July 7, 2022 • 39 mins
As the US government became increasingly concerned about the possibility of large-scale biological weapons, they decided something must be done: they needed to test— in secret. In today’s episode, the guys explore how the US Army conspired to spray an entire impoverished part of St. Louis with potentially dangerous chemicals… basically, to see what happened.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's give it up for
our one and only the Man, the Myth, the Legend
super producer, Mr Max Williams, who they called me Ben
and Noel. You and Max and I were having an
interesting conversation. I just wanted a gut check before we
(00:49):
rolled today. Where I was asking, I was asking all
of us is it St. Louis or St. Louis? And
we we all three are people who say St. Louis.
I mean, I think it's St. Louis unless you're bugs
Bunny and you want to rhyme it with screwy and
and and say so long screwy cy and St. Louis. Otherwise,
I think it's sort of more of a not majoritan.
(01:11):
What do you call it? Like a slang or like
calling San Francisco Frisco, which people hate who live there,
or calling um New Orleans no LA. I think it's
a little more socially acceptable from people that live there.
What are some other examples? Hotlanta? People lay that here. Yeah,
people only call Atlanta here. A lot of people will
(01:31):
say Atlanta like U H L, A and and A.
But I think that's just a regional accent. I don't
think anybody's spelling it that way. I'll say A T
L in text form because saying it out loud it's
silly because it's obviously more or the same numbers than
Atlanta A t L. It's the same. But the A
(01:51):
no thank you, no thank you, we're not we're not
the O C. Yeah, I'll say the A if I'm
styling and I need to make sure things rhyme, but
a lot of stuff rhymes with Atlanta, so I usually
get by with that. We're saying this because we we
were curious. I don't know whether any of us have.
(02:15):
I've been to St. Louis. Um. I think we talked
about this in the past. The spirit thing there, right,
the spirit of right arch of some kind. Yeah. So St.
Louis is fascinating because it is divided across two states,
which is neat right. It's uh, it's near the where
(02:38):
the Mississippi River and the Missouri rivers meet, and there's
East St. Louis, which I believe is in Illinois, but
I was on the Missouri side. That's interesting in general
about St. Louis and Missouri is like it's technically you're
getting into like the Midwest, but it's also still kind
of the South. So it's sort of like, you know,
(03:01):
um this limital space, you know, where like North meets
South or or or mid West meets South, and you
can you can see that reflected in the cuisine. You
can see that reflected in the people, and and there's
a really interesting mix sort of like that that one
year between like you know, the eighties and the nineties
where everything still feels a little bit eighties but starts
(03:22):
to feel a little bit nineties. That's kind of what
what St. Louis says to me an interesting comparison. Yeah,
I mean I think about that with Cincinnati. So we've
been to a number of times as well, because it's
like right there, like you know, part of it's in Kentucky,
and it's like you get there and it's like, well,
technically I'm in the Midwest now, but it's really still
pretty southern here. Also talking about the Christine and they
(03:43):
have that terrible cuisine where they put Chilian spaghetti. It's
pretty Yeah, I was gonna I bought some of that
one time, and I guess maybe I didn't go to
the right place, but it just didn't didn't do it
all the way for me, tell me tell us which
place we should get that famous Cincinnati chili from. Also,
this reminds me I met someone who had lived in
(04:05):
Cincinnati who referred to their town as the Natty. Uh so,
I don't like that. I don't know if I like
that either. That reminds me of bad beer. But uh
but today's story is not about bad beer or confusing
chili and spaghetti combos. Instead, we are talking about St.
(04:26):
Louis in a way that might be new to many people,
including St. Louis residents. Uh No, this is something we
dive into pretty thoroughly in our upcoming book for Stuff
they don't want you to know. St. Louis is a
lot of things, but once upon a time it was.
(04:47):
This is a true story, a secret testing ground for
some really sketchy stuff. That's right, It's in good company
among I believe Ben Savannah, Georgia. It was another place
that the US military tested, you know, dispersal patterns or
just detested chemicals to determine dispersal patterns um on our
(05:08):
own people and then also, I believe there was another
one where we dumped like like malaria carrying mosquitoes and stuff. Yeah,
I just literally just it's it's wild. Um. Today, we're
not talking about either of those things. We are talking
about chemical agents, but we're specifically talking about government contractors literally,
you know, contractors hired by the U. S. Government spraying
(05:29):
zinc cadmium sulfide, which is a chemical powder that's mixed
with fluorescent particles um in order to track dispersal patterns
of chemicals. And they're not just spraying it on some
like remote island you know, testing site. They're literally spraying
it over populated areas in St. Louis. Yeah. Now, if
(05:51):
you are not a chemistry enthusiast or a chemist yourself,
you might not be familiar with what Nill just describes
zeke cadmian sulfide. It's odorless, insoluble, inorganic, and it's made
of zinc and cadmium sulfides, respectfully. It was first made
as a paint pigment and it has a bit of
(06:14):
fluorescence to it. This is what was really exciting to
Uncle Sam. They said, this will allow us to track
those dispersal patterns, so we can let this stuff out
and we can kind of map the way the wind
will move it. Uh, similar to how oceanographers use that
(06:36):
that famous rubber duck accident to trace ocean currents. You
remember that, Yeah, that, and also that's that's very true.
Maybe to a lesser degree. There was like a massive
shipping container of legos that capsized about maybe you know,
half a decade ago, and that's been something that's also
been used to kind of track currents by seeing where
(06:56):
certain pieces end up washing up on on beaches. Yeah,
so this sprain by Uncle Sam was part of a
biological weapons program called Operation Large Area Coverage. So let's
let's talk about how this actually happened, how this all
(07:17):
went down. At first, when you hear that headline, it
sounds crazy. It sounds in no small part illegal, if
not just straight up dangerous. So we have to understand
this is a product of the growing Cold War, and
it starts way back in nineteen one. When people are
(07:38):
worried about foreign adversaries, you know, at that it's like
access powers. Maybe they're worried about foreign adversaries conducting biological
warfare in the United States and against other Allied forces.
So the U S Secretary of War at the time,
(07:58):
Henry Stimpson, ask the National Academy of Sciences for the
National Research Council to investigate all possible phases of biological warfare.
And as a result of this, like the first step
the Research Council takes is to make a committee of
nine Boffin's nine eggheads prominent scientists. This will be called
(08:22):
the War Bureau of Consultants Committee. And they work in
sort of a top secret sphere. They don't officially exist
to the public. I don't know what they tell their
partners they do. I'm a consultant. God only knows. You've
gotta be a really good liar to work in that
echelon of government, or have a partner that doesn't ask questions,
(08:44):
or both. But they worked assiduously to assemble a classified
report known as NASO UH and determined that biological warfare
was incredibly likely to take place and urged that defenses
be prepared for this eventuality. I guess it is probably
(09:06):
a word that the Boffins would have thrown around in
this document. It was in fact declassified in so we
can actually do a little reading from it. It goes
as such, the value of biological warfare will be a
debatable question until it has been clearly proven or disproven
by experience. The wide assumption is that any method which
appears to offer advantages to a nation at war will
(09:27):
be vigorously employed by that nation. There is but one
logical course to pursue, namely, to study the possibilities of
such warfare from every angle, make every preparation for reducing
its effectiveness, and thereby reduce the likelihood of its use. Okay, yeah,
so that makes sense. They're essentially saying it is inevitable
(09:49):
that someone will try to use this, and our enemies
are doubtlessly working on the same you know, with the
same set of facts we have. So we we have
to prepare. We have to know how this works. Secretary
Stimpson listens to the committee, he goes to President Roosevelt,
(10:11):
and he pitches it to Roosevelt. Roosevelt listens to him,
and so in May of two he says, all right, Stimpson,
you can chase this booning, right, you can pursue this
rabbit hole and see where it leads. I'm gonna make
a new organization for you inside the Federal Security agency.
(10:31):
This organization will conduct the new U S Biological warfare program,
and we're gonna avoid any public concern about what could
happen to the US in the case of an attack
like this. And we're gonna talk a little bit about
this with the United Kingdom in Canada. Are cool allies,
(10:54):
and um, you know, we're we're maybe gonna do a
trade with our scientists amongst these three countries while this
is happening. Again, the American public doesn't know about this.
The American public won't learn about this until the mid nineties. Nineties,
that's how long it was a successful secret. So essentially,
(11:16):
they had a couple of aims. They wanted to learn
everything they could about the militarization or weaponization of pathogenic
micro organisms. Pathogenic just means capable of causing disease, So
all those little micro organisms that can get you sick
one way or another, that's what they're looking at. And
(11:37):
then in turn, they're using that knowledge to figure out
ways to defend against those things. And this is this
is a pretty good idea. This seems like day one stuff.
But they wanted to do it at scale. No, they said, look,
we can if our enemies are attacking. They're not gonna
try to, you know, dose one Johnny Blue Jeans over
(12:02):
in Illinois or something. They're going to try to dose
entire regions. So we need to understand how this biological
warfare works on a large scale. That's right. So the
United States Army Chemical Warfare Service took over this UM,
this operation in terms of being able to bring that
(12:24):
scale that you were describing ben um that is UH
scaling or the research and development program specifically, so in
Fort Dietrich, which is in Frederick, Maryland, they began their work.
So the question becomes at this point, why is St.
Louis a good site for this kind of testing. It's
(12:52):
a very interesting answer in fact, and really just kind
of an unfortunate coincidence for the people of St. Louis.
Apparently it was a very decent stand in for the
former Soviet Union, the kind of terrain and layout that
was very difficult to match in any American city. But St.
Louis had a lot going for it in terms of
(13:14):
the size of the buildings. Buildings in St. Louis for
a metro area, it's kind of unusual. They don't exceed
three stories. The number of industrial installations and infrastructure that
exists both in densely populated areas and in more sparsely
populated areas are very very analogous. Not to mention that
(13:36):
there was that ample pool because the quote from from
some of the documentation of qualified personnel there due to
a university um it being a university town. Yeah, and
that would be that would be personnel that would help
with doing field tests and pulling data and all that stuff.
So you know, Junior Boffin's right, there would be partially
(13:59):
in the know. They might not know the full extent
of things like Operation L a C. But they would
know something was up and they would probably be happy
to have a job, honestly. So this is where the
famous class is um of US society raises its ugly head.
(14:19):
The government tries to figure out the best place to
test in St. Louis, and they don't go to the
nicest neighborhoods spoiler alert. From the nineteen forties to the
nineteen sixties, they focus on impoverished areas. And we're getting
a lot of this from an excellent book by Lisa
(14:39):
Martino Taylor, the author of Behind the Fog, How the
US Cold War radiological weapons program exposed innocent Americans, but
if a spoiler there. Uh. This was a top priority
for the government and they were targeting the most vulnerable
(14:59):
people in society. This extended, Like you mentioned all, there
were other cities. This extended to Nashville as well, where
pregnant women and UH folks and hospitals were targeted, as
well as minority populations wards of the state. The Nashville
series is is a little bit different. But let's let's
(15:20):
walk through some other programs where you get back to St. Louis.
So in Nashville, they actually injected about eight hundred and
twenty poor pregnant women with a mixture during their prenatal
care that included radioactive iron. They were not told this
was happening, by the way, and then later there would
be blood tests performed to see how much of the
(15:42):
iron was absorbed by the mother and then how much
was absorbed by the baby when the when the child
was born. There were also tests performed in Chicago and
San Francisco. UM. So it's not like this is just
being done in like flyover states. This is kind of
a national effort. You know, no one was really safe
in California. You had folks that were creating radiation fields
(16:07):
inside of a building in North Hollywood High School and
that was in the fall of nineteen sixty one. You
also had similar stuff happening at the University of California
in l a and also at the l A p
D headquarters. This testing also extended to Chicago, Berkeley, Rochester,
um and oak Ridge, Tennessee. And this was all stuff
(16:29):
that was involving the use of plutonium to thirty nine. Yeah,
which you might recognize as not being a cool thing
to be around as a human being. That's what it's
maybe most famous for. But yeah, totally yeah, yeah, it's
double plus. I'm good for you, as or well would say. So.
(16:51):
Back to St. Louis. Operation l a C. That's the
street name for Large Area Coverage. It was the biggest
test ever by the Chemical Corps and it covered the
United States from the Rockies all the way out to
the Atlantic and then from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
They were trying to prove the feasibility of covering large areas,
(17:18):
get it, covering large areas of a country with biological
warfare agents. And for a long time, a lot of
folks in academia and in the military totally believed this
was possible. But Operation L A C was the first
real proof. And it's what they did sound so weird
(17:41):
when you when you hear it out loud. The Army
went to low income areas of St. Louis, particularly a
high rise a housing est state and its schools, and
they would set up these motorized blowers to blow the
zinc cadmium sulfide stuff out, and they even like went mobile.
(18:07):
One of my favorite visions of this is some guy,
I guess they drew the short straw. Some guy literally
drove around a poor part of town in his station
wagon and he had his little chemical blower just running
out the back of his station wagon and people, I
guess people thought, man, you gotta fix your car, because,
(18:33):
like now, every time I see a car with a
lot of smoke coming out of the pipe on on
the interstate, just some little part of me, you guys,
some little part of me is thinking he is he
burning oil? Or is that on purpose? So at this
point you have local officials um being told that the
(18:54):
government is testing some sort of smoke screen um that
would be a benefit to the blow St. Louis that
would potentially shield them from being um, you know, sniped
by Russian sky attacks. Right. But then in Knights Any
four there's a pivot and the government says the tests
are actually part of a biological weapons program. And St.
(19:16):
Louis was chosen for the reasons that we outlined earlier,
because of the similarity in terrain and uh, city planning roughly,
you know, the best they could do on American soil
to Russian cities that the US might one day attack.
And oh, by the way, the material that was being
spray it wasn't in finding spokes for me at all.
It was this toxic zinc acadmium soul fide stuff. Yeah,
(19:40):
not not not not great. Yeah, it was are bad folks. Uh.
The the army did this multiple times. Uh. They did
it in the fifties. They did it again in a
decade later. The local officials got their own smoke screen
of a story which was about creating a smoke screen.
(20:02):
So it totally gave them plausible deniability to say, you
know what we're doing. Really, it's it's patriotic for you
to approve this, and it kind of puts you the
implication was you are at the forefront of technology we're
going to use to defend against Soviet attacks, which is,
(20:22):
you know, not true. So the we have to say
in defense of the folks in the US military and
and the and the associated halls of science at the time,
they were all under the impression that zinc cadmium sulfide
would be like firing a blank from a firearm, that
(20:45):
it would not actually harm people, you know what I mean.
Like if you for cat owners out there, one way
people sometimes try to modify a cat's behavior is by
spraying it with a little water bottle, right, and they
had You're dispersing water, but it's not gonna hurt the cat.
It's just unpleasant, irritating, Yeah, exactly, but it's not gonna
(21:07):
you know, it's not the same as spraying them with like,
you know, sulfuric acids. Say, it might look the same,
might sprits the same, but it does not act the same.
And that's basically the case here. Yeah. So, once the
testing on the good people of St. Louis is exposed
to Congress in nine, the public demands a health study,
(21:28):
which is totally reasonable. Uh, And this is where things
get sticky because when you think about it, the same
overall institution, the US government that is doing the testing
is the same institution that did the spraying back in
the day. So it should be no surprise that when
(21:50):
the National Research Council a few years later said, hey,
this chemical is dangerous at large, you know, large levels,
high level, but residents weren't exposed to levels high enough
to be harmful. It's no surprised that people didn't believe them,
and they thought it was a cover up rather than
(22:11):
a decent investigation. And the committee that came to this
conclusion even they said there wasn't a ton of research
and they had to rely on what little data they
knew from animal testing, which is not the same thing
as testing on humans. But what what else did they
(22:33):
find here? Like, what did they say about high doses
of this stuff? It's kind of scary. It's not a
good thing, that's for sure. Um. It is noted in
fact that high doses of cadmium that can happen in
long periods of exposure can actually cause serious problems internally
to your bones, your kidneys, and can even lead to
(22:55):
things like lung cancer. So this committee actually recommend end
of the Army, you know, do follow up studies of
the individual members of the community to determine how much
or if any or or you know, whether or not
zinc had been inhaled or zinc cadmium sulfide. Rather, so,
the committee actually recommended the Army do more studies, you know,
(23:17):
go a little deeper to figure out whether um inhaling
zinc cadmium sulfide causes it to break down into the
toxic components of cadmium um which actually are able to
be absorbed right into the blood and can produce severely
toxic effects in your internal organs um, including but not
(23:40):
limited to your lungs, as is often the case with
these kinds of things. Not really quite sure whether they
did that thing or not. Yeah, it's it sounds pretty
great at follow up, you know what I mean. They
like to put things to bed as quickly as possib right,
It's that clear if they actually did the follow up
study or just said they were going to do the
(24:02):
follow up study. We know again that these sprayers were
put in multiple locations. We also know that one of
the locations was, like we mentioned, a housing complex. It's
name was the pruitt Ego or Prudeigo Housing Complex. Ten
thousand people lived there. Of those ten thousand people, seventy
(24:24):
percent were children under the age of twelve, and they were,
you know, a ground zero for this. We started learning
more about this, we being the US public in two
thousand and twelve, when that sociology professor we mentioned earlier,
(24:47):
Lisa Martino Taylor, conducted a deep dive into what actually happened.
And she's based in St. Louis Community College, Merrimax. She's
familiar with the area. And Martino Taylor started saying, hey,
the Army might have also mixed radioactive particles with the
(25:11):
zinc cabinet in sulfide. She said there was no direct proof,
but what she did find was troubling enough that U.
S Senators from Missouri wrote to the Army Secretary of
the time, John McHugh in and demanded answers through a
Foyer request, a Freedom of Information Act request, and she
(25:35):
got some results. By the way, and the Army had
described this area at the time as quote a densely
populated slum district as that word that s word loaded,
you know, And here's the thing, Martina Taylor was not
said that she wasn't aware at the time of any
lawsuits filed by anyone that was affected by these tests. Uh.
(25:58):
There was actually one that was filed a month after
the statement, but up to that point she was not
aware and to our knowledge, there were not any lawsuits filed.
She also said that the government hadn't paid for any
medical procedures or or or care or reparations of any kind. Uh,
nor was she aware of them even even issuing an apology,
(26:22):
which is another thing the government is not very good
at doing. Yeah, and you know, she continued to try
to reach out to the army herself and was essentially stonewalled,
another thing the army is quite good at doing. Yeah,
and you know exactly think about the brutal calculus that
the army engaged in here. The thing about a disadvantaged
population is one there there's less likely to be public blowback.
(26:46):
Maybe a poor choice of words for this episode, but
you get the gist to These are people who are
overwhelmingly not likely to have the means to pursue a
case in court in terms of time or money, so
it makes sense that they would target the most vulnerable.
Martino Taylor herself became involved due to a personal connection.
(27:09):
She had a colleague who grew up in the targeted area,
and this colleague contracted cancer later in life, leading Martino
Taylor to wonder if the testing had something to do
with that cancer in her adulthood. And the same day,
the very same day, another coworker told Martino Taylor that
(27:32):
she also had contracted cancer and she also lived in
that test area. So Bartino Taylor started researching this as
were her thesis at the University of Missouri, and she yeah,
and it was a good thesis as they go. She
believes that the study was linked to the Manhattan Atomic
(27:55):
Bomb project and that a group of scientists from the project,
we're developing radiological weapons. In congressional study comes out that
confirms radiological testing, which is, uh, you know, it's like
biological warfare testing, but it's just with radiation and radioactive substances.
(28:18):
This congressional study confirmed that the testing occurred in Tennessee
and parts of the American West during the Cold War,
which leads her to believe it's reasonable to conclude, Uh,
there may have been a radiological component to the St.
Louis study, which means that even if zinc cadmium sulfide
is not itself as harmful in the amounts that people
(28:42):
encountered it, if there was radiological stuff mixed up in
that crazy, crazy aerosault smoothie, then that would have been
incredibly dangerous. Would that be nice if you just get
the airslized stabilities and just you know, squirt it right
into your mouth like whipped cream. Yeah, I've been I
think we're onto something. Maybe not, you know, leave out
the cadmium, perhaps, but the technology is not there yet. Good.
(29:09):
I mean, you know, it is hard to ariostolize a
thick slurrious mixture. Is slurrious the word? I'm gonna go
with it, this American english Man. Just get enough people
to say it as well, and then boom, tend to abulation.
I'm gonna start a change dot org petition to make
slurrious a word. Um So, mccaskell actually, uh, the Senator
(29:30):
agreed that this was all kind of a little bit
sus uh said this quote. Given the nature of these experiments,
it's not surprising that Missouri's citizens still have questions and
concerns about what exactly occurred and if there may have
been any negative health effects, um she said in a
statement from her office, UM are our hero scientist. Doctoral
(29:52):
fellow friend Martino Taylor said that again that these follow
up health studies should be performed, but it needs to
involved input from the community, from the people whose lives
are actually put at risk, you know, without their knowledge
by the government, and that they should their stakeholders in this.
They need to have a say, um and be you know,
(30:15):
part of the decision making process in terms of like
the tests and all of that stuff. And uh yeah,
she went on to say, their voices have not been heard.
Seems pretty clear that that's the case, wouldn't you say, Ben, Yeah,
I think it's very clear that their voices haven't been heard.
We need to have direct input from people who live
(30:38):
in those areas. Her book, by the way, it was
published just a few years ago in seventeen in August.
It was a follow up to that two thousand and
twelve dissertation. It's legit, you know, I've looked into it
as well, Like obviously no one's making up stories here.
Her report triggered and Army investigate and the Army in
(31:02):
a stunning plot twist, Max, I don't know what a
sarcastic sound. Cue is but sorry, that was smart. Yeah,
you're welcome, thanks, absolutely ridiculous. There it is, there, it
(31:29):
is okay. In a stunning plot wist. The Army investigation
found no evidence that the testing was a threat, and
this is an ongoing event. When you think about it,
history is never as far away nor as distant as
people often assume. There are potential victims who are alive today.
(31:51):
For example, from a Business Insider article that are old
pal Gabe found by Jim Salter. There are people like
dor Spates. She was a child when her father suddenly
died in n and Spates in her family alone, and
she's watched four siblings die of cancer. She herself is
(32:11):
a cervical cancer survivor. And because she was born in
that housing development I mentioned earlier at the top floor,
of course, she's wondering if the Army spewing hundreds and
hundreds of pounds of this sulfite into the air had
an effect on her family. Four of her eleven siblings
(32:34):
signed from cancer. By the way, that's not a normal number.
That's not a normal ratio. No, it's not. And this
also comes from the article that Ben referenced earlier from
the AP writer Jim Salter, The Army sprays St. Louis
with toxic aerosol during a just revealed nineteen fifties tests
came out in two thousands twelve. So this really is,
you know, relatively new information that is not terribly terribly surprising.
(32:59):
And again, you know, ben Um, I did my session
for the Stuff they Don't Want You to Know audiobook
the other day, and a couple of the chapters that
I read were from the section on chemical weapons and
UM testing and UM. It is very eye opening and
very disturbing. It happens more than you would think throughout history. Yes, agreed, agreed, unfortunately,
(33:21):
and you know, you can make all sorts of arguments
about a greater good, you know, that's those are the
arguments that are made in the halls of power pretty
often with stuff like this, the idea that we're going
to do our best not to hurt innocent people and privately,
never said in public, rarely said in public, but privately,
(33:43):
the idea is, if a few people do get hurt,
that's still better than millions dying in a biological warfare attack.
It's it's true, I mean, okay, it's it's you know,
it's people in this level of government, and then with
this amount of power, they certainly do have to make
some difficult decisions. I'm not saying I'm not justifying the
(34:06):
decisions that they actually make, but um, I am saying
that it's obviously, you know, a bit of a devil's
bargain there that you have to make oftentimes when you're
in that situation. But you know, sometimes I think they
go a little bit overboard. Let's just say, with testing
and looking for scenarios that may or may not actually
(34:27):
play out. And you know, to what degree are they
allowing kind of like paranoia and and the anxiety of
a perceived threat cause them to actually harm their own citizens?
I don't know what. What do you think? Man? This
is something that you dig into quite a lot, like
could you put yourself in the position of of a
person like that? And then is there another is there
(34:49):
an alternative to this? Are these easy solutions that are
the most the lowest hanging fruit, that require like a
certain degree of callousness to be able to say, like,
you know what, we've already got a Weston ground right
here in St. Louis. Let's just do that we need
to save some money and not worry about like building
some kind of like simulation. Yeah, well, here's the question
(35:09):
I think that should be posed to those folks. If
this stuff is so safe, why aren't you testing it
over your part of town? You know what I mean?
That's the question for the scientists and the general's uh,
and the secretaries various and subjury. It's kind of like
the question for a lot of very powerful business tycoons.
(35:34):
If indeed your factory isn't polluting anything, why don't you
live down the river? Right? Why don't you live in
that part of town? So I think the in a
very real way, their choice of disadvantaged populations, however they
rationalized it gives lie to the claims about safety. They
(35:56):
knew what was up, and this is this is just
one instance, like you said, Noel, of multiple other times
the US has tested chemical weaponry in one form or
another on civilians. We talked about some other times. You
can learn about even more times stuff like this occurred
in our upcoming book for a different show, uh stuff
(36:17):
they don't want you to know, publishing in October. You
can pre order now, But in the meantime we promise
We're gonna get to something a little bit less depressing
in a future episode. We have some of the most
exciting episodes I think we've ever done, coming very very soon.
Like like, I think we've mentioned that we're jazz about
(36:39):
our new research buddies, Jeff and Zach. They have been
churning out some incredible stories, digging deep and finding us
some really really fascinating stuff. And I think all of
you ridiculous storians out there are going to love them
as well. Um, and I think we're also gonna you
guys are gonna meet Jeff and Zach personally very soon. Yes, yes,
that is a ridiculous history. Geary and t uh So.
(37:01):
Thank you to Jeff and Zach. Thank you, of course
to our main man on the audio ones and twos,
Mr Max Williams. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed the soundtrack.
Thanks to Casey Pegram, and folks, we do still talk
with Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. Saw some
questions about that on Facebook. Don't worry, we'll be returning soon.
(37:21):
It's just a little weird for us now in our
nomadic phase, right as we moved from office to office. Yeah,
I may have mentioned as well that I recently moved
the house. Um, I bought a house recently. It's very
excited about, and I have a studio in my basement.
It's still a little bit crazy and chaotic, though, so
I kind of feel like I'm squatting and someone else's
(37:44):
creepy basement. But soon it will be full of rainbow
colored lights and art and and music and and all
of the all of those good things. But until then,
I kind of feel like a bit of a cave troll.
You are the opposite of a cave troll, my friend.
We do have a question for everybody, if you, if
you have a story like this in your pastor and
(38:07):
your family, um, whatever your neck of the global woods
might be, would you mind letting us know. We would
love to hear it. You can find us on Facebook
as ridiculous historians. You can also find us on social media,
not just as a show, but as individuals. Mr Noel Brown,
I hear you're blowing up those instagrams. I don't know
(38:27):
about blowing up. I'm that's more of a slow burn, really,
But you can't find me slowly burning on Instagram where
I am at? How now Noel Brown, how about you, sir, Yeah,
that's true. You can find me doing an Operation Large
Internet Area coverage over on Instagram where at Ben Bolling
b w L I N you can get a preview
(38:48):
for all the secret projects I'm working on. There are
more and more these these past few weeks. By going
to Twitter where I'm at Ben Bowling h s w
uh coming from my tear rble jokes and spoilers and
stay for what La Musk calls the best part of Twitter,
Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can find me on Twitter
(39:09):
at at a t L underscore Max Williams, where I'll
be trolling bands Operation what is? What is? What was
that acronym LAK Internet Internet Large Internet Area Coverage. Yes, yeah,
I'll be trolling Operation LAK. So yeah, find me on
there at a t L underscore Max Williams. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(39:36):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's give it up for
our one and only the Man, the Myth, the Legend
super producer, Mr Max Williams, who they called me Ben
and Noel. You and Max and I were having an
interesting conversation. I just wanted a gut check before we
(00:49):
rolled today. Where I was asking, I was asking all
of us is it St. Louis or St. Louis? And
we we all three are people who say St. Louis.
I mean, I think it's St. Louis unless you're bugs
Bunny and you want to rhyme it with screwy and
and and say so long screwy cy and St. Louis. Otherwise,
I think it's sort of more of a not majoritan.
(01:11):
What do you call it? Like a slang or like
calling San Francisco Frisco, which people hate who live there,
or calling um New Orleans no LA. I think it's
a little more socially acceptable from people that live there.
What are some other examples? Hotlanta? People lay that here. Yeah,
people only call Atlanta here. A lot of people will
(01:31):
say Atlanta like U H L, A and and A.
But I think that's just a regional accent. I don't
think anybody's spelling it that way. I'll say A T
L in text form because saying it out loud it's
silly because it's obviously more or the same numbers than
Atlanta A t L. It's the same. But the A
(01:51):
no thank you, no thank you, we're not we're not
the O C. Yeah, I'll say the A if I'm
styling and I need to make sure things rhyme, but
a lot of stuff rhymes with Atlanta, so I usually
get by with that. We're saying this because we we
were curious. I don't know whether any of us have.
(02:15):
I've been to St. Louis. Um. I think we talked
about this in the past. The spirit thing there, right,
the spirit of right arch of some kind. Yeah. So St.
Louis is fascinating because it is divided across two states,
which is neat right. It's uh, it's near the where
(02:38):
the Mississippi River and the Missouri rivers meet, and there's
East St. Louis, which I believe is in Illinois, but
I was on the Missouri side. That's interesting in general
about St. Louis and Missouri is like it's technically you're
getting into like the Midwest, but it's also still kind
of the South. So it's sort of like, you know,
(03:01):
um this limital space, you know, where like North meets
South or or or mid West meets South, and you
can you can see that reflected in the cuisine. You
can see that reflected in the people, and and there's
a really interesting mix sort of like that that one
year between like you know, the eighties and the nineties
where everything still feels a little bit eighties but starts
(03:22):
to feel a little bit nineties. That's kind of what
what St. Louis says to me an interesting comparison. Yeah,
I mean I think about that with Cincinnati. So we've
been to a number of times as well, because it's
like right there, like you know, part of it's in Kentucky,
and it's like you get there and it's like, well,
technically I'm in the Midwest now, but it's really still
pretty southern here. Also talking about the Christine and they
(03:43):
have that terrible cuisine where they put Chilian spaghetti. It's
pretty Yeah, I was gonna I bought some of that
one time, and I guess maybe I didn't go to
the right place, but it just didn't didn't do it
all the way for me, tell me tell us which
place we should get that famous Cincinnati chili from. Also,
this reminds me I met someone who had lived in
(04:05):
Cincinnati who referred to their town as the Natty. Uh so,
I don't like that. I don't know if I like
that either. That reminds me of bad beer. But uh
but today's story is not about bad beer or confusing
chili and spaghetti combos. Instead, we are talking about St.
(04:26):
Louis in a way that might be new to many people,
including St. Louis residents. Uh No, this is something we
dive into pretty thoroughly in our upcoming book for Stuff
they don't want you to know. St. Louis is a
lot of things, but once upon a time it was.
(04:47):
This is a true story, a secret testing ground for
some really sketchy stuff. That's right, It's in good company
among I believe Ben Savannah, Georgia. It was another place
that the US military tested, you know, dispersal patterns or
just detested chemicals to determine dispersal patterns um on our
(05:08):
own people and then also, I believe there was another
one where we dumped like like malaria carrying mosquitoes and stuff. Yeah,
I just literally just it's it's wild. Um. Today, we're
not talking about either of those things. We are talking
about chemical agents, but we're specifically talking about government contractors literally,
you know, contractors hired by the U. S. Government spraying
(05:29):
zinc cadmium sulfide, which is a chemical powder that's mixed
with fluorescent particles um in order to track dispersal patterns
of chemicals. And they're not just spraying it on some
like remote island you know, testing site. They're literally spraying
it over populated areas in St. Louis. Yeah. Now, if
(05:51):
you are not a chemistry enthusiast or a chemist yourself,
you might not be familiar with what Nill just describes
zeke cadmian sulfide. It's odorless, insoluble, inorganic, and it's made
of zinc and cadmium sulfides, respectfully. It was first made
as a paint pigment and it has a bit of
(06:14):
fluorescence to it. This is what was really exciting to
Uncle Sam. They said, this will allow us to track
those dispersal patterns, so we can let this stuff out
and we can kind of map the way the wind
will move it. Uh, similar to how oceanographers use that
(06:36):
that famous rubber duck accident to trace ocean currents. You
remember that, Yeah, that, and also that's that's very true.
Maybe to a lesser degree. There was like a massive
shipping container of legos that capsized about maybe you know,
half a decade ago, and that's been something that's also
been used to kind of track currents by seeing where
(06:56):
certain pieces end up washing up on on beaches. Yeah,
so this sprain by Uncle Sam was part of a
biological weapons program called Operation Large Area Coverage. So let's
let's talk about how this actually happened, how this all
(07:17):
went down. At first, when you hear that headline, it
sounds crazy. It sounds in no small part illegal, if
not just straight up dangerous. So we have to understand
this is a product of the growing Cold War, and
it starts way back in nineteen one. When people are
(07:38):
worried about foreign adversaries, you know, at that it's like
access powers. Maybe they're worried about foreign adversaries conducting biological
warfare in the United States and against other Allied forces.
So the U S Secretary of War at the time,
(07:58):
Henry Stimpson, ask the National Academy of Sciences for the
National Research Council to investigate all possible phases of biological warfare.
And as a result of this, like the first step
the Research Council takes is to make a committee of
nine Boffin's nine eggheads prominent scientists. This will be called
(08:22):
the War Bureau of Consultants Committee. And they work in
sort of a top secret sphere. They don't officially exist
to the public. I don't know what they tell their
partners they do. I'm a consultant. God only knows. You've
gotta be a really good liar to work in that
echelon of government, or have a partner that doesn't ask questions,
(08:44):
or both. But they worked assiduously to assemble a classified
report known as NASO UH and determined that biological warfare
was incredibly likely to take place and urged that defenses
be prepared for this eventuality. I guess it is probably
(09:06):
a word that the Boffins would have thrown around in
this document. It was in fact declassified in so we
can actually do a little reading from it. It goes
as such, the value of biological warfare will be a
debatable question until it has been clearly proven or disproven
by experience. The wide assumption is that any method which
appears to offer advantages to a nation at war will
(09:27):
be vigorously employed by that nation. There is but one
logical course to pursue, namely, to study the possibilities of
such warfare from every angle, make every preparation for reducing
its effectiveness, and thereby reduce the likelihood of its use. Okay, yeah,
so that makes sense. They're essentially saying it is inevitable
(09:49):
that someone will try to use this, and our enemies
are doubtlessly working on the same you know, with the
same set of facts we have. So we we have
to prepare. We have to know how this works. Secretary
Stimpson listens to the committee, he goes to President Roosevelt,
(10:11):
and he pitches it to Roosevelt. Roosevelt listens to him,
and so in May of two he says, all right, Stimpson,
you can chase this booning, right, you can pursue this
rabbit hole and see where it leads. I'm gonna make
a new organization for you inside the Federal Security agency.
(10:31):
This organization will conduct the new U S Biological warfare program,
and we're gonna avoid any public concern about what could
happen to the US in the case of an attack
like this. And we're gonna talk a little bit about
this with the United Kingdom in Canada. Are cool allies,
(10:54):
and um, you know, we're we're maybe gonna do a
trade with our scientists amongst these three countries while this
is happening. Again, the American public doesn't know about this.
The American public won't learn about this until the mid nineties. Nineties,
that's how long it was a successful secret. So essentially,
(11:16):
they had a couple of aims. They wanted to learn
everything they could about the militarization or weaponization of pathogenic
micro organisms. Pathogenic just means capable of causing disease, So
all those little micro organisms that can get you sick
one way or another, that's what they're looking at. And
(11:37):
then in turn, they're using that knowledge to figure out
ways to defend against those things. And this is this
is a pretty good idea. This seems like day one stuff.
But they wanted to do it at scale. No, they said, look,
we can if our enemies are attacking. They're not gonna
try to, you know, dose one Johnny Blue Jeans over
(12:02):
in Illinois or something. They're going to try to dose
entire regions. So we need to understand how this biological
warfare works on a large scale. That's right. So the
United States Army Chemical Warfare Service took over this UM,
this operation in terms of being able to bring that
(12:24):
scale that you were describing ben um that is UH
scaling or the research and development program specifically, so in
Fort Dietrich, which is in Frederick, Maryland, they began their work.
So the question becomes at this point, why is St.
Louis a good site for this kind of testing. It's
(12:52):
a very interesting answer in fact, and really just kind
of an unfortunate coincidence for the people of St. Louis.
Apparently it was a very decent stand in for the
former Soviet Union, the kind of terrain and layout that
was very difficult to match in any American city. But St.
Louis had a lot going for it in terms of
(13:14):
the size of the buildings. Buildings in St. Louis for
a metro area, it's kind of unusual. They don't exceed
three stories. The number of industrial installations and infrastructure that
exists both in densely populated areas and in more sparsely
populated areas are very very analogous. Not to mention that
(13:36):
there was that ample pool because the quote from from
some of the documentation of qualified personnel there due to
a university um it being a university town. Yeah, and
that would be that would be personnel that would help
with doing field tests and pulling data and all that stuff.
So you know, Junior Boffin's right, there would be partially
(13:59):
in the know. They might not know the full extent
of things like Operation L a C. But they would
know something was up and they would probably be happy
to have a job, honestly. So this is where the
famous class is um of US society raises its ugly head.
(14:19):
The government tries to figure out the best place to
test in St. Louis, and they don't go to the
nicest neighborhoods spoiler alert. From the nineteen forties to the
nineteen sixties, they focus on impoverished areas. And we're getting
a lot of this from an excellent book by Lisa
(14:39):
Martino Taylor, the author of Behind the Fog, How the
US Cold War radiological weapons program exposed innocent Americans, but
if a spoiler there. Uh. This was a top priority
for the government and they were targeting the most vulnerable
(14:59):
people in society. This extended, Like you mentioned all, there
were other cities. This extended to Nashville as well, where
pregnant women and UH folks and hospitals were targeted, as
well as minority populations wards of the state. The Nashville
series is is a little bit different. But let's let's
(15:20):
walk through some other programs where you get back to St. Louis.
So in Nashville, they actually injected about eight hundred and
twenty poor pregnant women with a mixture during their prenatal
care that included radioactive iron. They were not told this
was happening, by the way, and then later there would
be blood tests performed to see how much of the
(15:42):
iron was absorbed by the mother and then how much
was absorbed by the baby when the when the child
was born. There were also tests performed in Chicago and
San Francisco. UM. So it's not like this is just
being done in like flyover states. This is kind of
a national effort. You know, no one was really safe
in California. You had folks that were creating radiation fields
(16:07):
inside of a building in North Hollywood High School and
that was in the fall of nineteen sixty one. You
also had similar stuff happening at the University of California
in l a and also at the l A p
D headquarters. This testing also extended to Chicago, Berkeley, Rochester,
um and oak Ridge, Tennessee. And this was all stuff
(16:29):
that was involving the use of plutonium to thirty nine. Yeah,
which you might recognize as not being a cool thing
to be around as a human being. That's what it's
maybe most famous for. But yeah, totally yeah, yeah, it's
double plus. I'm good for you, as or well would say. So.
(16:51):
Back to St. Louis. Operation l a C. That's the
street name for Large Area Coverage. It was the biggest
test ever by the Chemical Corps and it covered the
United States from the Rockies all the way out to
the Atlantic and then from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
They were trying to prove the feasibility of covering large areas,
(17:18):
get it, covering large areas of a country with biological
warfare agents. And for a long time, a lot of
folks in academia and in the military totally believed this
was possible. But Operation L A C was the first
real proof. And it's what they did sound so weird
(17:41):
when you when you hear it out loud. The Army
went to low income areas of St. Louis, particularly a
high rise a housing est state and its schools, and
they would set up these motorized blowers to blow the
zinc cadmium sulfide stuff out, and they even like went mobile.
(18:07):
One of my favorite visions of this is some guy,
I guess they drew the short straw. Some guy literally
drove around a poor part of town in his station
wagon and he had his little chemical blower just running
out the back of his station wagon and people, I
guess people thought, man, you gotta fix your car, because,
(18:33):
like now, every time I see a car with a
lot of smoke coming out of the pipe on on
the interstate, just some little part of me, you guys,
some little part of me is thinking he is he
burning oil? Or is that on purpose? So at this
point you have local officials um being told that the
(18:54):
government is testing some sort of smoke screen um that
would be a benefit to the blow St. Louis that
would potentially shield them from being um, you know, sniped
by Russian sky attacks. Right. But then in Knights Any
four there's a pivot and the government says the tests
are actually part of a biological weapons program. And St.
(19:16):
Louis was chosen for the reasons that we outlined earlier,
because of the similarity in terrain and uh, city planning roughly,
you know, the best they could do on American soil
to Russian cities that the US might one day attack.
And oh, by the way, the material that was being
spray it wasn't in finding spokes for me at all.
It was this toxic zinc acadmium soul fide stuff. Yeah,
(19:40):
not not not not great. Yeah, it was are bad folks. Uh.
The the army did this multiple times. Uh. They did
it in the fifties. They did it again in a
decade later. The local officials got their own smoke screen
of a story which was about creating a smoke screen.
(20:02):
So it totally gave them plausible deniability to say, you
know what we're doing. Really, it's it's patriotic for you
to approve this, and it kind of puts you the
implication was you are at the forefront of technology we're
going to use to defend against Soviet attacks, which is,
(20:22):
you know, not true. So the we have to say
in defense of the folks in the US military and
and the and the associated halls of science at the time,
they were all under the impression that zinc cadmium sulfide
would be like firing a blank from a firearm, that
(20:45):
it would not actually harm people, you know what I mean.
Like if you for cat owners out there, one way
people sometimes try to modify a cat's behavior is by
spraying it with a little water bottle, right, and they
had You're dispersing water, but it's not gonna hurt the cat.
It's just unpleasant, irritating, Yeah, exactly, but it's not gonna
(21:07):
you know, it's not the same as spraying them with like,
you know, sulfuric acids. Say, it might look the same,
might sprits the same, but it does not act the same.
And that's basically the case here. Yeah. So, once the
testing on the good people of St. Louis is exposed
to Congress in nine, the public demands a health study,
(21:28):
which is totally reasonable. Uh, And this is where things
get sticky because when you think about it, the same
overall institution, the US government that is doing the testing
is the same institution that did the spraying back in
the day. So it should be no surprise that when
(21:50):
the National Research Council a few years later said, hey,
this chemical is dangerous at large, you know, large levels,
high level, but residents weren't exposed to levels high enough
to be harmful. It's no surprised that people didn't believe them,
and they thought it was a cover up rather than
(22:11):
a decent investigation. And the committee that came to this
conclusion even they said there wasn't a ton of research
and they had to rely on what little data they
knew from animal testing, which is not the same thing
as testing on humans. But what what else did they
(22:33):
find here? Like, what did they say about high doses
of this stuff? It's kind of scary. It's not a
good thing, that's for sure. Um. It is noted in
fact that high doses of cadmium that can happen in
long periods of exposure can actually cause serious problems internally
to your bones, your kidneys, and can even lead to
(22:55):
things like lung cancer. So this committee actually recommend end
of the Army, you know, do follow up studies of
the individual members of the community to determine how much
or if any or or you know, whether or not
zinc had been inhaled or zinc cadmium sulfide. Rather, so,
the committee actually recommended the Army do more studies, you know,
(23:17):
go a little deeper to figure out whether um inhaling
zinc cadmium sulfide causes it to break down into the
toxic components of cadmium um which actually are able to
be absorbed right into the blood and can produce severely
toxic effects in your internal organs um, including but not
(23:40):
limited to your lungs, as is often the case with
these kinds of things. Not really quite sure whether they
did that thing or not. Yeah, it's it sounds pretty
great at follow up, you know what I mean. They
like to put things to bed as quickly as possib right,
It's that clear if they actually did the follow up
study or just said they were going to do the
(24:02):
follow up study. We know again that these sprayers were
put in multiple locations. We also know that one of
the locations was, like we mentioned, a housing complex. It's
name was the pruitt Ego or Prudeigo Housing Complex. Ten
thousand people lived there. Of those ten thousand people, seventy
(24:24):
percent were children under the age of twelve, and they were,
you know, a ground zero for this. We started learning
more about this, we being the US public in two
thousand and twelve, when that sociology professor we mentioned earlier,
(24:47):
Lisa Martino Taylor, conducted a deep dive into what actually happened.
And she's based in St. Louis Community College, Merrimax. She's
familiar with the area. And Martino Taylor started saying, hey,
the Army might have also mixed radioactive particles with the
(25:11):
zinc cabinet in sulfide. She said there was no direct proof,
but what she did find was troubling enough that U.
S Senators from Missouri wrote to the Army Secretary of
the time, John McHugh in and demanded answers through a
Foyer request, a Freedom of Information Act request, and she
(25:35):
got some results. By the way, and the Army had
described this area at the time as quote a densely
populated slum district as that word that s word loaded,
you know, And here's the thing, Martina Taylor was not
said that she wasn't aware at the time of any
lawsuits filed by anyone that was affected by these tests. Uh.
(25:58):
There was actually one that was filed a month after
the statement, but up to that point she was not
aware and to our knowledge, there were not any lawsuits filed.
She also said that the government hadn't paid for any
medical procedures or or or care or reparations of any kind. Uh,
nor was she aware of them even even issuing an apology,
(26:22):
which is another thing the government is not very good
at doing. Yeah, and you know, she continued to try
to reach out to the army herself and was essentially stonewalled,
another thing the army is quite good at doing. Yeah,
and you know exactly think about the brutal calculus that
the army engaged in here. The thing about a disadvantaged
population is one there there's less likely to be public blowback.
(26:46):
Maybe a poor choice of words for this episode, but
you get the gist to These are people who are
overwhelmingly not likely to have the means to pursue a
case in court in terms of time or money, so
it makes sense that they would target the most vulnerable.
Martino Taylor herself became involved due to a personal connection.
(27:09):
She had a colleague who grew up in the targeted area,
and this colleague contracted cancer later in life, leading Martino
Taylor to wonder if the testing had something to do
with that cancer in her adulthood. And the same day,
the very same day, another coworker told Martino Taylor that
(27:32):
she also had contracted cancer and she also lived in
that test area. So Bartino Taylor started researching this as
were her thesis at the University of Missouri, and she yeah,
and it was a good thesis as they go. She
believes that the study was linked to the Manhattan Atomic
(27:55):
Bomb project and that a group of scientists from the project,
we're developing radiological weapons. In congressional study comes out that
confirms radiological testing, which is, uh, you know, it's like
biological warfare testing, but it's just with radiation and radioactive substances.
(28:18):
This congressional study confirmed that the testing occurred in Tennessee
and parts of the American West during the Cold War,
which leads her to believe it's reasonable to conclude, Uh,
there may have been a radiological component to the St.
Louis study, which means that even if zinc cadmium sulfide
is not itself as harmful in the amounts that people
(28:42):
encountered it, if there was radiological stuff mixed up in
that crazy, crazy aerosault smoothie, then that would have been
incredibly dangerous. Would that be nice if you just get
the airslized stabilities and just you know, squirt it right
into your mouth like whipped cream. Yeah, I've been I
think we're onto something. Maybe not, you know, leave out
the cadmium, perhaps, but the technology is not there yet. Good.
(29:09):
I mean, you know, it is hard to ariostolize a
thick slurrious mixture. Is slurrious the word? I'm gonna go
with it, this American english Man. Just get enough people
to say it as well, and then boom, tend to abulation.
I'm gonna start a change dot org petition to make
slurrious a word. Um So, mccaskell actually, uh, the Senator
(29:30):
agreed that this was all kind of a little bit
sus uh said this quote. Given the nature of these experiments,
it's not surprising that Missouri's citizens still have questions and
concerns about what exactly occurred and if there may have
been any negative health effects, um she said in a
statement from her office, UM are our hero scientist. Doctoral
(29:52):
fellow friend Martino Taylor said that again that these follow
up health studies should be performed, but it needs to
involved input from the community, from the people whose lives
are actually put at risk, you know, without their knowledge
by the government, and that they should their stakeholders in this.
They need to have a say, um and be you know,
(30:15):
part of the decision making process in terms of like
the tests and all of that stuff. And uh yeah,
she went on to say, their voices have not been heard.
Seems pretty clear that that's the case, wouldn't you say, Ben, Yeah,
I think it's very clear that their voices haven't been heard.
We need to have direct input from people who live
(30:38):
in those areas. Her book, by the way, it was
published just a few years ago in seventeen in August.
It was a follow up to that two thousand and
twelve dissertation. It's legit, you know, I've looked into it
as well, Like obviously no one's making up stories here.
Her report triggered and Army investigate and the Army in
(31:02):
a stunning plot twist, Max, I don't know what a
sarcastic sound. Cue is but sorry, that was smart. Yeah,
you're welcome, thanks, absolutely ridiculous. There it is, there, it
(31:29):
is okay. In a stunning plot wist. The Army investigation
found no evidence that the testing was a threat, and
this is an ongoing event. When you think about it,
history is never as far away nor as distant as
people often assume. There are potential victims who are alive today.
(31:51):
For example, from a Business Insider article that are old
pal Gabe found by Jim Salter. There are people like
dor Spates. She was a child when her father suddenly
died in n and Spates in her family alone, and
she's watched four siblings die of cancer. She herself is
(32:11):
a cervical cancer survivor. And because she was born in
that housing development I mentioned earlier at the top floor,
of course, she's wondering if the Army spewing hundreds and
hundreds of pounds of this sulfite into the air had
an effect on her family. Four of her eleven siblings
(32:34):
signed from cancer. By the way, that's not a normal number.
That's not a normal ratio. No, it's not. And this
also comes from the article that Ben referenced earlier from
the AP writer Jim Salter, The Army sprays St. Louis
with toxic aerosol during a just revealed nineteen fifties tests
came out in two thousands twelve. So this really is,
you know, relatively new information that is not terribly terribly surprising.
(32:59):
And again, you know, ben Um, I did my session
for the Stuff they Don't Want You to Know audiobook
the other day, and a couple of the chapters that
I read were from the section on chemical weapons and
UM testing and UM. It is very eye opening and
very disturbing. It happens more than you would think throughout history. Yes, agreed, agreed, unfortunately,
(33:21):
and you know, you can make all sorts of arguments
about a greater good, you know, that's those are the
arguments that are made in the halls of power pretty
often with stuff like this, the idea that we're going
to do our best not to hurt innocent people and privately,
never said in public, rarely said in public, but privately,
(33:43):
the idea is, if a few people do get hurt,
that's still better than millions dying in a biological warfare attack.
It's it's true, I mean, okay, it's it's you know,
it's people in this level of government, and then with
this amount of power, they certainly do have to make
some difficult decisions. I'm not saying I'm not justifying the
(34:06):
decisions that they actually make, but um, I am saying
that it's obviously, you know, a bit of a devil's
bargain there that you have to make oftentimes when you're
in that situation. But you know, sometimes I think they
go a little bit overboard. Let's just say, with testing
and looking for scenarios that may or may not actually
(34:27):
play out. And you know, to what degree are they
allowing kind of like paranoia and and the anxiety of
a perceived threat cause them to actually harm their own citizens?
I don't know what. What do you think? Man? This
is something that you dig into quite a lot, like
could you put yourself in the position of of a
person like that? And then is there another is there
(34:49):
an alternative to this? Are these easy solutions that are
the most the lowest hanging fruit, that require like a
certain degree of callousness to be able to say, like,
you know what, we've already got a Weston ground right
here in St. Louis. Let's just do that we need
to save some money and not worry about like building
some kind of like simulation. Yeah, well, here's the question
(35:09):
I think that should be posed to those folks. If
this stuff is so safe, why aren't you testing it
over your part of town? You know what I mean?
That's the question for the scientists and the general's uh,
and the secretaries various and subjury. It's kind of like
the question for a lot of very powerful business tycoons.
(35:34):
If indeed your factory isn't polluting anything, why don't you
live down the river? Right? Why don't you live in
that part of town? So I think the in a
very real way, their choice of disadvantaged populations, however they
rationalized it gives lie to the claims about safety. They
(35:56):
knew what was up, and this is this is just
one instance, like you said, Noel, of multiple other times
the US has tested chemical weaponry in one form or
another on civilians. We talked about some other times. You
can learn about even more times stuff like this occurred
in our upcoming book for a different show, uh stuff
(36:17):
they don't want you to know, publishing in October. You
can pre order now, But in the meantime we promise
We're gonna get to something a little bit less depressing
in a future episode. We have some of the most
exciting episodes I think we've ever done, coming very very soon.
Like like, I think we've mentioned that we're jazz about
(36:39):
our new research buddies, Jeff and Zach. They have been
churning out some incredible stories, digging deep and finding us
some really really fascinating stuff. And I think all of
you ridiculous storians out there are going to love them
as well. Um, and I think we're also gonna you
guys are gonna meet Jeff and Zach personally very soon. Yes, yes,
that is a ridiculous history. Geary and t uh So.
(37:01):
Thank you to Jeff and Zach. Thank you, of course
to our main man on the audio ones and twos,
Mr Max Williams. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed the soundtrack.
Thanks to Casey Pegram, and folks, we do still talk
with Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. Saw some
questions about that on Facebook. Don't worry, we'll be returning soon.
(37:21):
It's just a little weird for us now in our
nomadic phase, right as we moved from office to office. Yeah,
I may have mentioned as well that I recently moved
the house. Um, I bought a house recently. It's very
excited about, and I have a studio in my basement.
It's still a little bit crazy and chaotic, though, so
I kind of feel like I'm squatting and someone else's
(37:44):
creepy basement. But soon it will be full of rainbow
colored lights and art and and music and and all
of the all of those good things. But until then,
I kind of feel like a bit of a cave troll.
You are the opposite of a cave troll, my friend.
We do have a question for everybody, if you, if
you have a story like this in your pastor and
(38:07):
your family, um, whatever your neck of the global woods
might be, would you mind letting us know. We would
love to hear it. You can find us on Facebook
as ridiculous historians. You can also find us on social media,
not just as a show, but as individuals. Mr Noel Brown,
I hear you're blowing up those instagrams. I don't know
(38:27):
about blowing up. I'm that's more of a slow burn, really,
But you can't find me slowly burning on Instagram where
I am at? How now Noel Brown, how about you, sir, Yeah,
that's true. You can find me doing an Operation Large
Internet Area coverage over on Instagram where at Ben Bolling
b w L I N you can get a preview
(38:48):
for all the secret projects I'm working on. There are
more and more these these past few weeks. By going
to Twitter where I'm at Ben Bowling h s w
uh coming from my tear rble jokes and spoilers and
stay for what La Musk calls the best part of Twitter,
Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can find me on Twitter
(39:09):
at at a t L underscore Max Williams, where I'll
be trolling bands Operation what is? What is? What was
that acronym LAK Internet Internet Large Internet Area Coverage. Yes, yeah,
I'll be trolling Operation LAK. So yeah, find me on
there at a t L underscore Max Williams. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(39:36):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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