Damascus, Arkansas: The Titan II Explosion

A nine-pound socket slipped during routine maintenance inside a Titan II missile silo near Damascus, Arkansas. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the start of a real chain of events that turned a live Cold War ICBM into a disaster under rural farmland.

In this episode, I walk Andrea through it the way I learned it. No assuming you’re a history nerd. No pretending everybody remembers the Cold War. We break down the basics in human language: why these weapons existed, why they were placed where they were placed, and how people can live near something terrifying and still worry more about dinner and the weather.

Then we get into the night itself. The leak. The vapor. The pressure. The decisions made while everybody is trying to figure out what kind of nightmare they are standing next to. The silo ultimately explodes in a massive conventional blast. The nuclear warhead does not detonate, and the reentry vehicle is thrown clear and recovered afterward. That is the “good news.” The other part is realizing how thin the margin was, and how many outcomes still count as catastrophic even when the big one does not happen.

And here’s the line that should bother everybody: luck is not a safety protocol.

If you learned something, or if this one made you stare into the distance for a second, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with the moment that hit you the hardest.

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Transcript

AI Theme Song Experiments

Intro Music 0:08

Everybody's talking like the crack to code and still and then study full but still gap on still that's that is the new theme song at least today this week.

Paul G 0:48

What do you think?

Andrea 0:49

Yeah, that sounds good.

Paul G 0:50

It's uh I've been bothered to AI generate music at this point.

Andrea 0:57

Yeah, you've been doing a bunch of stuff.

Paul G 1:00

Struggling hard at these stupid songs.

Andrea 1:03

Some of them have been pretty good, some of them are not.

Paul G 1:07

Yeah, you get it, so you're gonna have to pay more to get a decent AI music. But this one's pretty good. Yeah, it's not bad. It it takes too long to get to the things I want to know. Things I want to know, yeah. We let it play, people are like, what do my songs do? I don't understand. I kinda like it though.

Andrea 1:25

Yeah, it's not bad.

Paul G 1:35

Yeah. Things I want to know. Yeah, I think it's pretty funny.

Andrea 1:40

It's better than some of the lyrics that were in some of the other songs because I would sit there and listen to it and be like, what? It doesn't make sense.

Paul G 1:48

Well, it's also uh it's I told the I told the AI, I went and grabbed the the critic's description of what Dua Lipa sounds like.

Andrea 1:59

Oh, okay.

Paul G 2:00

Right? And I you know, she's a copycat anyway. She gets like sued. She got like sued for her last album. I mean all of her tracks were like robbed from other people's music.

Andrea 2:12

All of them?

Paul G 2:13

I thought it was just all of them, but it's about three, yeah.

Andrea 2:15

I would have thought it was just like one that was like a huge big deal, and she lost.

Paul G 2:19

Yeah, she lost. So it's kind of like, okay, cool. I'll just use this then.

Andrea 2:25

Well, it's not her singing.

Paul G 2:26

It sounds like her though.

Andrea 2:28

But it's not her, so technically she couldn't come after us.

Paul G 2:31

But it sounds like her.

Andrea 2:32

Yeah, we can just say that AI, you know. It is AI, it's AI music, yeah. Like reincarnated her on, you know, our ability to I don't know.

Paul G 2:42

I think it's that it's really close. And it's actually decent. Some of the other ones weren't so good though.

Andrea 2:48

No, we should play on a couple in other episodes, some of the ones we didn't pick.

Paul G 2:53

Yeah, no, I'm going to. And in it's not gonna be a static themed song either. I'm gonna I'm gonna probably make a new song every week.

Andrea 3:01

That's a lot of work.

Paul G 3:02

It it I put in a prompt and it makes it, and if I like it, I just throw it in there and go on.

Andrea 3:08

Yeah.

Paul G 3:09

It's not hard. You know, it takes me it takes all of about three minutes to make a song on as long as you got yeah, lyrics.

Andrea 3:17

Yeah, but I don't mean some of their lyrics I'm just like scratching my head going, what?

Paul G 3:22

All the hip hop songs go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they start talking, they're singing.

Andrea 3:28

Yeah, that's true. But I mean that's the thing now.

Paul G 3:35

But I still haven't I w I spent probably twenty hours with Tim working on the theme song that they're recording over there.

Andrea 3:42

Oh really?

Paul G 3:43

Still not done.

Andrea 3:44

Well, you know.

Paul G 3:46

That's okay. And it's different. I don't know. We'll we'll see. Okay. It's it's all mel melodic. Well so there's no voices or anything on it.

Andrea 3:58

It'll work.

Paul G 4:00

We'll s we'll see. I don't know. I'll keep using this AI stuff, it might be fun.

Andrea 4:04

I'll switch it up. Like everybody confused on what are they listening to for the week.

Paul G 4:09

This is true. Or tune in every week for the next crazy song.

Andrea 4:14

And vote which one you want us to keep.

Choosing Today’s Topic

Paul G 4:16

Or don't. Either way, it's fine. Yeah. Anyhow. Uh so this week. You left it up to me.

Andrea 4:27

Yes.

Paul G 4:28

But why? Why did you leave it up to me?

Andrea 4:30

I don't know. We you pick things that are non-true crime. I seem to always land on true crime.

Paul G 4:35

You wanna yeah. Well, uh but that's okay. But I don't know, I think diversity is we're the word DEI in these stories.

Andrea 4:43

Oh gosh, let's not go there.

Paul G 4:45

What? Diversity and inclusion.

Andrea 4:48

Yes, we want to add like stories about, you know, nuclear silos, and then we're gonna add about somebody who my next case is kind of recently figured out who she is, so you got stay tuned for that for next week.

Paul G 5:02

She was missing for a long time.

Andrea 5:04

Yes.

Cold War Missiles In America

Paul G 5:05

Anyhow, um So what are we talking about today? So this is more of a story that happened here in Arkansas, but it might just you might think somebody's lying when they when they say this making stuff up when they tell you what happened.

Andrea 5:21

Really?

Paul G 5:22

Yeah. Um it's a nuclear missile silo down near Little Rock that exploded.

Andrea 5:31

I'm surprised that's not become a Netflix uh series.

Paul G 5:35

There is some stuff on Netflix about it.

Andrea 5:36

Really?

Paul G 5:37

You have to dig to find it. I've seen it already once. That's how I knew I you know I knew about it before then, but Okay, so when did this happen? Oh my gosh. So but it was a real missile, right? With a real, multiple real nuclear warheads on top of it. In the silo, ready to go at the moment's notice. Already loaded, locked, and ready to fire.

Andrea 6:03

They just gotta take the safety off.

Paul G 6:06

Basically, actually, you're absolutely right on that. They just have to take the safety off.

Andrea 6:11

That's so scary. So And this is okay, are these silos because educate me, uh are they underground, above ground, or they No it's under it's underground.

Paul G 6:20

It's gotta be protected from a nuclear blast.

Andrea 6:23

Okay, that makes sense. So is it?

Paul G 6:24

If there's a first strike, they don't know what's coming.

Andrea 6:26

What do they hide in a giant mountain or something?

Paul G 6:28

No, just sitting there in a giant concrete bunker in the middle of a field.

Andrea 6:32

Near Little Rock.

Paul G 6:34

Near Little Rock, yeah. I would almost want to next time in Little Rock go find where this place was, because I'm like probably probably there's probably no remnants of the explosion at all.

Andrea 6:44

Well, there's probably a bunch of federal stuff there that wouldn't even let me within five miles of it.

Paul G 6:48

Well, all the Titan II missiles, because this was a Titan II missile, have been uh decommissioned. They're all gone.

Andrea 6:54

Oh, is that what it was?

Paul G 6:56

Start treaty. The Stark or START Treaty. I can't remember which one is it got rid of them all. Oh yeah, when the s when the Soviet Union declapsed and became Russia, uh that was part of the treaty. And if there is any they're so obsolete now anyway, it wouldn't matter.

Andrea 7:15

Yeah, I think we can probably like launch a bomb from like a freaking um drone.

Paul G 7:20

Well, yeah, you can put it on a predator drone and just throw a nuke over there that way.

Andrea 7:26

That's so odd.

Paul G 7:27

They probably you know, I guarantee we're not supposed to, according to the treaty, but I guarantee you there are platforms in space that have nuclear payloads on it that can fire it at whenever they want. Guaranteed. Guarantee you there is. Exactly. Um so most people think that the Cold War, which is what caused these missiles to be put all across the country. I mean, they were everywhere across the country.

Andrea 7:54

Really?

Paul G 7:54

Not just Arkansas. Not just Arkansas, they're everywhere.

Andrea 7:57

Wow.

Paul G 7:58

Uh you know, it's not something that's the Cold War is not something in history class. You and I grew up young people experiencing some of the Cold War.

Andrea 8:07

Some of it, yeah. Uh all I remember is my my dad telling me stories about when he was a kid, and my mom too, about how they had to like had these um I guess uh nuclear I guess nuclear attack drills or whatever it was where you would basically put your head on your desk and you know pray. Yeah, exactly. But I guess I kind of remember a little bit about it. I mean, I remember when you know the Berlin windfall wall fell, obviously, but I don't remember Yeah, that was in the night that was like 8990s. But I don't ever remember being like afraid or having nuclear drills or like none of that. I I don't really remember that.

Paul G 8:49

Well, you know, the a Cold War means that it for the people who are too young might be listening, I'm just gonna be a little bit of a refresher for us old folks, I guess. Uh you know, that we weren't fighting directly.

Andrea 9:03

No, we weren't.

Why Over The North Pole Matters

Paul G 9:04

The US and uh Soviet Union. It was basically mutually assured destruction is what we were doing. Yeah, like if we detect your missiles coming at us, and this is why Greenland's important today, because if someone was from that side of the planet wanted to shoot something towards our side of the planet, the fastest route uh is gonna be if you're located in the northern hemisphere of the world, of the pl of the globe, like the Soviet Union is and France and China, they're all in the northern hemisphere. Okay. The fastest way to get a m missile is to shoot it over the north pole. Because it takes too long to get around the earth.

Andrea 9:50

Yeah, I think when I've seen like documentaries and stuff when they talk about like potential like bombs going off, they always show this weird trajectory of going to the North Pole. Is that why they talk about that?

Paul G 9:59

Yeah, it's fa it's shorter, it takes less time. And that's why we were so upset whenever uh the ca uh Castro let them put um missiles in Cuba. Because in Cuba, uh it's ninety miles off of off of um Florida coast, and yeah, the Florida coast. So they could just it would take less than fifteen minutes to go from Cuba to That's crazy.

Andrea 10:26

It's just you don't even have time to do people wouldn't have even had time to be notified at that point.

Paul G 10:31

No, no, no, no. Especially Miami would just be pfft gone.

Andrea 10:34

Yeah.

Paul G 10:35

I mean as soon as it's in the air, it's over it because uh the missiles are going they go so fast in the atmosphere, but once they get into space, which is what they're meant to do, because that's why it's called ballistic missile, because it goes into space. But once it hits space, there's no more atmosphere, so there's no more friction, it can speed up astronomically.

Andrea 10:55

That makes sense.

Paul G 10:58

You know, whatever. Because there's nothing to keep to hold it back. 15,000 miles an hour, if I'm if I'm not mistaken, that could be it could be wrong, is how fast the astronauts are going when they went to the moon.

Andrea 11:11

Wow. So basically, like America and Russia are all like having their fingers on the trigger just waiting for the other one to mix up.

Paul G 11:17

And there was many, many, many times, at least six that I know of, where we almost pushed the button.

Andrea 11:25

Yeah, I remember you telling me some of that.

Paul G 11:27

Yeah, or the Soviet Union almost pushed the button, and it was these mid mid-level genera uh majors and whatnot that stopped it.

Andrea 11:34

Yeah, because we're like, no, that's not that's fake, or that flock of birds is not a missile.

Paul G 11:39

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's where 99 Love Balloons came from. It's a song out of the 80s.

Andrea 11:43

Yeah, I remember that song, and then I remember my parents telling me what it was about, and my brother and I were like, What?

Paul G 11:48

Yeah, exactly, because that was I mean, that's it stemmed from it got out that this we almost died. We almost annihilated the the you know the two continents.

Andrea 12:00

So when China was bringing over those balloons, that's why I was laughing. It's like, hey, yeah, it's a song.

Paul G 12:06

It's all in German, of course. The girl who sang that song didn't even speak English.

Andrea 12:10

I remember you telling me that. Yeah, and I was she did a great job.

Paul G 12:12

I mean Yeah, if you if if you listen to her, some of those words you know what they are because you can translate it, but if you didn't speak English, you'd be like, What the hell is she saying?

Andrea 12:21

Yeah, yeah.

Paul G 12:23

If your English wasn't your first language, you'd be like, huh?

Andrea 12:26

So basically it 99 Balloons is like something that they saw on radar that was not real and almost an off a chain reaction.

Paul G 12:32

And that actually did happen.

Andrea 12:34

That's so scary.

Paul G 12:35

That actually happened, and that's probably what inspired that song to begin with.

Near Misses And Nuclear Anxiety

Andrea 12:39

So that explains, if people don't really think about it, why governments are so much uh upset when communist countries are developing ballistic weapons.

Paul G 12:51

Yeah, because you get well, any country developing a ballistic weapon because Iran. Even Israel was it's a concern.

Andrea 12:59

Yeah, Iran's not communist, but at least I don't know they are.

Paul G 13:02

Well, no, they're Islamist.

Andrea 13:03

But you know, I'm like Iran and um um uh nort North Korea.

Paul G 13:07

North Korea. Those are the ones I market man. Oh, I remember that.

Andrea 13:10

I thought that was so funny.

Paul G 13:13

Yeah, they don't have I there's still some debate on whether uh North Korea actually set off a nuclear weapon or if it was just a bunch of TNT when they tested it. They said they tested it. Um the Russian SAR Bomba, part of its yield was helped with a giant truckload or hundreds of truckloads of TNT to make it appear that it was bigger than it was.

Andrea 13:42

So this isn't what what when does this take place for this bomb going off you say Cold War?

Paul G 13:47

It's the Titan II missile, right? And uh it's an intercontinental uh ballistic missile that's sitting in Little Rock in the in the ground. That means the rock is designed to go to the other side of the planet. Wow leave our atmosphere, go around the world, which is makes it even faster, and then drop multiple warheads.

Andrea 14:09

And they pick Little Rock.

Paul G 14:11

Just for just one of 'em, yeah.

Andrea 14:13

Wow.

Paul G 14:13

They have to have 'em separated because you can't just have one, because if they set it off set off a nuclear strike, the enemy, and we didn't detect it, and it explodes, then we don't have any way of retaliating.

Andrea 14:24

Yeah, you need you don't want all your eggs in one basket, you can all anyone else. That's exactly where it's pistols in different areas.

Paul G 14:30

And it was built to be ready now. Okay. Not we'll fuel it and then arm it and then send it. No, it sat in the silo, fueled.

Andrea 14:41

Ready to go.

Paul G 14:42

With the warhead on it, ready to go. At any any point in time, it could just push a button gone.

Andrea 14:49

That's wild.

Paul G 14:50

And well, it had to be that way.

Andrea 14:52

Well, yeah, I mean, you can't just sit there and be like, oh, we need to negotiate as the bomb's coming.

Paul G 14:56

So this thing used liquid propellants instead of uh so it it it's kind of like filling it full of gasoline.

Andrea 15:05

Okay.

Paul G 15:07

It didn't use ja gasoline though. It's it's think of it like storing a giant chemical reaction underground.

Andrea 15:14

That sounds very dangerous.

Paul G 15:16

So it would you have a massive missile sitting in a silo fueled, being maintained by human beings, and the whole system depends on the procedure always being perfect. No mistakes ever.

Andrea 15:28

Oh, that's dangerous because it's human beings looking after it.

Paul G 15:30

Yeah. So what happens is what what it'll do, the it the fuel won't go off unless it's oxidized.

Andrea 15:37

Okay.

Paul G 15:38

And what that means is that it's a safe to store um fuel. But if you insert even just a little bit of this other chemical into it, it'll cause a reaction which will cause it to explode. And they use that at the engine portion. This is how the rockets are made, and solid that's why they call it solid fuel. This is what they're doing. They're injecting another propellant into it, or another another chemical into the propellant which causes it to catch fire.

Andrea 16:12

Which causes a reaction.

Paul G 16:14

Right. And then that reaction is caused at the engine, and it then the engine takes it and focuses it so it'll propel it.

Andrea 16:23

Okay.

Paul G 16:24

So all that fuel, remember it's gotta go twenty-five thousand miles. Because it's the other side of the planet's twenty five thousand twenty-five thousand miles away.

Andrea 16:34

Wow.

The Titan II In Arkansas

Paul G 16:34

So but you can't just have it go twenty-five thousand miles and stop. You may need it to hit somewhere further away.

Andrea 16:42

Yeah.

Paul G 16:42

So it's meant to go like forty thousand miles.

Andrea 16:46

Wow.

Paul G 16:47

Yeah. There's a whole lot of propellant in there, right?

Andrea 16:50

And we have human beings watching this.

Paul G 16:53

Yeah, it's a team of human beings, and so by the late 70s and early eighties, uh you know, this m nuclear war wasn't being treated as a science fiction idea. It was actual real.

Andrea 17:07

We were ready at any at a moment's notice.

Paul G 17:09

Because we had hundreds, if not thousands, of these Titan II missiles across the country.

Andrea 17:14

I wonder what other places had 'em, I wonder.

Paul G 17:16

We know Kansas did.

Andrea 17:18

That makes sense.

Paul G 17:19

Missouri. Uh the there was a mass of them in Montana.

Andrea 17:24

Montana, really?

Paul G 17:25

Well, yeah, because there's nobody out there.

Andrea 17:27

Well, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Paul G 17:28

If you know, if something goes off, it's not gonna hurt anybody.

Andrea 17:31

But okay, so it's in Montana that makes sense. But I guess in 70s and 80s, maybe Missouri and Arkansas wasn't so heavily populated.

Paul G 17:40

Yeah, well, we only have two and a half million people living in Arkansas now, maybe three million at most. So we're like, well, if it fucks up, then it's all concentrated in Little Rock, Jonesboro, Texarkana, and Northwest Arkansas, even today.

Andrea 17:56

Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Paul G 17:57

And you've seen this deep south of Arkansas, down Stuggard area, Pine Pine Bluff. There's nothing down there.

Andrea 18:03

It's nothing down there.

Paul G 18:04

That's why they decommission uh for a long time chemical weapons outside of Pine Bluff, because if one goes off, if they annihilate Pine Bluff with this, it's not that big a deal compared to doing it outside of Washington, DC, or Detroit, or New York City, right?

Andrea 18:23

True, but to the people of Pine Bluff, they're like, hey man.

Paul G 18:26

Well, I mean, you gotta it's the only way they can redo risk reduction. I personally think they should do it out in the desert. I don't know why they don't, but they don't. Because that's why all of our testing facilities and everything were always out in the desert. There's no one there. If it goes off and takes out the hundred square miles, it killed ten people.

Andrea 18:45

Yeah, but we've heard about some of their fallout testing and it messed up a Girl Scout troop or something.

Paul G 18:49

Well they weren't they they didn't understand the fallout.

Andrea 18:53

No, they didn't nobody really, I think those girls died too.

Paul G 18:56

It was the first nuclear missile or the first nuclear bomb test, and the fallout hit a, for people who don't know, hit a Girl Scout camp out having, you know, bivouac their maneuvers or just hanging out making some Mars in uh the desert.

Andrea 19:12

Yeah.

Paul G 19:12

And that fallout hit them, I mean, directly. It was snowing ash on them.

Andrea 19:16

But I don't think, in my opinion, we really understood everybody in that group died, by the way. Nuclear fallout until after Chernobyl.

Paul G 19:25

Well, we knew what it could do, but we never seen it happen. Yeah, and that was In in an in a modern area where we could study it correctly.

Andrea 19:33

Yeah, and I mean we had obviously the World War II with Nagasaki and all that, but I'm talking like Hiroshima. Hiroshima, like we can really actually like study it. And because I've read some stuff on it where people were like able to follow people for long-term effects if they were in the aftermath of this. So it's so crazy that it was in Little Rocks and it would if it went off, it would have like annihilated the whole entire state.

Paul G 19:57

So this is in Damascus, Arkansas.

Andrea 20:00

Damascus.

Paul G 20:00

Yeah.

Andrea 20:01

Okay.

Paul G 20:02

And uh so they had no idea that was there. We could not tell them it was there.

Andrea 20:06

Well, would you really want to live right next to that?

Paul G 20:09

Right, right, right.

Andrea 20:10

I mean, they have to keep going.

Paul G 20:13

So this is also the it was so the tensions were bad at the time. It's it's you had they played that uh ABC had a TV movie. Um what was it called?

Andrea 20:25

Um Is it the movie where the China Day After Tomorrow, I think it was. Yeah, where China comes over here and this was uh it was a few years after the Arkansas incident.

Paul G 20:37

ABC aired a movie called The Day After.

Andrea 20:39

Day After, okay.

Paul G 20:40

Yeah, it hit people hard because it showed nuclear war happening to regular towns and regular families, not just the politicians in Arkansas. And the people remember the movie because uh uh you know what gets me is that Arkansas had already lived the real incident with the bomb going on, with the missile going off, but then they're they're showing it on TV, what happens, right? So when we talk about Damascus, it's not a Hollywood warning, it's actually a real event that actually happened.

Andrea 21:09

Wow.

Paul G 21:10

Isn't that crazy? So it happened um uh happened in Damascus, Arkansas. It's rule, farm, small roads, not a desert test range or anything like that, what you're saying. Uh it was not separate, but it wasn't separated from the people, it was near where the people lived. Uh just like a mile away.

Andrea 21:30

So okay, you live in Damascus and you're like, hmm, what's that big concrete mound? What are they doing over there?

Paul G 21:35

No, you wouldn't see it. It's camouflage, you're not gonna know what it is from you and you'd have to know what it is.

Andrea 21:40

Okay, that's smart because you would hate to drive by, like, hmm, I wonder if I should go over and see what that concrete mound is.

Paul G 21:45

Or a Russian goes, I know where Van East. We put the bomb here. Exactly. Um so the mo people in the in the town really didn't know what they lived by, not until

Andrea 22:04

Oh man, yeah. So how did it actually blow up? Like what happened? Was it like some clerical error or somebody drop a wrench in something like our nuclear power plants we have here?

Paul G 22:14

So uh yeah, so the it's gonna sound like another joke. It's gonna sound like something that you would make up that even a TV show wouldn't do.

Andrea 22:22

Okay.

Paul G 22:23

Because it's too easy, it's too simple.

Andrea 22:25

Oh, that's scary.

Paul G 22:26

Right. The chain that it blew up because a dude dropped a socket wrench.

Andrea 22:31

Oh, I just was joking around saying socket wrench. Isn't that what the one in Russellville, the uh uh nuclear power plant was something that almost went off because of a the something.

Paul G 22:41

Probably conflating back this incident. This is probably what you're thinking about.

Andrea 22:45

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Fuel, Oxidizers, And Risk

Paul G 22:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um wrench? Yeah, just a wrench. A heavy socket wrench fell inside the silo and punctured the missile, which started a fuel leak.

Andrea 22:54

That must be one hell of a heavy wrench.

Paul G 22:56

About nine pounds.

Andrea 22:58

Nine pounds.

Paul G 22:59

Remember, these missiles are about five or six stories tall.

Andrea 23:03

A nine-pound wrench, like nine pounds. A gallon of milk is what?

Paul G 23:07

Uh uh eight and a half pounds. Maybe ten pounds.

Andrea 23:10

So you're dropping essentially the weight of a gallon. That's a big wrench. Well, it's a big missile.

Paul G 23:16

Well, yeah. So now it it released the toxic vapor, right?

Andrea 23:21

No, that poor person.

Paul G 23:22

So they knew it was gonna happen, but what happened was is that it also hit the oxidizing tank.

Andrea 23:28

Oh, the stuff that sets it off. Yeah.

Paul G 23:32

Exactly. Uh oh no. So once the league started, it's the vapor, the pressure, and the you know, everything started to fail at that point. Uh, and there was no way to turn it off. Uh, it became more of oh my god, it's it's happening now, right? And uh then it just exploded. So it set off a chain reaction, the whole thing the whole thing detonated.

Andrea 23:59

So I don't know how many people will be working in something like this, but this is happening, and everyone's like, oh blank. And so, you know, running out of there, and you couldn't get away from I would imagine the bomb crater fast enough.

Paul G 24:13

Yeah, so it was a violent blast and it destroyed the entire site.

Andrea 24:18

Oh, yeah.

Paul G 24:19

And caught and killed one dude. Only killed one dude, but it injured everybody else that was in the facility. Yeah, the one dude to drop the wrench.

Andrea 24:28

Oh, that's sad.

Paul G 24:30

He dropped I mean so I think now, uh if I remember correctly, they've attached, they've got it where these wrenches are attached to cables where you can't drop them.

Andrea 24:39

It will attach to yourself. Like dangling little like piece of like whatever, like rubber band or whatever to keep it from hitting. Oh, that's crazy.

Paul G 24:50

So here's the thing, here's what even more crazy makes scare you even more is the nuclear payload was blown like 200 feet away from the missile.

Andrea 25:02

So you're sitting in your backyard having a nice little barbecue and here. Giant explosion. This giant piece of metal comes hurtling in your backyard.

Paul G 25:08

200 yards, 200 yards in that far. It's two football fields.

Andrea 25:12

Okay, so hopefully people didn't live that close.

Paul G 25:15

Yeah. So have you ever have you ever seen a uh the they have those those fireworks where it just spews flames out of it? Yeah. Right? So that's what the ground looked like.

Andrea 25:27

It was just So I'm hoping that the bomb didn't go up.

Paul G 25:32

It just like the fact that it didn't go off.

Andrea 25:37

Come well, it went off, didn't it?

Paul G 25:38

But it No, the nuclear part, the nuclear weapon didn't explode. Oh, but just the The rocket exploded.

Andrea 25:44

Okay, the rocket exploded.

Paul G 25:45

All at once. Instead of a controlled burn to put it up in space, all the fuel just went up at once.

Andrea 25:51

Oh Yeah.

Paul G 25:52

It's a giant explosion.

Andrea 25:54

So it essentially became a big bomb. Can you go to Damascus now and see this giant crater of crater?

Paul G 26:00

No.

Andrea 26:00

Um I mean, even it have to be a crater.

Paul G 26:02

That's a good question. So I'm going to go to Google Maps and let's look and see.

Andrea 26:07

Because I'm thinking about looking at it as this giant, like I'm picturing a mountain in of concrete that's hidden. It looks like a mountain. It's the only way you can get away with it with people. And then all of a sudden it explodes. It's gonna like go into the earth and leave a crater if it doesn't go up in the sky.

Paul G 26:24

But it's not a mountain.

Andrea 26:25

But I'm just picturing it like, you know, like the big, like, whoosh of a big crater.

Paul G 26:29

Hmm. I don't know. We're gonna find out. Uh Google Earth it and turn it.

Andrea 26:33

Imagine though you're just in your home enjoying your enjoying your day, and then boom. I mean, and then What's the satellite view on this stupid thing? Was there fallout or anything with people?

Paul G 26:46

Uh well, it yeah. I mean, it it didn't hurt any locals, but it blew out the windows and stuff like that. I mean, it was pretty bad, actually.

Andrea 26:55

So they probably though well, think about it. In those days when this happened, people probably thought that we were being under attack.

Paul G 27:02

I don't know. I mean, it they did here's Damascus. Look here. Damascus is not even a stoplight town. That's that's it today.

Andrea 27:13

That's today?

Paul G 27:13

That's today. There's probably 1,500 people living there.

Andrea 27:16

So that's kind of why they picked it there, is it small.

Human Error And The Dropped Wrench

Paul G 27:19

Yeah, there ain't nothing around, man. And it's you see here, Damascus is right here. So it's actually between Russell. It's actually between us. Damascus is is is our neck of the woods. Between Little Rock and I take it back. Wait, where is this going on? Yeah, it's it's like right in the middle of the state, just above Little Rock, just about uh 50 miles above Conway.

Andrea 27:48

Wow.

Paul G 27:49

We drove past it when we went to Florida that one year.

Andrea 27:52

Yeah.

Paul G 27:53

So Damascus, Arkansas. It's Arkansas. And I don't see any craters or anything. I don't see any craters. So no, it didn't leave anything. I mean, I imagine the federal government came in and filled it in and cleaned it up.

Andrea 28:07

Yeah. Oopsie.

Paul G 28:08

Yeah. Because you can't put in nuclear silo in Damascus, Arkansas on the Google Maps and expect to find anything.

Andrea 28:15

One hope. I mean, you don't want China getting or anybody other country getting hold of Google where the weapons are.

Paul G 28:23

Exactly. So oh, here it is. I found it. Here's the uh Titan II missile silo right here. There it is. Yeah, they filled it in. That is in the It's right next to uh reservoir, actually. Huh? Rogers grouping. So here's here's a quarry that's right here. So they they put this thing right here. I bet you this is made to feed that missile silo. So in case it they dug a big reservoir over here, I bet you that's what that's for.

Andrea 28:51

I guess since it blew up and like oopsie, we have to move our missile silo. I guess we'll just put it on the map.

Paul G 28:57

Well, I mean, it's like not it's not a secret anymore. It's a giant explosion in the middle of the woods.

Andrea 29:02

So how do they explain this to the public?

Paul G 29:06

Um well that's they did just that. They just said it it's a you know, we had an incident, an accident. And uh, you know, there's congressional hearings about it, what happened, blah, blah, blah. I mean, what the dude died.

Andrea 29:20

His poor I mean, I I'm just thinking like maybe he if he was married, his poor wife, and if he had kids or whatever, to know that your husband dropped a wrench or husband or boyfriend or you know, father.

Paul G 29:32

It was an industrial accident of all things. That's what you would call it.

Andrea 29:36

That's scary if you think about it. That it Well, uh Chernobyl was an oopsie, but also they Chernobyl was not an industrial accident.

Paul G 29:45

That was it, it was a political time bomb. Political problem because the politics of the day is why they didn't fix it.

Andrea 29:52

Yeah. But I mean, I'm thinking like any of like nuclear silos or any of these places now, it takes an accident for them to be like, I think we need to have better uh contingency planning. Yeah, I've heard about that.

Paul G 30:06

But it's a totally different the new nuclear reactors cannot melt down the new ones that they make now.

Andrea 30:13

Yeah, I remember you saying that.

The Explosion And Immediate Aftermath

Paul G 30:14

It's the way they're built, they use the earth to disperse the heat. The way it's built. And before they had to have water churning through it all the time to disperse the heat, because that's what it is. And when it would melt down, the water would stop flowing or empty, and it's getting hot. You once you start a nuclear chain reaction like that, you can't really stop it. There's no stopping it, period. You can't stop it because it's molecules doing their thing. Right? Yeah. So these these cats I figured out a way to set off a heat reaction. Now a nuclear power plant, all it does is it gets really hot, and they evaporate water, and that water turns into steam, obviously. It's evaporated, and turns a turbine. Yeah. Which generates electricity. That's what a nuclear reactor is. It's it's not that mysterious.

Andrea 31:18

No, it's not.

Paul G 31:19

It's like taking baking soda and what was what's with volcano stuff?

Andrea 31:24

Oh, what is that? Baking soda and uh I don't know, vinegar or something like that. I can't remember. It's too simple, basically.

Paul G 31:29

It's a base and an acid, and it turns into this foam.

Andrea 31:32

Yeah.

Paul G 31:33

Right? That's that's what it is. And when you start doing that, it's not gonna stop until all those molecules have done their thing. You can't stop it.

Andrea 31:42

So what do they explain to the people in Damascus? Like oopsie.

Paul G 31:45

They immediately they they came out and told them this is what happened. The Titan II blew up. And there's no getting around it. I mean, it was when you're you're looking at what 10,000, 20,000, 100,000 pounds of of of rocket fuel rocket fuel exploding, you can't I mean that you probab everybody everybody knows it went off.

Andrea 32:06

So I mean you said it like busted windows and things like that around that. Was there any other damage in the town?

Paul G 32:11

No, it's not you saw how far away it was, right? Yeah, yeah. It this really didn't hurt. It's just people living out in the woods and and whatnot. But you could see it from and it was you know on fire for days.

Andrea 32:22

Wow.

Paul G 32:23

So and you but I you definitely hear it, that's for sure. Yeah. Think of that much going off all at once. Because it did, it went off all at once.

Andrea 32:31

Wow. We're kind of lucky it didn't launch.

Paul G 32:34

Well, there's enough the here's the good news is that the safeguards on the nuclear weapon and on the rocket are great. They worked because here's the thing that you have to worry about when you have a nuclear weapon, you have to worry about a fizzle. And a fizzle is when so the way a nuclear weapon works, it's they got a sphere of plutonium. This is no secret, you can go look it up. It's got a it's got plutonium in it in it, or uranium, or whatever's gonna go off. And it's surrounded by a uh shape charge of explosives.

Andrea 33:08

Okay.

Paul G 33:09

And it blows up when you ignite that shape charge, it blows everything inward and it compresses that material that's in the middle of it, and and you have to do it right. You have to have all the physics and all the right ingredients. Yeah, and well, not ingredients, but you have to have the shape charge perfect.

Andrea 33:29

Yeah, everything has to be correct.

Paul G 33:31

Right. And so technically, Hiroshima, fat man, little boy, uh, the one they blew up as a test, those were all actually fizzles. And I'll tell you what a fizzle means. Fizzle is whenever you're um if you have a nuclear reaction, you set it off, but it's not perfect. Okay. So not everything ends up in that chain reaction to explode.

Andrea 33:59

Okay.

Paul G 34:00

Um you get a lot of nuclear material left over that didn't it didn't get into the chain reaction and it goes everywhere. And you get lots of fallout.

Andrea 34:11

Okay.

Paul G 34:13

When it's done right, all of that material goes off. And that's why they have the larger and larger and larger payloads where they can, you know, a 50 megaton bomb, 50 megatons of TNT.

Andrea 34:27

That's a lot.

Paul G 34:28

Yeah. That's what that means. When that uh if it doesn't go off right, you may get a smaller nuclear explosion, but now you've got all that radioactive material that's still alive, not been changed from the reaction going everywhere in a powder form. That's a fizzle. So because they didn't know how to make it correctly, they were still learning how to make it with the first nuclear bombs, today those would be considered a fizzle.

Andrea 35:03

Yeah, because you basically want to like hit your target and not have a whole lot of extra stuff to deal with environmentally.

How Close We Came To A Fizzle

Paul G 35:10

And you want the whole thing to go off. Yeah. Because plutonium and uranium and whatnot is very expensive. Expensive to make. And by the way, plutonium and uranium, if you go up to the the the Black Hills, I think it is, up in uh the North Dakotas and whatnot, it's just laying on the top of the surface. You can just go collect it.

Andrea 35:28

That's crazy.

Paul G 35:30

Isn't that nuts?

Andrea 35:31

I wouldn't go collect it.

Paul G 35:32

But it's not dangerous because it's natural. It's not the the stuff that we're talking about is refined.

Andrea 35:40

Man-made.

Paul G 35:41

Well, it's refined and condensed. So while this rock on the ground is not gonna kill you or not make you sick, you get fifty of fifty thousand of those rocks and pull out just the radioactive material and then combine them together, that'll kill you.

Andrea 35:56

Yeah.

Paul G 35:58

It's just a bunch of mass, you know.

Andrea 36:00

That's crazy.

Paul G 36:01

And um, so that's the thing that worried when I heard this, I was like, oh crap, that could have been a fizzle. Um, because that's a massive amount of heat coming off of those rockets. Yeah. That rocket fuel. And if it would have got too hot, it could have cooked it off. Which means the stuff inside could have exploded. And if it could have exploded, it could have s made a small nuclear weapon of nuclear chain reaction go off. And on all that extra material that didn't go off.

Andrea 36:34

It would fall out all over Arkansas.

Paul G 36:35

Yeah. Or what if it actually did go off? What if the safeties didn't work?

Andrea 36:41

That's crazy. What year did this happen?

Paul G 36:44

79 79. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I can't remember. I did all you can tell I'm very interested in this crap. It's like you wonder it's uh why the Navy wanted me to go nuclear program. I didn't want to be in the bottom of a nuclear submarine for four years. No. Thank you. That's what they were at when I took my ASVAB. Yeah. They hounded me for months. They wanted me good, they wanted me to go nuke. And I'm like, no, I don't want to work on nuclear weapons. That's boring. I want to go out and blow stuff up. It's the military.

Andrea 37:20

Well, that's what they want you to do. Blow stuff up or create stuff to blow up.

Paul G 37:23

Yeah, but I didn't want to make it, I don't want to sit in a s in a in in the bottom of a submarine working on their nuclear power plant. You know what I mean?

Andrea 37:31

Yeah.

Paul G 37:32

Not only am I cooped up in the bottom of a nuclear submarine, I'm just I don't have anything to do because of nuclear plant power plants, which have been in operation since the 60s.

Andrea 37:42

Well, it makes sense.

Paul G 37:43

And don't nobody dies on submarines anymore, for sure.

Andrea 37:47

Yeah.

Paul G 37:48

There's nuclear power plants the way to go, man. Telling you. Ah, I'm looking for it. So I got it on my researcher and it didn't even tell me when. 1980, September 18th, 1980.

Andrea 38:01

Wow.

Paul G 38:02

It it blew up. I was three. Yeah. If it would have set off the nuclear warhead, though, and it and it did a complete explosion. Um, if you look at Google Maps here, right, that warhead that was on there would have been the the circumference of five miles at least of the initial explosion. So at two and a half miles in every direction would just be incinerated immediately.

Andrea 38:30

Wow.

Paul G 38:31

So if you look here, yeah, Damascus. Two and a half miles in each direction, the the exp initial explosions would have annihilated a ton of towns. Yeah, and then the pressure wave would have hit Little Rock.

Andrea 38:45

We would have ceased to exist, really.

Paul G 38:48

Well, not only that, but when you look at how the you know how the in here in Arkansas the weather patterns go from west to east, right? Right. But it if it would have taken the if it would have gone off completely. Check this out. Uh the um the contamination would have gone right here like that. All the way to all the way to Atlanta. And everything would have been irradiated.

Andrea 39:20

Tennessee and all the states would have had fallout.

Paul G 39:23

Uh it would have been Memphis would have been it might I mean if it was bad enough, it could have made it in uninhabitable. Memphis might have been had to have been evacuated.

Andrea 39:33

That's so crazy.

Paul G 39:36

Absolutely. West Memphis, all that stuff, everything in between West Memphis and and and Little Rock Conway would be gone. Well, I don't know if it'd be gone, but it would be unlivable. Yeah, basically. Everybody'd get cancer. Basically. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, it damn thing just went on.

Andrea 39:53

All because a guy dropped a nine-pound wrench. Yeah. That's crazy.

Paul G 40:01

I don't know. Could it we I don't think it would happen today, though. Our our missiles are way better than they used to be. I don't even know if we have missiles anymore. They're all they're all on tomahawks and stuff.

Andrea 40:13

Yeah, I mean but most disasters like this happen because they don't completely think of everything or it's a freak accident, or if it's just literally an oopsie.

Paul G 40:23

Yeah, this is just an oopsie, that's for sure.

Andrea 40:25

And you know, then you think of Willow.

Paul G 40:28

There's the hole. Right there.

Andrea 40:31

Dang. Yeah.

Paul G 40:35

I mean Yeah, here's where it was before, and here's after. Before? After. There's nothing left. All those buildings are just giant hole. Oh wow, here's a color photo. I I encourage you guys to go and and and Google this. Look at that's all ash. Everything's gone. All those buildings were destroyed when it exploded.

Andrea 40:55

But can you imagine the poor manager on duty? I mean, the explicit cuss words that are going off in his head as this is happening.

Paul G 41:02

Oh my gosh, look here. That tells you the the enormous of that explosion. There's a truck.

Andrea 41:09

It looks like a tornado hit. I mean, it looks like like buildings are obliterated and it looks like it looks like a tornado hit.

Paul G 41:15

Yeah, well, I mean, it's it's a giant explosion.

Andrea 41:18

Like Google pictures of Joplin. That's what it looks like.

Mapping Fallout And What Ifs

Paul G 41:20

Here's what it here's what it looked like. This is the Titan 2. Right here. It's a huge missile in it.

Andrea 41:26

That's a big boy missile.

Paul G 41:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not they're not small. Here, look here. This is uh just outside.

Andrea 41:35

Literally, it looks like like an F5 tornado went through.

Paul G 41:40

Oh, here's there's the top of it. Top of the missile is that has the nuclear payload in it, and these two guys are rolling it back.

Andrea 41:50

Oh, jeez. We don't know radiation, but we're gonna put this thing home.

Paul G 41:55

So the complex though was built underground and it goes as much as four stories underground, and it has three other two other complexes with the missile storage right here. And uh it'll so all these people are underground because if the this is a target for another nuclear missile. So if they try to nuke this, it's not gonna die unless it takes a direct hit. Right?

Andrea 42:17

Okay. They plan for it taking a direct hit, but they don't plan for a wrench.

Paul G 42:21

Yeah, exactly.

Andrea 42:22

Or the okay. Really, it's not. I don't mean to make like light of this, but it's it's the little things that make you go, really?

Paul G 42:36

That's not true. There's some there's some false advertising on here. I'm looking at 53 people died. No, they did not. One guy died.

Andrea 42:47

Which in in a way, uh sorry for his loss, whoever's listening, it's family, but it could have been way worse.

Paul G 42:55

Yeah, this is here's the nuke map if it would have gone off. This is where the radiation would fall all the way through Memphis to all the way down to directly at Atlanta.

Andrea 43:05

Atlanta. Oh wow.

Paul G 43:07

How about that? So 9.5 megaton surface burst, but I that was bigger than that. Those Titans carried multiple warheads. Not just one.

Andrea 43:20

Have we had any more incidences like this than the country?

Paul G 43:23

That was it.

Andrea 43:24

But everyone's like, okay.

Paul G 43:26

That was the only one that blew up. I mean, we've had other stuff, fires and things like that, but nothing nothing that big.

Andrea 43:32

That's crazy.

Paul G 43:34

Yeah, absolutely. And uh yeah, that's a big and big boy. That was that was our main one. Here's the thing, interesting thing about that Titan too, though, is it's it was not a product of modern nineteen eighties technology, it was a product of nineteen sixties technology.

Andrea 43:57

Oh right. Oh, that's bad.

Paul G 44:02

So one person was killed, multiple multiple people were injured. The part that cannot get loss is the big picture in this big picture is fear, says Chat GPT. Oh Lord. Um and this was also another reason for us to get rid of the Titans. Because they're they're getting I mean, it was a thin skin. I just can't believe that the skin was that thin.

Andrea 44:29

That's what I'm saying. Nine pound wrench. Nine pound wrench.

Paul G 44:32

But you nine-pound wrench, if it's falling two stories, it's going about 70, 80 miles an hour. Think about that. Physics. Yep, unfortunately. Uh so nuclear thing is that we still have these nuclear things going on. We still have these missiles. I think there's some in space. They're not supposed to be in space. We're supposed to have a treaty that keeps us putting them in putting them in space, but I think logistically that would make sense.

Andrea 44:58

I mean every country I mean has to protect themselves, and I'm sure that you know I I remember like things going on in the news in the 80s about how we're gonna like decommission certain like silo sites or whatever for nuclear weapons because we're a sign of a treaty, but yeah. We still have them because we still have threats. We're a country.

Paul G 45:20

Yeah. And now you can put a nuclear bomb in a suitcase.

Andrea 45:24

That's crazy.

Paul G 45:25

And and it may only be two megatons, but that's two thousand pounds of TNT.

Andrea 45:32

Well, no wonder they screen you at the airport by making you take off your shoes if you can probably.

Paul G 45:35

Well, that was the shoe bomber dude. He loaded his shoes up with uh with lighter fluid and he was gonna set them off and blow it up.

Andrea 45:42

I remember having to take my shoes off to go on a plane whenever I had to go to Actis, and I'm like, you want me to what?

Paul G 45:48

They don't do that anymore. They actually took that took that requirement away now.

Andrea 45:51

Uh you take something away, someone will bring it back.

Paul G 45:55

That's probably true. The the interesting thing is if you go back and try to watch that TV show the day tomorrow, whatever it was, I said it was, um it doesn't hold up. It's like stupid now when you watch it.

Andrea 46:11

Really, but think about it. This just happened, and then you're sitting in your living room back to your house, and then you're watching TV because that's what people did. They turned on ABC TV or whatever.

Paul G 46:19

Yeah, you didn't have internet back then.

Decommissioning Titans And Modern Safeguards

Andrea 46:21

And then that show comes on. I mean, movie that's a little that's not very tasteful.

Paul G 46:28

Well, it was everybody it was on everybody's mind, you know.

Andrea 46:32

They almost lived it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's realistic.

Paul G 46:37

So the modern systems though are different, that's the good news. Well, yeah. Right. Uh but they still have these things are pretty much still if something goes wrong with them, it's a high consequence. And humans screw things up constantly.

Andrea 46:54

We're human. We sometimes make boopsy mistakes.

Paul G 46:58

Mm-hmm. Well. So far, in this reality timeline, we've done okay. And in another reality timeline, I'm the king of the world.

Andrea 47:06

That could be interesting.

Paul G 47:08

Mm-hmm. I have many, many, many concubines.

Andrea 47:11

Oh god. Help us all.

Paul G 47:17

No, man, one's enough. I don't need more.

Andrea 47:21

That's what you say all the time.

Paul G 47:22

I know, I don't know. Well, you probably agree. You want two of me?

Andrea 47:25

No. I love you to death, but two of you no.

Paul G 47:28

Two of me? We get shit done though.

Andrea 47:31

Maybe. I don't know.

Paul G 47:32

We probably just sit around and goof off all day. You get my sense of humor. Yeah, I get your sense of humor because you get mine.

Andrea 47:42

I'd be like, somebody take out the trash. There's two of you. One of you can do it.

Paul G 47:46

You see, okay. Okay. That that doesn't work here now. I you take get on to me taking out the trash and all that stuff. But you have I keep trying to tell you, when you tell me to take out the trash, I will do it. But just not when you want me to do it.

Andrea 48:03

This is true.

Paul G 48:04

So you have to wait a minute. She's she's very impatient when it comes to doing stuff.

Andrea 48:08

I can be, yeah.

Paul G 48:09

And I'm like, you just told me like two days ago. I'll get to it.

Andrea 48:13

Two days ago is the point. Ladies, you understand the pain.

Paul G 48:21

Anyhow. So I hope today's episode was interesting.

Andrea 48:26

It was.

Paul G 48:26

Hopefully it doesn't scare us or scare I mean Well, they're no, we don't have those titans anymore, so that's good.

Andrea 48:32

It just, you know, we should not sit there and think that we don't have those lying around because we do, because we're a country and you're s we you know, let's be realistic here.

Paul G 48:43

Well, we're the number one military in the world still, whether you think so or not, we are.

Andrea 48:47

But I mean accidents happen and you know, that's that's life.

Paul G 48:52

True. We lost uh a few air a few pilots the other day where somebody crashed. I mean, it happens.

Andrea 48:58

Yeah, it happens. It's sad.

Paul G 49:00

Oh, and we've lost, do you know we've lost six nuclear weapons?

Andrea 49:03

That's a thing that is mind-blowing to me. You shouldn't lose those.

Paul G 49:07

Yes, we've lost them. There's still one sitting somewhere in a North Carolina swamp, I think it is. I can't find it. Still missing. Okay, we can there's two in the ocean right now.

Andrea 49:16

We can air tag our purses in our wallets in whatever. We dropped them in the 80s and 90s and 70s.

Paul G 49:22

So I mean, come on.

Andrea 49:23

You can't you can't put an Apple air tag or something like this on these things.

Paul G 49:28

That's that's good height of government incompetency. Incompetency? Whatever it is.

Andrea 49:33

But you know what I'm saying, though.

Paul G 49:34

They just buy a bunch of air tags, throw it in their nukes.

Andrea 49:37

We can air tag our purses and stuff, but you can't keep up with a nuclear weapon. I mean, let's be realistic.

Paul G 49:43

The airplanes that were carrying them crashed.

Andrea 49:45

Wow.

Paul G 49:45

And they found one. There was it was it's interesting. There's one that the the they crashed and they found the one that broke open. Because it broke open and there's nuclear material everywhere.

Andrea 49:56

Oh, that's lovely.

Paul G 49:57

Yeah, it didn't go off. That's good news. Then the other one's just gone. Nobody knows where it is.

Andrea 50:01

See, that's they're still looking for it.

Paul G 50:02

They what they did is they the federal government came in and bought the land where it lay where it where it supposedly fell.

Andrea 50:07

Yeah.

Paul G 50:07

Like 50 acres, and they just fenced it off and said nobody go in here. Because they can't find it.

Andrea 50:12

Like, we think it's here, but we're not going to admit our oopsie, so we're just gonna buy some land. But they can't find it. That's even I'm sorry, but that's messed up. I know.

Paul G 50:21

The farmer's got it in his in his in his barn next to his cows.

Andrea 50:25

He's growing like radiated um tomatoes.

Paul G 50:29

That's where that attack of the killer tomatoes comes from. Well you know that, right? Yeah, makes sense. Attack of the killer tomatoes.

Andrea 50:36

Yeah, I remember.

Paul G 50:37

Remember the theme song? Did you know George Clooney was a number it was in the second one?

Andrea 50:41

No, I could barely get through the first one. Much less. Gut any ketchup?

Paul G 50:49

So the guy was dressed up as a giant tomato. I mean, you gotta start.

Andrea 50:54

You just gotta start somewhere as an actor, but that's gonna haunt you if you become famous.

Paul G 50:59

That's hilarious. Anyhow, so you've got well, you're gonna go back to true crime next week, right?

Upcoming Episodes

Andrea 51:04

Yeah, I found this case and I thought it was pretty interesting considering that she didn't have a name and it took one smart bitten county detective to push twenty-five years later. Push for her name. Yeah. And um I guess I I thought it was interesting because it was dis her name was discovered in twenty twenty-two and she went missing in nineteen eighty nine eighty nine eighty nine, yeah.

Paul G 51:29

Wasn't it?

Andrea 51:29

Eighty nine ninety, somewhere in there, yeah.

Paul G 51:31

And on top nobody cared because of who she was hanging out with. And we'll get into that.

Andrea 51:36

Yeah, we'll get into that. I don't know if I I want to believe that that's not true because I want to believe that people care, but that's just me.

Paul G 51:43

Like I keep saying, stereotypes exist for a reason.

Andrea 51:46

I know, but I know it's a just the sad thing about it is is nobody would be able to be prosecuted for this.

Paul G 51:54

No. So no, not anymore anyway, that's for sure.

Andrea 51:58

Yeah.

Paul G 51:59

Anyhow, so do do do do do do do. Alright, you guys, if you want to have a little participation with our participation with our uh little weirdness going on here, go to Paul Gnewton.com and find a t-shirt that you like and buy it. Yeah. Or I will come to your house and force you No, I won't. Because I don't know where you live. If I did know where you lived, it might not be such a good thing. Oh gosh. What? You will buy a t-shirt. Yeah, you buy a t-shirt. I'd say we need ten bucks a month from somebody to pay for more AI music.

Andrea 52:39

That's true.

Paul G 52:41

And then we need thirty dollars a month to keep the program going. To pay for the hosting and the transcriptions and stuff. Yeah, we do, yeah. I think they uh to do these podcasts costs us about a hundred bucks a month.

Andrea 52:54

Really? Yeah, that makes sense.

Paul G 52:56

$75 to $100.

Andrea 52:57

Yeah, it's about right.

Paul G 52:58

So you guys are benefiting from our money. Freeloaders.

Andrea 53:03

Oh gosh.

Paul G 53:04

No, listen to it. We enjoy doing it, it's fun.

Andrea 53:07

Yeah, we do. I enjoy. I learned some stuff. I go like I went into this episode completely blind because I actually wanted to learn something.

Paul G 53:13

So you learned that nuclear missiles can explode.

Andrea 53:17

I learned that I almost died in 1980 if it went all went off.

Paul G 53:20

No, it would we wouldn't. We're up here in northwest Arkansas. We would have been fine.

Andrea 53:24

Still.

Paul G 53:25

We're upwind.

Andrea 53:26

Still. That's creepy.

Paul G 53:29

All right. If you like the episode, or if you don't like the episode, let us know. We don't care. We'll take the comments either direction because it helps the algorithm.

Andrea 53:38

This is true.

Paul G 53:40

Alright. So I guess next week. Yep. Alright.