donna went over this and pointed that a landslide could cascade down the southwest side of the mountain into SWIT reservoir, during an eruption,

an overtop, the SWIFT dam triggering a flood that could devastate downstream communities. He pointed out the mud flows could travel down river valleys faster than a man could run most alarming. He mentioned the possibility of those damn pyroclastic flows He described how people could die by suffocating on the stone dust that filled her lungs or from burns from an enveloping ash cloud Or maybe the worst option be torn apart literally by the sheer force of the blast and the people listing were stunned and now he was like You're dead you're dead you're fucking dead and now you started punching people in their faces and now he was like you're fucking dead, you're dead, you're fucking dead! And now he started punching people in their faces. Now, now he didn't do that.

Um, I wish, I wish he would just for, you know, a little bit of drama in the story, a little extra drama. About people who were stunned. They had never seen Mount Sinhala's as a possible location for chaos. It seemed like a paradise, right? Peaceful forest, streams, lakes, nice vacation area. Hard to imagine. All that could be destroyed almost instantly.

They and especially warehouse and locally elected officials who relied on the support of the community were also scared of the idea of possible restrictions, which would mean shutting down resorts campgrounds. A lot of people losing a lot of money. Right people are going to maybe have to move away if this goes on for too long. The government is going to lose out also on need a tax money to fund local schools and such. But how likely was any of this? Well, that's the big problem here. Nobody knew. But there wasn't an unfortunate recent precedent for an overreaction to similar news. Five years earlier, Mount Baker, and even larger volcano, 20 miles south of the Washington, Canada border, had started to spewed dark clouds of ash and steam, as well as increasing amounts of heat. Geologists warned that even a small eruption

could flood Baker Lake on the southeast from the side of the volcano. And they pointed to landslides. There's a few hundred years old that had inundated the sites of numerous campgrounds. Based on these warnings, the Forest Service closed the area around Baker Lake, opened the sluice gates on the upper Baker Dam

to lower the reservoirs water level. Tourism plummeted, leading local outfathers, restaurants and hotels to complain to the press that the forest service had overreacted when nothing serious ever happened other than the loss of a lot of income. As the concrete herald wrote on October 10th, 1975, maybe it's time to take a lot closer to look at the bureaucratic decisions being made by some of our governmental agencies and to start reducing their powers back to where the citizens control instead of being controlled. I don't hate it.

The following spring of geologic, I mean, right or wrong, it's going to lead to shitty things sometimes, but I like to freedom. The following spring of geological survey issued a new statement that there was now no clear evidence of a forthcoming eruption. The area was reopened and the lake refilled. Right? So from the beginning, a lot of conflicting opinions here. The representatives from around Mount St. Helens eager to avoid a repeat of that Mount Baker

situation. Complicated the Mount St. Helens situation, there was a mixed ownership of the land around the volcano. The various land grants that provide both private companies and public agencies had, which meant that there were conflicts of interest, as well as authority. Warehouse are of course, wanted to keep the land open to log in. Cabin owners, hunters, fishermen, hikers, they wanted the land to stay open. The forest service and local law enforcement could try and restrict access, but they had

to answer to politicians who were under pressure from their constituents. Their could and probably would be lawsuits. Mullin O was convincing when it came to horrible possibilities But he couldn't say for certain when anything would happen and later he would say I'd give them facts But they wanted predictions to me. They wanted things that scientists could not do Yeah, the day after the conference Thursday March 27th Dave Johnston stood in a parking lot on the North slope of Mount St. Helens Early that morning at television station in Seattle had ordered Steve Malone, a helicopter ride to the volcano, and exchange for an interview.

Malone was too busy so he asked Dave Johnson if he wanted to go. Thirty years old, Dave was clean-shaven, blonde, handsome and a rough kind of way, and had a great penis, real straight, girthy but not too thick, solid pink tip, one large van on the shaft, but not too thick solid pink tip one large van on the shaft but nothing to prominent no hair on the shaft very symmetrical healthy looking balls hanging in a nice loose 10 chicken skin duffel bag swinging below I don't know what his junk look like but funny for me to imagine a world where when people describe you they include a thorough description of your genitals They have had received I'm an idiot. They. David received his PhD in geology just two years before and was an expert on the gases given off by volcanoes.

Volcanoes have been his passion since college. He had spent summers mapping the ancient volcanoes of Southeast from Colorado before becoming a graduate student at the University of Washington. That was where he discovered gases and now his main project was to determine whether volcanic eruptions could be predicted by monitoring the gases they admitted.

And that was what he was doing in Mount St. Helens. And he'd never anticipated he would be at the front of a national story. He'd once passed out while giving a scientific talk, making him not an ideal candidate for an interview. But this opportunity too good to pass up. The helicopter carrying Johnson and the reporters landed in the Timberline parking lot. On the north flank of the volcano, Tim lot on the North flank of the volcano. Timberline was the end of the road to Mount St. Helens, a broad paved area just above the volcanoes.

Highest grow with trees for drivers who wanted to get as close to the summit as possible. From this parking lot, nothing but glaciers and snow fields stood between the reporters clustered around Johnson in the top of the volcano. Dave was well aware of the risk that posed. He told the reporters, this is an extremely dangerous place to be. If it were to explode right now, we would die. I'm sure the reporters will love hearing that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what? What was that last part?

What was that part about us dying right now? Dave said magma is rising. It looks like there's a very good chance that there will be an eruption. If there was an explosion, it is possible that very, very hot, incandescent debris could come down on all sides. He compared it to standing next to a dynamite cake with a lit fuse. They just didn't know how long the fuse was. That day, the first ash clouds would rise from the mountain.

In response, law enforcement officials from Caledts County set up a roadblock on the Spirit Lake Highway. Hmm, kind of. Wasn't much of a roadblock. It was designed to keep some people out, but not others. For one thing, warehouse was still logging the woods behind the roadblock in the mountain, so their employees got to go through. Scientists studying the mountain also granted free passage, as were journalists if they had permission to do a story closer to the mountain, even homeowners, as the beginning of the crisis could talk their way through it, if they made a convincing case to whoever was man in the gate. The roadblock also wouldn't stay put as time went on, as warnings

intensified, intensified, it would move farther away from the mountain, but then the property and business owners would put pressure on public officials to move the roadblock back up the valley four times. It moved up or down the spirit lake highway, finally coming to rest about 12 miles down the road from a spirit lake. Even more important, the roadblock was only on the paved road. None of the logging or forest service roads, the zigzag to the woods around it were cordoned off.

So if you knew your way around, you could easily get to where you needed to go still. I felt like it was put up mostly for optics, right, for show. One of the people who did another way around and used the various side roads on a daily basis with John Killian. He was working for Warehouseer on a road building crew. 29 years old, lean and bushy here, fighting the urge to describe his penis.

He lived in the nearby little town of Vader, almost his whole life, except for his time in the Navy. In the spring of 1980, John would get off work and head for Vader Tavern, or he and fellow workers engage in a popular debate subject, whether it was safe or not to be working so close to the mountain. Warehouser had moved many of its crews into the hillside and ridge lines so they wouldn't be stuck in a valley, least if an eruption caused a mud flow, but some of the crews

were still working less than five miles from the peak of the volcano, logging just as much as usual, if not more. And some of the loggers and workers were worried, having read newspaper accounts to predict it some kind of impending doomsday, they'd personally cut into the hill sides and seen layers of ash, which had been deposited during prior eruptions. What's some like John Kelly, and you know, not worried. He'd been a boiler man in the Navy, mostly off the coast of Vietnam, keeping an eye on Russian submarines, patrolling in the South China Sea. His ship had been shot. He survived. As a logger, he'd watched men get run over, crushed by trees, injured in other ways. He was all right. He took a risk every day, knew that was just part of the job. He was confident that in the unlikely case of an explosion,

he'd be able to get away somehow. And we will connect with John again later when shit gets crazy. By Tuesday, April 1st, six days after the median Vancouver, it was clear to many that the situation was gonna be worse than what happened at Mount Baker. The day before the size mom, size momators at the University of Washington

picked up a particularly ominous kind of earthquake. Most earthquakes consist of a jumble of incoherent shaking motions as waves travel both through the ground and along the Earth's surface, like under the ground, yeah, and along the Earth's surface. But very deep in the traces from the seismometer in March 31st was a kind of shaking known as a harmonic tremor where the Earth kind of shakes in a rhythmst was a kind of shaking known as a harmonic tremor where the earth kind of shakes in a rhythm.

Like the kind of earthquake with the ground really really moves at sexy, sexy fat ass, right? Where it twerks in the most seductive of ways. Really fucking claps those hot, sexy earth cheeks together. Harmonic tremors are generally associated with the movement of fluids like molten magma or volcanic gases through channels inside the earth. That had never happened in Mount Baker. And the harmonic tremor continued for the next several days. A lot of hot magma was on the move, but would it suddenly burst forth from the ground?

Ah, still no one knows. Also on April 1st, a new eruption of ash and steam reaches elevations of 16,000 feet. A small steam vent opens on the northeast side of the mountain. So that's fun. Over the next week, more earthquakes, more smaller options continue with most of the eruptions consisting of steam, some with some ash also by the beginning of April, Mullenow's partner on the Mount St. Helens research Rocky Crandal moves from Denver to Vancouver to help with the crisis The two get to work creating a danger map showing areas that will be particularly susceptible to volcanic debris. The map they produced had three zones.

One showed what might happen in the case of a smaller option, such as those that occurred repeatedly during the 19th century. Another showed a moderate eruption, and the third showed an eruption they called, holy fuck, everyone's so totally fucking fucking, fuck of this bitch goes fucking full of pocket limping and shit. Or they didn't call it that,

and they just called it a worst case eruption, as large as ending the past 4500 years. For such an eruption, Crandal predicted that avalanches could descend as far as spirit lake, five miles from the summit, and that pyroclastic flows would surge at least 15 miles down to the north and south forks of the total river. As falls could be more than three feet deep, 20 miles from volcano and a foot deep, 50 miles from the volcano, this worst case scenario became the basis on which many future decisions were made. These maps also pointed to another major problem. The volcano was becoming a tourist attraction.

People were traveling to Mount St. Helens from all over the world. Journalists, swarm in the area, interviewing locals and filming eruptions, news trucks or parked along the shores of Spirit Lake every day now. All this meant that if an evacuation was needed, an evacuation of the roads would be incredibly clogged. And there was also something else to worry about. In April, the geologist, monitoring Mount St. Helens realized that the shape of the volcano was changing. A large bulge had formed on the north side of the mountain. It was about a mile from the from the from top to bottom and a little over a half mile across. Big bulge. It stretched

and fractured the glaciers on the side of the mountain, and it continued to grow, expanding each day by about five feet. Geologists worried that the volcano was developing something never witnessed before, and recorded human history, something only thought to be theoretically possible. A massive eruption boner. In theory, a massive eruption boner, once fully hard, is struck by enough seismic activity could ejaculate millions of tons of magma all over the faces and chests and maybe even asses and sometimes backs of millions of people all over the Pacific Northwest.

And there was a concern that if a massive eruption boner started coming, halava, it would just keep doing that a few times a day possibly for years. And that might be nonsense, but something weird was happening. A major deformation like this is pretty extreme. Dave Johnson told newspaper reporter, it surprises us to be quite honest. It's not that it's totally unexpected, but it is a major change in the shape and size of the volcano.

Gel just like Dave Johnson, and many others who had flown in from places like the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in Menlo Park, California. And sorry, Menlo Park, California. That'll be weird if the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in Menlo Park, California. And sorry, Menlo Park, California. That'll be weird for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory was in the fucking California. They were working around the clock, analyzing ash falls,

tracking volcano gases, inspecting the volcano, and trying to make predictions about what could happen. Since his press conference today, after the first eruption, Dave Johnson had been more worried than many of his colleagues about the dangers posed by the volcano. He and a few of the other geologists had begun talking about the similarities between Mount St. Helens and another volcano, Mount Bezimiani, a composite volcano that massively erupted in 1956, after a build-up of similar activity, this happened in Russia.

No one died in that eruption due to the volcano not having anyone living near it. If something similar happened to Mount St. Helens, Dave told the other geologists the destruction would be immense. To get a better read on the developing situation, a state snow plow cleared a path along logging roads to an old landing above cold water creek where geologists erected a canvas tent on a wooden platform, their new observatory. Man, nerve racking place to work. Hope you don't get buried in ash or magma at any moment sounds incredibly tense and stressful. By the second week in April, our buddy Rocky Crandall was sufficiently worried

about the north slope of the volcano, so much so he decided he needed the help of another expert. He talked with Barry Voight, a respected landslide geologist at Penn State University, asked him to come take a look. Voight, a member of a pretty well-known family. One of his brothers is the actor John Void, whose daughter, probably heard of her, Angelina Jolie, Angelina Jolie Void, was four when Mount St. Hall was beginning acting up. This landslide geologist is Angelina Jolie's uncle.

Barry's other brother who went by the stage named Chip Taylor, musician best known for writing Angel of the Morning and Wild Thing. A lot of fame and accomplishment one family. On April 10th, 1980, Voight flew to Portland, rented a car and drove to Vancouver where he attended what was now a regular morning meeting where geologists discussed the volcano's behavior. Next day, he drove up the Spirit Lake Highway and set up a camp about a half mile east of the Cold Water observation post.

Sat down on a bedroll with a notepad and binoculars and began to study the mountain. And quickly he realized, things didn't look good, not good at all. Gigantic cracks pierced the ash-covered glaciers on the north and west slopes, displaced by that growing bulge. Something was also caused the mountain top to split. But Void didn't know if it was the magma pushing up from below or the heated groundwater. On his notepad, he sketched out some hypotheses of what might happen. If the bulge gave way, could a large avalanche occur

He did a quick calculation of the size of a potential landslide. It'd be fucking huge It would easily reach spirit lake and you wrote a note to himself recommend not opening the spirit lake area And then surge wave and lake if rockfall reaches lake run up on far ashore The inverse was also possible if If pressure was building up inside the mountain, a landslide might trigger an eruption, then they would see, you know, pyro classic flow and an avalanche running in the same direction. Void would stay on the mountain for two days. Then he would drive back to the timber line parking lot where he would tell geologists working there that they were in a pretty dangerous

spot. If a landslide came down to the north side of the mountain, they were fucked. It was going to kill them all. Boy, spend a few more days of Vancouver and around the mountain trying to get his landslide hypothesis to the right people. He posted a drawing of the mountains cross-section and landslide potential on the office wall, then returned to Pennsylvania and wrote a report on what he'd seen. The principal hazard of Mount St. Helens during the period of my observations, April 11th through 1980, involved the potential instability of the north Slope. If the slope gave way, the resulting landslide could be as much as a kilometer thick and involve a cubic kilometer or more of rock and fragmented material.

More over the release of the underlying pressure from the avalanche, would likely promote further explosive activity, flashing in hydrothermal systems, occupying the core of the volcano and surrounding porous edifice and perhaps also in shallow magma chambers. A catastrophic event must be regarded as legitimate possibility. So that's, you know, pretty terrifying. Meanwhile back to the mountain, geologists discussed Voids Predictions. They seem serious, but then again, they just could not agree on exactly when this would

happen, if it would happen. There's just one of many, you know, different scenarios so much maybe with all this. There were so many ideas and hypotheses floating around. It seemed harder and harder to tell what might actually happen. Crandall and Mullenose predictions were based off of Mount St. Helen's history, but in that history, the volcano had acted quite unpredictably, even their hypotheses could be misleading. As Crandall told the newspaper reporter in April,

Mount St. Helen's has done so many things in the past that hardly anything would be a surprise. The only thing it hasn't done is blow itself apart. By the end of April, the bulge was the geologist greatest concern. At God for saken, massive, eruption boner. It could drown them all, and molten lava come at any moment. An April 25th release from the Forest Service revealed that the bulge had raised the side of the mountain 300 feet above its original contour and was continuing to expand. It's a big one.

Couldn't go on growing like that forever. Eventually, you would have to collapse down the north side of the volcano, meaning it would flow over Timberline and into Spirit Lake, where it would generate a large wave that would drown anyone still in the lake shores. The landslide and water displacement Spirit Lake would then course down the north forer to the Tudor River, sweeping away whatever it encountered. Crandall wrote in a letter to the forest,

to forest supervisor Bob DeKarzik, the probability of an avalanche cannot be quantitatively determined, but such an event must be regarded as a distinct possibility. And probably the most serious hazard yet posed by the current eruption up to this point. But as always, other geologists had different theories. Some geologists were still working in the Timberline parking lot,

which certainly would be wiped out by a potential avalanche caused by the bulls breaking, which demonstrated their lack of concern. They were confident that they would have some kind of warning that a major event was about to happen. The bulls would start slipping or an earthquake would occur or soul for emissions would rise or hot spots would appear on the mountains flanks. All things being constantly monitored by scientists.

This belief was also in Mullenose report. It wrote there's a good chance we would have a warning before a serious eruption, right? And that calms a lot of people down, maybe too much. Might not be much, maybe a few hours or minutes, but it would give everyone on the amount of head start. And that perspective would gradually make its way to the public. Things with the public overall, not going well at this point. One person charged with keeping the public safe was Cowlitz County Sheriff Les Nelson.

Nelson had been a ranch foreman in Colorado before moving to Washington for logon work. As Sheriff, his job was mostly to keep people from doing unsafe things, like set in fires, or traversing unstable terrain. But that was proven to hell of a lot harder with an active volcano. At the barricade on the road to Spirit Lake, drivers with yellow Nelson, this is a free country. I have a right to go to my property. I'm going to call my attorney. And I imagine they yelled, you know, things that were a lot less polite.

The restaurant motel owners on the far side of the barricade were complaining about the government taking away their freedom while the owners on the near side raked in more money than they'd ever seen in their lives. It was chaos. And the state government wasn't doing much to help. It had again closed spirit lake highway, but none of the surrounding logging roads. People could buy maps at the gas station, go anywhere they wanted. Frustrations amplified by the press who were flying in helicopters onto the crater room like it was a sightseeing tour. They made getting close to the volcano sound daring and adventurous, not dangerous.

And then there was Harry Truman, an octogenarian who refused to leave his lodge on spirit lake. Truman had been running his lodge since the 1920s, since not long after his dad was killed in a logging accident. He and his wife Eddie hosted hundreds of people each summer, and Harry did not give a flying fuck about some theoretical eruption that might not even happen in what was left of his lifetime. He did care a lot about his home.

Five years earlier, Eddie had suddenly died after going upstairs, taking nap, following her death, Truman's demeanor changed from welcoming to hostile. He was so angry and honorey, people regularly avoided him. He'd recently become known for swinging around a brick bat Whenever visitors approached threatening to take out anyone who crossed him and what he called a gangland hit He become convinced that he was an important player in the Irish mob Okay, maybe not the Irish mob stuff, but he had gone a bit nuts The lodge was empty now except for Truman in his 16 cats

Which meant that he and the buildings smelled a lot like capis The press loved this old angry stinky fella. He was money when it came to cont anchor a sound bites. Harry loudly proclaimed to reporters, I stuck it out for, I stuck it out 54 years and I could stick it out another 54 as he sipped from his glass of whiskey and coke. He predicted the trees were somehow going to block the rock and snow from descending on him. He said, the mountain will never hurt me. When you live some place for 50 years, you either know your country or you're stupid. I like this guy, but I'm not sure I live it in some place for 50 years or anything at the time at all. Somehow

makes you an expert in geology or volcanology, but you know, that's just me. That's just me and logic. That's just me and logic. That's just me in a basic understanding of how specialized knowledge acquisition works. Harry seems like he was funny deal with. Sheriff Nelson thought he might have left if the papers had written stories about him. But now he had an image to uphold, right? The outlaw, defending his homestead in the face of a stupid, tyrannical government. Now put Sheriff Nelson in a really awkward position.

If he lets Truman stay at his house, well, then everybody else can expect the same treatment. In the interest and not shown any favoritism to the press over locals. In the middle of April, the Forest Service now works on a better way of controlling access to various areas of the mountain. They're now working harder on presenting photographers, reporters, other sites, years from going in and out. The job I figured out how to do this falls primarily on Ed Osmond, 23 year veteran of the agency who transferred to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest

just a couple months earlier. Ed's nickname was Napalm. And he wasn't afraid to burn down, and he wanted to go out his way. There were rumors that he'd made some loggers who fucks them disappear a few years earlier, and he definitely burned down some poachers. Their chart remains were found in an area of the woods.

He was known to patrol, but no charges were ever filed. The fuck with Napalm was to invite disaster and death into your life. And that guy for sure was in the Irish mob. No, JK, of course. No one of these episodes is in the Irish mob. Pretty sure no national forest service employees ever had the nickname of Napalm either. Ed took a series of maps started drawing lines around the volcano. He assumed that nothing would go past the high point of Mount Margaret Ridge, even if there was an avalanche or a landslide. He assumed that if anything came roaring down the mountain, it would fall primarily inside the basin. The line he drew across the section of the Gifford

Pinchot National Forest as well as parcels land owned by Warehouse, Burlington, Northern the railroad and a few others. Other companies. To the east of volcano, Osmond and his colleague carried the line down a ridge between Smith Creek and Bean Creek, figuring as on the north side that the ridge line would block the force of an eruption. On the south, the line followed a road that provided access to some of the southern climbing routes to the mountain. He knew this line was probably a bit too close to the volcano, but putting any farther south would place off limits, some of the rich forest land being harvested by the forest service and private companies.

The real problem was the western and northwestern sides. On those sides, warehouse were owned almost all the land outside the national forest. And the boundary between the national forests and warehouse were land, which ran north south along a county line, just to the west of the mountain, was less than three miles from the peak. Osmond didn't think he could legally draw a line that would be respected on warehouse or property. At least not on property that big. They couldn't force warehouseers to remove employees from land they owned. So on the western and northwestern sides, they simply followed the boundary between the national forest

and the warehouse or property based on no signs. Everything inside that line called the red zone, only scientists and law enforcement would be allowed inside the red zone. One problem with this, all of this, was that Harry Truman's lodge inside the red zone, only scientists and law enforcement would be allowed inside the red zone. One problem with this all, all of this was that Harry Truman's lodge inside the red zone. They decided to make him the lone exception. Nobody knew how to get that honorary fucker out of there. Outside the red zone was another ring about 10 miles wide called the blue zone.

Loggers and property owners could enter during the day, but only if they had permission. Except since the first line of buttered warehouse or property, there was no blue zone on the west and northwestern sides. This made for a danger zone weirdly squished on those sides. And by unfortunate coincidence, the bulls on the mountain was pointing exactly in those directions. Geologists law enforcement personnel not happy with the danger zones. As Krandall later said, people wanted the zone to extend as far as possible, as long as it didn't include their lands. Yeah, exactly. How indicative of human nature, right?

Do whatever is best, do whatever is best, as long as it doesn't fuck with me, of course. One state patrol captain put it this way. If this isn't warehouse or any county politics, it makes no sense at all. This doesn't reach me like a local issue, actually. This is more of a maybe a cultural one, right? Nearly everywhere in America is like this. Do what you wanna do, as long as it doesn't fuck with like a local issue actually. This is more of a maybe a cultural one, right? Nearly everywhere in America is like this.

Do what you want to do, as long as it doesn't fuck with anything that I'm doing. Like you can apply that mentality to so many divisive cultural issues that we've gone through in the past few years. Right, vaccine mandates, abortion laws come to mind immediately. A lot of people who have been anti-vaccine mandate under the argument of don't impinge on my freedom to do what I feel is right for my body have also been pro abortion

and a lot of people who are pro choice have also been pro mandate both sides totally okay with regulating other people's bodies in way they see fit but they shouldn't like it when that same logic is applied to their bodies in ways they don't agree with and I don't feel like Americans overall speaking in general terms, of course, are real good at pulling back and looking at an argument from an imposing viewpoint. Also not great in understanding the concept of slippery slope. Not surprised at all that the locals reacted this way about mountain hellens. Even Washington State was eager not to have a danger zone on their state on land since harvesting temper meant millions of dollars in revenue for the state. So they're like, yeah, we got to keep people safe. But I don't know, no, no, but don't fucking don't fuck with our land here.

We got to make some money. And again, right, do no, no, no, but don't fucking, don't fuck with our land here. We got to make some money. And again, right, do the right thing as long as it doesn't pinch my wallet. I probably not fair to label that as an American attitude, by the way. Can't be too many cultures on earth who don't have that attitude. I think it's just a human tendency.

I for sure do it all the time in various ways. Only one person can legally extend the danger zones into warehouse or territory. The governor of Washington State an interesting woman named Dixie Lee Ray. Would she? No she would not. I like to learn about this meat sack. Born Marguerite Ray to a working class family to coma, she'd been a tomboy grown up, often

called the little Dickens, which gradually became Dixie. At 16, she legally changed her name to Dixie Lee Ray. She received a bachelor's degree in duology from Mills College in Oakland, later a PhD from Stanford in biological science, worked her way through colleges to puppeteer, that's right, a fucking puppeteer. It just came up earlier and coming up again. Janitor, waitress, house painter.

She said I missed a lot of sleep in those days, but never a class, hail, fucking Nimrod. Beautiful work ethic. Doggett pursued one's dreams. Long also been an American cultural trait. One of the best ones I feel. You take it too far for sure, and I have personally on different occasions, but damn do I respect someone willing to work their ass off to do what they feel is they're calling. Instead of just dreaming and talking shit, but never doing anything. The dream in, that's the easy part, the doing. That's where most aren't willing to sacrifice free time for some grind. Also, I love the show. Again, she was a dream and talking shit, but never doing anything. The dream and that's the easy part, the doing. That's where most aren't willing to sacrifice free time for some grind.

Also, I love the show, again, she was a puppeteer. I did not make that up. Dixie was a biologist on the faculty of the University of Washington for more than 20 years, then the director of the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, which was built for the 1962 World's Fair and had a profound influence on many science-oriented kids in Northwest.

1972, Richard Nixon, the president appointed her to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission. Right? Tricky Dick didn't only make bad decisions, and she became chair of the Commission the next year when she, when former chair James Slesinger was named headed to CIA. She'd always been adamantly pro-NUK though her expertise was in marine biology rather than a nuclear science. She also did Tennessee to say exactly what she thought, even if it wasn't right. How many of us do that too? For example, there is no evidence that the survivors of the Hiroshima bombings have suffered

any more cancer than anyone else, including the second generation. The problems faced in the nuclear industry are largely raised by fears of the public, but we all know that fear requires ignorance. Okay, maybe not the best example, Dixie. Maybe should have made the sales pitch more about how nuclear power plants are not nuclear bombs instead of linking the two there. She made headlines in Washington, DC for living in a motor home in rural Virginia, wearing white knee socks, bringing her Scottish deer-hound and miniature poodle to work.

She was eccentric. In 1975, she returned to Washington State and ran for governor. Never much interested in party politics. She only filed as a Democrat because the Republican slate was already full. I fucking love that. And she would win. During her time as governor, the never married Ray lived in the governor's mansion with her dogs.

Although she tried to return to her mobile home nearby Fox Island most weekends. And she quickly drew criticism from her new political party for conservative views, especially on environmental and energy issues. How dare she try and apply logic to individual issues? And do what she feels is right, instead of just following a party line. She sought to permit oil super tankers

to offload impuget sound, but was blocked by Senator Warren Magneson, sparking a feud that continued for years. Quick to anger, she engaged in legendary fused with the news media. This is so good. 1978, she named a litter of 11 piglets born at her Fox Island home after various reporters. Next year, she treated those reporters to sausage made from those pigs. She offered to let them eat themselves. When the first eruption occurred on March 27, 1980, Ray was addressing a meeting of Washington's Superior Court judges in Port Luddlow, an old timber town on Puget Sound.

I might just read you the note that it has just been handed to me. She told the assembled judges with the grin. We have received information that Mount St. Helens has erupted at 1258 today. I've always said for many years that I hope I live long enough to see one of our volcanoes erupt. Maybe soon I'll get a chance. After the speech, she went directly to a nearby airport, had a plane flyer to the mountain, I hope that lived long enough to see one of our volcanoes erupt. Maybe soon I'll get a chance. After the speech, she went directly to a nearby airport, had a plane flyer to the mountain,

after which she reported it was really quite a thrill. No lava, but the top is quite dirty. Toward the end of April, the Washington State Department of Energy, the Washington State Department of Emergency Services, forwarded the map prepared by Osmond and his colleagues to Ray with an urgent request from local law enforcement that she established the red and blue zones in state policy. But the map was obviously imperfect as we went over. Rey knew that people were using logging roads to get way too close to the mountain on the western and northwestern sides.

She like Osmond did not want to extend the red or blue zones into warehouse or property. You cannot restrict or remove people from their homes or prevent them from earning a living unless you have awfully good reason she later said. April 30th, Dixie issues an executive order that simply adopts the red and blue zones developed by the Forest Service. And that decision would later have major consequences. People entering on the west and northwestern sides

were effectively doing nothing wrong and couldn't be told to leave by law enforcement. Effectively they were on their own. If anything happened, well, they should have known better. And I gotta say, I do love that attitude. I tend to love, you know, any policy that leans more towards personal responsibility, less towards government acting like our parents,

telling us dumb kids how to live our lives. You wanna keep work or living in an area that we've told you might be reduced to ash here soon? Fine. But then, don't bother calling 911. If the top blow is off, and now you need help, right? You made your bed now lying in it. If we could adopt that mentality culturally,

how much less litigation a red tape would there be, right? You wanna jump head first and the shallow one of the pool? I have fucking do it. But see that sign right there? That sign means that if you break your neck, doing something, we told you was really fucking stupid. You don't get to do anybody, if things go south. You don't even get to file for disability. When I live off taxpayer money for doing something that everyone told you it was really fucking stupid. You don't get to do anybody. If things go south, you don't even get to file for disability.

My live off tax payer money for doing something that everyone told you not to do. Consequences. So many want all the actions, but they don't want the consequences. If I ever OD due to illicit drug use, my death not be a tragedy. It'll be the consequence of an action

I didn't need to take, but did anyway. Right? And I do try and be careful, by the way, and I'm not fucking constantly doing drugs. I just I just don't want to point my finger out towards others and then not point it to myself as well. Meanwhile, things are still iffy looking on the mountain. Toward the third week of April about the same time the public learned about the bulls of Mount St. Helens North slope, the worst possible thing happened in terms of later consequences. The mountain began to quiet down.

The number of earthquakes and steam and ash eruptions fell even though the intensity of the quakes was greater. Overall, the mountain was strangely still. Only the bulls was active, growing and expanding until the north-faced of the mountain became grotesquely bloated and cracked. At the same time, press coverage of all this fell off dramatically. Most people now looking at Iran. On April 24th, the U.S. military had launched a rescue attempt of 53 hostages in Iran that went terribly wrong. It would be known in history as the Iran hostage crisis and the thing that cost Jimmy Carter a second term. Well, that inflation and insanely high gas prices and a whole bunch of other things.

Of eight helicopters that took off from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Iran, only six made it to a staging area in the desert desert 400 miles southeast of Tehran and another one had a mechanical failure when it arrived. In a move still debated in military circles today, President Carter agreed with the commander that the mission should be aborted. Then as one of the helicopters was being moved for refueling, it hit a troop plane, cause an explosion, and fire that killed eight servicemen, five helicopters left behind in the retreat, some of which contained the names of Iranians working for the Americans, press quickly now loses interest amounts in hellens to cover this more intriguing developing story.

And with the mountain becoming quieter by the day, people now start pushing for lesser restrictions, especially the people who owned homes and resorts around spirit lake make sense. They pointed to the fact that lagers still got to go to work on the ridges right next to spirit lake why were they being you know kept out of this area many people in the washington state side also got in their property tax bills in april and protest that the government was not letting them use their homes but still expected them to pay taxes on those homes and that is fucked up the government banning you from your property already fucked up my mind uh... then if i'm willing to assume the risk, you know, fuck off Uncle Sam But then to not let me go down to my own land, but still tax me for that land

Get the fuck out. That's so dirty other people were protesting too for the opposite reason Loggers working for the warehousing are working for warehousing could now see the bulls looming above them when the weather cleared and they knew They were working in a very dangerous spot The bulls could drop on them or on the roads that they used to get home every night, stranding them in a fiery inferno. If the red zone was dangerous for members of the public, why wasn't it dangerous for them? Very fair complaint. Washington State has a division of industrial safety and health and an April complaints from loggers began to arrive in the long view office. But when the agency contacted warehouse or the company assured them that they had a

contingency plan, the call for loggers to make their way to higher ground. And the division of industrial safety and health decided, well that's enough. Senior safety inspector Les Ludwig would say to an organ newspaper that he thought the complainers were just trying to get unemployment benefits. I don't know, maybe some of them were. I didn't know. Even though it did end up blowing, there was also a good chance based on available information at this time that there would never be a major violent eruption in the near future.

One of the crews working north of the mountain trekked daily overland blackened by ash. That made them nervous, understandably. As they worked, earthquake shook the ground under their feet. Okay, okay, that would scare the shit out of anyone's saying. Shame on a warehousing, right, at that point. Go log a different area in the millions and millions of acres you own for the while.

These workers only option to not be in danger was to take a leave of absence without pay. By the beginning of May, the US Geological Survey was beginning to take seriously very voids warning that the Timberline parking lot was now a very dangerous place to be working. The Cold Water Observation Post where geologists have been monitoring the mountain seemed too far away to provide a timely warning. Early in May, warehouse or bulldozers removed the snow from a logging road

and a ridge just north of the mountain. A clear cut from the top of the ridge, just five and a half miles from the summit, provided an unobstructed view of the volcano and its bulging northern flank. To this clear cut, the geologist hauled a small white trailer, equipment for monitoring the mountain, a radio, and some directors chairs, and they named it Coldwater 2. Coldwater 2 just a few yards in the red zone line running along the top

of the ridge, but a colleague of Rocky Crandell has done an analysis of the ridge and had concluded that except for airborne ash deposits, it had been untouched by every eruption in the last 38,000 years. Still, some of the geologists thought it still wasn't a good spot. As beginning of May, one of them contacted the Washington State National Guard to ask if the survey could borrow an M-113 armored personnel carrier, essentially a tank on caterpillar treads, that would be placed next to the trailer, right, to take it fucking going and hide, if shit got crazy. A note accompanying the order said that in case of violent explosion, wins with debris could reach a

hundred miles an hour. On Thursday, May 15th, story about Harry Truman is now featured in a long-view daily news. Picture showed him at an elementary school in Oregon day before he'd been helicopter to the school by nasty geographic for a story when he landed all 104 of the school students stood outside holding a giant banner that said Harry we love you Oh boy He proceeded to tell them about his half-century the lodge and why he would never leave And one of the students at the school asked if he knew when the volcano would erupt he replied I wish I did because I would run. I'm gonna tear down that hill as fast as I can

Sheriff less Nelson trying to talk to Harry that afternoon after we turn home Sheriff Les Nelson trying to talk to Harry that afternoon after we turn home drove up to the spirit lake. He drove up spirit lake highway parked outside the lodge. He'd been hearing that Terry was ready to leave. I had some friends that he told some friends that the earthquakes were keeping him up at night. A few days earlier, the sheriff had scrambled to send a helicopter to the lodge when the Seattle news crew told him they'd found Harry and a broken down an emotional state.

But inside Truman Seam Trampett, he'd gotten a letter from governor Dixie Lee Ray that When the Seattle news crew told him they'd found Harry and a broken down an emotional state, but inside, Truman seemed triumphant. He'd gotten a letter from Governor Dixie Lee Ray that read, Your independence and straightforwardness is a fine example for all of us, particularly for senior citizens. When everyone else involved in the Mount St. Helens eruption appeared to be overcome by all the excitement, you stuck to what you knew and what common experience and sense told you. We could use a lot more of that kind of thinking, particularly in politics. I get a fair amount of criticism for calling things the way I see them. I'm glad someone like yourself got credit for the same approach. Well, I got lucky, but you know, Sheriff Nelson pleaded with Truman to leave, but the answer

was no. That Thursday, John and Christy Killian are making plans to go camping over the weekend at Fawn Lake. It would be perfect weather. in the 60s lows in the 40s, clear and cold. We met John earlier, if you recall, the lake could be full of fish to be getting a couple days to fish it for themselves, right? What could be better than that? Well, boy, within for a huge fucking surprise, the next day, May 16th, concerns of some of the loggers come to a head. The geologists are now saying that a landslide is inevitable,

right near where the loggers are still working, right? That big old bulge. One logger already walked off the job on Thursday, more threatened to do so the following week. That morning, a safety representative for the international woodworkers of America, a local named Joe Embry, drove up to the south fork of the Tuttle of the Tuttle to talk with a group of about 50 disgruntled loggers who were working within five miles of the mountains base. Several weeks earlier, the company promised that it would develop an evacuation

plan for each logging district, but in many cases, Henry found either the plans had never been developed or if they had had not been communicated to the crews. Still, Henry urged the loggers not to walk off the job despite the danger. He told them, we got the best experts in the world. Supposedly, you're going gonna get two hours notice, but all I can tell you guys is if it blows it blows. Who's to say won't happen tomorrow or 10 years down the line? That same day, the owners of the 80 or so cabins around Spirit Lake are now in open revolt. Rumors have circulated that they are going to form a caravan the next day and drive to

the roadblock to protest. Patrol cars are assigned to the area in case it happens, become something like a riot. Also on Friday, John Killian calls Leroy Bane, who've been the best man in his wedding, to see if he and his wife wanted to come fish with Christie and him over the weekend. All the lakes that have been in the closed off Red Zone were now open, and since nobody been up there all spring,

there was bound to be plenty of big fish. And I gotta say, that does sound pretty fucking awesome. I might have been the idiot that went into the Red Zone with him for the same reason. Leeroys wife Elna had a cold so they didn't come. How lucky. On the morning of Saturday, May 17th, John and Christie stopped by the house where John's sister

and her husband lived to pick up some fishing gear. John always been close with his three sisters and his sister, Charlene, was now worried that the mountain was too close to fond like. John reassured her that always fine. He promised to wear a new jacket and some waders he had bought that were a hundred percent lava proof. So that's a red in the tag.

Guaranteed to protect you against temperatures up to 25 hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Obviously not true. How cool would lava proof waders and jackets be though? Make some gloves, mask out of the same material, suddenly being a firefighter. Well, it got to hold that lost dangerous. Meanwhile the protesters arrived in a parking lot to begin their caravan on Saturday morning. They learned the governor would allow them to go to their cabins if they filled out a waiver and left the area by 6 p.m. Why not sign a waiver saying they relinquish their right to evacuation assistance in the event of an explosion? Let them do what they want.

These extra bodies were adding to a growing problem. By this point, it had become obvious to local enforcement personnel that the red and blue zones, Dixie Lee Ray had established at the end of April were inadequate. The woods in the western, northwestern, northern sides of the mountain were full of people who were working, camping, fishing, trying to get a good look at the volcano. Because they were not technically inside the red or blue zones, police officers could not site or find them. It had no authority to keep them out of the area. Warehouseer had always kept most of the gates to its logging roads open.

But now if shit went wrong, some of these roads might not be enough. So a new system is needed working with warehouseer. New plan is drawn up. It would extend the blue zone 11 and a half miles to the west and seven and a half miles to the north. It would also move the roadblock farther down the spirit lake highway to right above warehouses camp Baker. The new proposal would actually make it easier for loggers, reporters and property owners to get into both the blue and red zones. The media would be allowed into

the red zone on the helicopter as long as they didn't land above the tree line. Loggers could get permits to log in the red zone, whereas before they'd been allowed only in the blue zone, main effects of these new zones would be to get the public out of the areas, west and north of the volcano. Sheriff's would have legal authority to cite people who entered the area. Warehouse would get the cars and campers off its login roads out of the way of its trucks, seem like a good compromise, sent it off to the head of Washington State's Department of Emergency Services for approval. State officials knew that the local sheriffs were right, but they delayed for a day while typing up the order

and making sure that warehouseer had bought into this plan. Sheriffs were ready on Friday, the 16th to move the roadblock and post the new blue zone before a weekend of warm and sunny weather, but the order never came. Not until Saturday morning, the 17th, the officials hand delivered the order to the governor's office for her signature, but that weekend, Dixie Lee Ray was attending a roaded dendron day parade in port towns and on the Olympic peninsula. The new blue zone would have to wait until Monday, the 19th, spoiler alert, if you forgot, when the volcano explodes, that's going to be too late. Also, why the fuck has there ever been a parade thrown for roaded enderids, just anywhere? They still do this in port towns and by the

way, this year's parade Saturday, May 20th, starts at 1 p.m. sharp. Part of a whole week of events. There's going to be a spaghetti feed at the Elk slodge from 5 p.m. to 7. Uh, you should attend it, uh, unless you hate everything that is good and right with the world. I love us spaghetti feed. Uh, seriously, why does pasta make you fat? What a dirty trick! Back to May 17th, that afternoon, Rob Smith and his girlfriend, Kathy Paulson, leave the lodge, the Smith family owned near the cabins and drove the rest of the way up to Spirit Lake Highway. The rest of the way up to Spirit Lake Highway, to see their buddy, Harry Truman. Truman was watering his lawn when they arrived getting the lodge ready for summer tourists.

Smith helped Truman sharpen his saw so he could cut some more firewood. 83 years young. Still cutting firewood. I love it. Reminds me of popboard just you know pop board didn't have all the cats. I do love Harry in this story. Do just wants to keep living the life he's led for so long. A police sergeant who was also visiting Truman gave him a bundle of mail including letters from school children who had read about his refusal

to leave the mountain. Truman's eyes teared up when he saw the letters. Some of his visitors that afternoon thought he was just being sentimental. Others thought the strain of holding out the spirit lake was getting to him. As his visitors left, Truman told them to keep a stiff upper lip by 6 p.m. the protesters who gathered that morning were in their cabins, gathering their personal belongings with another group said to be allowed up to following morning. They were scored out that night, the highway re-barricated behind them. Most of the geologists were away that night now that the volcano would quiet it down. One who wasn't was a graduate student named Harry Glican, staying up at Coldwater too. He was monitoring the bulge. He wondered, was it hard? Was a massive eruption

boner hiding under the dirt? Was it gonna lava come all over everyone for miles around? Was it gonna lava come all over poor Harry Truman's face and chest and ass? Okay, maybe he wasn't worrying wondering that. Glicking head to leave for California that evening talk about the graduate work. He was starting the fall and the geological survey now needed someone else at Cold Water too to keep an eye on the volcano. So lucky, lucky for clicking a geologist named Don Swanson, who had been working at the Hawaiian volcano observatory in the big island before Mount St.

Helens became active agreed to goucky for him, but maybe not. After meeting Swanson, sought out Dave Johnson in a hallway. Could Dave fill in for him for that evening? Swanson had a graduate student from Germany visiting, and he wanted to see the student off on Sunday morning. Swanson would replace Johnson as soon as the student was gone. Dave was nervous. He was much more worried than most of his colleagues about being so close to the volcano.

It was quite frankly doing things volcanoes were not supposed to do, things that were difficult to understand. At this point the geologist agreed that the bold had to be the result of magma welling up inside the volcano and pushing on the mountains northern flank. But if that was so, why hadn't Dave detected a higher levels of sulfur emerging from bends on the volcano's sides? It was as if the magma was somehow bottled up and unable to escape to the surface. Did that mean the mountain was about to really erupt? Despite the fear of this, David Greed to fill in that night at Cold Water too. Very unfortunate.

The poor bastard drove his government issued for Pinto station wagon up Spirit Lake Highway, boarded the helicopter, flew high onto the side of the volcano, jumped out quickly and measured the temperature of a steam vent, 190 degrees Fahrenheit, not as bad as he feared actually. But then rock started to fall around him and earthquake was shaking the ground, dashed back into the helicopter and flew away. Before he went to sleep, Dave got on the radio with a geologist named Dan Miller and Vancouver. Miller told him that the armored personnel carrier was on a flatbed truck traveling down Interstate 5 and would arrive the next day. By that evening, Harry Truman was the only person left on the shore of Spirit Lake.

But in the surrounding area, more than 20 other people were settling down for the night. A photographer named Reed Blackburn, a 64-year-old volunteer radio operator named Jerry Martin, John and Christie Killian and more. If the blue zone had been extended to the North and West, as the local sheriffs were advocating, most would not have been there. And with the extension order sitting unsigned on Dixie Lee Ray desks, none of them were doing anything currently illegal. 8.32am, Pacific Daylight Time, May 18, 1980, the biggest earthquake yet rumbles through

Mounts and Hellens registering a five on the Richter scale. Still not normally a big deal, according to the scale, but in the context of everything else going on, it's very worrisome. Some of the snow in the south facing side starts to move. Then all of a sudden, a fucking gigantic east-west crack appears across the entire top of the mountain, splitting the volcano into, holy shit, and here we fucking go. The ground on the northern half of the crack begins to ripple and churn, like a pot starting to boil. What a crazy sight to witness. And surviving eye witnesses from many miles away did see this go down suddenly without a sound the northern portion of the mountain begins to slide downward towards the north fork north fork of the total river and spirit lake.

The landslide included the bulge but was much much bigger the largest ever recorded the whole northern portion of this mountain is collapsing. You can watch video of this on YouTube and it's insane. It looks CGI. A few seconds later, an angry, gray cloud emergence from the middle of the landslide in a similar darker cloud leaps up from near the top of the mountain. In a matter of a few seconds, the two clouds rapidly expand and coalesce, growing so large that they covered the ongoing landslide.

It extended to the north and east, or sorry, it extended to the north and east, spread it into an anvil shape. It was a pyroclastic flow. The three people who were closest to Mount St. Helens were hairy Truman in his lodge and Bob Casewetter and Beverly Wethrold were whetherald in their cabin on a mild downstream. They were close enough to have certainly heard a rumbling, a massive earth-shaking rumble as the North flank of the mountain began falling towards them. But before the avalanche reached them, the expanding cloud overtook the following Earth and raced ahead.

The cloud sped down the flank of the volcano, ripping to the forest as it passed. Then the cloud hit the resorts and camps around Spirit Lake and the cabins on the Tudor River annihilating the structures. A few seconds later, the avalanche reached Spirit Lake in Tudor River, buried the lodging cabins under literally hundreds of feet of steaming stone, earth, ice, and mud. Harry Truman, Bob, Case Wetter, and Beverly Wethherald, dead in seconds. And with Truman, I don't feel sad. I like that guy.

He made it to the age 83, still in great health. All right, he was sad that his long time wife, Eddie had passed. He spent the final weeks of his life being admired by a ton of kids, other people. And then in an instant, it was all over. Right, he never had to leave his beloved cabin, never had to wither away in some nursing home. We should all be so lucky, I think. If these people were afraid before they died, and I imagine they were, it was only for

a few confused moments. Meanwhile up at Coldwater 2, Dave Johnson is watching when the landslide begins. He watches his three blocks slide down and away from the mountain. When the first block drops, it exposes the top of a pocket of magma that was partially embedded in the second block. The magma had been responsible for the bulge. But as Johnson had suspected the overlying rocks had sealed the magma uptight, heightening the pressure inside the mountain. When the landslide releases that pressure, the water in the magma flashes in the steam.

That created the two clouds, aka the pyroclastic flow. The pressure had been building up at that point for three months. Inside the cloud were ash, pumice, lava blocks, snow, ice from the overlying glaciers, tree fragments, soil, swept from the ground, glaciers, tree fragments, soil, swept from the ground, and boulders as big as cars. It expanded at top speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, but didn't explode upward, as Barry Voight expected to explode to the side in the direction of the bulge. It was like a fucking cannon, and it was pointed directly at cold water too.

When Dave Johnson saw the North flank of the mountain giveaway, he flipped on the radio. Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it. He said, as Johnson watched the volcano, the blast cloud quickly obscured the ongoing avalanche. He could have tried to take shelter, might have run inside the trailer, but he probably knew he wasn't going to live no matter what he did. He might have just stood there and watched it all happen. Nature showcasing power, they must have been so beautiful and awesome and terrifying all

at once. It was a bright blue sunny day. It would be nearly 70 degrees that afternoon. What a thing to be the last thing you witness on earth. In a way, what a beautiful death. When the blast front hit cold water too, it flung the trailer of the Ford Pinto and Johnson across the top of the ridge as easily as someone would brush away a fly. Johnson undoubtedly lost consciousness

and died almost instantly. Everything that was on top of the ridge flew into the adjacent valley. Another two people that died were Jim Plurde, the foreman for a warehouse re-logging crew, and his wife Kathleen. They left their home early that morning to check on Jim's cruise equipment. The plurde's in a blue pickup truck never seen again. Now, everyone who had the means to leave were trying to desperately do so. One rich behind Dave Johnson, ham radio operator Jerry Martin, climbed into his motorhome, tried to outrun the incoming fucking death cloud. At 832, he radioed to the network. Oh, oh, I just felt an earthquake. A good one. Shaking up. Here's up. At this point, his transmission was

cut off by a device that limits the length of transmissions. Another hand radio operator cut into tell Martin that he should change his frequency for better reception. Twenty seconds later, Martin resumes his broadcast. Now we've got an eruption down here. Now we've got a big slide coming off. The slide is coming off the west slope. Now we've got a whole great big eruption out of the crater. And we've got another opening on the west side.

The whole west side, northwest side is sliding down. A few seconds later, Martin continues. The whole northwest section, a north section blown up, trying to come up over the ridge towards me. I'm going to back out of here. He spoke calmly, reflecting years of Navy training. His words were interrupted by static from the lightning in the in the blast cloud. Gentlemen, the camper and car that's sitting over to the south of me is covered. It's going to hit me too. At this point, the blast was traveling near its maximum speed, which meant that it took about 20 seconds to travel the two miles from Johnston to Martin. His microphone switch opened and closed. Jerry Martin was dead.

You can listen to a recording of his final transmit of words on YouTube. It's gonna get me too. Spoken so calmly. I hope I can be so calm when someday I face my own death. The blast cloud also reached photographer Reed Blackburn. He was dead before he could turn the Spoken so calmly. I hope I can be so calm when someday I face my own death. The blast cloud also reached photographer Reed Blackburn. He was dead before he could turn the key in the ignition of his Volvo, which quickly filled with burning hot ash. The deadly cloud continued to travel, moving like a fluid, hugging the ground as it flowed away from the volcano, with an encounter to ridge it swept up one side and down the

other. When the volcano exploded Sunday morning, John Killian was almost certainly out on Fawn Lake fishing. Before leaving Vader the previous day, he had thrown a rubber raft onto the back of his pickup, scraps of that raft later found far down the valley below the lake. Christie was at the campsite with her pet poodle when the cloud rose up, snapping every tree around the lake. Christie was caught in an inferno of wood stone, water, and hot ash.

She was literally torn to pieces. Her left arm was found several months later only identified by the wedding band on her finger. One person would almost make it out. Two campers Clyde Crofts and Al Handy have prepping their horses for a journey back when the volcano erupted. As the cloud pressed in, Handy raced up the hillside north of the river hoping to take cover in a nearby mine.

He made it to about 20 yards from the mine entrance before the ash enveloped him, filling his throat and searing his lungs as well as the two horses. Craft grabbed a sleeping bag dove into green river above him hot ash fell into the sleeping bag. For more than an hour he remained partially submerged in the water with the sleeping bag over his head. Finally the darkness lifted enough from to rise up from the river. He began walking up the trail to Ryan Lake,

holding the sleeping bag over his head. Croft had been a combat veteran the Vietnam War had also survived a hard childhood on a poor Texas farm. He was strong, determined, burns now covered his face, arms and chest, but he kept going. But he was inhaling more and more ash.

He reached his truck where he drowned down to Cans of Beer, but a hurt to swallow, tried to set reached his truck where he drowned down to Kansas beer, but I heard the swallow, tried to set off towards Randall, 25 miles to the north. Two miles north of Ryan Lake, he began to grow dizzy. He weaved from side to side as he walked, right? He was unable to get the vehicle going. He came to a large uprooted tree, tried to climb over the tree. Too large and he was too weak.

Droped to his knees, began digging through hot ash, forming a tunnel so he could crawl underneath, he fucking did it, dug his way underneath that tree, made it to the other side, got back on his feet, kept walking, finally made it past the blown down trees, tractors and other machinery parked on the sides of the robe. He got into one, turned the key in the ignition, but the tractor wouldn't start, because the heavy ash fall,

all the vehicles are unusable. He gave up, continued walking down the road. For three more miles he walked. If he kept going, he would make it. But he had to rest. He'd walked eight miles, badly burned with lungs half full of ash. He moved to the side of the road, laid his sleeve bag in the ditch, wriggled inside, rested his head on his arm, and stopped breathing. His final moments later reconstructed by the condition of his remains, and the tracks he made through the ash. There was another group nearby in the Green River, Terry Crow, his girlfriend, Karen Varner

and Bruce Nelson and Sue Ruff. About 70 yards down the trail, Brian Thomas and Danny Bultch were still sleeping their tent after staying up drinking beer around the campfire. About 830 Terry came burst into the campsite to tell Sue and Bruce about a huge fish that had broken his line. As Sue rose to get a pack of camel lights from the tent, she noticed a small plume of smoke rising above the southwestern tree line. Suddenly their campfire shot sideways and the clouds above them turned from yellow to red to black. Hurricane Force winds blew through the trees. Terry ran to the tent where Karen and the dogs were sleeping and jumped inside. An instant later, a large tree fell

directly on top of them. Bruce wrapped his arms around Sue. They were stated between two large, Douglas fir trees. All around them trees are falling, creating big booming sounds like cannons being fired. The tree standing next to them fell and the couple toppled into the hole where the roots had been.

Above them, falling trees partially now cover the hole. They are engulfed by darkness. Their terrified was still alive. Nearby, both Brian and Danny had gotten out of their tent. When they sent something was wrong instantly, they were hit by the cloud. Brian was buried by ash, branches and debris. Danny was hit by scorching heat. He reached out to try and grab onto something screamed and pain as the skin on his hands fucking melted in the root pit farther up the trail, scalding ash, now falling on sue and Bruce. They did dig the chalky gray grit from their mouths with their fingers.

They pulled their shirts over their heads to protect themselves, you know, to keep from inhaling too much ash. They felt themselves getting cold, sleepy, and nauseous, though whether because of gas in the blast cloud or shock they couldn't tell. After 15 minutes of skylightens, but there are still random chunks of debris falling outside. Sue and Bruce climb out, gagging on the air, call out to their friends, don't hear a reply. Bruce says, if we get out of here alive, you're going to marry me. And Sue agrees. It's like a fucking movie, but it's real life. Danny meanwhile, stumbling to the woods when he fell to something grab his leg, it was

Brian. They heard Bruce and Sue calling for them and Danny shouted out in response. Out of the grave fog, Bruce and Sue appear, Sue looks at Danny, his skin hung from his hands like a burnt marshmallow and his fingers are fused together. Jesus, it's like a horror movie. They tried to get Brian to stand, but his hip is broken. You can't walk. For the next hour, they struggle to get Brian to a dilapidated shack on the Green River Trail near the campground. They'd lift and roll their friend over dozens of downed trees. Trying to figure out their best change for our chance for survival,

Bruce, Bruce, Sue and Danny, leave to find help. They begin trudging down road 2500. They hike for an hour and a half, making only two miles. Eventually they had to leave Danny, who was slowing him down. Several miles later,

they come across Grant Christensen, age 59, who was walking on road 2500, after driving into the devastation zone, earlier the day, to try to recover some of his brothers Tools from warehouse was camp Baker the three now tried John they're about to stop for the night when they hear a helicopter The crew thankfully sees him lands nearby Bruce and Sue tell the crew about Brian and Danny the crew doubts that they're still alive Nonetheless the crew goes back to the shack Brian no longer there He'd become convinced that he was gonna die if he stayed there. So we tried to literally crawl down road 2500. The crew finds him

that evening. He's still alive. He only made it about 200 yards from the starting point. They fly into a hospital and long view farther down the river. Danny tries to keep moving. His feet badly burned, but he is walking in the water. And suddenly he hears a voice saying, Hey, survivor. It was a logger named buzz Smith, which is a great logger name. And his two sons when the blast had rolled through they'd huddled under a sleeping bag in a fallen tree while debris rained down around it on them. When they met Danny buzz put some tennis shoes from his pack on Danny's feet and gave him a fruit roll up. Fucking classic buzz. Always carrying around fruit roll ups. The four of them continue walking.

Over the next three hours, they walk through, they walk three more miles to where road 2500 crosses, the green river buzz find the sea, the fresh water in the river bank, the four of them drink deeply. As Danny drinks water, oozes from his neck because his skin had been fucking burned off and he had a hole in his neck.

How is he alive and moving? Our bodies combine with a strong will to survive. Man, they can do some amazing things. A hundred yards past the bridge at about 730 in the evening, a national guard Huey flies over them. Lands farther down the road, a crewman carries smith sons of the helicopter, while the two men trudged the rest of the way themselves.

Danny had walked nearly nine miles on severely burned feet. Hail Nimrod, that guy's a fucking champion. Before a helicopter now takes him to Longview Hospital. Meanwhile, on the Geologist side, about an hour after the initial earthquake, Don Swanson, the man who was supposed to be at Coldwater 2 the night before, is flying in an elevation of 11,000 feet, be south of the mountain. Swanson could not believe what he has seen. A thick column of black ash has spouted from the top of the mountain, towers many miles above the plain. At one point, the wind blew a veil of dust and ash away from the mountain's rim and

what he saw was horrific. The top of the volcano was totally gone. The mountain was over a thousand feet lower than it had been before the eruption. The ash stream from an immense crater that extended towards the north through those swans who couldn't see how far. The forest on either side of the ash, cloud had been leveled. He realized Johnson must have been dead. He could see that hundreds of feet of debris

covered the ground. He wondered who was going to help look for survivors in all this mess. Purely by coincidence, two reserve units are conducting training exercises now near Mountain Helens. The 304th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron of the US Air Force Reserve, training near Mount Hood about 60 miles south of volcano. The 116th armored cavalry of the Washington Army National Guard was trained at the Yakima

Fire and Center about 90 miles east. The National Guard unit was on call in case anything happened with the volcano, while the cabin owners were retrieving their possessions later that day. But no one was prepared for what was actually happening. When the response began, it was largely improvised. They took helicopters through the area, trying to spot survivors. Sometimes they saw cars, had to drop down and see if anybody was inside. When people were inside, they were dead.

When they touched one woman's skin, it literally slid off of her body. She was seated in the passenger seat next to her husband. Their names were Fred and Marjorie Rollins, retirees from Hawthorne, California, a parage jumper, grabbed Marjorie's purse to stash Fred's wallets inside of it. When he opened the purse, it was full of bags of cocaine and watered out paper money. Weird. And pretty fucking awesome.

I hope those two, both in their 50s, were high on so much coke when the volcano erupted. I hope that they knew there was no chance for survival. They spent the last minute or so of their lives snorting all they could snort. So by the time the blast hit them, they were both high and numb as fuck. That would be a good way to go out, right?

Getting so fucking high, while watching a massive volcanic eruption, just O.D. before the blast hits you. Most of the rescues that day took place to the northwest of the mountain where the blast clouds effects for the most severe and were the absence of danger zones to drawn visitors. Some of them, the ones furthest away had managed to escape to Randall where they huddled in basements to wait out the ash. Others died usually instantly either from breathing an ash or the force of the blast, but those weren't the only dangers. When the volcano

erupted that morning, water from melting snow and ice poured into the south fork of the Tudor River, which is a over a tall ridge from the north fork. The flood swept down Valley, hit warehouses 12 road camp about 1030. There it carried away trucks, loaders, railroad cars, crumbies, buildings, and thousands of logs waiting to be sorted and shipped to sawmills. So much power. The logs formed an immense battering ram that devastated some structures downstream. Took out warehouses, row road bridge across the South Forks, swept up river banks with

the river curved, snapin off trees, add them to the flow. Two young people are swept up in this insane fucking shit storm. Venus Durgan, 21 and rolled, reten, 20. When the flood started, they ran to their car, but quickly that sank below the Russian water, and they had no choice now but to grab onto some logs. The logs were so tightly packed that rolled could remain upright on the one he was riding as it carried him fast as hell downriver. It was like he was on one of the world's, uh, or that one. The world's most intense water park ride right now. It's unbelievable.

The log soon shifted and his right leg was crushed. He struggled to free it but couldn't. If only there were lifeguard, who could have stopped the ride for him? The log shifted again, his leg is freed. At almost that same time, he sees Venus his hand in the mud ahead of him, injured leg and all he leaps to another log, reaches for.

Twice he grabs for her arm and poles, both times the rolling and bounding logs tear her away. But moments later, he sees her float between the ends of two sod logs, her face is covered in mud, only her eyes are visible. If the logs come together now, she's gonna be crushed. Thankfully, the logs separate, rolled grabs her hand, able to keep hold together, they pull themselves across the tumbling logs. One of Venus' wrists is broken, both of them are bleeding heavily, but they're alive. Soon the water slows, they jump off the logs and struggle on shore. Right, they emerged in the river, their bodies caked in mud onto a dirt road. This whole thing lasted about five minutes. And they felt it was fucking awesome, so they ran back

up stream, so they could do it again. Best ride ever! Broken wrist, blood and all. Woo! No, it really sucked. They made their way uphill with a spot of some people. At about 12.30 pm, a warehouse or helicopter huffers above the clearing where they stood and picked up Venus to take her to the hospital. Few minutes later, National Guard pilot, plucks rolled from the road. Worried about Rolls-Condition, the pilot yells to keep them from going into shock. They both would live and have quite the story to tell. Three miles below the toe of the avalanche, the mud flow hit warehouses camp bakered about 2pm. The devastation was even worse than

at the 12 road camp, right? The mud flow is bigger now. It had picked up more logs, vehicles, entire buildings carried them downstream. And total 27 bridges would be destroyed. Houses popped off their foundations like it was nothing dragged along with the flow. And the early evening, the mud flow reached the bridge over I five state troopers. It stopped traffic on the freeways. The flood approached. Now logs began to ram the bridge's supports over and over. It's metal trusses vibrating with each impact, but the bridge holds. Good job, engineers. And gradually the log jam passes underneath the flood.

Now carries immense amounts of mud and gravel that came to rest on the beds of the total cowlets and Columbia rivers. Channels became so clogged the boat could not leave their morgans and future flooding became inevitable. Ocean-going cargo ships were stranded for weeks in Portland, 50 miles south of the volcano while dredging crews labored to clear the channel through the Columbia. Speaking to going out into the world, there was also a column of ash. After it rose to approximately 60,000

feet, it got caught in the West release, prevailing winds that blow from the West and began to drift east. Over the next two weeks, that ash cloud would literally travel all the way around the world. In the small Eastern Washington town of Othello, 150 miles from the volcano, a two inch thick layer of ash would cover everything. Crops, cars, driveways, roofs, roads, golf courses, ash, bill building across the roadways made it impossible to drive, stranding travelers for days. My grandpa Ward collected a bunch of volcanic ash in a jar back where I grew up in Rick and Zydeho, 280 miles from the volcano. I was going to college back in 1980 and some of my classes were canceled. No, I was three. And then the last one happened. The

age reference is just a little nod to an ongoing secret suck joke with Tyler and our space lizards that led to this topic getting voted in. Ash clouds contained powerful electric charges and people miles away felt their knives, axes, even braces, zing with electricity, as the clouds spread back in Mount St. Helens. Most efforts still focused on finding and rescuing people. By the end of the day, the helicopter pilots had flown 138 people, eight dogs, and so random, one boa constrictor to safety. As night fell, the eruption subsided. The next morning, dawned clear and bright. The eruption had essentially ceased. It all happened so fast. The bulge had formed slowly, that hidden massive eruption boner, but then once the mountain whipped

out it's volcanic dick. It became, you know, happened fast, it came quick, and then like boners tend to do, withered away and it was once again harmless for now. And I think I'm done with the bullshit about boners, by the way. I'm sure thousands of you, at least, are like, shut the fuck up with the mountain boner stop. But also, I'm sure that a lot of you like it. Admit it, You dirty volcano purse. Anyway, a layer of ash as much as three inches

the extension of volcano through Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. That day, a photographer flying over a ridge west of the volcano shot a picture of a body lying lifeless in the bed of a pickup. That evening in Portland, the photographer stood next to the darkroom technician as the print began to appear in the developer. The guy looks awfully young, said the technician. The photographer hesitated, but a few minutes later, sent out the photograph over the associated press wire, and when the photograph was published in the newspapers the next day, the boy's grandparents instantly recognized their 11-year-old grandson. Ugh, terrible.

Photographer Reed Blackburn's body wouldn't be excavated from his car until May 20th. Above the ash his face was still recognizable, but below the ash, his body was literally gone. It had burned away. How trippy. Forest Ranger walking south toward Ryan Lake found Clyde Croft's body in a sleeping bag by the side of the road. Rescuers followed his footsteps to pick up and horse trailer. And then to the campsite by the Green River reconstructing the last few hours of cross life. At the campsite, they also found the bodies of Al Handy and the two horses. Meanwhile, Governor Dixie Lee Ray was trying to deflect blame onto the victims. Many people chose to remain near the mountain despite repeated warning. She said in a press

conference, the Tuesday after the eruption, we cannot be responsible. It's a free country. Maybe not the most popular opinion, but also I don't think she's wrong. On Wednesday evening, President Carter arrived from Washington, DC to view the devastation. His convoy greeted the airport by Governor Ray, Governor Vic, a Tia of Oregon, and Washington State, US Congressman Don Boncker, whose district concluded the area west of the volcano. Then the entire entourage made its way across the Columbia River to four service headquarters in Vancouver, where the president received a briefing from Mount St. Helens researcher,

Rocky Crandell and other officials. Crandell warned that the volcano could erupt explosively again, especially once it built up a new cone of eruptive material. President Carter, former nuclear engineer, asked at the power released by the volcano that Sunday was in the 50 megaton range. Krandel responded that it was between one and 10 megatons, still greater than anything in the American nuclear arsenal. Carter would go open a helicopter to see the extent of the devastation and about it he

would say, somebody said it looked like a moon scape, but the moon looks like a golf course compared to what's up there. The ash is several hundred feet deep. There are tremendous clouds of steam coming up. There are enormous icebergs big as a mobile home. A lot of them are melting. And as the icebergs melt, the ash caves in and creates enormous craters. There are a few fires about on the edge of the ash flow where logs are still exposed. It's an unbelievable sight. President Carter would basically also repeat dixielly ray statements about the victims saying one of the reasons for the loss of life logs are still exposed. It's an unbelievable sight. President Carter would basically also repeat Dixie Lee Ray statements about the victims saying one of the reasons for the loss of

life that has occurred is that tourists and other interested people, curious people, refused to comply with the directives issued by the governor by the local sheriff, the state patrol and others. They slipped away around highway barricades and into the dangerous area where it was well known to be dangerous. On May 22nd, Sue, Ruff, and Brut Nelson go on the today show to talk about their escape from the volcano, after which they had lunch with their interviewer, David Burrington, this is happening not too far from the volcano. They tell them that they had been trying to get the rescuers to search for some of their

friends, Karen Varner and Terry Croll, with the request for being ignored. Well Burrington now charges a helicopter and puts rough Nelson and the camera crew on board and heads for the campsite. But the helicopter is ordered to land at the operations center in Toledo before it could head up to the green river. For five hours, they wait for permission to fly to the camp. Finally, Burrington and Nelson, followed by a cameraman, cornered two search officials. And Burrington says, if you don't let these kids look for their friends, we'll put you on national television and make you look like the assholes you are. Fucking David Burrinson, not messing around.

Good on him. Hell, Nimrod. Shortly after the helicopter takes off, they spot a dog and three puppies running around in the ash, which belonged to Karen. Wonder could their friends have survived as well? Sadly no. They eventually find their tent. Terry was lying on his right side, his arm around Karen.

They both have been crushed by a tree that had fallen on their tent. Damn. Just a week after the eruption, the neighboring lands are once again covered with ash. Somewhere in the night between Saturday and Sunday, the mountain erupts again, not nearly as powerfully, while the wind is blowing from the east. A gray rain mixed with the ash drips from the branches and leaves. Meanwhile, geologists are still mourning the loss of Dave Johnson, but they have worked to do. The Exploited volcano had actually given them a unique opportunity. In the walls, the ripped open volcano geologists could read the layers of deposition and destruction, like the pages of a book.

The landslide had created a strange landscape that bore an unexpected resemblance to landforms near other volcanoes around the world. Most interesting, the eruption had scoured the land of living things in a vast track north of the volcano. Biologists were eager to watch life recolonize the blast zone to learn how the earth can recover from even such severe devastation. Also with the help from the federal government, a cleanup effort begins. The US Army Corps of Engineers wants to start building dams to hold back sediment before the rain start. Other environmentalist groups are working to have the area preserved, which means creating new jobs, replacing some of those that were lost with logging operations and mill shutting

down, but it was hard to get anything done when a fear of another eruption looms large. And there would be more eruptions. There would be three more after the May 25th one, June 12th, July 22nd, August 7th. They released less ash than on May 18th, but more than during the pre-May 18th eruptions. September of 1980, now, warehouse or other logging companies began salvaging trees from the blowdown zone. The companies argued that if they did not remove the down trees quickly, the wood would rot or be consumed by insects or burn into fire and they went wrong. The Forest Service agreed already with citing emergency contracts to salvage the trees on

federal land, warehouse or plan to have more than a thousand men in the woods by the following spring, removing the 68,000 acres of fallen timber on warehouse land. Within two years, the job will be done, and new trees could be planted to prepare another cropped for eventual harvest. Well, conservationists did not like this plant. They knew that once the trees were removed, it would be harder to protect the land. Biologists and tourists who wanted to learn from the explosion wouldn't be able to experience that. Warehouse would be back in control just as it had been before the eruption. And just like before the eruption, the work carried out by Loggers was dangerous.

Raising and loading the ash-covered timber raised clouds of dust that threatened to choke anyone nearby. One logger said, it was like going to the land of Mordor. It wasn't just the volcano that gave us a feeling of dread. The whole gray lifeless landscape made us apprehensive. Whenever a job came up in the red zone, we'd say, oh no, back to Mordor, and think all kinds of excuses,

not to go into work that day. I love that this logger was Lord of the Rings guy before the movies came out. Despite the logger's discomfort by October, Warehouse was running 300 fully loaded trucks out of the blast zone each and every day. And I mean, you know what? I mean, it was their land.

Land they did have legal log and rights too. In January of 1991, several conservation groups come together as the Mount St. Helens Protective Association to create a plan for preserving the area around the mountain. The plan calls for 216,000 acre monument that will protect everything of geological, scenic, recreational, and ecological interest around the mountain. The plan will still allow most of the down timber to be salvaged,

but proposes that thousands of acres of other down trees represented millions of dollars of potential profit be left in place for scientific research and tourism. Washington State officials, the Forest Service and logging companies all united in opposition to this proposal, back to the drawing board. After a lot of back and forth in July of 82, the House of Representatives passes the bill to protect the 115,000 acres land around mountain hellens. A few days later, Senate passes bill protects 105,000. There would then be a conference to reconcile the two bills and the final bill in August would call for a monument of 110,000 acres, where housing would cooperate. It and Burlington, Northern traded away about 32,000 acres of land inside the boundaries of the monument in return for 7,400 acres outside the protected area.

And on August 26, 1992, President Reagan signs this bill into law and you can still visit the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument today. Now there was a bit more fallout to deal with some lawsuits. Warehouse as well as a state of Washington would be the recipients of a lawsuit on behalf of the Killian, Plural, Blackburn and Crow families who filed wrongful desuits. Both the state and the company were accused of failing to inform the public of the Kylian, plural, Blackburn, and Kral families who filed wrongful desksuits. Both the state and the company were accused of failing to inform the public of the obvious danger posed by the volcano. After extensive fact finding and legal back and forth, the case goes to trial in 1995 with

Washington having been dropped as a defendant. A superior court ruled that Dixie Lee Ray had made a legitimate policy decision, but warehouse could still be potentially held liable. A lawyer represented the family's Ron Franklin would tell the jury, wherehouse did not vary the work location of one living person as a result of the volcano's activity. The eruption was an act of God, but the deaths were an act of man when man ignored weeks and weeks of God's warnings. Hmm. Again, there was so much disagreement right up until the volcano exploded regarding if it would actually explode or not.

And if it did, win and how destructive, et cetera. In the end, the jury couldn't decide if the company was at fault or not. And the family's agreed to settle for a few thousand dollars a piece. Sadly, what may have hurt the family's chance of winning the lawsuit, the most was the firm they ended up going with it the last second. They ended up firing Ron Franklin shortly before the end of the trial and Replace him with rooster boggle that we're seeing one of his commercials Hey, it's me rooster boggle. I'm kind of a lawyer

Have you or anyone you know ever been completely destroyed in a volcanic explosion? Are you very burnt and dead right now? Is someone you know very burden dead? Are you very burnt and dead right now? Is someone you know, very burnt and dead. Has a massive eruption boner, a lava, came all over you. Or anyone you know is face, a chest or ass. It's time someone pays. Volcanoes have money, a lot of it.

Probably hidden in caves and guarded by goblins. And I'm willing to get it for you. Or at least find someone else who can go get it. I won't get it personally because I'm pretty scared of volcanoes. You know the volcano's guilty. I know the volcano's guilty. You got cockatoo doomed! It's time to call the rooster. Call 1-800-GILTI, but two-wise.

And cook quick. I'm about to violate my parole game, so we don't have much time. Oh, that was fun for me at least. I'm still thinking about the rooster from last week, and we were just looking for any excuse to throw him in this week. Again, and that was it. Moving on now, what did the scientists involved in all of this, those who lived, what did they take away from this? They of course were devastated. Not only by the loss of life, but that they had spent so long trying to monitor the volcano and still had been able to provide a meaningful warning. We failed, said Steve Malone. For two months, we counted and located thousands of earthquakes, looked for changes to anticipate an eruption. Then it just happened.

It killed many people. It killed David Johnson. We could hardly work. They were particularly upset about the failure to discuss the lateral blast as a distinct possibility. Lateral blast, not well understood at the time, but Crandell and Mullenau had included the possibility in the report as, you know, very void did in his, but so many possibilities when the report, so many that it was clear, no one really knew what would happen. The experience would pave the way for geologists to understand volcanoes better going forward, be able to make better predictions, more funding would be funneled into volcano studies in the US following the blast After the explosion, the US Geological Survey created the position of information scientist with experience and press relations to convey information and layman's terms to the public. Also created the standardize volcanic activity alert notification system, which uses the same advisory watch and warning labels that the

national weather service uses for hurricanes and tornadoes. Preparedness plans and exercises with emergency planners also now became standard. And of course, as technology has gotten better, more technology for the study and monitoring of volcanoes has developed. Global positioning system instruments, a technology known as LIDAR for light detection and ranging and digital oh boy. It's a photo photography, but with grammetry in it. It's a photogrammetry. There we go. Can measure ground movements with an accuracy that would have astonished the geologists who worked around mountain hellens in 1980. Computers in the field can now process data

analyze signals and model eruptions, mud flows, ash falls and climactic effects. When this technology or with this technology, geologists have been able to predict a few hours or days in advance, most all of the smaller volcanic eruptions that have occurred since 1980. Okay, now before leaving the timeline, couple more things about mountain helens between the eruptions of May 18th, 1980,

and the end of 1986, about 20 separate eruptions of mountain helens built a new lava dome that rose hundreds of feet above the crater floor. Then the volcano was once again dormant, then Mount St. Helens became active again in 2004. On March 8, 2005, a 36,000 foot plume of steam and ash was expelled from the mountain accompanied by a minor earthquake. Another minor eruption took place in 2008.

Though a new dome has been growing steadily near the top of the peak and small earthquakes are still frequent, scientists do not expect the repeat of the 1980 catastrophe anytime soon. But someday, yeah, yeah, it's probably gonna go off again. Just like someday, other volcanoes will go off. Maybe right now, some volcano, you don't even know about, has a bulge growing. And you know what's inside that bulge?

That's right, something that I said I wasn't gonna talk about again. But sometimes I lie about stuff. Maybe a massive eruption boner's about to grow. Right now, it just feels a bit tingly, just stirring ever so slightly. Right now it's soft, it's weak. But soon, maybe next week, might be so fucking hard and strong,

and then it's gonna come lava all over you and everybody and everything you love. I want you to think about that. When you try to go to sleep at night, I want you to pray to baby Jesus or whoever else you pray to you or just beg the universe or whatever. Please not bury you and your family in super hot and not hot and sexy way. Molten lava come. And with that, let's get out of this timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

Mount St. Helens, a fascinating, strange story. Combining literally millions of years of geological history with the comparatively short history of human beings, our myths and beliefs, our ability to understand volcanoes, and the ways volcanoes can destroy whatever is around them, named by the English navigator George Vancouver for a British ambassador, Mount St. Helens, had been dormant since 1857. The first sign in eruption was recorded on March 16, 1980. I should say virtually dormant since 1857. More earthquakes and cause some snow avalanches to occur on parts of volcano. Between March 16th and March 18th 1980, there were thousands of earthquakes recorded

the volcano and huge bulls began to develop on the volcano's left side. A magnitude 5.1 earthquake rattled the mountain on May 18th, causing the bulls to burst and landslide down the mountain. Once the bulls was gone, the volcano's magma system was depressurized and blew off the top of the mountain. Ash rock and hot gases spewed into the air, ash blank into the Pacific Northwest, and a lot of ash fell across 11 states and parts of Canada. And a little bit of ash made it literally all the way around the world. The blast reduced the mountains height by 13 or 1,314 feet, then it took just two weeks for the ash and shot out of the volcano to reach up to 60,000 feet up into the air and travel around the globe. A total of 57 people and thousands of animals were killed on the May 18th event,

trees over an area of some 200 square miles blown down by a lateral air blast. Those that weren't burned or otherwise destroyed. At the events end, Mount St. Helens, Volcanic Cone had been completely blasted away in his place of the 9,677 foot peak was a horseshoe shaped crater with a rim reaching an elevation of 8,363 feet. But the biggest loss was felt in the people, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers and family members who were there one day and gone the next. Such a thing had seemed unthinkable, especially the families who had lived in the area for years, making their homes in the idyllic valleys.

John killing especially felt safe in the area because he spent so much time in it with his family and it is job and as a logger. He had no way of knowing the camping trip he knew that weekend or he took that weekend would be his last. Other campers had to fight through a fire in Fernos and survived. That part was fucking crazy. Clamping whatever clothes they had over their mouths facing jets of fire that sloughed off their skin, burnt their feet, and then they continued to walk from miles to tortures

pain. Some of them would survive after long process. The area would go on to be recognized as a preserved monument, an area for scientists to study to understand how volcanoes work, how they might have, you know, more advanced warning of such a blast in the future. Size-mig activity around Mount St. Helens quieted after the mid-80s, with more popping up in the mid-2000s, and scientists currently don't expect another big blast anytime soon, but you never fucking know. When there is another blast, will there be less fatalities? Will more people heed the most extreme warnings of the most trusted experts? I don't know. Keeping us human safe is a hard thing to do.

We're tricky creatures. We want to survive. We want our families to survive, but we also largely don't want others to tell us what to do. We want to live our lives in the way we choose them to live our lives. If experts told you that you needed to leave your home because the volcano you live near might erupt the next 20 years, would you leave?

What if they said it would probably explode in the next 20 years? What if they said it would definitely explode? And in the next five years, then would you leave? Or would you just stay and just hope that they were wrong? I imagine it depends on how much you love where you live and on how much you trust the people who study volcanoes. I honestly don't know what I would do. If they said it definitely would, I think I would leave.

But if I was 83 living alone, would I leave then? Probably not. Probably rolled the dice, spend what time I had left to live living how I wanted to live. I might make time I had left to live, live and how I want to live. I might make sure I had a huge amount of heroin on hand, right? That's how you do it. Make sure the needle is close by so that when she blows, hopefully, you've got enough time to shoot up and enjoy one last incredibly fucking awesome show.

On time of science, it's gathered more and more evidence, predictions will get more specific and more accurate, and then we can all make more informed decisions and situations like this. So go, volcanologist go. Time now for today's takeaways. Time suck. Top five takeaways. Number one, Mount St. Helens exploded. 832 in the morning, May 18th, 1980, after months of geologic activity. The blast killed 57 people devastated some 210 square miles of wilderness. Of the people killed, some of them were geologists and researchers.

Like David Johnson and Reed Blackburn. Others were campers who simply believed that they were far enough out of the blast zone to be safe, like John and Christie Killian. And then there was that stubborn old bastard in my favorite character in this story, Harry Truman, rest in peace, Harry. I hope you're enjoying a whiskey in a Coke. Why don't you say whiskey in a Coke? I think you're gonna be better.

I hope you're enjoying a whiskey. Af, nah, I'm fucking, none of the words seem to seem right, even though I know whiskey choke with your life somewhere. I hope somewhere you can talk better than I can right now. Number two, because of conflicting corporate interests, private landowners in different

authority uh... being given to different government institutions the danger map did not accurately describe the actual areas likely impacted by the volcanic blast since the johns is couldn't predict exactly what would happen how it happened many people didn't want to take protective measures for something that may not have happened number three george where house or was kidnapped as a nine-year year old by a rag tag crew of criminals held for ransom later released. He hitched a ride home was intercepted by another person, a journalist, then finally delivered to his parents' hands. And then decades later,

after he became CEO of his family's company, he would give a job to his former kidnapper. How weird. Remembering how sad Harmon Waley seemed to be when he played the ukulele form through a closet door. Strange little side road that I'm glad we went down today. Number four, volcanoes are awe-inspiring things, responsible for some of the year's greatest creations and some of its most massive destructions. Wiping out whole species, towns and more. They've also given us many legends and enriched our cultures in so many ways as we try to rationalize their tremendous power.

Today scientists understand them better than ever and with modern technology we predict what are winter options might occur with increasing accuracy as time goes on and take steps to ensure that the loss of life is minimal. And number five new info is not only Earth, excuse me, that is home to volcanoes. Volcanoes have also been found on your mom. Now you fucking heard me. Sweet, meaty, mommy volcanoes. Think about it.

Think about your mom's meaty volcanoes, ready to erupt with nourishment. Picture them, clearly in your mind. Picture yourself sucking on your mommy's volcanoes, but not in a creepy way. Picture me in a baby, and doing it it in nice, innocent, baby way. And then stop picturing that. You're thinking about too much and you're making everyone comfortable.

It's your fucking mom. You degenerate. Once you grow up and show some respect. But for real. Not only Earth, this home to volcanoes. So far we know volcanoes are found on Mercury, Venus, the Moon, and Mars. I.O. one of the moons of Jupiter, the most volcanically active body in our solar system. Currently active volcanoes only known to exist

on two of the bodies in our solar system, I.O. and Earth. However volcanoes could be erupted on Venus, Jupiter's moon, Europa. We're unable to see if they are due to Venus's thick atmosphere in Europa's thick ice shell. Fucking ice shell, that sounds terrible. And many scientists consider Mars to be vulcanically active, even if we haven't observed an eruption. The gas planets such as Neptune, Uranus and Saturn have no solid surface. Therefore, these planets do not have volcanoes.

And they don't have mommies either, you know, and they don't have meaty, mommy volcanoes as far as we know. Time, shock, tough far as we know. Time, suck, top five takeaways. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens has been sucked. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for the help of making time suck. Thanks to Polish Monster and beautiful Queen of Bad Magic Lindsey Cummins. Thanks to the Art Warlock, Logan Keith producing and directing today, and the suck Ranger Tyler C, helping with production. Thanks to Bitelixer for upkeep on the Time Suck app, the Art Warlock, Logan Keith, producing and directing today, and the suck ranger Tyler C, helping with production.

Thanks to Bidelixer for upkeep on the time stock app, the Art Warlock again for creating the merch, badmagicmerce.com, bring to a tank, bring to a tank, get the air banjo back, and for helping run our socials along with the suck ranger, and a team led by social media strategist Ryan Handlesman. Thanks, Bruce, for Sophie Evans, for initial research this week,

and thanks to the all-seeing eyes, moderating the cold to the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad, making sure Discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the time suck, subreddit, and bad magic, etc. Next week on TimeSuck, would you marry someone you'd only heard a short description about?

Maybe something like, 30 wealthy lost mother for whom I sacrificed youth, dread a lonely future, seek husband and true companion. Or what about Widow, 44, Southerner, Stranger, Own Home, West End, would like the heathstone of her heart swept and the cobwebs brushed away a matrimony. Or even an old bachelor returning from the mines finds his old sweetheart married in old acquaintances scattered, desires, lady acquaintance, object, marriage.

All those may not sound very attractive to us in the 1940s, I was with a bee's knees. Many a single person scoured the newspapers and their formalized cousins lonely heart clubs, or lonely hearts clubs, for information on a potential new sweetheart. For the price of a few bucks, you could have your picture and description printed,

sent out to all of the club members and then hopefully have some love come back your way. Sounds like Tinder. And much like Tinder, there were some real security concerns. Possibilities for shit going way wrong. Possibility for some douchebags to use these people seeking out genuine connection for their own advantage like Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, the Lonely hearts killers. In 1949, police and Wyoming township Michigan were called to the house. We're 31 year old, Delephine Downing and her three year old daughter, Renelle, lived neighbors of gotten suspicious because they hadn't seen Delephine in three days.

When they opened the door, they found a strange man named Charles Martin and his supposed sister packing Delephine's belongings into a a suitcase and then they found something else in the basement What you'll have to listen to find out the only hard killers next week on time suck right now Let's head on over to this week's time sucker updates First a quick little Cummins law an anonymous meat sack to get warmed up. A fast laugh at someone else's expense. They wrote, oh suck master flash you got me. I was a victim of commons law.

I work at a law enforcement agency. For that reason I'll need to be kept anonymous. I listen to this most righteous podcast at work and I use headphones for obvious reasons. Today I left my headphones on my desk, stuck my phone in my pocket to go meet with our director, Fatal Mistake. As I walked to the director's office, your podcast came back on. Full volume, it was the order of the solar temple, Doom's day cold episode. Were you saying stuff that's safe for work?

Of course not. I wouldn't be writing what I. I was frantically trying to turn your voice off, turn my phone volume down, break my phone, muffle the speaker, anything to make you quiet? No. The phrase that the director heard was, I'm not gonna lie, I'll probably have to fuck your wife. And your best coldly your voice.

I finally got you muted, but the damage was done. Thank Nimra, the director is retiring soon and I can leave this humiliating experience behind. It was that or chuck it all in and start fresh in Canada. Keep with the good work. Knowledge Nimrod. Well, thank you anonymous for sharing that and thanks for doing what you do risking your life to keep us idiots safe.

Very fun to imagine what your director must think about you now. And now an important point of discussion. I touched on recently but did not dive deep enough on. For curious sack Hannah Manna who writes, freakishly devoted to you. Okay, my friends, I am a very long-time listener. First time writer, I am listening to the episode about the Kirtland cult. Here you speak about a young man,

pulled himself up by his bootstraps, it strikes a nerve. He described a fellow named Donnie and how foolish was sentiment that he was some kind of self-made businessman. He went off on a wonderful tirade about how no one of us ever is truly self made. You said something like, do any of us do it all ourselves?

No, we don't. Bust in your ass, have it a plan, mental fortitude, perseverance, health, blah, blah. You mention people needing daycare and loans and whatnot. Then I was expecting some recognition about how being white or perceived a certain way is vital to a certain standard of success in this country. I don't know. Some recognition about race and how much harder it is for anyone not white and not a dude I don't need to be a downer. No, because I do think and feel your voice for the people

But I thought this was a place you could have dug much deeper into the myth of the self-made man white men tend to be the only people who say I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. I know you're cool as dude recognize systemic racism and sexism and yada yada blah blah blah blah. This was a little moment where I felt something was missing when you were describing the blind spots of this individual. Thanks for reading. My name is Hannah Manna. We've been listening for many years. I felt the urge to write in for the first time.

I love you, show the attention that you put into it and hope you take into account other perspectives of devoted listeners. Hannah Manna. Well, thank you, Hannah. Yeah, no, thank you for sending that in. And a couple of things. A little explanation of why I don't always dig deep. Well, sometimes I don't dig deeper

because I don't want to distract further from the narrative of the day. I kind of have a little recipe just based on how I kind of visualize the document and italicize certain parts that are opinion versus what is fact and don't want to lean too dry or too opinionated. Other times because the episode is already long, I just don't want to wear myself out by adding more info. I can only talk for so many hours in a row passionately

before I start to get hangry or exhausted or disinterested. Sometimes I'm running out of time before I need to record and just don't have the needed minutes to continue along with the tangent. In this particular case, I agree with your overall sentiment, but I do disagree as far as only white men believe in that the myth of the self-made man, I think it's a human condition. Not one specific to a broadly defined racial group. That being said, yes, historically, of course, it has been much easier for white men to succeed in this country for a variety of litany of reasons. White men founded this country, allowed only each other to attain positions of political

influence and power, literally created a system where for years only white men could legally own land. Queue centuries of systemic racism and sexism followed and thanks to the lingering effects of all of that to this day, yes, it is easier in most, but not all cases to succeed as a white man. I choose or chose not to address that issue in this way because I try to speak whenever possible to human conditions,

like racism, for example, not speak whenever possible to human conditions, like racism for example, not a disease of the white man, a disease of humanity. It's been expressed most destructively, most often by white men overall, because we've been in the most positions of power and created systems to stay in power. I can give tons of examples, though, of it being employed by non-whites and having many episodes. Just what I don't want to do is what I'm speaking about something like the self-made man kind of thing.

I don't want somebody listening to think, that's not me, that's a white man issue. He's not talking about, I would never do that. That's them, that's them not me. I just don't think that's fair accurate. I like to share thoughts with everyone, make us all think a little more about how we perceive reality, how we look at history myself, include. I hope that makes sense, but that one was intentional. Yeah, and I have talked about those other things I feel like in other ways, many times.

But with this particular mentality, I did it myself. I do think it transcends race and sex. Once again, I can spend hours and hours talking about this. You know, it's a very complex issue and going to historical examples and da da da, but you know, time. I spent all my time suck hours this week on that big, massive eruption boner. I hate them, Rod Manna.

Appreciate your listing, and I appreciate that you wrote and I like the way you think. Now for an interesting tossing bones out in the yard update from serial killer sucker Justin Evans who writes, Oh great sucked on. And master and curious co leader. I've been devoted to follow up with jangles and his quest to rid the universe of communism for a little over a year now.

I found the suck as a result of listing to scared death. I'm trying to catch up with episode since then. It's been quite a ride. I'm a geologist. Oh, all right. Well, you cried some thoughts about today. And wrote Lindsay at scared of death to tell her that her crystal collection,

well, pretty was not doing much for her. Best way to use crystals for defense or offense is to throw them at anyone who's attacking you. In some cases, like, hey, light, table salt, they're also good to eat. Otherwise, they don't really do much. I can go deep, but I won't. Now for my update.

I recently listened to the story on Fox Hollow Farm and had something that might help you understand part of the story. The issue of the wife, believing the story of her biomesters, about the skeletal remains found in the farm. Not all that far-fetched. Sit back and I will tell you how it can happen.

It'll take a little while to get there, but I think the trip is worth it. My dad was a family physician and went to medical school in the 1960s. At the time, it was not unheard of for doctors to acquire partial or complete skeletons for their offices. If you've ever been to an orthopedic doctor,

it is likely they have models of knees or feet in their exam rooms or even a full skeleton. These are now most likely plastic. In days of your, there were parts of actual skeletal remains, which is fucking weird to think about. I think our high school actually had a full skeleton that we used in biology. Well, according to Dad, the skeletons were knowingly donated

by their former owners before they died, probably not always the case. Dad didn't have a full skeleton, just a skull, he kept it in his office for years. As time wore on, it was no longer normal to have a skull in your bookshelf at work. So we brought it home. If this was scared of death, I would now regale you

with stories of a haunting by an angry ghost looking for its head. There were events in our house, but I don't think they were connected. In any event, the skull stayed in the cabinet for many years. My brother tried to get dad to let him display it, but dad refused. He wouldn't even allow it for Halloween. Instead, it was a teaching tool, not a toy. Now, 15 years ago, dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, so sorry. He had retired a few years before and he and mom had moved to a farmhouse in northern Oklahoma. When his condition got bad enough, they realized he had to pack up, moving to town, where they could get quick help when necessary. In the packing, they came across the skull. Both mom and dad realized they were downsizing. Absolutely, did not need a skull in their lives anymore. The question was what to do with it. As I said, they lived in a farmhouse,

had 128 acres of land. The first thought they had was they could just throw it in a ravine and forget about it. But then thankfully, they imagined that someone walking around in the woods, you know, could come across a school. That would be a bad thing. There would be investigations and questions that would be very hard to make sound believable. Imagine if dad had an entire skeleton. The story would have been read similarly to what old her balmeister told his family. The events he decided to call the local sheriff, they explained the story to a surprise deputy sheriff

to see what he would recommend when he stopped laughing. He suggested they contact a funeral home or a crematorium. That's what he did. I don't know if the school was cremated or was surreptitiously slipped into someone's coffin, ended up on an undertaker's shelf or was thrown into a ditch, but it was out of our family control.

I hope you can see that herb story of the skeletal remains on Fox Hollow Farms wasn't all that far fetched from my point of view. Just wanted to share a different perspective. Three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing. I also want to share that I'm very excited about my new action hero people collection. I have all the current figures fighting man fight fight fight fight fight flying guy warrior woman attack cat and atomic man. I've also sent in 2500 pull tabs from Whipple to preorder karate lady And spy person as an aside Whipple may need a warning label drinking that much about killed me If I could be so bold the a hp team needs a new member ninja dog cousin to bojangles four legs of fury

Jaws of doom and a bionic tail holding a katana Glorifying in the length of this email. Sorry. It was dickless holding a katana, glorifying in the length of this email, sorry it was dickless. Keep out sucking Justin. Justin, that was a wonderfully written message and a great update. And that does make the story of her, you know, a bit more believable to me. So I appreciate that and appreciate Ninja Dog. Glad you like to tell the action figures. Who knows what may be added to the collection going forward.

And then one more from Chris, a beautifully grateful and strobe light, hate and sack who writes, to the greatest Suck Master Profit Nimrod, holy herald of most good, most, most, humble servant to our glorious, glorious, sexiest goddess Lucifina. Hey, Dan, an amazing crew, bad Maddox, sorry, but this is going to be a long one and I don't really give two shits. First, let me commend you and your crew on creating great, a material from your comedy, your podcasts. They have got me through, got me and my fiancee through a really rough year for both avid peepers. I'm a proud sucker. Slowly converting my wonderful fiance to the wonders of the suckverse. The community you've created is incredibly creating a truly

safe space for so many people allowing for honest and meaningful connections between us meat stacks in an extremely, uh, is an extremely hard thing to have achieved in these recent years, bring people together rather than dividing them a truly amazing feat. It is because of the scale and power of the community that I've written in. I would be honored if you could give a massive shout out to all your listeners who are suffering with epilepsy, their families and anyone who cares for them or about them. I have epilepsy was diagnosed at the age of 22. We think it has been happening all my life. We have no idea why or where it came from. I most recently had four seizures in the summer of 2022 after being seizure-free for two years. It tore my life in two. Not only did my fiance have to watch me seize three times. She drove hundreds of kilometers in the early hours of the morning to pick my ass up from the small community hospital.

We were also dealing with the emotional fallout you have after a seizure, which is always hard. I always thought I'd lost my, I also, oh, sorry, I also thought I'd lost my entire career as a park ranger in country redacted. Ever since I was in university becoming a park ranger, it was always my goal. I've always wanted to be a part of a ranger service that protected our parks and wild spaces. This requires a lot of skills and technical backcountry, ecological knowledge, construction skills, law enforcement training. Yes, we are badasses.

If we build and maintain trails, haze bears, haze, maybe, haze, haze, haze, haze, haze sounds fun though. We fucking haze bears. We fucking, we hold them down and we shut things into butts if they wanna join our fraternity. No, educate the public, protect the park

from the people and the people from the park. We are a go anywhere, do anything crew. Come on Dan, can you give us a to hell with the devil, little buttons. Yeah. Right up until a few weeks ago, I honestly believed I was done with parks. I was ready to throw in the towel, go back to college, go and search for a new career which I never wanted. Now I am all for more education and exploration.

But when you found your passion, you know that's what you want to do. It's some issues with occupational health and safety who are making it nearly impossible for me to return to the job that I loved and I'm so passionate about. It is hard to stand up and say, no, I can do that job. Epilepsy doesn't stop me from doing that. When you feel so caught up in paperwork and all that bullshit, unfortunately society has created a stigma around epilepsy

and those who suffer from it. I've heard comments from, you don't look sick. What if it happens when you can't do that? No one's ever gonna let you do that. These ideas make living with this condition extremely hard for anyone involved, or everyone involved, from the person who has epilepsy, the family and friends and the many physicians and nurses that work hard to improve our lives.

However, if that's where the story ended, that would fucking suck. But I'm glad to say it doesn't. I moved to a new area, found my people, a group of people who don't say you can't do that, rather say you can do it, is there anything we can do to help? I'm still a park ranger. I'm proud, honored to serve my community and protect our beautiful wild spaces. I wanted to give a shout out to all your listeners who suffer with epilepsy to never stop pursuing your dreams, even if it is just one small step at a time, county hours, count the days, count the months, count the years between seizures. Have faith in yourselves. It takes time, patience, and a huge effort, but I nearly gave up. And if it wasn't for the people around me, my wonderful fiance, family, friends, and colleagues,

I wouldn't be where I'm right now. So please don't stop, so please don't stop, don't let epilepsy define you. So thank you, Suck Master, Prophet and Imran, for creating this community. Thanks to your crew, you and your crew, you make this world a better place to live in from your loyal fan, Chris.

And also if you give a shout out to my wonderful fiance, Ashley, that would be epic. I can't wait to marry the most wonderful, powerful woman in the world. Well congrats to Christian Ashley, Chris, Chris and Ashley and congrats again Chris for persevering and not giving up. Good on you and good on everyone in our online community for encouraging and supporting you. I did not create that community.

Fans did wonderful caring meat snacks who just want to help make the world a little bit better place to live in and they do exactly that. Uh, it's got lucky that they rallied around this silly shit for whatever reason. Uh, love these stories. Thanks everyone for sending in your messias and keep sending them in. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast, a scared-of-death time suck every week, also the secret suck, a few space lizards.

Please don't go fishing in a lake at the base of an active volcano. People are worried about exploding this week. Just go fish in one of the world's many, many, many, many other lakes and keep on stocking. I'm magic productions. Logan, did you ever do the volcano project in grade school, the paper mache thing? You know, I actually did.

You did? Yeah, I did. We did a lot of those types of like the topography maps and all that good stuff. Yeah. I did one too and it's so weird to think about looking back but actually a grandpa ward helped me make one. I think like fourth grade and where it's like the baking soda vinegar food coloring in the little cup in the center to make it explode and yeah and you got the recreation little monopoly houses and stuff we use and I think we actually did a recreation of Mount St. Helens

and then had the flow like destroy houses and stuff. Which is a pretty dark fucking project. Yeah. It's a great school. That's fun. But this episode reminded me of that and it was a good memory.