October 28, 2025 • 60 mins
With a special shoutout to fellow Conspiracy Realist J, we present our Classic episode on some hidden history from Mississippi: Most people have heard of Three Mile Island — but what about the multiple other nuclear events on US soil? Join Ben and Matt as they explore the strange, largely untold story of the Tatum Salt Dome in this story from 2020.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. We're returning to you with a tale
of with a little bit of synchronicity here. We recently
received an excellent piece of correspondence from our fellow conspiracy
realist that we'll call J and Jay. You asked us
about nuclear experiments in Mississippi. Most people have heard about
(00:23):
Three Mile Island, but what about other nuclear tests on
US soil. Now, as we were researching your question here,
we were struck by a moment of deja vu. Things
seemed very familiar, and lo and behold, we did an
entire episode about this debacle back in twenty twenty. Do
you guys remember this one salt domes.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
See, when the US government was doing a lot of
experiments blowing up nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs, atom bombs, all
those things, they tended to do it out in the
desert way in the west of the US. But the
thing we're going to talk about today is the only
place this area, this thing also known as the Salmon
(01:08):
Test Site. It's the only place east of the Mississippi
that the US government has ever detonated a nuclear device.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, and they did it on purpose, and they did
it without repercussions or consequence. It's a real conspiracy and Jay,
your timing is impeccable. We hope you, as well as
all our fellow listeners enjoy this. When so, without further ado,
let's drop it like drop it like a bomb. Oh
(01:35):
my god.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
A production of.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
iHeartRadio, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Noel is on Adventures.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And we'll be returning soon. They call me Ben. We're
joined as always with our super producer Paul mission control deck,
and most importantly, you are you. You are here and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt.
You know, I was having a bit of a uncharacteristic
(02:27):
wave of nostalgia over this past weekend and before we
went on air. It's weird because it seemed like once
again you were reading my mind when you talked about
our YouTube channel. It's strange when you think that, like
we used to do so many videos.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I know that it consumed our lives for several years there,
both before and after we got our own channel, which
by the way, is YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
If you haven't checked it out recently, you should go
check it out. And we'd actually like for you to
run a little test for us. Use your favorite internet
(03:09):
search engine, perhaps a Duck duck go perhaps Google, Yahoo, whatever,
and search for stuff they don't want you to know
YouTube and see what comes up. Because we found, at
least on our end, that Google seems to have forgotten
about our channel.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Which is you know, it's kind of flattering to imagine
that that channel, which has been inactive for a while,
at least up to now. It's kind of flattering to
imagine an entity as large as Google would care about that,
you know. To me, that indicates that we were doing
something right.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Now granted, well, we were either doing something right or
you know, they're categorizing us in the same way as
some of these other people who have been taken off
of YouTube and other platforms recently.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, you know, I predict that as things become more
unstable in the near to mid future, we're going to
see increasingly heavy handed use of censorship and surveillance powers.
But that is to tweak the old figure of speech
(04:23):
that's a bridge we'll burn when we get there, you
know what I mean. For now, I've got to say
I'm tremendously grateful for every one of our fellow listeners
who's been writing to us and telling us about all
these strange things that aren't making it into the news.
(04:43):
For years and years, you and I have always wanted
to cover the things that are just off the edge
of the mainstream map, the things that the regions of
the map where cartographers of old would draw some serpents
and say here be dragon, and things that are just
like outside the pool of the street light. And we've
(05:05):
only been able to do it this long because we
have help from the best part of the show, which
is specifically you. So what better way to put our
money where our mouth is then to explore an episode
topic brought to us by one of our fellow listeners.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
That is correct, one of you, who hopefully is listening
to this episode send us a little voice message and
it goes a little something like this.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
And Noel, this is word life in Miami.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
That's a question.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
And you don't think the thought that me joggle is
a tope on because it's found its own sentience that
it's there that there is something to it. Also, look
at potato salt.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
See yeah, okay, first thing here. Weird Wes, and we
did not do this on purpose. Ben and I did
not discuss this prior to recording this episode. You just
asked if Google was a tulpa of some sort, some
kind of thought form that had sentience that could act
on its own. We did not. I I don't know
(06:19):
if Ben, if you listened to that voicemail right before
this or something. I didn't do this on purpose. Now
I'm thinking the tulpa that is Google is trying to
bring us down from a YouTube standpoint.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
At least, I'm fascinated by the idea. For anyone who
is unfamiliar to tulpa is this concept that a life
form can exist without a physical body, a sentient thought
or collection of thoughts, or an algorithm. So you know,
in a way, a software program that reaches the level
(06:56):
of machine consciousness could be a tulpa. And you know,
the actation of algorithms that our Google could in some
ways be considered a tulpa. I've got a really weird
uh story. I'll have to I'll have to send you
off air. I've been writing a bunch of garbage. But
I've got a really weird story about a world in
(07:16):
which emotions shared between two or more people can become sentient,
and it's it's totally it's a Tulpa situation. I started
off trying to write it as a rom com, but
I'm terrible at rom com, so it became yet another
horror story. But you're right, You're right, Matt. It's a
fascinating concept, and it's a concept that we have, I believe,
(07:37):
explored in the past a little bit. But there was
one thing Wes said, one thing you said weird Wes
in Wyoming that I think Matt and I really like,
really tuned into because it was something that we had
never heard of, which is admittedly, I don't want to
(07:57):
say rare, but it's admittedly uncommon for us.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That is correct, that little thing, a little throwaway you
had at the end of the message that just said, hey,
look in look into the Tatum salt mines. Bye. Uh yeah, dude.
But Ben and I both and Noel actually we all
just went, wait, what is that? And we started using
Google the Tulpa now that we've established that to search, uh,
(08:24):
to search things about it, and my goodness, we found
an entire episode hidden deep within those salt mines.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
M and I like, I liked the waxing poetic there
at the end of that. It's true on multiple levels.
Today's episode is inspired by you, Weird Wes and Wyoming.
You contacted us about a strange, largely unknown event that
occurred right here in the good old us of A.
It's a bit of hidden history. It's a story the
(08:54):
Jedi won't tell you. It concerns one of the most powerful,
one of the dangerous forces ever wielded by human hands,
nuclear power. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Before we jump into this, I just want to point
out that Ben, you and nol got to do a
bit of a nuclear story while I was out recently,
and now Nola's out and you and I get to
do a nuclear story, and I'm liking this. That's true.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
That's true, and they're very They're very different as well, but.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Disturbing, absolutely. So one of the major things here as
we begin into the facts is just to talk about
nuclear power within the United States. And you know, I
would I would wager that there are several of you
out there listening who remember the protesting that occurred within
(09:49):
this country when nuclear power plants were beginning to be
constructed across the states in various places that were deemed
to be you know, good places for these things because
they were safer there, you know. But like a lot
of the other protests that have occurred for various things
in this country across time, they you know, appear to
(10:13):
have done very little and actually preventing things from happening,
and in this case, nuclear power plants from being built
and or nuclear tests from being run. And a lot
of this is because there are some tremendously beneficial things
that can come from something like nuclear power that you know,
isn't just your traditional burning of coal or other fossil
(10:36):
fuels or natural gases or something like that. And these benefits,
many times, let's say almost all the time, are going
to outweigh the dangers, at least if you're looking at
it from a monetary standpoint, from a clean energy standpoint
or a cleanish energy standpoint, and you know, the dollar signs,
(10:58):
really that's what speaks to the most benefits, right.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yes, make no mistake, the vast majority of large scale
actions that occur like this, especially in the energy industry,
are the results of a cost benefit calculation the same
way that we all individually use cost benefit logic in
our own daily lives. This just affects people in many,
(11:25):
many unforeseen ways. So the protesters failed. Let's just be honest,
the protesters failed. According to the World Nuclear Association, as
of now twenty twenty, the United States is the world's
largest producer of nuclear power a single country out of
the one hundred and ninety three ish countries in the world.
(11:49):
It produces more than thirty percent of all of the
nuclear generated electricity on the planet, full stop. And this
is the result of a concerted effort that goes across
both sides of the political divide in the US. Multiple
companies are on board with it, even if they compete
with each other. Government policy changes since about the late
(12:13):
nineteen nineties paved the way for a significant rise in
nuclear capacity, and as of now, Uncle Sam officially has
ninety eight nuclear power centers. They're across thirty states, and
they're operated by a group of around thirty maybe more
(12:34):
different power companies.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
And just like Ben You and Noel discovered when covering
the Santa Susanna experiment recently that occurred out in California,
where some of this nuclear power was being generated and
tested to see if there are new ways to generate
the power, and something went wrong. We have to remember
that these things, if something does go wrong, the consequences
(12:58):
are massive. Right. So it's that's when you're getting back
into that cost benefit analysis. A nuclear power can be terrifying.
There's we're going to look right here at words from
an author Benjamin k Sova cool He wrote a Critical
Evaluation of Nuclear power and Renewable Electricity in Asia. It
(13:20):
was written in twenty ten. This guy says that there
have been at least fifty six nuclear reactor accidents within
the United States. That seems like more than I've heard of, right,
So you know what he's saying is that there are
there's a large scale here in what could be called
(13:43):
a nuclear accident, right because the definition it covers a
wide range of things that could go wrong and that
have go wrong. But there are some commonalities here with
all fifty six of these that Benjamin is pointing to.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, the these fifty six accidents, again, that's
a huge number.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
By the way, these.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Fifty accidents, fifty six accidents all have two things in common.
They either resulted in an immediate loss of human life,
and the media is important there we'll see why, or
they cause more than fifty thousand dollars US worth of
property damage. That last part's very interesting to me because
fifty thousand dollars is far more than the average US
(14:30):
resident is going to have on hand right just to
pull out and use. But it's also a cartoonishly low
threshold when we consider the overall cost of specialized nuclear equipment,
particularly because that specialized equipment is inevitably going to be
some of the first stuff damaged when things go south.
(14:53):
And you know, again you should be weirded out by
that how high that number is of proven nuclear incidents
in the US nuclear meltdowns, disasters, malfunctions. But there's one
you're definitely familiar with. It's one that Nol and I
mentioned in our previous episode, and that is Three Mile Island.
(15:19):
Three Mile Island, for a quick recap, was a partial
core meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear plant on
March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine. And it, you know,
it's safe to say it exceeded that fifty thousand dollars threshold.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, the cleanup costs alone ranged somewhere within the billion dollars,
like as in Doctor Evil one billion dollars and an
estimated total of two point four billion dollars in property
damage that was done because as a result of this accident,
and you know, over the years, in various forms of reporting,
(15:58):
you're going to hear all kinds of different claims about
the health effects, both short term and long term of
this disaster, but officially, a lot of experts note that
the health effects are of a very low level, like
as in, you know, not much bad really happened on
a human level because of Three Mile Island. Guys, we're
going to reassure you, just to let you know everything's okay,
(16:20):
You're gonna be okay, your family's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Not everyone agrees, of course, because you know, even as
recently as nineteen seventy nine, there there was a lot
of debate about the possible long term ramifications of these
sorts of disasters, you know, or the possible long term
consequences to the life forms in their vicinity. Again officially, right,
(16:48):
this is all officially, and that's the problem with nuclear
reporting in general. Right. We threw out a couple numbers,
just a few minutes ago. But if you remember only
one of those numbers, remember this, when fifty six incidents,
more than fifty times in this country, nuclear power almost
(17:09):
or did go disastrously wrong. And even today, there's stuff
the US does not want you to know when it
comes to nuclear power.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And there's certainly stuff they don't want you to know
when it's turned from generating nuclear power to detonating nuclear
weapons within the United States. What could go wrong if
we did that.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
We'll find out after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. So here's the issue with nuclear technology.
One of the many issues nuclear technology is dual use.
We've talked about this before. It's one of the great
(17:53):
dilemmas in geopolitics. Please don't fall asleep just because we
said cheopology. Essentially, the same stuff you have to do
to create nuclear power is the same stuff you have
to do to make nuclear weapons. Not very many efficient
ways to tell the difference between a country's aim here,
(18:14):
because there's not really a difference in what you need
to do and what you need to have.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It's just how long you keep those centrifuges running, right, Really,
what it is, That's what it amounts to right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
It's a matter of iteration. That's that's really the only difference.
Like imagine if you were this might be a little
bit too off the grid for some of us, but
imagine if you were churning butter and after you know,
x amount of churns or x amount of time spent churning,
you had butter. But if you kept going, you had
a bomb. That's basically the problem with nuclear energy and
(18:49):
nuclear enrichment. And so this left the US and many
other countries in a pickle because this meant that in theory,
any country with the ability to domestically create nuclear energy
would also domestically have the ability to make nuclear weapons,
and no one could stop them short of try short
(19:12):
of trusting them or like you know, doing a Reagan trust,
but verify watching how many times the centrifuge is spin.
It's a very messy situation. So they got into this
idea of monitoring testing. Testing nuclear weapons is one one
great way to tell right what a country's true aims are.
(19:33):
It's like building a battleship. You can't test a nuclear
weapon and say you're doing anything other than that. You
can't build a battleship and say you're doing anything other
than attempting to build a Blue Force navy and dominate
part of the ocean. So the US said, we need
to figure out how these other countries are testing, and
(19:55):
just for our own pr we're gonna say that we're
doing this. Think this is dual use. We're going to
say we're doing this just to make sure we know
what other countries are up to. It's defensive. Other countries
was widely suspected we're testing nuclear weapons underground, so that
you wouldn't from a satellite, for instance, you wouldn't see
(20:18):
a lot of atmospheric you know, atmospheric anomalies. You wouldn't
have people on the ground noting, you know, like a
mushroom cloud miles away or something. So they said, okay,
we're going to assume people are doing this underground because
that's what we would do well exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
And just to jump back in time slightly, we're talking
about the sixties and seventies here, but let's just jump
back in time to nineteen fifty four in March to
something called Castle Bravo. And just the reason why the
United States took on this. We're going to police the
nuclear testing or possible nuclear testing across the globe because
(20:59):
we conducted a test in the United States in a
place called the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. And
like I said in marsh First nineteen fifty four, it
was a massive explosion. I believe it was fifteen megatons
that was the yield essentially, And there was a lot
(21:21):
of fallout because of this nuclear test, like literally, and
I guess prly because it caused a lot of damage
and there was a lot of radiation that spread further
and in ways that we perhaps didn't expect. And it
was decided globally, at least between the powers of the
(21:43):
United States and the Soviet Union and several other places
that we would no longer test nuclear weapons, like we
were going to stop. That's why the US took on this.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Role, right right, they said, we are the we're the
perfect people to you know, keep everyone honest here. In
nineteen fifty four, also the same year that Edward Burnees
helped persuade the US to invade invade Guatemala and launch
(22:17):
a coup on behalf of private agricultural sector businesses. It
was a business coup, So shout out to you Brenees.
You monster. I'm still so impressed with the guy. Though
you have to be. You got to respect the hustle.
But anyhow, you're right. You're absolutely right, Matt. There's a
(22:37):
lot of precedents going into this, but unfortunately the US
was maybe not the best police officer. Maybe it was
just the least worst, you know, like that's what people
say about democracy, it's the least worst system humans have
come up with. But the US, like many other countries,
(22:57):
blurred the line between testing for nuclear power peaceful pursuits
and testing for nuclear weaponry. And that's why you'll notice
that we caveated some of our earlier statements by adding
the O word. Officially, it's because we have to. You see,
the US, aside from Bikinia Toll, it turns out the
US conducted multiple nuclear tests back in the day, some
(23:21):
of which are still probably secret. But weird Wes and
Wyoming hipped us to several tests that occurred in good
old Mississippi. And at the time, what's weird about this,
These tests were not even secret. The New York Times
ran an announcement about it that kind of aged like milk,
(23:42):
because it's very it's very like whoa, hey, look at this.
We're you know, nuclear power is not what could go
wrong and you can you can read the article in
full online. But this project. One of the first things
I noticed about this project met was that it had
just a terrible name.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Were talking about Project Dribble. I'm just drooling a little
bit thinking about it. But yeah, this was This was
one of several tests that fell under this thing called
the VELA Uniform. This was a mission that was essentially
(24:25):
attempting to detect nuclear blasts. It ran from nineteen sixty
three to nineteen seventy one, and it was Yeah, the
VELA mission really was to detect blasts that occurred in air,
blasts that occurred on land, like above the ground, underwater,
(24:46):
blasts that occurred even under the land, like in a
cave or something. It was trying to figure out any
of the ways that the United States Forces military in
this case, could detect whether or not a nuclear blast
had gone off anywhere in the world at any altitude.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, and this is similar to weather balloon detection programs,
you know, where we could maybe put something high enough
in the atmosphere that it would detect certain changes indicative
of a nuclear explosion, but figuring out what was going
on under our feet was almost more important because that's
where the really sneaky stuff can occur. Vella Uniform was
(25:27):
overall seven different tests that we know about, and not
all of those tests were nuclear, but not one, but
two of the nuclear detonations occurred just north of a
very small town in Lamar County, Mississippi, called Baxterville. Baxterville
is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, you know, it's kind of
(25:50):
like that. Around the time this occurred, Baxterville is what
Garth Brooks would have called a one stoplight town or
something like that. I'm forgetting my Garth Brooks, but you
know what I'm referencing right anyway, Anyway, friends in low
places aside, Baxterville was about twenty eight miles and is
(26:13):
twenty eight miles southwest of Hattiesburg, which is probably the
most recognizable town in the area. So the Powers that
Beach chose to detonate nuclear weapons in nearby Baxterville, where
again people did live, because there was a distinctive geological
(26:34):
feature there called the Tatum Salt Dome. I have to mention,
I don't know if it's because I was hungry when
I was listening to your voicemail initially, West, but I
could have sworn. I could have sworn you said potato
salt dome, and I just like started imagining all the
(26:55):
cool things you can do with potatoes. But no, this
is way less cool. This nuclear energy.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
No joke, man. I googled. The first thing I googled
was potato salt dome, and I didn't know. I'm not joking.
I thought that's what it was too. And that's nothing
against us, is I just I was maybe having a
hard time understanding it when I was listening on my
phone or something, and perhaps that was also a bit ravenous.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
We're a very carb oriented podcast, and know just like
as a crew, you.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Know for sure, I really quickly, I just want to
go back. So we're talking about the Tatum salt Dome.
We're going to get into that, but I want to
backtrack just for a moment to make sure people understand
that these seven tests that were talking about with Vala
Uniform were to test the sensor equipment that the Veala
(27:46):
project essentially was going to use to detect explosions elsewhere.
So in order to know that you can successfully detect
an underground nuclear explosion. Let's say, somewhere in the USS
are you need to first manufacture your own explosion to
see Hey, if they do one like this, can we
see it? Yep? Okay, So that was the point of this.
(28:08):
I am not sure if I explained that well enough
prior to saying it here.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I think you ye. I think it's important to like
highlight that because it's another instance of dual use, isn't it.
It would be naive to assume that there would not
be other data, right, other results that were monitored and
pulled from again, these detonations of nuclear weapons. You're right,
(28:39):
And they spend a lot of time thinking about this.
As a matter of fact, they spend a lot of
time thinking about how to set it up. But they
did not spend a lot of time on three big things,
and that's what this episode is about. First, they obviously
didn't spend a lot of time thinking through what would
actually happen when you detonated nuclear they called a nuclear device,
(29:04):
but when you detonate a nuclear bomb underground in an
occupied area. Second, they didn't think about the long term
consequences aftermath or effects. And third, they really phoned in
the names. I can't I can't emphasize that enough. Project Dribble.
The first test is called the Salmon Events, which sounds
(29:28):
like something your local park ranger gets excited about once
a year, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I think they were hungry too.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Man.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Well, we mentioned the Tail salt dome wide is important.
I just gonna put this out here quickly. One of
the major reasons when they're you know, they're imagining what
another country might do. When they were going to try
and test underground, they thought, well, if there was some
kind of salt dome or an underground assault deposit somewhere
(30:01):
on land, the authorities could put a bunch of water
into that salt deposit, essentially, you know, turn that solid
sodium into salt water, and create a cavity underground where
they could then place a bomb, explode it and do
some testing. Right. That was one of the major reasons
(30:21):
they chose this Tatum Salt mine or Tatum Salt dome.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't just because it was cool,
but it was because of the actual physical makeup of
the dome. So they announced this to their credit, unlike
some other US test on domestic populations. And here's what
they decided to do. On October twenty second, after warning
(30:49):
some residents in the area. About ten am nineteen sixty four,
the authorities detonated a five point three kiloton device eight
hundred twenty meters or twenty seven hundred feet underground. Real quick,
because I know we've thrown some words around here. Kill
A ton is one thousand tons, so this is like
(31:12):
thousand five thousand tons, and change a megaton, like Matt,
you had mentioned with Bikini A toll is one million tons,
so this is smaller than Bikini A toll. But again
it is in a It's an area where people were
not expecting to encounter radiation and nuclear disaster. So the
(31:35):
first thing that goes wrong when they detonate this at
ten a m Is that the explosion is much much
stronger than the residents had been told it would be.
The ground shook, A gigantic cloud of dust rises, the
thing you were hoping to avoid. Windows break, walls crack
(31:55):
fourteen miles away, Wells go bad, run dry, They clawed.
This favorite story, I know you probably have some two, Matt.
One of my favorite stories is there's a local fisherman
who watches in amazement as all the fish in this
pond jump out of the water at once.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Wow. Yeah, I can't imagine seeing that. Wow. Well, you
know another thing that I can't imagine is the way
a lot of the local residents described what they saw,
even when they were miles away from ground zero. They
this is I'm just gonna paraphrase this, and you can
go online and read a lot of first hand accounts
(32:35):
of this test. Salmon in particular, they noted that there
were ground ripples, like waves of the ground where it's
estimates now at this point, because a lot of this
was looking back, you know, twenty thirty forty fifty years
after the incident, but a lot of it they described
(32:57):
as you know, maybe three feet of let's say, now
imagine five inches of wave of that ground that you
can see moving essentially in a semicircular path towards you,
and actually moving the ground and rippling it. There were
some people who said they were standing on concrete, and
(33:18):
on the concrete you could feel a wave of earth
travel under your feet, and then they would They described
about ten to fifteen seconds of just quiet and nothing,
and then another ripple, and then another eleven seconds or so,
and then a third ripple of the ground that you
could actually watch like that sounds otherworldly to me.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Have you ever I remember we talked about this. Have
you ever been in an earthquake or experienced one?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
There have been several low, very very low level earthquakes
in Georgia that I have felt, and I didn't know
I was feeling it until I woke up the next
day and read that there was a low level earthquake.
But you know, I've been to California a few times
now in my life, and I've never experienced anything big
or in any other place.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
M Yeah, it's it's a it's an incredibly disorienting feeling,
and it's one of those things where all of a
sudden you recognize how powerless we as individuals can be.
When I was when I was living in Central America,
I looked like honestly, man, I looked like a woos
(34:31):
the first couple of times, you know, I was at
this family's this family's residence where you know, we're drinking
instant coffee. It's like eight thirty in the morning or something,
and then all of a sudden, the kitchen just moves,
and then it moves back, and some stuff I'm trying
(34:51):
not to curse here, but some stuff just falls off
the shelves, and the lady who's house it was, she
is She's like, I'm just gonna put up this spoon again,
and blah blah blah. And I think maybe I've done
some sort of drug that I can't remember, you know,
and that reality is just glitching. But I say that because,
(35:14):
you know, it is difficult to explain what an earthquake
feels like unless you experience it. There is no anchor,
there is nothing that you can hold because the world
is quaking, and this is what these people experience, right,
So of course they're scared, especially because they thought they
(35:35):
had done everything right. They had complied with the orders
of the federal government. They had evacuated if they were
told to evacuate, and they still, as we would say today,
got their stuff rocked, you know. And the thing is that, Okay,
(35:56):
this is crazy, right, No one dies immediately, and thank
your lucky stars for that, right, Federal agents residents alike.
Several weeks after the blast, the government has hired workers
to drill back into the hole in the ground left by.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
This explosion in the Tatum saltom in the.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Tatum salt them to release radioactive gas that's trapped inside. Now,
the officials were using what we would describe as cutting
edge technology for the time. They had scrubbers that were
set up, and a scrubber basically would decontaminate the radioactive gas.
But soon they realized that wasn't the real problem. They
(36:40):
would have to do something about the radioactive liquid waste
from all the drilling operations. Just like in Lord of
the Rings, they delved too deep and their bow rog
was very dangerous waste radiation. So they said, Okay, you
know what we're going to do. We're going to dig
a We're gonna dig a hole. We're just we're gonna
(37:03):
dig some more holes, and we're gonna dig one really
deep hole two four hundred feet into the earth right
by the salt dome. And then someone in the room
is like, hey, isn't there a groundwater aquifer there? And
they're like, come, Craig, I need you to be a team player.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
It's fine. It's also who cares if it's an aqua
for everything will be fine. There's no problem with irradiating
ground water. Yeah, so we're still in nineteen sixty five
here remember, and between March and July of that year,
(37:45):
there was a ton of radioactive liquid waste that was
disposed of into this well where an underground aquifer was.
We're talking about three hundred and thirty eight thousand gallons
of radioactive waste that was just see you later, down
into the well, into the water. And that wasn't it either.
(38:08):
That's not where the story stops. It wasn't just one
nuclear test underground at this location. The government went right
back through and dropped another bomb into that hole that
they created with the first test. And we'll tell you
all about that when we returned from a word from
our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
That's right. They must have had a different person writing
the names by this point. A few years later, they
conduct a second test, as you said, Matt, during what
was called the Sterling Events. This happened on December third,
nineteen sixty six. Basically, they said, hey, we got this
great hole from earlier, let's keep using it. This was
(38:57):
a very like pro hole in the ground kind of institution.
And it made sense. I don't mean to bust their
chops too hard, it made sense. So they dropped a
three hundred and eighty ton device into the cavity that
was left behind by the previous explosion. In the Salmon event,
the Department of Defense and associated agencies required residents for
(39:22):
these tests within one and a half miles of the
explosion point to leave their homes while the events were occurring.
They also said, hey, you know, these detonations might mess
up your house a little bit. They might damage some
buildings and stuff. And it did, and it definitely did.
(39:46):
They also proactively said, you know, we are going to
we're going to get in front of this, as they
say in corporate America or in the realm of politics,
and we're going to go ahead and just let you
know whatever happens, We're going to give you a five grand.
Just tell us what happened. We'll give you five grand.
Everybody's happy. It didn't stop there. Later, they would go
(40:11):
on to conduct more experiments with non nuclear explosives during
a project called Miracle Play, which sounds like something for
you know, your Nintendo switch.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, yeah, it does. Ben Really quickly, let's get into
the reason why they tested secondary much much smaller device
in that same place where they caused the first explosion.
Just quickly, just go over this. So the first time
they detonated a nuke in the Tatum Salt Dome. It
(40:45):
essentially created a massive, let's say, spherical hole in the ground,
not necessarily holding and get into like a cavern, like
a cave basically underneath the ground. And when once they
had created that with the first explosion, the first test
during Salmon, they like I said, like we said, they
(41:07):
drilled a hole into this cavity. They dropped a much
smaller bomb and what did we say, It was three
hundred and eighty ton, Yeah, three hundred and eighty ton device,
much smaller, and they dropped that down there and it
exploded it to test whether or not there would be
this dampening effect that the you know, the scientists and
(41:32):
personnel that were testing with the veal val uniform. They
wanted to see if a country could do that could
dampen the essentially shock waves of a nuclear explosion by
having a hole in the ground, a large cavernous hole
in the ground, rather than just dipping it into the
ground and exploding it. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah, I mean, there's there is valuable science here, you
know what I mean. I think that's one of the
biggest points about this. But the problem is everything we've described.
Even with the safety measures that they took, it's still
incredibly dangerous. People were living in the area, right, And
(42:14):
you'll be happy slash roll your eyes and groaning to
learn that Uncle Sam did compensate the residents of Baxterville
and Hattiesburg. Even they gave adults ten dollars and they
gave children five bucks. The shockwave of this explosion literally
(42:35):
lifted the ground four inches. A lot of buildings only
have minimal damage. That's frankly amazing. But what is not
amazing and what is you know, perhaps the most disappointing
and strange part of this story be the effects and
the aftermath, which they clearly did not plan for.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Agreed, I would say, we're talking nineteen sixty four dollars,
so ten bucks, five bucks not too shabby.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
That's very fair of you.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yes, I'd be facetious here. No, you're right, though, Ben,
the aftermath and effects of these tests is not something
laugh at. I apologize again. We're in one of those
situations where you're trying to be a little light just
because this stuff is. It's tough on individual people and families.
So you know, the big thing here is that the
(43:28):
United States government appears to not have been fully aware
of the risks that were posed by contaminating with radiation
things like groundwater and just you know, a general area
where flora and fauna are going to be affected by
this radiation. They were, however, fully aware of the horrific
consequences of dropping the bomb on let's say, a city
(43:51):
and suburban area when you're looking at the attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this case, the lodge at least
was that this would this would not have much of
an effect because you know, you're exploding this thing underground,
because the radioactive material is going to be stuck under there.
(44:12):
It's not going to be able to escape and get
into the air and affect things in the way that
we you know, generally had been testing nukes in the past,
and it would you know, over time, if you didn't
disturb the area, and especially like essentially the cave that
was created because of this explosion, if you didn't disturb that,
then the stuff would decay naturally, slowly, but naturally, and
(44:36):
you wouldn't have to worry too.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Much, right, This was not the case. Follow up drilling
operations that allowed scientists to collect more information about this
and to dispose of the devices actually ended up contaminating
the site. So it wasn't so much the initial testing
(44:59):
as it was the later attempts to leverage info from
the testing or to get a hold of these devices
created hazardous radioactive waste. You know, all like imagine that
green gunk you see in episodes of The Simpsons or
Captain Planet. It made that stuff, and that stuff is very,
very bad. Humans are not built to be around it.
(45:21):
Decades after the first test, the Department of Energy is
still picking up radiation in the ground and surprise in
the aquifers, and that is due to the problem with
the cleanup. Employees who worked on these clean up missions
said that it was lax at best. Some a couple
(45:41):
of poison particular, maintained that they were allied to when
they asked medical professionals to explain things like strange burns
they found or differing medical conditions. The Department of Energy
maintained that the radiation levels they did find, even the
ones that persisted for decades, were no threat to the
(46:03):
health of residents. And to be fair, we know that
the modern human being, especially in the West, is exposed
to low levels of radiation from every including everything from
like maybe an X ray scan to I kid you
not bananas. Bananas have low level radiation. So they were
(46:26):
still oh yeah, I'm flying in a plane. Oh man,
remember when we used to do that. I would still
trade it all. I was supposed to go to Easter
Island this summer. Did I tell you that? No, it
was a secret plan. I didn't want to tell you
guys until I could text you a picture. But uh yeah.
But being a US resident traveling internationally is going to
(46:47):
be harry for a while. Even if even if you
live in the US and you have the ability to
go somewhere, the other country might not necessarily want to
let you in now more than ever, But we'll anyway.
That doesn't matter. The point that matters here is that
there are a lot of things that expose you to
low level radiation. You run into it all the time,
(47:09):
and the Department of Energy was saying, well, this is
kind of the same thing. It's not going to be dangerous.
But in the nineteen nineties, residents of the area Baxterville, Hattiesburg,
and workers from Project Dribble, they started to say, you know,
(47:29):
a lot of our friends, coworkers and loved ones from
this time period are dying, and they're dying of cancer.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, about twenty five thirty years later, that's when I
guess you begin to notice that that radiation, those rads
you took back in the day are starting to show
themselves because there are long term effects there. And you know,
the local residents ended up creating a list of I
believe it was forty four people who had either died
(48:00):
of cancer or who had developed cancer.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
And you know.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
That's in the large scheme of things, that's a relatively
low number, but in a small town, forty four people
in an immediate area who had you know, gotten cancer
or died of cancer is a lot. And they demanded
that the state and federal government figure out if any
of these conditions were in any way linked to the
(48:26):
salt dome tests that were done back in the sixties.
And you know, we're talking in nineteen nineties. It moved
slowly trying to get any kind of movement within the
legal system, within you know, the people who could actually
run the testing, because there was, by the way, there
was a lot of long term testing of the flora
(48:48):
and fauna in the immediate area that was going on.
But you know who's to I couldn't find much on
the actual testing of the residents that was going on
up until they started raising a flag and saying, hey,
we're we're fauna too, right.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
I mean, that's a very very salient point.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
By the way, I forgot to mention this, the a
lot of residents in this area used wells that they had,
you know, doug or had been there existing on their
properties prior to these events. Almost all, if not everyone,
of the wells in the surrounding area were producing undrinkable
water or no water at all, water that was not
(49:33):
potable for them to drink, so they had to find
alternative means to get water. There. You can read a
lot more about this in a couple of places online.
I would recommend the Atomic Heritage site atomic heritage dot org.
And there's also a bunch of local reporting that's happened
over the you know, let's say, from about twenty ten
(49:54):
and onward. There have been several stories about this. Sorry,
I just want to put that there.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, I would recommend and I was reading
into work by NOLA dot com, by the Sun Herald.
There's actually there's a really good Atlas Obscura article on
this that gives a nice overview, but you're right without
admitting liability for some stuff. Around two thousand, the government
(50:25):
built a water pipeline to help residents of the Tatum
Salt Dome get drinking water that came from an area
other than the test site. And their idea was, you know,
we're not officially saying that we really screwed the pooch
on this, but we want you guys to feel better,
(50:46):
So this is sort of this is for you. Fast
forward twenty fifteen, the Department of Labor has paid nearly
five point five million dollars US two people who are
suffering medical problems after working at the Salmon nuclear explosion
site against southwest of Hattiesburg, about twenty eight miles. So
(51:07):
if you combine that with the money that was paid
to workers who lived in Mississippi but didn't necessarily work
on the site, the total bill is sixteen point eight
million dollars. Oddly enough, that's the price tag for a
total of fifty six claims. Odd coincidence, there's that number
(51:27):
again For the numerologists in the crowd. Those fifty six
claims came from the Salmon site, which today we usually
call the Tatum Salt Dome, and today as we record
this officially, Tatum Salt Dome is the location of the
only known nuclear weapons test aka detonation to ever be
(51:48):
performed in the eastern United States.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
That's right. A lot of it was done out in Nevada, Nevada, however,
you want to say it at the test sites out there,
and a couple of other places, or just you know,
outside of the United States, on atolls and other places
underneath the water and in the air, in various places.
It's pretty weird to think about. And it's so odd
(52:12):
again that Ben and I were unaware of this until
Weird West came along and was like, hey, guys, look
at this and then left. It's really it's really frustrating
to know that the government did pay out that money
to fifty six people, when to my mind, you think
(52:34):
about the residents that have been living there, the families
that have been growing up there near this place, it
feels like there's been a larger effect maybe than just
the workers who were there on site who got dosed
or radiation, because you know it's highly likely that they didn't.
That's probably one of the major reasons that the money
was actually paid out. But just thinking about the number
(52:56):
of people that ended up drinking water, children that ended
up drinking water around there, it feels like it feels
like there would be more casualties. But maybe I'm wrong.
I would say there are a couple of places online
where you can read first hand accounts of people who
were there, and there's one gentleman who refers a couple
(53:19):
of times to the number of people with cancer, and
he says, I believe the quote is something along the
lines of if you look north essentially of the Tatum
Salt Dome, that's where there are a ton of people
getting cancer. And that was a I believe it was
a twenty fourteen interview with this gentleman, but he was
(53:40):
specifically saying, look to the north of where these explosions occurred,
and that's where you'll find the people who were really affected.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
And this situation has not been solved. You know, more
than what you know decades and decades later, this situation
remains unsolved. The one important thing to note here is
we are harping a lot on the activities of the
(54:08):
US government, but made no mistake. The USSR was conducting
similarly dangerous and devious nuclear experiments, and many other modern
nuclear powers have done the same thing. This was how
the radioactive sausage was made. Today, most of the residents
(54:31):
of Lamar County have, you know, maybe a passing understanding
of these two nuclear explosions, right at least from what
we understand, and younger citizens in Mississippi typically like if
you drove there today and you asked someone, say, I
(54:51):
don't know under eighteen about this stuff, they probably haven't
heard of Project Dribble. To your point, Matt, about the
distribution of cancer and cancer rates. Statistics now show that
cancer and heart disease the rates in Baxterville are comparable
to the rest of the state of Mississippi, which sadly
(55:14):
means that they are noticeably higher than the national average.
Some residents who are familiar with this story maintain that
the US government is still hiding some part of the truth,
whether that's the full extent of the radiation, the consequences
of the test, or the distribution of contamination associated medical conditions.
(55:38):
And you can't blame people for being distrustful in these
situations in general. But you know, thank you to weird
West Wyoming. Wish we have more of a happy ending
to this story. But the best thing we can say
is the story's not over yet.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
That's right, the story is not over. Thank yous. I
will get give you just a quick thing from the
Sun Herald. So back about ten years ago, little little
less than ten years ago, back in twenty ten, the
good old us of A government declared that this site,
the Tatum Salt Dome in this area was safe and
(56:18):
they transferred I believe it was about fifteen hundred, yeah,
one thy five hundred acres to the state, back to Mississippi,
and they were talking about, how, you know, the wood
out here, the trees, the timber, this is all really
good stuff we can use. It's about two million dollars
worth of twenty ten dollars of this stuff. And also
(56:42):
we could build recreational sites here. Let's do it. Hey,
we got all this land, let's make it happen. Everything's safe.
And the state Health Department in Mississippi in twenty thirteen,
they were still, you know, up until twenty thirteen, they
were still monitoring the whole site, looking at the water,
specifically for tritium, which is according to the Sun Herald
(57:05):
which is also, according to science, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.
And you know, they were saying, you know what, We're okay,
We're still going to monitor the groundwater. We're gonna look
at the surface water. But everything seems fine. Let's get
back to it out here in the old Tatum salt dome.
Here's another thing, just a quick note that they make
(57:26):
at the end of this article, which by the way,
is called nuclear tests in South Mississippi cost government millions
and claims. They note that several times the concept of
using a salt mine or a salt dome in this
way as a safe place to store nuclear waste, even
(57:47):
though we learned from this test that is not necessarily
a safe place to store nuclear waste because of the aquifers.
That is, I think one of the big takeaways nuclear
waste and ground aquifers are it's a very dangerous combination.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Yeah, it's true. And at this point we passed the
torch to you. What do you think about this? Do
you think that people are maybe being alarmist about the
connection between these older nuclear detonations and rates of cancer
or certain medical conditions in the area. And now do
you think that there's not enough attention put on this.
(58:28):
What do you think about other similar tests in the
world and are there any that you are aware of
in your neck of the global woods. We'd love to
hear from you. Let us know. You can find us
on the Internet. We're all over it. The Internet is
just like lousy with our presence, despite the fact that
we have seemingly angered the Tulpa god of Internet search.
(58:52):
You can find us on Facebook. You can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. We especially
like to wreck commends our Facebook community page. Here's where
it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (59:05):
Yes, you can hang out there with your fellow conspiracy realist,
talk about this episode, suggest others, post memes, whatever you
want to do. You can hang out with some of
the awesomest mods that exist on that old Facebook platform.
If you don't want to do that stuff, you can
always pick up your phone and give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. If
(59:29):
you leave a message, you can be certain that Ben
and I will both hear it, and Noel will will
hear of it if we deem it to be good
enough or elicit to it. No, I'm just choking Noel's
can listen to. If you don't want to do that stuff,
but you still want to reach out, you can always
reach us at our good old fashioned email.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist. We're returning to you with a tale
of with a little bit of synchronicity here. We recently
received an excellent piece of correspondence from our fellow conspiracy
realist that we'll call J and Jay. You asked us
about nuclear experiments in Mississippi. Most people have heard about
(00:23):
Three Mile Island, but what about other nuclear tests on
US soil. Now, as we were researching your question here,
we were struck by a moment of deja vu. Things
seemed very familiar, and lo and behold, we did an
entire episode about this debacle back in twenty twenty. Do
you guys remember this one salt domes.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
See, when the US government was doing a lot of
experiments blowing up nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs, atom bombs, all
those things, they tended to do it out in the
desert way in the west of the US. But the
thing we're going to talk about today is the only
place this area, this thing also known as the Salmon
(01:08):
Test Site. It's the only place east of the Mississippi
that the US government has ever detonated a nuclear device.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, and they did it on purpose, and they did
it without repercussions or consequence. It's a real conspiracy and Jay,
your timing is impeccable. We hope you, as well as
all our fellow listeners enjoy this. When so, without further ado,
let's drop it like drop it like a bomb. Oh
(01:35):
my god.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
A production of.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
iHeartRadio, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Noel is on Adventures.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And we'll be returning soon. They call me Ben. We're
joined as always with our super producer Paul mission control deck,
and most importantly, you are you. You are here and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt.
You know, I was having a bit of a uncharacteristic
(02:27):
wave of nostalgia over this past weekend and before we
went on air. It's weird because it seemed like once
again you were reading my mind when you talked about
our YouTube channel. It's strange when you think that, like
we used to do so many videos.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I know that it consumed our lives for several years there,
both before and after we got our own channel, which
by the way, is YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
If you haven't checked it out recently, you should go
check it out. And we'd actually like for you to
run a little test for us. Use your favorite internet
(03:09):
search engine, perhaps a Duck duck go perhaps Google, Yahoo, whatever,
and search for stuff they don't want you to know
YouTube and see what comes up. Because we found, at
least on our end, that Google seems to have forgotten
about our channel.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Which is you know, it's kind of flattering to imagine
that that channel, which has been inactive for a while,
at least up to now. It's kind of flattering to
imagine an entity as large as Google would care about that,
you know. To me, that indicates that we were doing
something right.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Now granted, well, we were either doing something right or
you know, they're categorizing us in the same way as
some of these other people who have been taken off
of YouTube and other platforms recently.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, you know, I predict that as things become more
unstable in the near to mid future, we're going to
see increasingly heavy handed use of censorship and surveillance powers.
But that is to tweak the old figure of speech
(04:23):
that's a bridge we'll burn when we get there, you
know what I mean. For now, I've got to say
I'm tremendously grateful for every one of our fellow listeners
who's been writing to us and telling us about all
these strange things that aren't making it into the news.
(04:43):
For years and years, you and I have always wanted
to cover the things that are just off the edge
of the mainstream map, the things that the regions of
the map where cartographers of old would draw some serpents
and say here be dragon, and things that are just
like outside the pool of the street light. And we've
(05:05):
only been able to do it this long because we
have help from the best part of the show, which
is specifically you. So what better way to put our
money where our mouth is then to explore an episode
topic brought to us by one of our fellow listeners.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
That is correct, one of you, who hopefully is listening
to this episode send us a little voice message and
it goes a little something like this.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
And Noel, this is word life in Miami.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
That's a question.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
And you don't think the thought that me joggle is
a tope on because it's found its own sentience that
it's there that there is something to it. Also, look
at potato salt.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
See yeah, okay, first thing here. Weird Wes, and we
did not do this on purpose. Ben and I did
not discuss this prior to recording this episode. You just
asked if Google was a tulpa of some sort, some
kind of thought form that had sentience that could act
on its own. We did not. I I don't know
(06:19):
if Ben, if you listened to that voicemail right before
this or something. I didn't do this on purpose. Now
I'm thinking the tulpa that is Google is trying to
bring us down from a YouTube standpoint.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
At least, I'm fascinated by the idea. For anyone who
is unfamiliar to tulpa is this concept that a life
form can exist without a physical body, a sentient thought
or collection of thoughts, or an algorithm. So you know,
in a way, a software program that reaches the level
(06:56):
of machine consciousness could be a tulpa. And you know,
the actation of algorithms that our Google could in some
ways be considered a tulpa. I've got a really weird
uh story. I'll have to I'll have to send you
off air. I've been writing a bunch of garbage. But
I've got a really weird story about a world in
(07:16):
which emotions shared between two or more people can become sentient,
and it's it's totally it's a Tulpa situation. I started
off trying to write it as a rom com, but
I'm terrible at rom com, so it became yet another
horror story. But you're right, You're right, Matt. It's a
fascinating concept, and it's a concept that we have, I believe,
(07:37):
explored in the past a little bit. But there was
one thing Wes said, one thing you said weird Wes
in Wyoming that I think Matt and I really like,
really tuned into because it was something that we had
never heard of, which is admittedly, I don't want to
(07:57):
say rare, but it's admittedly uncommon for us.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That is correct, that little thing, a little throwaway you
had at the end of the message that just said, hey,
look in look into the Tatum salt mines. Bye. Uh yeah, dude.
But Ben and I both and Noel actually we all
just went, wait, what is that? And we started using
Google the Tulpa now that we've established that to search, uh,
(08:24):
to search things about it, and my goodness, we found
an entire episode hidden deep within those salt mines.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
M and I like, I liked the waxing poetic there
at the end of that. It's true on multiple levels.
Today's episode is inspired by you, Weird Wes and Wyoming.
You contacted us about a strange, largely unknown event that
occurred right here in the good old us of A.
It's a bit of hidden history. It's a story the
(08:54):
Jedi won't tell you. It concerns one of the most powerful,
one of the dangerous forces ever wielded by human hands,
nuclear power. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Before we jump into this, I just want to point
out that Ben, you and nol got to do a
bit of a nuclear story while I was out recently,
and now Nola's out and you and I get to
do a nuclear story, and I'm liking this. That's true.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
That's true, and they're very They're very different as well, but.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Disturbing, absolutely. So one of the major things here as
we begin into the facts is just to talk about
nuclear power within the United States. And you know, I
would I would wager that there are several of you
out there listening who remember the protesting that occurred within
(09:49):
this country when nuclear power plants were beginning to be
constructed across the states in various places that were deemed
to be you know, good places for these things because
they were safer there, you know. But like a lot
of the other protests that have occurred for various things
in this country across time, they you know, appear to
(10:13):
have done very little and actually preventing things from happening,
and in this case, nuclear power plants from being built
and or nuclear tests from being run. And a lot
of this is because there are some tremendously beneficial things
that can come from something like nuclear power that you know,
isn't just your traditional burning of coal or other fossil
(10:36):
fuels or natural gases or something like that. And these benefits,
many times, let's say almost all the time, are going
to outweigh the dangers, at least if you're looking at
it from a monetary standpoint, from a clean energy standpoint
or a cleanish energy standpoint, and you know, the dollar signs,
(10:58):
really that's what speaks to the most benefits, right.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yes, make no mistake, the vast majority of large scale
actions that occur like this, especially in the energy industry,
are the results of a cost benefit calculation the same
way that we all individually use cost benefit logic in
our own daily lives. This just affects people in many,
(11:25):
many unforeseen ways. So the protesters failed. Let's just be honest,
the protesters failed. According to the World Nuclear Association, as
of now twenty twenty, the United States is the world's
largest producer of nuclear power a single country out of
the one hundred and ninety three ish countries in the world.
(11:49):
It produces more than thirty percent of all of the
nuclear generated electricity on the planet, full stop. And this
is the result of a concerted effort that goes across
both sides of the political divide in the US. Multiple
companies are on board with it, even if they compete
with each other. Government policy changes since about the late
(12:13):
nineteen nineties paved the way for a significant rise in
nuclear capacity, and as of now, Uncle Sam officially has
ninety eight nuclear power centers. They're across thirty states, and
they're operated by a group of around thirty maybe more
(12:34):
different power companies.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
And just like Ben You and Noel discovered when covering
the Santa Susanna experiment recently that occurred out in California,
where some of this nuclear power was being generated and
tested to see if there are new ways to generate
the power, and something went wrong. We have to remember
that these things, if something does go wrong, the consequences
(12:58):
are massive. Right. So it's that's when you're getting back
into that cost benefit analysis. A nuclear power can be terrifying.
There's we're going to look right here at words from
an author Benjamin k Sova cool He wrote a Critical
Evaluation of Nuclear power and Renewable Electricity in Asia. It
(13:20):
was written in twenty ten. This guy says that there
have been at least fifty six nuclear reactor accidents within
the United States. That seems like more than I've heard of, right,
So you know what he's saying is that there are
there's a large scale here in what could be called
(13:43):
a nuclear accident, right because the definition it covers a
wide range of things that could go wrong and that
have go wrong. But there are some commonalities here with
all fifty six of these that Benjamin is pointing to.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, the these fifty six accidents, again, that's
a huge number.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
By the way, these.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Fifty accidents, fifty six accidents all have two things in common.
They either resulted in an immediate loss of human life,
and the media is important there we'll see why, or
they cause more than fifty thousand dollars US worth of
property damage. That last part's very interesting to me because
fifty thousand dollars is far more than the average US
(14:30):
resident is going to have on hand right just to
pull out and use. But it's also a cartoonishly low
threshold when we consider the overall cost of specialized nuclear equipment,
particularly because that specialized equipment is inevitably going to be
some of the first stuff damaged when things go south.
(14:53):
And you know, again you should be weirded out by
that how high that number is of proven nuclear incidents
in the US nuclear meltdowns, disasters, malfunctions. But there's one
you're definitely familiar with. It's one that Nol and I
mentioned in our previous episode, and that is Three Mile Island.
(15:19):
Three Mile Island, for a quick recap, was a partial
core meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear plant on
March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine. And it, you know,
it's safe to say it exceeded that fifty thousand dollars threshold.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, the cleanup costs alone ranged somewhere within the billion dollars,
like as in Doctor Evil one billion dollars and an
estimated total of two point four billion dollars in property
damage that was done because as a result of this accident,
and you know, over the years, in various forms of reporting,
(15:58):
you're going to hear all kinds of different claims about
the health effects, both short term and long term of
this disaster, but officially, a lot of experts note that
the health effects are of a very low level, like
as in, you know, not much bad really happened on
a human level because of Three Mile Island. Guys, we're
going to reassure you, just to let you know everything's okay,
(16:20):
You're gonna be okay, your family's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Not everyone agrees, of course, because you know, even as
recently as nineteen seventy nine, there there was a lot
of debate about the possible long term ramifications of these
sorts of disasters, you know, or the possible long term
consequences to the life forms in their vicinity. Again officially, right,
(16:48):
this is all officially, and that's the problem with nuclear
reporting in general. Right. We threw out a couple numbers,
just a few minutes ago. But if you remember only
one of those numbers, remember this, when fifty six incidents,
more than fifty times in this country, nuclear power almost
(17:09):
or did go disastrously wrong. And even today, there's stuff
the US does not want you to know when it
comes to nuclear power.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
And there's certainly stuff they don't want you to know
when it's turned from generating nuclear power to detonating nuclear
weapons within the United States. What could go wrong if
we did that.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
We'll find out after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. So here's the issue with nuclear technology.
One of the many issues nuclear technology is dual use.
We've talked about this before. It's one of the great
(17:53):
dilemmas in geopolitics. Please don't fall asleep just because we
said cheopology. Essentially, the same stuff you have to do
to create nuclear power is the same stuff you have
to do to make nuclear weapons. Not very many efficient
ways to tell the difference between a country's aim here,
(18:14):
because there's not really a difference in what you need
to do and what you need to have.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It's just how long you keep those centrifuges running, right, Really,
what it is, That's what it amounts to right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
It's a matter of iteration. That's that's really the only difference.
Like imagine if you were this might be a little
bit too off the grid for some of us, but
imagine if you were churning butter and after you know,
x amount of churns or x amount of time spent churning,
you had butter. But if you kept going, you had
a bomb. That's basically the problem with nuclear energy and
(18:49):
nuclear enrichment. And so this left the US and many
other countries in a pickle because this meant that in theory,
any country with the ability to domestically create nuclear energy
would also domestically have the ability to make nuclear weapons,
and no one could stop them short of try short
(19:12):
of trusting them or like you know, doing a Reagan trust,
but verify watching how many times the centrifuge is spin.
It's a very messy situation. So they got into this
idea of monitoring testing. Testing nuclear weapons is one one
great way to tell right what a country's true aims are.
(19:33):
It's like building a battleship. You can't test a nuclear
weapon and say you're doing anything other than that. You
can't build a battleship and say you're doing anything other
than attempting to build a Blue Force navy and dominate
part of the ocean. So the US said, we need
to figure out how these other countries are testing, and
(19:55):
just for our own pr we're gonna say that we're
doing this. Think this is dual use. We're going to
say we're doing this just to make sure we know
what other countries are up to. It's defensive. Other countries
was widely suspected we're testing nuclear weapons underground, so that
you wouldn't from a satellite, for instance, you wouldn't see
(20:18):
a lot of atmospheric you know, atmospheric anomalies. You wouldn't
have people on the ground noting, you know, like a
mushroom cloud miles away or something. So they said, okay,
we're going to assume people are doing this underground because
that's what we would do well exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
And just to jump back in time slightly, we're talking
about the sixties and seventies here, but let's just jump
back in time to nineteen fifty four in March to
something called Castle Bravo. And just the reason why the
United States took on this. We're going to police the
nuclear testing or possible nuclear testing across the globe because
(20:59):
we conducted a test in the United States in a
place called the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. And
like I said in marsh First nineteen fifty four, it
was a massive explosion. I believe it was fifteen megatons
that was the yield essentially, And there was a lot
(21:21):
of fallout because of this nuclear test, like literally, and
I guess prly because it caused a lot of damage
and there was a lot of radiation that spread further
and in ways that we perhaps didn't expect. And it
was decided globally, at least between the powers of the
(21:43):
United States and the Soviet Union and several other places
that we would no longer test nuclear weapons, like we
were going to stop. That's why the US took on this.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Role, right right, they said, we are the we're the
perfect people to you know, keep everyone honest here. In
nineteen fifty four, also the same year that Edward Burnees
helped persuade the US to invade invade Guatemala and launch
(22:17):
a coup on behalf of private agricultural sector businesses. It
was a business coup, So shout out to you Brenees.
You monster. I'm still so impressed with the guy. Though
you have to be. You got to respect the hustle.
But anyhow, you're right. You're absolutely right, Matt. There's a
(22:37):
lot of precedents going into this, but unfortunately the US
was maybe not the best police officer. Maybe it was
just the least worst, you know, like that's what people
say about democracy, it's the least worst system humans have
come up with. But the US, like many other countries,
(22:57):
blurred the line between testing for nuclear power peaceful pursuits
and testing for nuclear weaponry. And that's why you'll notice
that we caveated some of our earlier statements by adding
the O word. Officially, it's because we have to. You see,
the US, aside from Bikinia Toll, it turns out the
US conducted multiple nuclear tests back in the day, some
(23:21):
of which are still probably secret. But weird Wes and
Wyoming hipped us to several tests that occurred in good
old Mississippi. And at the time, what's weird about this,
These tests were not even secret. The New York Times
ran an announcement about it that kind of aged like milk,
(23:42):
because it's very it's very like whoa, hey, look at this.
We're you know, nuclear power is not what could go
wrong and you can you can read the article in
full online. But this project. One of the first things
I noticed about this project met was that it had
just a terrible name.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Were talking about Project Dribble. I'm just drooling a little
bit thinking about it. But yeah, this was This was
one of several tests that fell under this thing called
the VELA Uniform. This was a mission that was essentially
(24:25):
attempting to detect nuclear blasts. It ran from nineteen sixty
three to nineteen seventy one, and it was Yeah, the
VELA mission really was to detect blasts that occurred in air,
blasts that occurred on land, like above the ground, underwater,
(24:46):
blasts that occurred even under the land, like in a
cave or something. It was trying to figure out any
of the ways that the United States Forces military in
this case, could detect whether or not a nuclear blast
had gone off anywhere in the world at any altitude.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, and this is similar to weather balloon detection programs,
you know, where we could maybe put something high enough
in the atmosphere that it would detect certain changes indicative
of a nuclear explosion, but figuring out what was going
on under our feet was almost more important because that's
where the really sneaky stuff can occur. Vella Uniform was
(25:27):
overall seven different tests that we know about, and not
all of those tests were nuclear, but not one, but
two of the nuclear detonations occurred just north of a
very small town in Lamar County, Mississippi, called Baxterville. Baxterville
is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, you know, it's kind of
(25:50):
like that. Around the time this occurred, Baxterville is what
Garth Brooks would have called a one stoplight town or
something like that. I'm forgetting my Garth Brooks, but you
know what I'm referencing right anyway, Anyway, friends in low
places aside, Baxterville was about twenty eight miles and is
(26:13):
twenty eight miles southwest of Hattiesburg, which is probably the
most recognizable town in the area. So the Powers that
Beach chose to detonate nuclear weapons in nearby Baxterville, where
again people did live, because there was a distinctive geological
(26:34):
feature there called the Tatum Salt Dome. I have to mention,
I don't know if it's because I was hungry when
I was listening to your voicemail initially, West, but I
could have sworn. I could have sworn you said potato
salt dome, and I just like started imagining all the
(26:55):
cool things you can do with potatoes. But no, this
is way less cool. This nuclear energy.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
No joke, man. I googled. The first thing I googled
was potato salt dome, and I didn't know. I'm not joking.
I thought that's what it was too. And that's nothing
against us, is I just I was maybe having a
hard time understanding it when I was listening on my
phone or something, and perhaps that was also a bit ravenous.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
We're a very carb oriented podcast, and know just like
as a crew, you.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Know for sure, I really quickly, I just want to
go back. So we're talking about the Tatum salt Dome.
We're going to get into that, but I want to
backtrack just for a moment to make sure people understand
that these seven tests that were talking about with Vala
Uniform were to test the sensor equipment that the Veala
(27:46):
project essentially was going to use to detect explosions elsewhere.
So in order to know that you can successfully detect
an underground nuclear explosion. Let's say, somewhere in the USS
are you need to first manufacture your own explosion to
see Hey, if they do one like this, can we
see it? Yep? Okay, So that was the point of this.
(28:08):
I am not sure if I explained that well enough
prior to saying it here.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I think you ye. I think it's important to like
highlight that because it's another instance of dual use, isn't it.
It would be naive to assume that there would not
be other data, right, other results that were monitored and
pulled from again, these detonations of nuclear weapons. You're right,
(28:39):
And they spend a lot of time thinking about this.
As a matter of fact, they spend a lot of
time thinking about how to set it up. But they
did not spend a lot of time on three big things,
and that's what this episode is about. First, they obviously
didn't spend a lot of time thinking through what would
actually happen when you detonated nuclear they called a nuclear device,
(29:04):
but when you detonate a nuclear bomb underground in an
occupied area. Second, they didn't think about the long term
consequences aftermath or effects. And third, they really phoned in
the names. I can't I can't emphasize that enough. Project Dribble.
The first test is called the Salmon Events, which sounds
(29:28):
like something your local park ranger gets excited about once
a year, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I think they were hungry too.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Man.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Well, we mentioned the Tail salt dome wide is important.
I just gonna put this out here quickly. One of
the major reasons when they're you know, they're imagining what
another country might do. When they were going to try
and test underground, they thought, well, if there was some
kind of salt dome or an underground assault deposit somewhere
(30:01):
on land, the authorities could put a bunch of water
into that salt deposit, essentially, you know, turn that solid
sodium into salt water, and create a cavity underground where
they could then place a bomb, explode it and do
some testing. Right. That was one of the major reasons
(30:21):
they chose this Tatum Salt mine or Tatum Salt dome.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't just because it was cool,
but it was because of the actual physical makeup of
the dome. So they announced this to their credit, unlike
some other US test on domestic populations. And here's what
they decided to do. On October twenty second, after warning
(30:49):
some residents in the area. About ten am nineteen sixty four,
the authorities detonated a five point three kiloton device eight
hundred twenty meters or twenty seven hundred feet underground. Real quick,
because I know we've thrown some words around here. Kill
A ton is one thousand tons, so this is like
(31:12):
thousand five thousand tons, and change a megaton, like Matt,
you had mentioned with Bikini A toll is one million tons,
so this is smaller than Bikini A toll. But again
it is in a It's an area where people were
not expecting to encounter radiation and nuclear disaster. So the
(31:35):
first thing that goes wrong when they detonate this at
ten a m Is that the explosion is much much
stronger than the residents had been told it would be.
The ground shook, A gigantic cloud of dust rises, the
thing you were hoping to avoid. Windows break, walls crack
(31:55):
fourteen miles away, Wells go bad, run dry, They clawed.
This favorite story, I know you probably have some two, Matt.
One of my favorite stories is there's a local fisherman
who watches in amazement as all the fish in this
pond jump out of the water at once.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Wow. Yeah, I can't imagine seeing that. Wow. Well, you
know another thing that I can't imagine is the way
a lot of the local residents described what they saw,
even when they were miles away from ground zero. They
this is I'm just gonna paraphrase this, and you can
go online and read a lot of first hand accounts
(32:35):
of this test. Salmon in particular, they noted that there
were ground ripples, like waves of the ground where it's
estimates now at this point, because a lot of this
was looking back, you know, twenty thirty forty fifty years
after the incident, but a lot of it they described
(32:57):
as you know, maybe three feet of let's say, now
imagine five inches of wave of that ground that you
can see moving essentially in a semicircular path towards you,
and actually moving the ground and rippling it. There were
some people who said they were standing on concrete, and
(33:18):
on the concrete you could feel a wave of earth
travel under your feet, and then they would They described
about ten to fifteen seconds of just quiet and nothing,
and then another ripple, and then another eleven seconds or so,
and then a third ripple of the ground that you
could actually watch like that sounds otherworldly to me.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Have you ever I remember we talked about this. Have
you ever been in an earthquake or experienced one?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
There have been several low, very very low level earthquakes
in Georgia that I have felt, and I didn't know
I was feeling it until I woke up the next
day and read that there was a low level earthquake.
But you know, I've been to California a few times
now in my life, and I've never experienced anything big
or in any other place.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
M Yeah, it's it's a it's an incredibly disorienting feeling,
and it's one of those things where all of a
sudden you recognize how powerless we as individuals can be.
When I was when I was living in Central America,
I looked like honestly, man, I looked like a woos
(34:31):
the first couple of times, you know, I was at
this family's this family's residence where you know, we're drinking
instant coffee. It's like eight thirty in the morning or something,
and then all of a sudden, the kitchen just moves,
and then it moves back, and some stuff I'm trying
(34:51):
not to curse here, but some stuff just falls off
the shelves, and the lady who's house it was, she
is She's like, I'm just gonna put up this spoon again,
and blah blah blah. And I think maybe I've done
some sort of drug that I can't remember, you know,
and that reality is just glitching. But I say that because,
(35:14):
you know, it is difficult to explain what an earthquake
feels like unless you experience it. There is no anchor,
there is nothing that you can hold because the world
is quaking, and this is what these people experience, right,
So of course they're scared, especially because they thought they
(35:35):
had done everything right. They had complied with the orders
of the federal government. They had evacuated if they were
told to evacuate, and they still, as we would say today,
got their stuff rocked, you know. And the thing is that, Okay,
(35:56):
this is crazy, right, No one dies immediately, and thank
your lucky stars for that, right, Federal agents residents alike.
Several weeks after the blast, the government has hired workers
to drill back into the hole in the ground left by.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
This explosion in the Tatum saltom in the.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Tatum salt them to release radioactive gas that's trapped inside. Now,
the officials were using what we would describe as cutting
edge technology for the time. They had scrubbers that were
set up, and a scrubber basically would decontaminate the radioactive gas.
But soon they realized that wasn't the real problem. They
(36:40):
would have to do something about the radioactive liquid waste
from all the drilling operations. Just like in Lord of
the Rings, they delved too deep and their bow rog
was very dangerous waste radiation. So they said, Okay, you
know what we're going to do. We're going to dig
a We're gonna dig a hole. We're just we're gonna
(37:03):
dig some more holes, and we're gonna dig one really
deep hole two four hundred feet into the earth right
by the salt dome. And then someone in the room
is like, hey, isn't there a groundwater aquifer there? And
they're like, come, Craig, I need you to be a team player.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
It's fine. It's also who cares if it's an aqua
for everything will be fine. There's no problem with irradiating
ground water. Yeah, so we're still in nineteen sixty five
here remember, and between March and July of that year,
(37:45):
there was a ton of radioactive liquid waste that was
disposed of into this well where an underground aquifer was.
We're talking about three hundred and thirty eight thousand gallons
of radioactive waste that was just see you later, down
into the well, into the water. And that wasn't it either.
(38:08):
That's not where the story stops. It wasn't just one
nuclear test underground at this location. The government went right
back through and dropped another bomb into that hole that
they created with the first test. And we'll tell you
all about that when we returned from a word from
our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
That's right. They must have had a different person writing
the names by this point. A few years later, they
conduct a second test, as you said, Matt, during what
was called the Sterling Events. This happened on December third,
nineteen sixty six. Basically, they said, hey, we got this
great hole from earlier, let's keep using it. This was
(38:57):
a very like pro hole in the ground kind of institution.
And it made sense. I don't mean to bust their
chops too hard, it made sense. So they dropped a
three hundred and eighty ton device into the cavity that
was left behind by the previous explosion. In the Salmon event,
the Department of Defense and associated agencies required residents for
(39:22):
these tests within one and a half miles of the
explosion point to leave their homes while the events were occurring.
They also said, hey, you know, these detonations might mess
up your house a little bit. They might damage some
buildings and stuff. And it did, and it definitely did.
(39:46):
They also proactively said, you know, we are going to
we're going to get in front of this, as they
say in corporate America or in the realm of politics,
and we're going to go ahead and just let you
know whatever happens, We're going to give you a five grand.
Just tell us what happened. We'll give you five grand.
Everybody's happy. It didn't stop there. Later, they would go
(40:11):
on to conduct more experiments with non nuclear explosives during
a project called Miracle Play, which sounds like something for
you know, your Nintendo switch.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, yeah, it does. Ben Really quickly, let's get into
the reason why they tested secondary much much smaller device
in that same place where they caused the first explosion.
Just quickly, just go over this. So the first time
they detonated a nuke in the Tatum Salt Dome. It
(40:45):
essentially created a massive, let's say, spherical hole in the ground,
not necessarily holding and get into like a cavern, like
a cave basically underneath the ground. And when once they
had created that with the first explosion, the first test
during Salmon, they like I said, like we said, they
(41:07):
drilled a hole into this cavity. They dropped a much
smaller bomb and what did we say, It was three
hundred and eighty ton, Yeah, three hundred and eighty ton device,
much smaller, and they dropped that down there and it
exploded it to test whether or not there would be
this dampening effect that the you know, the scientists and
(41:32):
personnel that were testing with the veal val uniform. They
wanted to see if a country could do that could
dampen the essentially shock waves of a nuclear explosion by
having a hole in the ground, a large cavernous hole
in the ground, rather than just dipping it into the
ground and exploding it. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah, I mean, there's there is valuable science here, you
know what I mean. I think that's one of the
biggest points about this. But the problem is everything we've described.
Even with the safety measures that they took, it's still
incredibly dangerous. People were living in the area, right, And
(42:14):
you'll be happy slash roll your eyes and groaning to
learn that Uncle Sam did compensate the residents of Baxterville
and Hattiesburg. Even they gave adults ten dollars and they
gave children five bucks. The shockwave of this explosion literally
(42:35):
lifted the ground four inches. A lot of buildings only
have minimal damage. That's frankly amazing. But what is not
amazing and what is you know, perhaps the most disappointing
and strange part of this story be the effects and
the aftermath, which they clearly did not plan for.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Agreed, I would say, we're talking nineteen sixty four dollars,
so ten bucks, five bucks not too shabby.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
That's very fair of you.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yes, I'd be facetious here. No, you're right, though, Ben,
the aftermath and effects of these tests is not something
laugh at. I apologize again. We're in one of those
situations where you're trying to be a little light just
because this stuff is. It's tough on individual people and families.
So you know, the big thing here is that the
(43:28):
United States government appears to not have been fully aware
of the risks that were posed by contaminating with radiation
things like groundwater and just you know, a general area
where flora and fauna are going to be affected by
this radiation. They were, however, fully aware of the horrific
consequences of dropping the bomb on let's say, a city
(43:51):
and suburban area when you're looking at the attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this case, the lodge at least
was that this would this would not have much of
an effect because you know, you're exploding this thing underground,
because the radioactive material is going to be stuck under there.
(44:12):
It's not going to be able to escape and get
into the air and affect things in the way that
we you know, generally had been testing nukes in the past,
and it would you know, over time, if you didn't
disturb the area, and especially like essentially the cave that
was created because of this explosion, if you didn't disturb that,
then the stuff would decay naturally, slowly, but naturally, and
(44:36):
you wouldn't have to worry too.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Much, right, This was not the case. Follow up drilling
operations that allowed scientists to collect more information about this
and to dispose of the devices actually ended up contaminating
the site. So it wasn't so much the initial testing
(44:59):
as it was the later attempts to leverage info from
the testing or to get a hold of these devices
created hazardous radioactive waste. You know, all like imagine that
green gunk you see in episodes of The Simpsons or
Captain Planet. It made that stuff, and that stuff is very,
very bad. Humans are not built to be around it.
(45:21):
Decades after the first test, the Department of Energy is
still picking up radiation in the ground and surprise in
the aquifers, and that is due to the problem with
the cleanup. Employees who worked on these clean up missions
said that it was lax at best. Some a couple
(45:41):
of poison particular, maintained that they were allied to when
they asked medical professionals to explain things like strange burns
they found or differing medical conditions. The Department of Energy
maintained that the radiation levels they did find, even the
ones that persisted for decades, were no threat to the
(46:03):
health of residents. And to be fair, we know that
the modern human being, especially in the West, is exposed
to low levels of radiation from every including everything from
like maybe an X ray scan to I kid you
not bananas. Bananas have low level radiation. So they were
(46:26):
still oh yeah, I'm flying in a plane. Oh man,
remember when we used to do that. I would still
trade it all. I was supposed to go to Easter
Island this summer. Did I tell you that? No, it
was a secret plan. I didn't want to tell you
guys until I could text you a picture. But uh yeah.
But being a US resident traveling internationally is going to
(46:47):
be harry for a while. Even if even if you
live in the US and you have the ability to
go somewhere, the other country might not necessarily want to
let you in now more than ever, But we'll anyway.
That doesn't matter. The point that matters here is that
there are a lot of things that expose you to
low level radiation. You run into it all the time,
(47:09):
and the Department of Energy was saying, well, this is
kind of the same thing. It's not going to be dangerous.
But in the nineteen nineties, residents of the area Baxterville, Hattiesburg,
and workers from Project Dribble, they started to say, you know,
(47:29):
a lot of our friends, coworkers and loved ones from
this time period are dying, and they're dying of cancer.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, about twenty five thirty years later, that's when I
guess you begin to notice that that radiation, those rads
you took back in the day are starting to show
themselves because there are long term effects there. And you know,
the local residents ended up creating a list of I
believe it was forty four people who had either died
(48:00):
of cancer or who had developed cancer.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
And you know.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
That's in the large scheme of things, that's a relatively
low number, but in a small town, forty four people
in an immediate area who had you know, gotten cancer
or died of cancer is a lot. And they demanded
that the state and federal government figure out if any
of these conditions were in any way linked to the
(48:26):
salt dome tests that were done back in the sixties.
And you know, we're talking in nineteen nineties. It moved
slowly trying to get any kind of movement within the
legal system, within you know, the people who could actually
run the testing, because there was, by the way, there
was a lot of long term testing of the flora
(48:48):
and fauna in the immediate area that was going on.
But you know who's to I couldn't find much on
the actual testing of the residents that was going on
up until they started raising a flag and saying, hey,
we're we're fauna too, right.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
I mean, that's a very very salient point.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
By the way, I forgot to mention this, the a
lot of residents in this area used wells that they had,
you know, doug or had been there existing on their
properties prior to these events. Almost all, if not everyone,
of the wells in the surrounding area were producing undrinkable
water or no water at all, water that was not
(49:33):
potable for them to drink, so they had to find
alternative means to get water. There. You can read a
lot more about this in a couple of places online.
I would recommend the Atomic Heritage site atomic heritage dot org.
And there's also a bunch of local reporting that's happened
over the you know, let's say, from about twenty ten
(49:54):
and onward. There have been several stories about this. Sorry,
I just want to put that there.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, I would recommend and I was reading
into work by NOLA dot com, by the Sun Herald.
There's actually there's a really good Atlas Obscura article on
this that gives a nice overview, but you're right without
admitting liability for some stuff. Around two thousand, the government
(50:25):
built a water pipeline to help residents of the Tatum
Salt Dome get drinking water that came from an area
other than the test site. And their idea was, you know,
we're not officially saying that we really screwed the pooch
on this, but we want you guys to feel better,
(50:46):
So this is sort of this is for you. Fast
forward twenty fifteen, the Department of Labor has paid nearly
five point five million dollars US two people who are
suffering medical problems after working at the Salmon nuclear explosion
site against southwest of Hattiesburg, about twenty eight miles. So
(51:07):
if you combine that with the money that was paid
to workers who lived in Mississippi but didn't necessarily work
on the site, the total bill is sixteen point eight
million dollars. Oddly enough, that's the price tag for a
total of fifty six claims. Odd coincidence, there's that number
(51:27):
again For the numerologists in the crowd. Those fifty six
claims came from the Salmon site, which today we usually
call the Tatum Salt Dome, and today as we record
this officially, Tatum Salt Dome is the location of the
only known nuclear weapons test aka detonation to ever be
(51:48):
performed in the eastern United States.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
That's right. A lot of it was done out in Nevada, Nevada, however,
you want to say it at the test sites out there,
and a couple of other places, or just you know,
outside of the United States, on atolls and other places
underneath the water and in the air, in various places.
It's pretty weird to think about. And it's so odd
(52:12):
again that Ben and I were unaware of this until
Weird West came along and was like, hey, guys, look
at this and then left. It's really it's really frustrating
to know that the government did pay out that money
to fifty six people, when to my mind, you think
(52:34):
about the residents that have been living there, the families
that have been growing up there near this place, it
feels like there's been a larger effect maybe than just
the workers who were there on site who got dosed
or radiation, because you know it's highly likely that they didn't.
That's probably one of the major reasons that the money
was actually paid out. But just thinking about the number
(52:56):
of people that ended up drinking water, children that ended
up drinking water around there, it feels like it feels
like there would be more casualties. But maybe I'm wrong.
I would say there are a couple of places online
where you can read first hand accounts of people who
were there, and there's one gentleman who refers a couple
(53:19):
of times to the number of people with cancer, and
he says, I believe the quote is something along the
lines of if you look north essentially of the Tatum
Salt Dome, that's where there are a ton of people
getting cancer. And that was a I believe it was
a twenty fourteen interview with this gentleman, but he was
(53:40):
specifically saying, look to the north of where these explosions occurred,
and that's where you'll find the people who were really affected.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
And this situation has not been solved. You know, more
than what you know decades and decades later, this situation
remains unsolved. The one important thing to note here is
we are harping a lot on the activities of the
(54:08):
US government, but made no mistake. The USSR was conducting
similarly dangerous and devious nuclear experiments, and many other modern
nuclear powers have done the same thing. This was how
the radioactive sausage was made. Today, most of the residents
(54:31):
of Lamar County have, you know, maybe a passing understanding
of these two nuclear explosions, right at least from what
we understand, and younger citizens in Mississippi typically like if
you drove there today and you asked someone, say, I
(54:51):
don't know under eighteen about this stuff, they probably haven't
heard of Project Dribble. To your point, Matt, about the
distribution of cancer and cancer rates. Statistics now show that
cancer and heart disease the rates in Baxterville are comparable
to the rest of the state of Mississippi, which sadly
(55:14):
means that they are noticeably higher than the national average.
Some residents who are familiar with this story maintain that
the US government is still hiding some part of the truth,
whether that's the full extent of the radiation, the consequences
of the test, or the distribution of contamination associated medical conditions.
(55:38):
And you can't blame people for being distrustful in these
situations in general. But you know, thank you to weird
West Wyoming. Wish we have more of a happy ending
to this story. But the best thing we can say
is the story's not over yet.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
That's right, the story is not over. Thank yous. I
will get give you just a quick thing from the
Sun Herald. So back about ten years ago, little little
less than ten years ago, back in twenty ten, the
good old us of A government declared that this site,
the Tatum Salt Dome in this area was safe and
(56:18):
they transferred I believe it was about fifteen hundred, yeah,
one thy five hundred acres to the state, back to Mississippi,
and they were talking about, how, you know, the wood
out here, the trees, the timber, this is all really
good stuff we can use. It's about two million dollars
worth of twenty ten dollars of this stuff. And also
(56:42):
we could build recreational sites here. Let's do it. Hey,
we got all this land, let's make it happen. Everything's safe.
And the state Health Department in Mississippi in twenty thirteen,
they were still, you know, up until twenty thirteen, they
were still monitoring the whole site, looking at the water,
specifically for tritium, which is according to the Sun Herald
(57:05):
which is also, according to science, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.
And you know, they were saying, you know what, We're okay,
We're still going to monitor the groundwater. We're gonna look
at the surface water. But everything seems fine. Let's get
back to it out here in the old Tatum salt dome.
Here's another thing, just a quick note that they make
(57:26):
at the end of this article, which by the way,
is called nuclear tests in South Mississippi cost government millions
and claims. They note that several times the concept of
using a salt mine or a salt dome in this
way as a safe place to store nuclear waste, even
(57:47):
though we learned from this test that is not necessarily
a safe place to store nuclear waste because of the aquifers.
That is, I think one of the big takeaways nuclear
waste and ground aquifers are it's a very dangerous combination.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Yeah, it's true. And at this point we passed the
torch to you. What do you think about this? Do
you think that people are maybe being alarmist about the
connection between these older nuclear detonations and rates of cancer
or certain medical conditions in the area. And now do
you think that there's not enough attention put on this.
(58:28):
What do you think about other similar tests in the
world and are there any that you are aware of
in your neck of the global woods. We'd love to
hear from you. Let us know. You can find us
on the Internet. We're all over it. The Internet is
just like lousy with our presence, despite the fact that
we have seemingly angered the Tulpa god of Internet search.
(58:52):
You can find us on Facebook. You can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. We especially
like to wreck commends our Facebook community page. Here's where
it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (59:05):
Yes, you can hang out there with your fellow conspiracy realist,
talk about this episode, suggest others, post memes, whatever you
want to do. You can hang out with some of
the awesomest mods that exist on that old Facebook platform.
If you don't want to do that stuff, you can
always pick up your phone and give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. If
(59:29):
you leave a message, you can be certain that Ben
and I will both hear it, and Noel will will
hear of it if we deem it to be good
enough or elicit to it. No, I'm just choking Noel's
can listen to. If you don't want to do that stuff,
but you still want to reach out, you can always
reach us at our good old fashioned email.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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