Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 45: 1955 Le Mans Disaster

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Magnesium car go boom slides: https://youtu.be/VbfSlTIfMig patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod

And I'm going so as I was saying every northeastern city is Toronto yes, they're all Toronto I wish we had some of the suburban public transportation that Toronto has but you know Cuomo had to kick out Andy Biford because he was too good at his job you know here we are. There we go. I am now also recording look like fantastic. All right. Does that mean we have a show going? Yes. So what does Chicago smell like? It just kind of smells vaguely of like sweat, you know, like, you know, okay. Did you have to chain kill bossa? Yeah, it's kind of just like sweaty meat.

I don't know like that's that's sort of the I was like, oh, I imagine this is what crack house smells like. And I went to crack how and crack out actually smells pretty decent. Well, all of Europe just smells like diesel cigarettes. Yeah, I mean Jacksonville smells pretty fucking heinous. That's the one thing I really remember about Jacksonville was that it truly did smell. Absolutely. You know, you know what I think the worst smelling American says he is is Phoenix purely because if you go in summer, you're just getting like melting rubber like coating the inside of your lungs. Tell me that like actually Phoenix is nice and there's tons to do.

No, no, no. Yeah, maybe in the three months of the year you can go outside. I'm going to go with worse smelling city is Lancaster. No, because Gettysburg smells worse. If we're if we're extending if we're extending city down to like a small city or a town level, then I've got to put in a strong word for Greeley Colorado home of the shit wind that occasionally like hits Denver from from the various hog plants. I will say that York has that nice mixture of we used to have a paper a paper plant, which smelled horrific. Wonderful. And then we also got the we got the cow shit smell.

So we had cow shit. And can I help you about York, Pennsylvania? Yes. Talking. Karen wanted you to know that she had said talking shit. I'll ask her if she wants a job as the fourth host of the podcast. No, I'm not splitting it another way. That's that's the nativism that always comes out after the commune is established.

Well, there's your cron stars. Yes. Oh, hey. Welcome to Well, there's your problem. A podcast where we talk about which cities smell the worst. I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him, and I don't smell that good myself right now.

To be honest with you, but my name is Alice called for Kelly. My pronouns are she and her. And I smell delightful. Thank you for asking cash around. My name is Lea. We understand I'm the person who's talking right now. I smell I can only imagine absolutely fucking atrocious. I took a shower this morning.

I don't think it helped. I assume I just sort of smell like I don't know what I smell like. That's not that bad. This has been the smell. This is smell update. Yeah, you're you're lucky. We don't have smell of vision here. Yeah, especially the old apartment.

Jesus Christ. What do you see on the screen in front of you is we have a very attractive PowerPoint background now. Yeah, it works southeast. I use that just because I thought it would annoy you a little bit. It did. Yeah. It kind of breaks with the tradition of every previous episode.

It's very annoying. Good. Good. Suffer. We also have a text on the screen. That's a new one. Yeah. I made a funny joke.

Yes. And then. No, I've, you know what? You two record this. You just go fuck yourselves. Oh, do you want to teach the podcast? No. Ross is good at it.

No, I suck. And you'll see the remnants of a car here. No, I don't. No, I don't. I see a collapsed like tent maybe or like a group. Yeah, don't worry. We'll get to that. Yeah, we'll get to that.

So they were going to talk about the 1955 Le Mans disaster. Le Mans. Le Mans. Le Mans. You know what? I take it back. That's French for the mall. It's called a disaster.

And the province of Maine. Yes. Really? Yeah. Maine. Yeah. So before we do that, we have to talk about the goddamn news. Oh, God.

Two. Up. Tom. Turb. Oh, missed it. You have. You have.

He had a lot of fun with that when we were at. Out. Tim. I can't believe you defeated Torp. Pratt. So, yeah, Philly has defeated President Trumbo. President Dalton Trumbo and his like army of Brazilian special operations forces and like Polish grom that we're going to

investigate the Democrat party rigging the polls have been defeated by, you know, the watchword, the watchword of Liberty is eternal vigilance. Right. And so that's what happened. Congratulations to all the agents involved. That's right. I was proud to take point on this one with my second in

command. How you like them apples. Roz. Justin Rosniak. I still can't hold a carbine real good. But yeah, we were, we were very proud. That I will say, you know, we were very proud that I will say you know, I understand obviously that this is not exactly the

victory we were fucking hoping for. But I did. I did kind of want to take a moment to say that like it is important, especially as the world goes on this sort of collision course, and we don't know really what's going to happen other than possible catastrophic climate change to do take joy where you can get it because otherwise you end up with a bullet in your mouth and like that's a pretty fucking

depressing place to be. I know that like I'm not happy. You know, it's Joe fucking Biden up there. But I was very happy to just keep tweeting you mad at Trump supporters. So that's been what's really keeping me going in these last few days of COVID. I searched for the phrase bet on Trump and found people who

had put money on Trump winning. And I said, I said, I don't know. I don't know who had put money on Trump winning. And I said, it's a pleasant afternoon. Quote, we think each of them with a cringe emoji. Nice. Yeah, I just put a lot of money on Trump winning, by the way. And also put a million pounds on Biden.

They still haven't paid him, which is actually kind of what they're saying. I just, it's important to not lose sight of making fascist this upset. So yeah, take joy where you can get it. Obviously, I don't know how realistic pushing Biden to the left is. I assume not very.

My goodness. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to say congrats to President Mitch McConnell. Yeah, you're right. And if there's anyone in the Democratic Party leadership who for God forbid listens to this podcast, hit me up because I got some words to tell you.

Yeah. Mitch McConnell gets a 20-minute meeting in his office with Gina Haspel. You get Liam. Nancy Pelosi gets Liam. We go through our, we go through our Patreon donors and realize, holy shit, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Hey, we can talk about our, we can talk about our

hollow recipes. I will say as a fun aside, and I know we're trying to keep this brief, and I thought you would like this, that my girlfriend's sister used to intern for a congressperson. And he had a special suit. He's a Democratic congressperson for when he was going to get yelled at by Nancy Pelosi, who apparently when she actually like loses her temper and starts yelling at you is

terrifying. And I love the idea, you know, as much as she sucks at Nancy Pelosi of all people giving you the Johnson treatment. Yeah. Oh my God. She just wimps the dick out on the desk. Hey, you know, if you want to negotiate salt one, we can do this.

That's anachronistic. Shut the fuck up. Tell us a jumbo, you know. Prepare to meet jumbo. It's going to be very confusing if you don't know that LBJ called his deck jumbo. Yes. Well, you're not going to call it tiny, you know, this is

true, but that would be, that would be a good irony post, I think. Little buddy. Yeah. Someone needs to do one of those, you know, like the Alexander Hamilton, but he's trans. Oh, no. Do one of those or LBJ.

Someone's going to do that because of you. I am. I'm wondering how we deal, how she, how they deal with their dysphoria. That's why the long phone calls to the tailor about pant fitting. I don't like that at all. I'm sorry.

I spoke this into existence. You fucking should be the lay you're hopping between podcasts here. Oh God. All right. Another news. I just want to say this as a public service announcement. Do not under any circumstances during this pandemic take the

Redding Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad. Yeah. Cause they gave you COVID. They probably did give me COVID. We don't know yet to be fair. Yeah. I don't, I don't have any symptoms. It's been about, it's been four days now.

You have defeated the Corona virus and single combat, but they did give you the COVID. Apparently. You're president now. This is a set of four, three rail diesel, rail diesel cars from the bud company. And my friend and I, and one of her friends went to, we went from the, we went from Redding, Pennsylvania to Jim Thorpe,

Pennsylvania on these, right? And everyone was lined up to get in the cars. They all had masks on. And then, you know, I figured, okay, they're going to do social distancing. They're going to do all this crap. No, they pack this train full of people. It was about 80 seats in each car and they had someone sitting in

every single one. That great advantage of trains that you can fit a lot of people in them. Suddenly now they're disadvantaged. I know, right? And all of them were like 60, 65 year old people with like Trump shirts on and shit. They all took their masks off.

Tell the people what you called them. The goddamn fossils. I just think it was kind of ironic that all of them were wearing I will never get the novel Corona virus t-shirts. But yeah. What I don't get is they, they were all wearing masks outside. And then when they got on the train, they took the masks off. There's something about this.

There's something about the human brain that doesn't work well with like putting the thing on indoors. You like, you take the thing, like the new secretary of defense like Trump fired Mark Esper for not wanting to do a coup or something. Arrived at the Pentagon. Tripped over his dick on the first step and then immediately walked up the stairs and took his mask off.

So like that's, I think it's just eight brain stuff. It just, it's in there. You know, you come into a warm enclosed area. You like take an item of clothing on your outer layer off. It was two hours and 30 minutes to get the gym tharp. And then it was two hours and 30 minutes back after even was drunk and they were yelling at each other on the way back. And like, uh, old man actually asked me to close my window

because he was getting cold. And I was like, what the fuck did like, like. No, no, it's not worth it. This is the finest, the finest medical science of the 16th century eludes that guy. You can't close the fucking window, dude. You're going to get miasma. Yeah, exactly.

You're going to get miasma. You're going to get there because you're human. Pandemic. Yeah. My God. I was very confused. You posted cringe. You were going to lose bile.

Yeah. Someone please, instead of drawing, instead of drawing the LBJ thing, please draw the three of us in plague doctor masks with that caption. And safety helmets. Yes. That's it. Yes. I don't know where they're going to go on the, on the bird mask.

But you know. And a man in Jim Thorpe yelled at me for jaywalking. Like actually, he's got me aside and yelled at me for jaywalking. I was like, I, I don't know what this is. We don't have this crime in my country. Anyway, this is my, this is my public service now. This would be a very nice trip, if not for COVID, but COVID was occurring. So do not take Redding Blue Mountain in northern.

They do not acknowledge disease exists. Okay. That was the goddamn news. Okay. Strong first showing here. Yes. Tag yourself. I'm professor face.

That's, that's right. You wanted the professor fate card here. And I did. I did want the professor fate car in here. What is the professor fate car? It's from the great race. It's a film from 1965, I think about a old, like early 1900s, long distance car race from New York to Paris.

And it's sort of a slapstick comedy, you know. It's a good movie. It is a good movie. It has one of the greatest sword fights ever filmed and the largest pie fight ever filmed. Well, official movie recommendation then. Yeah. That's one of 12 movies he's seen.

I know. So, uh, Liam, take, take it away. You did the notes for the slide. I just decided to put the Hannibal twin eight on there instead. Oh fuck. Yeah. All right. Hold up.

Where am I? Yeah. No, I got it. Roll tide. So, so, yeah. So motor racing, I honestly basically begins when cars are invented. So the late 1800s, um, time learned and bends, obviously. The first organized race is actually in 1894, uh, in France.

Oh, yeah. It's a road race. The average pace is a blistering like 12 miles an hour. I don't know if this is a nose, but it took them like six and a half hours. Different. Great. You invent motor sport and immediately create the Indy 500. Yeah.

But, uh, but enough about that. Let's talk about the 1903. A horse still wins. Let's talk about the 1903 Paris to Madrid race, uh, where everybody fucking dies. Uh, this is in this is in the group B slides too. So I'm going to talk about this twice. Yeah. Yeah.

So the 1903, uh, Paris to Madrid race is great because the, the French prime minister doesn't want this to happen. There's pressure from the French public and King of France of Spain, uh, the French public's rationale as well. He does it with the French and with the, I'm going with Germans. Uh, huh. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Best in the world. The building's a car. Oh, yeah. Uh, so that's tight. And then half the fucking cars crash. Yes. Like if you've ever read about early tour de France or like early, just even the Olympics used to be like this.

It was a slapstick ass time in human history and all of them also when you include like early mechanical engineering. Yeah. Uh, eight people die. They have to cancel the race to the point where they like restarted at the Spanish border and won't even allow the drivers to restart their engines. Um, yeah, just get out of the bush force. Yeah.

Basically, actually have a mule pull it. This introduces, uh, in the French consciousness, at least the, uh, the concept of speed limits. Uh, and there's discussion if there should be speed limits during racing. Obviously, if you're a coward, that's what you should do. Uh, after this public road racing, at least in France is canceled kind of across Europe. Obviously, there's the outbreak of World War one. Um, and the new race over the trenches.

Yes. The meal me glia or me lia. I don't speak Italian. Yeah. Well, I'm not a fucking fascist. So shots to do it. But, uh, uh, the, that restarts in 1927, uh, because of two young counts. Mussolini actually canceled it because a bunch of people died in 37.

Normally I would be shot for being Italian. Yeah. Yeah. And then hung upside down at a gas station. So who says cars are good for nothing. Uh, and that ends in 1957. Next slide, please. Man, I wish I had more than one monitor.

All right. So you may see, uh, Alice, you're up here. If you'll notice that girling. Yes, I do be doing that. Yes. Uh, so you may be wondering to yourself why these dudes are sprinting to their cars. This is called a Le Mans start. This is how they fucking do it.

You line up, you run out of your car, you jump in, you start it, and then away you go. Uh, a little bit of side note here. When safety harnesses were introduced in the 1960s, a bunch of drivers just said, fuck it. I'm like, I'm not spending the extra few seconds at the start. I'm doing a five point harness. A bunch of people died just doing that. Like I really can't stress enough that like wallets less deadly than historically has been like the, the, uh, the Le Mans race is absolutely just hilariously dangerous. In ways that kind of don't make any sense.

I also see down here a cup soloi. Uh, and Lucas electric. Uh, obviously you also notice that they're wind up according to their country. Uh, because this is sort of one of the great pride of nations races. Yeah. And that post war, like post World War One, post World War Two vibe of this is what we're doing instead of war is. Oh, we'll get back to the war. This actually plays a role.

Oh, good. German shop with a Zeppelin. Indiana Jones just kick it ass right into the Le Mans track. No ticker. Great fucking movie. Second movie recommendation. One of them. I have seen some movies.

I have seen some movies. More than Roz has. Yes. So the mall is launched in 1923. We should just do a bonus episode where we talk about good disaster movies. That would be fun. We got, we could watch crazy eights or something. Oh, yeah.

And MST three K it. Um, Well, you mean unstoppable? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy eights was the real incident. So in contrast to sort of earlier races of the day, uh, where you're just sort of purpose

belt race cars as fast as possible or close to, uh, you know, you're not really worried about like fluids and stuff like that. Cause you're just sort of going forever. Uh, this is really hard because you have to, you can't always stop for fluids in the beginning. You had to do at least, uh, you had to go at least an hour without stopping for fluids. So you have to balance efficiency, endurance, speed. Um, you know, there's some, you know, the track, the track is relatively fast, especially

or actually counter that the track is relatively slow. There's a lot of like, not especially well, well maintained road services, which are going to play a role, um, in the, uh, in the crash that we're going to talk about. Uh, it's absolutely hot as hell. Uh, this takes place in, uh, June, July. So you're talking about the French heat cars that are very delicate that have to run for a huge amount of time. Uh, guys that are run like two drivers.

Uh, one of the guys here almost wins Lamont in, I believe 52 by himself, having driven for 23 hours straight. And the funny, the crazy thing I learned about Lamont in the beginning was that it was three consecutive 24 hour races. Cause that's how you did an endurance challenge. Like genuinely, that's very neat. That's basically across the continental United States and back. And like, this is the thing, right?

This is also true of rally. It's like one of these things that diverged, right? But like in both cases, uh, the idea was whether you're on a track or just on roads, the points of a race is to destroy as many cars as possible and kill everyone. Uh, we're actually providing entertainment to people watching as a very distant third. Well, NASCAR manages to combine these, um, pretty well. Um, so that's what I have just as like background on Lamont and how it sort of is specific in the, in the, in the, it's like, it's kind of quirks.

So Ross, you did this one. If you want to talk about it. All right. So we're going to talk about the actual Lamont, uh, track. All right. So the circuit Dilla Sarth. Sarth, Sarth. I don't know how to.

No, it's Sarth. It's Sarth. I am not a friend of the French anymore. That makes sense. All right. So we start up here, what do you see as a sort of, this is a modern view. This is sort of modern racetrack here called the Bugatti circuit that was not built until the sixties, right?

Um, in 1923, the first Lamont occurred, right? And that was actually on a slightly longer circuit than what there is now. They'd start around here. They went down into the city of Lamont itself along the, um, Ruda lag. Yeah. And then came back on Avenue George Durand, which was renamed that at some point, right? Um, later they built, they decided to bypass the city because it's a bad idea to drive cars at extremely high speed through the city.

Um, Yeah. Yeah. So after that, they go down something we know is in English is the Mulsanne Strait. This is about six kilometers long. You go straight. Very, very fast. Get to a 90 degree corner at the end.

Right. Yeah. Cars have achieved very, very, very high speeds at this location. They've had to, they've had to add the chicanes because cars were regularly going so fast. They, they lift off. There's another crash, uh, in 1999, a Mercedes GTR is coming over a hill and air pushing up, lifts his car. He's flown.

I don't know. Like, like I've seen the video a million times, like 50, 75 linear feet going, whatever, 200 miles an hour. And he walks away on skates, which I think is a testament to like how cars are built now and how they weren't built then. Yeah. Like you did, you do that in like a fifties car. That guy's chunky marinara.

But there's a dichotomy here, right? Because in addition to, you know, the modern cars lift off some of the older cars, the main problem was you, you had a spoiler, if you had a spoiler on the back and you were going very, very, very fast, it would just put so much force on the rear tires. They just shred. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get there with the Mercedes.

Because that's how it breaks apart. So like the highest speed that was achieved here was right before the Chicanes were installed in 1990. Someone hit 253 miles an hour on the straight in 1988. Right. And there's a lot of this course you keep going, go up this road, you get up to here, you make a turn, you go up here, you go over here, you're going around, you go through a couple other bullshit up here, which I can't see from this resolution, right?

You know, and then you come back to Pitt Lane, which is right here, which is where today's incident is going to occur. And I will be your incident for today. Yes. So, you know, in a lot of the course, you're going full throttle, right? The car is completely full throttle. For a lot of the course, you know, for a long time, a lot of the roads were not so well maintained. So you're going slower today.

It's a very, very, very fast course. That's one of the reasons why it's so challenging is because you're running the car full throttle for such a long time, right? So you need like an intensely reliable vehicle to do this well. And an intensely reliable driver who can concentrate and not fall asleep in between getting shot full of horse, whatever, and the fucking Pitt Lane. Yeah, exactly. Well, well, being fed a bunch of strickenin' like they're a St. Louis marathon runner.

So, okay, here's the modern Pitt Lane up here, right at the top. Today, Pitt Lane is a separate area, right? You can see there's like a barrier between the pits and the main racetrack here, right? So, to give you more of an idea of what the configuration was in 1955, you can see there's a public street over here. This is the Rue de l'Augne, whatever. The Rue de Guerin l'Augne. The Rue de French thing, right?

And you can see that that continues through. It diverts around the race course and then comes back down to the same alignment, right? In 1955, the street went straight, this Rue, the Rue went straight through, right? Because you were just a Mandu, yes. Because you were just racing on ordinary streets. Sacre bleu. Yes. So, it's an ordinary public road.

It has some special markings on it for where Pitt Lane was said to be. It was a little wider so they could fit the pits in there. But there was no barrier between Pitt Lane and the main race course. There's nothing like you would see in a modern race course. And then there was a four foot earthen berm between the spectators and the race course. We'll sort of see how that was configured in the next slide. You never really hear about berms these days. Shout out to berms.

Yes, well. You just like saying berms. I really like saying berms. Yeah, I know. Here's the berm right here. Man, that's not a big berm at all. I mean, I realize there's a small cars, but still. Yeah, and I don't love how, you know, they're seemingly, that four feet doesn't seem like

it's going to make much of a difference, say if a car goes hurtling by you at 125 or so. You get a hair must, you know. It's like when a high speed train comes through, you know. Well, I mean, people aren't usually racing high speed trains. I mean, they have a limited ability to divert from a said path. Why do you hate the T1, Roz? All right. Liam, this one's you.

Oh, Jesus. Everybody hold on. Oh, yeah. This is just a picture of the sort of the start. I just wanted to include this to get the same idea of that, that berm. So the people that are going to matter. We've got the number 26 car Austin Healey number 19 over. Yeah, I know you can't annotate it.

So Roz, you could circle these or I can't annotate it. 19, which one's 19? Right. It's kind of the back left. Yeah, right here. Yeah. And then I want you to do 22. That's Pierre Levé, who is sort of he's racing for Mercedes.

Mercedes had sort of invited him. He's sort of the folk hero. He's an older guy. He's the guy I mentioned who very nearly won them all sort of by himself, which is absolutely crazy. He's a Frenchman. Remember World War two had sort of just ended and that's actually going to play a part in some of the weird tensions that come out during and after the race.

This features the sterling loss at the top of his game. Juan Malfangio, Mike Hawthorne racing for Jaguar, Ferrari at the top of their game, Mercedes at the top of their game. And we'll talk about it in a couple of slides is has introduced the 300 SLR, which is an absolutely bonkers race car. It has an airbrake system. It's made out of magnesium. Jag, Mike Hawthorne, who's driving for Jaguar hates Mercedes

because he is a good Englishman. And. And yeah, this is this is going to play a part in how sort of everything unfolds and where blame gets shifted. Wait, is this one the Anglos fault? Is this us? World War two. I don't know.

No, no. World War two. The fucking the incident. Did you did you fight amongst getting bailed out? Well, I mean, yes, obviously. Yes, congratulations. It was Woodrow Wilson's fault. Let's get real. Not entirely.

Bismac. I will say I love one of my favorite weird questions. And I try not to do the armchair general thing is like after the battle of Britton Hitler, it's just like, no, fuck this, man. Well, I'm just not. I'm just not going to do it anymore. I'm going to. I'm going to go.

I had ADHD and was just like, yeah, whatever. That's like, cut off her mic. Cut off her mic. I'm not hearing the phrase small being again. All right. Let's get an intersectional Hitler image somewhere in the chat. Yeah. The Jaguar and the Mercedes are going really, really at each other.

This is it's worth noting this is an endurance test and neither team is especially treating it like one. So. Disaster ensues on lap 35. But before we get there, next slide, please. Talk about the car. Yeah, let's talk about the Mercedes in question. Imagine doing that shit with just like a leather helmet and goggles though.

Yeah, this is the one. The one fact I have here is that I one of the ones I have is that this thing ran on a mixture of gasoline and benzene. Absolutely. 5% gasoline. 35% fuel. Yeah. You just strap the guy into the fucking V for rockets.

That guy's teeth are 90% bug by weight by this point. I don't know much about chemical bullshit because I studied economics like a good boy. What does benzene do again? It's just really lethal, right? It's just real bad for you. It stays around in the environment a long time. It's toxic in high quantities and usually there's high quantities of it.

Benzene is we talked about this in an earlier episode. I forget which one. Yeah, we did. I was just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So this thing is truly like a marvel of engineering. It can do 150 plus.

Keep in mind the track had basically not been upgraded since the 20s. Yes. So at the time cars were doing 60, not 150. So there's very little room for error, as we'll say. The truck had generally seemed just like very minor modifications since 1923. Super lightweight because it had a steel tube space frame. And then the bodywork was built out of a magnesium alloy called Electron. It's really helping yourselves here.

And it deployed the first air brake. So at a certain speed, the brake comes, yeah, the brake comes down or deploys and applies downforce, which helps you from lifting off and doing whatever Mercedes did in 1999. Yeah, when you the air comes under and you just go flying. He's going to go flying regardless, but we'll see why. Yeah, I reject modernity and brace tradition. And to be clear, the reason why everything is made out of magnesium is because it's very light.

That's why I included a slide. Yes, please. Chemistry. Chemistry. Chemistry. All right, let's go. Not in the not in the not in the the romantic sense in the chemistry sense. Okay, so magnesium.

It's element 12. That's MG up here, right? It is an alkaline earth metal that's in group group two, which is this column here on the periodic table, right? It's the ninth most abundant element in the universe. And it's it's a metal, right? Alkaline earth metal has a low atomic weight, which means it has a very high strength to weight ratio, right? If you alloy it with other elements that can increase this property further. But the fun chemical property, of course, group two means in layman's terms, all these elements have two extra electrons.

So they like to form bonds over here with group 16, right? And group 16, of course, includes oxygen, which is fairly abundant in the atmosphere. Thank God. For now, otherwise we'd be dead. Yeah, I know, right? So group 16 is missing two electrons. So, you know, they have a mutual interest in forming bonds, right? And this is a fun and exciting exothermic process.

We came back to economics after all, we're doing rational self interest. Yes. So it's an exothermic reaction, the reaction generates heat, right? So magnesium, like it's relatively stable on its own, but it will ignite very easily in the presence of oxygen. Usually it forms a thin layer of magnesium oxide around the magnesium rather than catching fire, but it will catch fire fairly easily. It burns very brightly and at a very, very high temperature. But again, it's hard to ignite in bulk because it forms this coating, right? So, yeah, big black won't ignite, but a thin sheet like car bodywork will.

Oh boy. Now, let's say you've got a magnesium fire, right? And you're like, I don't want this magnesium fire. I want to put out this magnesium fire. Yeah, I don't like it. I think this is going to cause me some problems. I think there should not be fire here, right? Say it's in your living room or something.

So the first thing you might think is, well, you know, fire doesn't like water, right? Yeah, I'm going to try and pour some water on there. Put the wet stuff on the red stuff. Yeah, exactly. And you think this is fairly logical, but the thing is, you don't put out the fire that way because magnesium reacts exothermically with the water, right? Because magnesium oxide, so it will react with the water to produce heat and magnesium hydroxide, right? And hydrogen gas.

Oh, that sounds verbotic. Because that's the new preferable configuration the oxygen thinks is good. So, and the thing is, of course, number one, this reaction produces heat. Number two, this reaction produces hydrogen gas. So rather than extinguishing the fire, what you've done is made this fire significantly worse. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is this not also the case that in some cases the flames are not visible to the human eye? Oh, no, magnesium blinds you.

Yeah, well, I guess that's one way of not being visible. Yes. What am I thinking of? Because there was one motor sport thing where like some fuel products started burning, but like not with a visible flame. And so there's like trackside video of like the driver like running around on fire and nobody can work out what's going on until eventually someone hits him with a fire extinguisher. Maybe some ethanol based. I'm not sure. I say in the comments what it was.

So, OK, so the water hasn't worked. Let me try my CO2 fire extinguisher, right? Let's try the CO2 fire extinguisher. Carbon dioxide puts out fire, right? Well, this is also bad news because magnesium is so reactive that it strips the O2 off of the carbon. Oh, boy. Reacts exothermically with it. And it produces, you know, just raw carbon magnesium oxide and of course more heat.

It inadvertently creates a carbon fire extinguisher. Yes. So, so you you you've made the fire. So, yeah, water doesn't work on it. CO2 doesn't work on it. The only reliable way of extinguishing a magnesium fire is to dump sand or some kind of dry chemical extinguishing chemical on the fire. Like a chip pound fire. Well, I mean, it has to be a non flammable blanket.

Just because of the sheer heat it's producing, you know, because your magnesium fire is on a whole other level. Than like an ordinary fire. I mean, you're looking at you're looking at, I want to say 3000 degrees Celsius or something like that. Yeah, it's very, very, very, very, very hot. Lots of conventional firefighting techniques do not work on it. Now, you can alloy magnesium with other metals and you can reduce some of these undesirable properties like being extremely flammable. You can increase its strength. But these properties are not eliminated if there's a major fire, right?

And that's what electron was. It was a magnesium alloy. So, you know, it wasn't like going to catch fire just from sitting around. But, you know, for some reason, a race car had a fire that was intense. You might have some problems. Liam, this is yours. Oh, Jesus Christ. Sorry, I was texting someone.

I was just enjoying the like rain noise. Is that what that is? Yeah, that's right. Again, this is just something I put in sort of for illustrated purposes, as we're going to see. This is the Austin Healy 100 S. This is the car that the Mercedes is going to ramp off of. You can see it's sloped to the back, which does in fact act as a ramp. Yeah, we've all played GCA.

00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:29,960 I mean, I really have in here like you do the math just because like it's clear to see like how this is going to go. It did sell into the car involved. 00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:38,960 I didn't use a picture of it just because I wanted to show sort of the side profile. That car actually sold for, I believe, $1.3 million. That's what you're paying a lot of money for a ghost. Yeah, it's well, it's supposedly not a curse car because no one died in it.

Yeah. The Austin Healy driver ended up being a little shaky, but more or less fine. Once he hit a wall or an embankment, but they pulled him out with very little injury. That said, next slide, please. You just have a picture of a D type here. Yeah, I have a picture. It's gorgeous. Yeah, I love a Jaguar.

It's another car involved in the incident. You say Jaguar? Jaguar, yes. Jaguar. Jaguar. No, it's a Jaguar. I'm from America, Alice. Look, I accept that Jaguar might be a fucked pronunciation of like the animal, right?

But it's a British company. Yeah. We have to use our fucked up pronunciation. Now, this is the Jaguar D type. It is another type of car which is involved in the accident in question. I'm sorry. Thanks, man. One of the things about the Jaguar D type is it had very, very good brakes.

So Jaguar had actually one previous Le Mans, almost purely on the strength of the brakes in the car, right? Because brakes are very important in race cars. The faster you can slow down, the more time you can spend at speed, right? If you can slow down the car faster, you can get through that part where you slow down faster and you can get back up to speed faster. You know, brakes are a safety device, but they are also important for going fast, right? Right, because the better you can brake, obviously, the quicker you can stop, so on. You can regain speed quicker and get so on and so forth. Yeah, you have to leave behind the Mario Kart logic when you're actually doing real racing, right?

One of the reasons that made it very good is it had these things called disc brakes, right? Which you can see here. This has Ferrari calipers, but obviously, in real life, this would say a Jaguar on them, right? So this is the difference between the Jaguar and the Mercedes. The Mercedes had drum brakes, right? Drum brakes are an older design. They had very, very large drum brakes, large enough that they couldn't actually fit them on the tires. They were actually connected by a half shaft to the unsprung part of the vehicle.

That's the part of the vehicle which is, you know, sort of the main body, excuse me, the sprung part of the vehicle. Unsprung part of the vehicle is the tire and stuff that wheels and stuff like that. And then the sprung part of the vehicle is the, you know, the body, the frame, so on and so forth. The stuff that's, you know, past the suspension, right? So the drum brakes were, you know, this is an older design. It's still common to this day. Drum brakes are prone to brake fade, right? Which is when your brakes stop working over a period of time because the drum, the drum is sort of a, well, it's a metal drum that goes around the outside of what you're seeing here, right?

It tends to deform when it's under heat, right? Oh, that thing, the brakes never raw. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is the problem. Yeah, brakes, they get hot and then stuff changes shape, which is not good. And of course, drum brakes, all of this is enclosed usually, right? So it's also harder to ventilate the brakes, get cooling in there, right? So as you're racing for longer, and of course, this is a big problem over a 24 hour race, these brakes get less and less effective, right?

Now, your Jaguar, your Jaguar had these disc brakes, right? And disc brakes, again, they heat up, but because the disc is exposed to air flow, they cool down a lot quicker, right? You know, the caliper here also isn't affected by, like, changes in shape of the disc in quite the same way that drum brake is, right? They also look way cooler because you can see the caliper heat up, and so this will just go screaming past you, and you'll be like, huh, this is the thing in the wheel is glowing orange. That's very red. That's dope. No, yeah, disc brakes, definitely, they look cooler, they work better all together, a very, very, very much a better braking system. And oddly enough, like, disc brakes, actually, they work a little better when they have a certain amount of heat in them.

That's why, you know, if they're heated up enough that they will deform a little bit, the calipers can get a better grip on them. So, you know, you actually want some heat in these guys when you're running. You don't want too much heat because then, you know, the melt. But this is 1955, so a lot of the science wasn't necessarily super well understood. Yeah, it's all being done by guys in shirt sleeves with martinis. Yeah, exactly, right? In a shed. But the disc brakes, you know, they ran cooler, they had a lot more stopping power and they were not subject to brake fade, right? So this becomes an issue round about lap 35, right?

Well, not about lap 35 at lap 35. All right. Oh, it's been a while since we've got an actual crash diagram. I'm so happy. All right, so remember, we're entering pit lane. Pit lane has no separation, right? So we got Hawthorne. Hawthorne's in the Jag with the good brakes, right?

That's the green guy here, right? Behind Hawthorne is Macklin, who's in the Austin Healy, right? Then we got LeVe, he is in the first Mercedes here. Behind him is Fangio, right? Fangio is in the second Mercedes, right? So Hawthorne raises his hand. He's in the first car here. He says, I'm going to go into a pit.

He's already kind of bracing to just stick your hand in the air out of like an open top car. Yeah, I wouldn't love that. I know, right? And as he does that, he says, I'm going into the pit. He raises his hand to indicate he's going into the pit. He hits the brakes and, you know, they're good disc brakes. So, you know, they slow down the car real fucking quick, right? So Macklin, who's right behind him, is like surprised at how quickly he's slowing down.

He actually has to swerve to avoid him, right? Some of this is a bit disputed as to what exactly happened, right? But once he's swerved, he momentarily lost control of his car and he winds up in front of LeVeur back here, who's, you know, of course, going about 120 miles an hour, right? Didn't think he was going to have to deal with any of this shit. So LeVeur's car smashes into Macklin, right? The front wheel ramps up onto the Austin Healy and it flies up in the air. Now, some accounts say like LeVeur's last act as a living person was to indicate to Fangio to go around.

God, that's dire. Yeah, which Fangio managed to do. He got through this completely unscathed and then later lived to be kidnapped by the Cuban Communist Party, who he made friends with his kidnappers. That's a funny story. Because Batista was actually just that bad. And also the race that they kidnapped him from probably would have killed him because there was a huge wreck at that one. So Communist won, most of sport zero. Yes.

Oh, they maintained like a letter correspondence for like the rest of Fangio's life. Oh, that's sweet. So LeVeur, right, smashes into Macklin, he sort of ramps up off the Austin Healy. That long sloping trunk. Yeah, not going well. And then Macklin hits the other wall, ricochets off. I think he just scrapes by the Jaguar, Jaguar right here, right? Jaguar, it's a Jaguar.

So. All right. The main thing here is LeVeur has hit the wall, right? And the wall here in this case is that four foot earth berm, right? And he bounces along it for a while. He clears the berm and then it, you know, it hits a concrete stairwell for the grandstand that is right on the other side. Oh boy. LeVeur was thrown clear of the accident, but immediately killed when his skull impacted the ground first.

Yeah. I mean, save that for your boomer uncle who's like, yeah, I don't want to see because I'll get thrown clear of the accident. You know, well, you know, it's like it turns out roads are a hard surface. Yeah, a lot harder than airbags. Yes. So the car disintegrated when it hit the stairwell, but all the big heavy components, you know, the engine, the suspension, the tires, the frame, all this stuff. It still has momentum, right? So they plow into the crowd in the in the grandstands and kills.

They killed dozens of people like instantly. Apparently the magnesium hood just flying here. A head height and because it's like catching air because it's, you know, it's an airfoil. This sort of flying sharp wing of metal just goes through and frisbee of death straight off the top, you know. Yeah. A little bit too much off the top. Literally allowing someone's ears. Yes.

Yeah. So the, you know, of course, this car, you know, it's in an endurance race, right? They had really big fuel tanks. I think they started out with something like 70 gallons of fuel in these things. They're not protected in fuel cells like they are today, right? Of course, because that's, you know, that's car shit. Why would you do that? That's extra weight.

Yes. No. Gotta go fast. Gotta go fast. So this fuel immediately ignited and became a huge raging inferno, right? And of course, the fire's intention enough that the electron bodywork all ignited into a big magnesium fire, right? This white hot magnesium fire and a bunch of shards of magnesium flew up in the air and then they came back down as sort of this white hot magnesium rain onto the grandstands. Absolutely not.

No, thank you. Yeah. So that burns and injures the whole shitload of people. Now, emergency crews were on the scene almost immediately and started spraying the wreck with water. Oh, which made it like 10 times worse. This is a kind of recurring feature. Did at least like relative to the other like firefighting excellence that we've seen before, did this at least manage to not kill all the firefighters? I don't think any firefighters were killed on account of this.

Oh, you know, it's not so bad. I do know. I guess. I do know what's his face who was in the in the Austin Healy. I think he after he got thrown off course, I think he ran over a police officer while he was trying to stop the car. He was doing he was suddenly doing praxis. Oops. I did praxis.

The fire burned for several hours just sort of resisted any attempt at containment whatsoever. They eventually were like, all right, well, I guess we'll let it burn out. Now, keep in mind, they did not shut down the race, which would be like truly unthinkable today. But no, they just kept racing. Imagine having to keep your eyes on the road like 130 miles an hour with a magnesium fire off to one side. Hawthorne when he came back around was like sobbing. Jesus. Yeah.

Yeah. And like, yeah, because they made that certain go around after he pit it. They were like, you need to get away from the chaos for the moment. And he did a full lap and came back around. He's like, oh, shit, I've done. Absolutely. We got to get you to do something safe. Why don't you drive this car at 120 miles an hour around the circuit for a while?

Okay. Have fun. It's important to say time to decompress, I find. Yes. It's also the theme of our bifidolphin episode. That's good. Yeah, do some self care. What happened?

Your internal organs separate themselves violently from your. That's right. Is that caught on the left? Actively in the act of tripping. Well, this photo was taken. Yes, I think the clown. Yeah. So when the dust cleared, there were at least 83 spectators dead and another 178 injured.

You know, it's bad when they hit you with that at least, you know, that's some melted together stuff. There's lots of others. There's records of this incident that have not been unsealed till this day. A lot of eyewitness accounts said it must have been more than 83. So, all right. You know, so they're trying to clear out this accident scene, right? And there's a special memorial mass for the victims almost immediately at a nearby cathedral, but they do not call off the race.

Again, incredible. They continue the race. And, you know, because race organizers, they said, oh, we don't actually have the authority to call off the race. Also, they were afraid a lot of people might sue them. At very least Mercedes Benz had the dignity to withdraw from the race later that night. But Jaguar did not. And Hawthorne won the race. Yeah.

I mean, like there was obviously he didn't like he wasn't the proximate cause of this accident on purpose. But it's still pretty funny in a bleak sort of way to be like up there spraying yourself with the champagne, you know. There was a famous photo that went around in the French newspapers and magazines after this race showing Hawthorne. Yeah, he did take a couple big swigs from the victory champagne. I was joking. Yes, he does. And they were the caption was to your health.

Which I don't blame him for, honestly. Like I don't think he caused the accident. And I think maybe you do need to do some self care after this. That's right. Especially if they weren't letting you not raise. So all right, after this race, there's some immediate blowback from a lot of European countries, right? Which is that France bans motorsport entirely as does Germany, Italy and Switzerland, right? Switzerland still has it banned pretty much to this day.

I think I have some exceptions now, but it's still very illegal. You can do rally style racing where there's only one car on the track at once and you can do Formula E, they've allowed. But most of these bands were, you know, we need to we need to ban this sort of thing until we can figure out what's going on. How do we make this safer, right? So. I don't think it was until the next year that really most of these bands were lifted. They make some vague safety improvements. I think Le Mans, the the actual grandstands are reconstructed entirely in a new and safer fashion.

Out of a mess. Yeah, exactly, right? They didn't really change the course, though. And the pit lanes were still unprotected. Still? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they got there eventually. After 55, they were unprotected.

It wasn't for 15 more years till they decided, oh, maybe maybe we should have a special pit lane as opposed to just having the pits out on the track. Right? That's incredible. You're sort of immediate investigation was like, who is at fault here, right? And all the racing teams blamed each other. The drivers blamed each other. You got sued for libel. Yeah.

Yeah, Hawthorne initially took responsibility. He thought he caused the accident like moments after it happened. Then afterwards, he's like, no, I didn't cause the accident. The formal investigation eventually says, well, this is sort of tragic racing accident, right? No one could have, you know, there wasn't anyone here specifically at fault. It was just, you know, bad, bad safety, right? Yeah, that bum just appeared on its own. Yeah, exactly.

I don't know how it got there, should I? No one had changed the design of the track for 40 years and cars were three times as fast. Yeah, but that's nobody's fault. That's just force majeure. Exactly, right? Insurance company's favorite. Things happened. People die.

83 people get guillotied by a flying hood. Self-care. Yeah, I'm like, this killed 83 spectators plus the driver. At least. This horrible accident, like it results in a year-long ban of motorsport, but it didn't result in a lot of material safety improvements for Le Mans, right? And what it really took after this incident was decades and decades of advocacy by drivers for motorsport to become as safe as it is today, right? Because dangerous events are relatively cheap to run, you know? Once you have these sort of ironclad safety laws that say, look, you need to spend money on safety, only then you can run a safe event.

This is going to be a recurring theme. We'll hear about it again when we talk in the bonus episode about Group B. It's also a thing in NASCAR to a certain extent. It's a thing in Formula One, is that racing drivers might have a reputation as being thrill seekers, but when your friends start getting killed in preventable accidents, you can organize and at times actually withhold your labor and that's very powerful because who else is going to drive the fucking car? I'm not going to drive a race car. Yeah, I'm not going to scrub up. I've already scratched a race car once in my life.

I'm not going to do it again. I don't need to be a race car driving scam. Yes. They just inflate a big scabby the rat holding a green flag. Oh, that'd be funny. I like that. I like that a lot. It'd probably be like, I don't think racing has big union culture.

I mean, not as we know unions at least. I'm not safe, Liz. Yeah. I don't know. The F1 Drivers Association at times, I mean, it's gone back and forth like any kind of sports union, but like, they've been kind of successful at mostly like things like the hands device, the head and neck restraint that like stops you from just snapping your skull off at the back when you get in the high speed crash. That's been quite successful. Although NASCAR drivers hated it weirdly enough.

Like even knowing it would have like saved Dale Earnhardt's life. All of these NASCAR drivers like I'm not wearing that shit until they like had to make them with rule changes. Of course. Yeah. I'm Kimmy Reichenan. I'm in the F1 Drivers Association Local 102. Listen, leave us alone. We know what we're doing.

Oh my God. But yeah, so that was, there's a Le Mans disaster. Wow. This is a short episode. It's wild. Made it to like an hour. I knew we had to go. Well, we had to go quick.

We saw safety third. I was about to say, well, I got an hour until I have to do my other thing. So we could have discussion. Debate, discussion. About what? Safety, good or bad. I would say good. Tentatively neutral.

Definitely say safety is good. I would further say the car. Bad. Yes. Car crash worse. Car crash. I mean, I think that that's part of it is that like even knowing full well, like you've now seen 83 spectators, you know, plus a driver at least die.

You're still just like, yeah, like this was a tragic and unavoidable accident. And we're just not going to fix it, which is an attitude that pops up a lot on the show is just, you know, a lot of times we'll get the, we'll get the dire warnings that something is amiss and then they don't do anything about it. It's like something really did happen. And like, obviously, like, I don't understand necessarily like the whole, you know, oh, the like the overlooking, I suppose, and like, no, I can't break the tradition of a 32 year old track for cars that like

we're clearly going. Yeah, because that's the danger. And like it, like it says on the back of your ticket, motor sport is a dangerous event. And I would question to what extent like the entertainment value is separable from that danger, right? If you want. No, I mean, the entertainment value is in danger, I think for a lot of people.

Like a lot of people watch NASCAR for the big one. Oh, fully. Yeah. If you want to like watch cars proceed safely around a track, you can be one of the freaks who gets into touring cars. But like. Sorry, I just couldn't resist like huge slam on touring cars out of nowhere. You're not wrong.

Yeah, I like to watch a stock car, but like more boring. Well, I mean, that's the thing, you know, you think, wow, it'd be real, it'd be a lot better if NASCAR was actually stock cars. And you look at touring car racing like, I actually do hold that point, which is that I think you basically manufacturers enter as opposed to what they have now. And you say you could have, you know, your car that costs under $30,000 with essentially whatever engine you choose to put in it and whatever,

you know, racing harnesses, so from a fire suppression system, you would absolutely watch like a Ford, whatever the Echo Sport with a Ford GT engine crammed in there or like a 7.3 liter power stroke diesel. You'd watch that. I just want to see like another like whatever it was. I think it was a Pontiac with a 20 foot tall spoiler. Yes. Hold on, I'm going to use the rest room.

I'll be right back. Oh, good me too. Well, I guess I'll just go fuck myself. This is on you. Yeah. Well, how's it going, everybody? I'm just now helming this podcast by myself solo. And I'm kind of, I'm thinking about how much to like contribute here

and how much to hold back when it comes to motorsport for the Group B episodes about rallying that we're going to talk about. But like it's interesting the kind of, I don't know, sort of fly by night culture that develops around, around these sorts of events. And I, I don't know, I think there's part like as much as it might have at that time pretended to be purely an endurance thing. I think, I think Liam was right. I think there is an element of like waiting for the big one, right?

You're, you're trying to test these cars and these drivers to something very near destruction. And, you know, I, I'm not sure how surprised you can be when, when the result is, oopsie, oopsie, we made this bum our only safety measure for a, you know, giant magnesium fire. It's real bad, folks. Hi, I'm Alice Caldwell Kelly. That's right. That's right. You are.

What were you, what were you telling the, our listeners about? Oh, I was, I was like, I was just musing. I don't think I said anything coherent. Oh, good. Yeah, no. I said that there were various like traits involved in the scenes of the area and things of that nature. Like, I'm bad.

You've been saying horrible things. No much. I had a huge book report. Energy is what it did. I just did like a, a solid like two to three minutes of nothing. Nice. In conclusion, motor sport is a land of contrasts. Yes.

Oxford signal six. No, you do websters like, like an American. Yeah. This is America. I should have just talked shit about touring cars instead. Yeah. I really want to drive like a Mercedes like W 134 with a seven foot wide spoiler on it at like 45 miles an hour.

I like the concept of touring cars. I don't like the implementation, the execution. It's not, it's not as entertaining as I feel like it should be. The thing is right because you don't have the, the, like the space or the, the speed to do a lot of overtaking. What you end up it with is this kind of like convoy thing, which is like NASCAR, except the ambient danger isn't there. Like NASCAR, that's fine because in that like pack of cars,

they're all going at a fucking canted angle with a concrete wall on one side, like that could lead to a massively entertaining mass death event. Whereas like touring cars just like, oh, one of them spun off into the mud sucks. Like NASCAR also like get those, those, those high speed wrecks, like they don't, they don't kill anyone. They barely injure anyone, but they are entertaining to watch.

You're right. Oh yeah, especially with like the whole, like the outer shell of those cars just get flies, you know, that's very entertaining. Sometimes it's a little off sometimes bad stuff. I wonder if you could do touring cars on an oval track. That might work. You know, I would be interested to see it. I think that's something.

Yeah. If you have access to a large number of touring cars and an oval track, try this out and let us know how it goes. Yes. Setting ourselves up for a future safety third there. Future episode where we all become touring car drivers. We wind up on top. Hey, I mean, BBC, if you're listening, clearly you need some people who are

both, you need some people who are both not going to be the original top gear dickheads who are like impossible to work with and abusive and stuff, but also crucially are not cucks. And so if you want to and or pedophile as Chris Evans may have been, it was NFC's little black book. Oh my God. Not the actor, not the actor, the BBC provider. That could have been for perfectly legitimate reasons, I'm sure.

Anyway, if you want to uncuck top gear, my suggestion to you is call us. Hire us to present top gear. Yes. Yes. I will happily present top gear. I don't know if I can put in the work that Jeremy Clarkson did, but I will make an attempt. We'll do our best.

Yeah. I'm just punching a guy for not bringing you the correct cheese stick. Yes. Listen. Oh my God. All right. Well, on that bombshell. We have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third.

This is a safety third from an aquarium. Oh boy. So I'm sure Liam will be happy about this. I just saw the slide. I am. I'm Squidward. No, I'm Squidward. No, this is Patrick.

Shit kills the Irwin, man. I keep saying it. Is this thing right, a fish? Oh. I mean, look, in a in a spiritual sense, yes. In a biological sense, I don't know. Those are very strange ones because like rays in general are very friendly animals. Like I was like, it's really dislike Australians.

Apparently. Yeah. Well, I can't blame them. Is is a stingray of fish? Yes. No, no, but I don't like him anyway. Are they fish? They are castalaginous fish.

They killed Steve Irwin, Roz. Yeah, but they're like, they're usually very friendly. Yeah, they're usually very friendly. That's why they killed Steve Irwin. You can't judge the whole species. Yes, I can. You don't know who else is like murdered people is like house cats. Yeah, but I like house cats.

I'm fine if they're murderers. I don't give a shit about that. They probably deserved it. Yeah, exactly. All right. Before starting grad school, I worked at a fancy public aquarium, mostly doing animal feedings and being a bio lab technician. Okay.

Please tell me this is an orchestra story. Is this an orchestra story? No. Okay, good. I've seen black fish more, more, more related, more related to what we're looking at. Well, what the public saw was really clean and fancy. The back rooms were not that way at all. There were tanks bowing out and held together by wood and metal beams to keep the glass

from shattering. There were tank lights, which are tens of years old. There was improper drainage sterilization in several cases. Heaters and other devices with known current leaks were just left in tanks because they were too hard to replace. I think that the lasting nerve damage. It's okay. It still works basically fine.

In my left arm, a combination of these leaky machines and an unsecured light falling into a tank I was working on twice. Fuck that. After the second time I quit. You know? Fool me twice. Feel that. Feel that.

We were told not to unplug the lights when putting our hands in the tank for feeding because that's too often. Have they heard of a light switch? You can just hit the. Okay. All of that is a side story, though. The real worrying incident was a couple months in which we started having a problem with venomous box jellyfish showing up in tanks.

That's why you got to deploy the rocket launchers. No one knew where they came from. They probably hitched a ride on a shipment of exotics from East Asia. But once you have an infestation, it can be hard to get rid of. That's fucking weird to think of box jellyfish as being like cockroaches or something, you know? I've never had a jellyfish infestation in my house. I mean, I have one anti biotics right up.

So I don't live in a giant van of water either. So if you don't know, all jellyfish grow from little tiny polyps that can grow in the sealant of the tank or on rocks or on glass, basically anywhere. Once this issue crapped up, we tried bleaching the tanks. But even after bleaching them, these fuckers came back. Jesus, I'm that pissed. Eventually they went away. But before that, my manager just started pouring the venomous jellyfish out into the set of

drains that led to the sewers and storm drains and from there into the ocean. I express some concern about introducing invasive species. Think lionfish, which came from a similar type of situation. I find it very difficult to kill you, though. Box jellyfish not so much. Yeah, they don't sweat it. But my boss wasn't worried. He said they'll go through water treatment, ignoring, of course, that our sewer system is

old as hell, poorly maintained and has floodwater influxes and outflows. Neat. I remind you that these things survive bleaching and drying and are a really toxic species. It's somebody else's problem now. Yeah. There's just like a really rickety, great holding back 50 box jellyfish and just like one screw is like getting slightly loose. Don't worry about it.

I used to. When I was in high school, I rode. I did crew because I'm a, you know, upperclass. A wasp. Yeah, exactly. Right. A Catholic wasp. The worst kind.

A wasp. Yeah. So, you know, we had a boat house, which is right near a combined sewer overflow point. You know, so if it rained too hard in Washington, D.C., all the sewage would dump directly onto our dock. And I'm like, well, this is bad enough. I don't want jellyfish dumping on there as well. You just got to go and brush the like shit cover jellyfish away from your dock with a

broom. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't look at it. Don't look at it. Don't fall in. Do not fall in.

Yeah. Last year, River was pretty bad to start out with, but then, you know, you add jellyfish in there. So anyway, no one really keeps a record of which jellyfish species are where, and we don't even know what exact species we kept releasing. So it could be years before we find out if they took a foothold on our coast. If they did, you'll have even less reason to swim in Florida. Beautiful.

An actual honest to God environmental disaster in the making whistle blown to us and not the EPA. Yes. Thanks guys. Thank you. Yeah. I was about to say, so this is a top. Well, there's your problem top tip.

Don't swim. Don't swim. Don't swim. Don't swim. Don't swim. Don't swim. Don't release jellyfish into the sewer system. Also, if you're going to go racing, remember to wear a harness.

Can't wait for that. Well, there's your problem. Collaborative lemon steam. That's right. Bring a suitcase full of baked beans. Next episode is the Tacoma Narrow Bridge Disaster. Yeah. Well, there's your problem.

Any percent speed run. I was about to say, yeah, we made it quick. This is because Riley forces the wheel on us. How you like it, Riley, and so now we can only do podcasts within an hour and a half. Yes. We were on the most recent bonus episode of Trash Future. So listen to that podcast. Let me get paid off of you listening twice.

Yes. Yes. Become our pay pigs. Right. We have a Patreon for this purpose where there will be bonus episodes. Our next bonus episode is on Group B. Group B rallying. More of this, more, more motor sports.

Motor sports. Yes. A lot of death. Oh, so much death. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What happens when we take a car that weighs as much as a bicycle and we put a twin turbo V6 in it?

Let's find out. Yes. That's not gone well. Urquatro, urquatro, urquatro. Hey, but listen, if I hadn't been to the demise of Group B, you never would have gotten the anti-lag sound in Group A. So, you know, just enjoy that. That was dope. All right.

I am working on shirts. I have taken it over. I'm waiting on Union Pete to get back to me. If you want a Pennsylvania Secret Service card following our election victory, you can DM me. What you cannot DM me, well, I guess you can, but I wish you wouldn't, is those Percival Secrets. Yes.

Yes, they are. I need three things from you. The name you want on the card, the image you want on the card, and the address you want me to mail the card to. If you send me all three of those, I can get right on it and print it. And if you want to send me a few bucks for shipping, that would be much appreciated, but it is not mandatory. This has been an announcement about the Pennsylvania Secret Service card.

Go birds. Send more money. All send more stuff. That's right. Yes. I guess my commercial is Frankham 12. It's coming. No, really, it's coming.

I actually have the damn thing open in fucking Adobe Premiere right now. What's this one going to be? A bunch of stuff done of 12. 12 is about 12 is about the various ways we have subjugated people in the West. I'm sure that would be the genocide and relaxing and relaxing time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's full of exciting topics like the walking treaty, like Cherokee removal, like the Haitian

Revolution and how we profit it off that. Oh, boy, that's self care. Well, that's your problem. Veeve, General Desaline, Veeve, General Lovato, yes. Is it Lovator? I think so. Because I was calling him Lovator the whole time. Amy Lovator.

Amy Lovator. Fuck, that's so cursed. Oh my God. I'm just throwing a stapler at Napoleon. What am I here for? It turns out the short guy with the horse was bad. Oh, yeah. Real bad, folks.

Yes. Not very good. Other than that, I don't know. Subscribe to our Patreon. At the end of it. Yeah. Subscribe to our Patreon. Polar Liam on Twitter.

Something about the Discord. Yes, yes. Yeah, something about the Discord. Discord. We haven't quite figured out if it's for patrons only or not. But that's where the link is. But you could probably just distribute the link, too. I wouldn't care.

I don't care. Yeah, exactly. Just stop causing problems. Yes, please. Thank you. Please shut up about your fucking problems. It's well, there's your problem, not well, there's our problem. All of these are problems.

Exactly, right? This should be a more grill-pilled sort of environment. I don't know why. You want to log on to this fucking Discord and then start talking about the specific. Yeah, we're going to have serious discourse about China or some crap. No, we're supposed to hear. We're supposed to just be shooting a shit. Lose the shitpost trains.

Yeah. I'm begging you. Do not have serious opinions on our Discord. Do it on Twitter like a man. Take him outside. That's a party. That's right. Can we just have, can we just quarantine off a channel called the parking lot and just

let you have it out in there? Oh, yeah, we have political fight club for that. Yeah. Yeah, political fight club. We could just rename the parking lot. Yeah, do it. Yeah. All right.

To meet me outside. No rules. If you don't want to be abused, just don't go in that channel. Exactly. So we'll call you a mean name and I will do nothing to stop them because you said. I hear roses in the swing a chain around hollering about Maoism. Yes. Exactly.

I too have heard that. All right. I think that's a podcast. Hi everybody. Okay. Yeah. All feet is in. That's for Don.