May 28, 2024 • 52 mins
On November 11, 2018, seismologists began puzzling over a weird low-frequency rumble that rang through the entire planet. The wave wasn’t connected to any known events, and scientists remain mystified by the mysterious phenomenon. Join the guys as the explore the theories behind the world’s weirdest earthquake.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. I feel the earth move under my feet.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's a banger, dude. You can't remember when like they
made movies where like natural disasters were the big bad guy.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Yeah, like Twister.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Oh boy, there is I was just exactly what I
was thinking, Matt.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
This one's called twisters plural. Yeah, there's Inferno. Now there's
two where the bad guys a fire.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, the towering one, right, isn't that right? Towering fron
I mean maybe there was a there's probably another one
in the two thousands that was just Inferno.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
There's I believe there's one.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Where like the moon is the bad guy because it's
gonna hit the earth moonshot.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm thinking the one with Purece Brosnan, that Inferno.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm certain it's just the Towering. Inferno is a seventies movie,
so I'm certain that just they just dropped the Towering
because that sounds dated and put Pierce Brosen in it
because he was James Bond. That'll probably sell tickets. But
while that may be sort of a dated format, you know,
for for tent pole Hollywood action movies, seismic activity is
no oak, y'all.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
No, if you've ever been in an earthquake. You know,
I've never been in a big one, just ten blowers.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Now, neither of I've really I've not been in. I've
only heard sound from it or like you know, I
saw reports on the news, but I've never actually felt
a tremor in my life.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, guys, today's episode may not even be about a tremor.
This is one of the weirdest events that I can recall.
We talked about it. This is an earthquake type event
that was released as a perfect clean sin wave that
happened underneath the ocean. But earthquakes don't do that, So
(01:37):
what the heck was down there?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
November eleventh, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Cuthulu wakes, Oh man, you have me at sine wave?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Matt, Oh, I know I would.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
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 3 (02:16):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Dol They call me Ben. We are joined with our
guest super producer, Casey the quake Pegram, So everybody say
hello to him. And most importantly, you are you, you
are here that makes this stuff. They don't want you
to know. A groundbreaking episode in a number of ways. Oh,
earth shattering perhaps. Yeah, it's our first it's our first
(02:40):
time getting back together after the in the new year,
after the relatively arbitrary end of December twenty eighteen. I mean,
just it's just me going out of my way to
be disrespectful to the Gregorian calendar system, Yeah, which is
a man made thing.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
It is that we've discussed on the show.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
They say it's the anniversary of our obsession with arbitrary time.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I think Hallmark's going to put some cards out that
just say that, right.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
But yeah, you can almost breathe now by the way.
I went out outside like last night, the night before,
and you just can not breathe because of all the
leftover smoke and stuff that's in the air.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And it's weird because overnight everything outside looks like Blade Runner. Now, yes,
this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Just switched really like that meme that was making the
rounds in December reminding everyone to dress and Blade Runner
appropriate clothing. H So unlike Blade Runner and unlike the
Gregorian calendar. Earthquakes like that segue are a natural phenomenon.
We didn't make those up. They've just been around. It's
kind of like, I don't know if we talked about
(03:51):
it on the show before, but do you ever No,
I know you hate birds, but I walk around sometimes
these our modern days and think, you know, have we
as humans really figured out things of significance. I mean, sure,
we can put stuff into space, but birds can still
(04:13):
fly around and shut on anyone whenever they want to,
because you only have an umbrella if it's raining, and
we also can't do much about that. Earthquakes are kind
of like that. They're kind of like a Mother Nature's
way of reminding you that you can get shot upon
at any given point, you know, unless you're on the
moon or something. But earthquakes have been around. They've been
(04:38):
terrorizing humanity since before the dawn of recorded history.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And it comes about because the planet appears to be
a stable surface. We even have cliches about it, figures
of speech, like a rock, right, the old Chevy campaign, Oh,
like a rock.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
And the thing is that this is misleading because the planet,
as I'm sure many of us know, is not a
stable surface, not remotely. It may look like it's a
stable surface, kind of the way that everyone looks like
they might be cool and chill on the first date.
But then once you get into the layers, you see
this is a complex network of interacting catastrophic traumatic forces.
(05:21):
Am I saying that? Am I comparing dates to earthquakes? Maybe?
I don't know. Twenty nineteen, we're all figuring it out together.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I certainly we both have the potential for some bumping
and grinding.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Hey, there we go, good save. And it's weird when
you think about how strange and upsetting these things have been.
Have you guys ever been in an earthquake? Do we
talk about this on the air before?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well, it was apparently one that everyone felt here at Atlanta.
The other a couple weeks ago, but I slept right
through it.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, it was in the night.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
My kid woke up and told me she had a
dream about an earthquake, which is kind of weird. No way,
So maybe she made it happen with her dream mind.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Super EmPATH over there. I've never been in one, but
I was in San Francisco recently and we went over
the Bay Bridge, and on the radio, as we're going
over this huge bridge, they're discussing how it was the
anniversary it was in October of this massive earthquake in
nineteen eighty nine. I think that actually flattened part of
that bridge, like while people were driving underneath it. It
(06:18):
was a really really horrifying to think about.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, I've never been in a major earthquake, which I guess,
I guess, go me, but it's a but I have been.
When I was living abroad, earthquakes were more common than
they are here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I was freaked out.
I was just eating breakfast with a host family and
(06:42):
then everything just sort of jiggles. Yeah, that I'm shaking
the table. Everyone everything jiggles just for a little bit.
Nobody else loses skips a beat, right, really loses a step.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, it was the structure really sound that you were in.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
No, it was just a small one. It was just
a little, well, little shiver, little Central American shiver in
the soil. And then they explained to me that that
wasn't anything to get excited about. That probably wouldn't even
make a decent landslide. And the idea that was rated
is a decent landslide. It's also strange but these things
have been around, and we'll talk about how people win
(07:19):
the dark lottery that is an earthquake. But this might
surprise some of us to learn that although these things
have been around forever or much longer than people, we
as a species didn't really start understanding what causes them
until maybe like maybe a century ago we started. And
it's true, way back in the thirteen hundreds and other
(07:41):
periods of time, there were inventors who had figured out
ways to detect earthquakes right, detect seismic disturbance, but we
didn't really understand why it happened, much less were we
capable of developing technology to measure the magnitudeness signif way,
and today's episode is about the latest unexplained seismic event
(08:06):
because spoiler alert, we still don't know near as much
as we thought we knew about earthquakes, and Matt, this
is something that you hipped us to off the air. Recently,
there was a global wave of earthquakes that somehow rang
the earth like a bell? Right, what was even mean?
I mean, I guess first things first, if we want
(08:26):
to figure out what happened recently, we have to understand
what an earthquake is. And luckily we are affiliated with
a website called how Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, and that writes articles about these kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
We're also remembering a lot of this from our physical
science classes.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
That's right, That's right, Noel is going off solely physical
science from what is that Houghton Mithlin is.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
That the they put out the textbooks.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I'm pretty sure it may have been a different company,
but I know they did a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
It rings true, just like the Earth was not long ago.
So technically, an earthquake is just that it's a vibration
that travels through the Earth's Earth's crust, that that thing
that we walk around on every day and pretend like
it's completely stable and everything's okay. And like we've kind
of discussed, earthquakes can be caused by all kinds of
(09:20):
different things, everything from if a meteor happens to travel,
you know, into the Earth's atmosphere and then impact with
the Earth's crust, you will get a nice earthquake that
will also end a lot of lives, probably if not
in the entire human species. They can also be caused
by volcanic eruptions that are occurring beneath the crust and
sometimes as a part of the crust. And it can
(09:41):
also sometimes be made by man made things, you know,
mind collapses, underground nuclear tests, which is a topic that
we've discussed before. There's a lot of technology trying to
get those fracking and fracking that's the big one. Even
saying it sounds like it's a bad thing. Oh but
(10:02):
here's the thing. Most naturally occurring earthquakes are caused by this, uh,
the Earth's crust itself, when there are these moving pieces
of the Earth's crust called tectonic plates. Now there's really
getting back to that physical science class.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I confirmed it. Tote Mifflin did make physical science books
so good they're still in print, new editions every year.
It's a racket. It's beautiful, it's not, it's it's awful.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Well, there's Macmillan's huge, that's true.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
McMillan's also big. But don't you remember like the whole idea,
like the textbook racket, how it's like, you know, you
have to buy it from this exact monopoly on them.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Oh no, that's a whole episode probably that we should do.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I think you're right.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
So plates, so plates, Yeah, let's let's just keep going.
Scientists didn't come up with any real solid theory that
explained exactly what an earthquake was or what caused it
until the mid nineteen sixties, and they call this theory
plate tectonics. There you go.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So here's the gist. Earth has a crust, which you
mentioned earlier, Matt, and people who want to sound authoritative
or accurate, we'll call it the lithosphere. You hear it,
smart people, usually because they're seismologists, you know what I mean,
And they probably think crust is for cake. I don't
know if you're a seismologist. Right in, this crust is
(11:20):
not a single seamless shell. Instead, it is composed of
layers of plates, and these things every day are sort
of bumping into each other while they float on this
lubricant layer called the esthenosphere. And all the hijinks seismically speaking,
in the world on the planet happens at the boundaries
(11:42):
of these plates. Sort of the way, since I'm just
doing terrible comparisons for twenty nineteen, apparently, is sort of
the way that a lot of the really crazy stuff
that happens in many countries happens at the border towns,
you know what I mean. That's and these high jinks
take a number of forms, so we don't want to
get to into the weeds here, but just so you
(12:03):
have the gist first, there's something called the divergent plate boundary.
Plates might move apart, allowing magma ok molten rock to
reach the surface as lava, and this stuff, once it
reaches the surface, cools and adds to the crust, essentially
functioning the way that kulk functions, filling in the space
between tiles. If you've ever you know, if you've ever
(12:26):
laid tiles somewhere.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yes, And then there are convergent plate boundaries, which is
pretty much the exact opposite of that, where at the
boundary of two plates they are kind of squishing together,
and that's when you can get mountains formed where a
lot of volcanic activity occurs. That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
It's literally pushing up volcanoes too, right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And also sometimes pushing down like it's kind of weird.
They just they've you can imagine all the different things
that two very strong and heavy things do when they
push against.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Each other very insistent forces. Yeah, they can subduct and
that creates mountains for our purposes today. The next category
is the most important. It's where two plates sort of
slide by one another, like two ships in the night
or two trucks on an interstate, just sideswiping each other.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They very slowly, and that is what is known as
a transform boundary, where energy builds up in the region
between the two plates, and that forms a fault line
or a break in the earth crust where blocks of
crust are moving in different directions. And I'm already picturing
the beautifully color coded image from that physical science book
(13:39):
where it has big fat arrows going in either direction
and the plate pieces, one in purple and one in
like red, kind of overlapping each other and like grinding
against each other in different directions, and that's what creates.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That fault in a weird way. This one is the
scariest to me for some reason, and I don't know why.
I think it should be the one where the plates
are actually moving away from each other, because that's in
my head, when you get the lava coming out, when
you get the whole opening up with a fissure or something.
But these two, if you've ever seen the images in
I believe it was in Japan during the last major
(14:13):
tsunami that occurred there where you can actually see parts
of the street that are doing this movement, like moving
in parallel next to each other, that for some reason
terrifies me.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Yeah, we're talking about fault lines, right, and the majority
of earthquakes, not all, but the majority happen along these
transform boundary fault lines. And there are some there are
different types of fault lines, there are different types of
seismic waves. But again, this is just the gist. This
(14:44):
is just what we need to know. That's it's how
an earthquake works. So how many quakes are we talking?
This is where it starts to get pretty interesting, because
the US Geological Survey estimates that there are as many
as one point three million quakes with a magnitude greater
than two point zero on the Richter scale. That's the
(15:05):
threshold at which humans can feel the vibrations. Stuff less
than that might really freak out your household pet. Yeah,
you know what I mean. But this two point zero
is where you get to the legit people, spider sense
goes off for it.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
And there are one point three million of them.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Which is pretty nuts, right, Yeah, I guess because we
only hear about the real terrible ones on the news
that we have a lot of these pass without ever,
you know, registering on our radar, so to speak. So
in general, the majority of earthquakes are not going to
be particularly powerful. They're also not going to last for
(15:45):
very long at all, even the catastrophic ones. Strong ground
shaking during a moderate or large earthquake lasts maybe thirty seconds,
ten to thirty seconds. And then after that, after you
you know, you shake up one part of the of
the earth, other parts around it start to shake as well.
(16:05):
So then you can have timblers, and you can have
aftershocks and things like that. And most of these things,
these aftershocks can happen for like weeks or months later,
but you probably still won't notice them, because again, most
earthquakes are not very powerful, and many, many, many of
them occur in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I always thought the word timbler sounded like a cute,
like diminutive earthquake, but apparently they can be quite catastrophic
as well.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
What is it that is true?
Speaker 4 (16:30):
A timbler?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Timbler?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, or timble?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
It sounds like a timble.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
You know, it sounds like an app It just sounds cute, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
But no, it's a big deal. And like you said, Ben,
it's a chain reaction and it all depends on the
magnitude of the first one. I guess as to how
bad the aftershock and the other things that it causes
later will be.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, and we are enormously fortunate too that most earthquakes
are so very small, and it's this brutal lottery. You
know that in case of the rare quake capable of
touching up population center, it can destroy the city in minutes,
just like you were talking about Matt with the with
the road moving in different directions, things that should be
(17:10):
solid appearing fluid for even a moment's time. You know,
these things can wreak enormous amounts of property damage and
more importantly, they can claim thousands of lives. And we
have some statistics about that as well.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
I think, oh yeah, over the last decade alone, earthquakes
and then the tsunamis avalanches landslides that follow because of
these earthquakes, they've killed over six hundred and eighty eight
thousand people around the world. That that's insane over the
course of ten years, and arguably the most lethal quake
(17:46):
in history had a magnitude of eight point zero and
this one occurred quite a long time ago in China
and the Shengxi province in fifteen fifty six. And you
can imagine this structural engineering has come a long way
since fifteen fifty six. And just the devastation that occurred
(18:07):
when that eight point zero struck that city.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It goes close to a million people, Yeah, were killed. Yeah,
that's I mean, I just can't imagine. And one fell swoop.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And they didn't expect it too, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And it was the earth itself attacking in a way.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
That's a poetic way to put it.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
And it's interesting, Matt, like you mentioned San Francisco, and
especially in places that are more prone to earthquakes, they
build out their infrastructure with that in mind, like houses
on stilts and things of that nature. And that's probably
not something they would have even considered at this time.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
This is about several hundred years after they built maybe
the first early earthquake detector, which looks really cool. It's
the way that it works is if certain parts of
the world shake, then these balls rolled down into this
dragon's mouth and points in whatever cardinal direction that the
(19:00):
astrophe occurred who but they didn't know how to build
something that would stand and act of the heavens right,
and the survivors adapted as best they could. There was
one scholar who survived the quake and later provided us
what may very well be the first earthquake preparedness advice
in history. He said, at the very beginning of the earthquake,
(19:21):
people indoors should not go out immediately, just crouched down
and wait for chances. Even if the nest is collapsed,
some eggs in it may still be kept intact.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yikes.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I mean, it's eloquent, but it's also frightening, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, and it's counterintuitive as well. And again I've never
experienced it personally, but my first instinct would be get
out into open land where there's nothing above fall on you.
But then you have to imagine trees and all the
other buildings, and especially if you're in a city, just
all the things that could be falling on you in
debris and.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The ground opening up beneath you. Yeah, yea, or landslides
much slides, right. So that's that's the science and those
are the stakes. So let's fast forward to the morning
of November eleventh, nine thirty Universal time quick note for everyone.
(20:17):
Universal time or UT is the modern version of Greenwich meantime.
So nine thirty Universal Time nine thirty AM would be
four to thirty am here on the east coast of
the North American continent.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So these seismic waves begin roughly fifteen miles off the
shore of Mayote. This is a French island that's kind
of sandwiched between Africa and the northern tip of Madagascar.
You can look it up. It's a cool looking little place.
The waves just started buzzing across Africa and there it
started ringing sensors all across the Earth, in Zambia, at
(20:53):
least in this area, Kenya, Ethiopia. They traversed across the oceans.
There were hum all the way over to Chile, all
the way to New Zealand, to Canada, even Hawaii nearly
eleven thousand miles away. So just this one tiny place
on Earth just starts.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Well, that's a really good sound effect, kind of a gurgle.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
But here's the thing. Unlike the earthquakes that we've talked about,
with these waves, you can feel and again the waves
versus what you can feel can be slightly different depending
on the frequency, but they didn't just you know, ding
or and go by. It lasted for over twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes of this And here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Not only was no one hurt by this event or
no one hurt during this event, no one knew it happened,
at least that is until a lone Twitter user noticed
the ODDS signal on the US Geological Surveys real time
seismogram displays, and this set off another chain of events.
No all right, Seismologists around the world tried to figure
(21:59):
out why this quake was so unusual and how it happened.
So what did they find? We will tell you after
a word from our sponsor. Years where it gets crazy.
No one knows.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, still right now, nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Nobody knows what happened.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So this this occurred on November eleventh, again, November eleventh
of twenty eighteen, and as of right now we're in
twenty nineteen. I guess that's not that far of a runway.
But we still don't know what happened. And we've been
studying these earthquakes for a while. We have very sensitive
equipment across the globe, like we said it was noticed
(22:41):
in all these different places, but we're still in the dark.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
So yeah, one of the reasons we're in the dark
is that this quake is unusual, add several strange attributes.
Not only did it last for a cartoonishly long amount
of time, it also did not behave like any other
known quake in a normal earthqua. These built up tensions
again along that transform boundary, right, These built up tensions
(23:07):
in the lithosphere release with a jolt in seconds, and
this sends out a series of others, smaller pops, a
series of waves known as a wave train, which sounds
like something way more cool, doesn't it. Yeah, I love it.
A wavetrain is not this awesome car and an Amtrak line.
It's the series of seismic waves that radiate out from
(23:30):
the point of wherever this rupture occurs, like ripples in water,
Like ripples of water. That's excellent. Yeah, And we have
descriptions from seismologists like Stephen Hicks at the University of
Southampton who he breaks down the order in which these
waves occur. So the fastest traveling signals are the ones
(23:50):
called They're called the primary waves, and the seismologists call
them the pee waves, I know, but they move in
bunches like what happens to an extended slinky when you
suddenly push it at one end. Yes, you can see
that wave occur, and then they're you know, the wave
chain continues. Yea.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Then you get secondary waves or S waves, and these
have more of a side to side motion. And both
these two, the primary and the S waves, have relatively
high frequencies, and Hicks describes them as a sort of
ping rather than a rumbling.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
And after that then you have these slow, kind of
longer period surface waves that show up. And these are
the ones that most closely resemble the signals from Mayot.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, which is weird because there's no big earthquake, right,
they're supposed to come third in line.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Here they are again just sort of happening. It's a
little irritating to scientists, right, well.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah, because you get just get these surface waves all
of a sudden, and what the hell is happening here? Guys?
Anyone go on Twitter, Hey what's this? And then just
a Twitter storm occurred?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Right exactly what the hell is going on? Is there
no order to this chaotic and uncarrying, inexplicable universe? Right,
seismologists weren't grappling with philosophical quandtries of that nature. They
were they were more focused on figuring out why this
thing is happening. Right, And now we're at the point
(25:26):
where there are several theories, some that are more plausible
than others. We can we can walk through some of these.
They get increasingly exciting. One what about a meteor What
if a meteorite somehow caused earthquakes? Initially, scientists searched the
region around this island to see whether there was any
(25:47):
evidence that a non terrestrial object could be the culprit
behind the quake. So far, no one has found any
compelling proof. So this theory, while it has some sand
to it, can be safe dismissed.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
And I guess in a way this could make sense,
I guess to someone theorizing about it because you don't
have those those P and S waves that are associated
with that quick jolt, right, That's why this one was
thought to be possible.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, good point.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Just because I guess if you had the surface waves
of or the surface and literally the surface of the
water being impacted without that deep cracking, I guess that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
That makes sense to me, But again not that yes,
so not that they So what if it were not
an act of nature in its random you know, infinite
monkeys typing nine infinite typewriters sort of scenario, What if
somehow human beings are responsible.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, but here's the thing. Scientists tend to want to
take care to not accidentally veer into bananas conspiracy theory territory.
But the way these waves behaved, the regularity of them
was quite extraordinary, quite remarkable. So you see that long
(27:09):
low frequency grumble is kind of punctuated by a series
of high frequency blips signals. It turns out that have
very regular intervals like this often tend to be artificially generated.
That's just how it is.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And yeah, as you're reading about this event, because you
can find it in places from Gizmoto to Big Think,
they are they discuss how these tiny little pings occurred,
as Nola was saying, like clockwork. That's just if you're
looking at the wave forms, it would literally be as
(27:46):
though someone is playing an instrument or hitting something or
a mechanical device is triggering at an exact time. It's
so weird.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And it's spooky. This is kind of a matter of interpretation,
but it is it feels way more plausible or way
more probable, rather that this is somehow man made. When
you hear it, yes, you know what I mean. It
sounds similar to machinery in terms of the intervals. But
(28:18):
our species has been fooled before, right, we First we
have to admit we have found no evidence of heavy
industry in the area, at least nothing that people know
of so far. Right, and to be fair, we have
encountered other natural processes and phenomena and objects that have
(28:38):
the appearance of regularity. When pulsars came out in the
we're discovered, I guess it's a better way to say it.
When pulsars were discovered in the nineteen sixties, people were
convinced they were generated by intelligent life.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Oh, hands down.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And even looking at a pulsar now it's like, okay.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Really, you're gonna make that light exactly that many times
at that rate?
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Okay, cool, Because pulsars, you know, rapidly rotate and they
have this kind of lighthouse appearance, and the flashes seem
to be on a regular calculated frequency, right or interval.
So the original source of pulsars. When it's discovered they
were called lgms, which stood for little Green men. So
(29:29):
we've been fulled before. This still could be some This
still could be a natural phenomenon rather than you know,
a large scale fracking or something. So there's no evidence
of something man made that's large enough to produce this kind.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Of global event that we know about.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That we know about, that's correct, So what if we
look more closely under the water.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And for that we go to the French Geological Survey
or the BRGM, and it's closely monitoring the recent shaking
and it's suggests that there's a new center of volcanic
activity that may be developing off the coast of Mayote.
Because Mayote was formed from volcanism or volcanoes volcanic activity,
(30:12):
but the volcanoes in this area have just they haven't
erupted in over four thousand years. So basically the thinking was, well,
perhaps that's not the first go to just because it's
been dormant for so long. But the BRGM, again, the
French Geological Survey's analysis, it suggests that this new activity
may point to magmatic movement offshore. And we're talking we're
(30:35):
not talking like, take a few steps. We're talking miles
from the coast under thousands of feet of water.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Oh oh, Matt, Matt, So yeah, I have to interject
because this is one of my I propose this be
the word of the day. Okay, episode that was Some
people may have thought that you were mispronouncing magnetic, but
you're not. Oh you're saying magmatic.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Yes, magmatic.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
What a great word.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, buddy, magmatic.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
I like volcanism too, volcanism magmatic. Yeah. I think the
reason a lot of people get into the science of
this stuff is because the names are so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It's fun to say.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Man, So if this is the case, then well here's
my question. First of all, if they haven't rupted in
four thousand years, doesn't that mean they're due for an eruption? Guys?
I mean, I don't really know how it works. And
you think they could predict it, they could see if
there was something. Where's all the lava?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, exactly where's the lava? And if you think about
some of the things we've discussed in a slightly different capacity,
but with oh what the hell am I thinking here?
The super volcano in the middle of the United Yes,
and you think about that when you're talking about the
interval of time, noal where it's been so long, we're
(31:51):
just waiting for it to occur.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
But also it's the margin of error here is in
terms of geologic geological time, right, we are but a blip,
We are a we are an awkward thought in the
very fleeting ephemera of Earth's mind. So this is when
we see another proposal. And so folks at the E. N.
S University in Paris say, hey, maybe it's not a meteor.
(32:18):
Maybe there's magma draining from a site somewhere and it's
caused in its magma draining from a subterranean reservoir. And
when the magma is moving, the reservoir is collapsing, and
this is causing quakes. And they looked at the GPS
data and from that they said, okay, we think this
(32:40):
kind of thing might happen if zero point three cubic
miles of magma all moved at once, or they said,
possibly sea monsters, the eldritchge dead and dreaming beast from
the darkness between the stars, slumbering until the constellations reach
a predetermined position. Not can I mean scientists did propose
(33:02):
that multiple people.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Actually they did some kind of eldritch beast.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I'm pretty sure they were joking. But you know, what
would the show be if we don't include that part?
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
And speaking of the weird out there stuff, we did
save the best theory. Sorry, I can't speak for everyone
in my opinion the best theory.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Oh no, no, I'm right there with you, Ben Concur, Oh.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Great, we saved the best one. Then we're unanimous on this.
Who saved the best one? For last? Learn all about
the vortex after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Wait the Vortex, huge dramatic music, the war.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
War, war tech tech tech text.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Back in twenty thirteen, Wiki leaks released an article alleging
that a mysterious vortex opened over the Gulf of Aden,
just off the Horn of Africa, which created catastrophic weather
in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
So like a portal, Just like a portal, but a vortex.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Fortse Yeah, but this is what we're talking wikiliks, right, Yeah,
WikiLeaks did release this. It was according to a report
allegedly prepared by an Admiral Maximov of Russia's Northern Fleet
for Vladimir Putin. What they said was in late two thousand,
the specific year two thousand, there was a magnetic vortex
(34:28):
that was discovered in this area that you just described,
matt in the Gulf of Aden. And according to the story, Russia,
the People's Republic of China, and the USA joined together,
cast aside their paltry human differences to study what this
vortex was, and they discovered that it defied logic and
(34:49):
the laws of physics. This sent the world the conspiracy sphere,
kind of like the lithosphere, I guess, on fire. And
with the recent reports of audun events near mayott More,
theorists are resurrecting this story, and who can blame them?
Speaker 3 (35:04):
It's a great story, dude, doe. The cover story from
the governments was that all of these navies were joining
forces to combat Somali pirates.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
That's true, Yeah, that's true, which is strange when you
think about how much firepower that.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Would be, you know what I mean, Yeah, to fight
a vortex or whatever was going to emerge from the vortex.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And that's yeah, you've stump you've stumbled on it. So
people have also connected this with something called the Norway
spiral or Norway vortex, and people started I guess pretty
quickly people began bringing aliens into the picture, right, Yeah,
because why else would these geopolitical adversaries or at best
(35:47):
frenemies cooperate.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yeah, there's an alleged connection to Jupiter, which is which
is fun about one of the large storms that's on
Jupiter and the vortex showing up when the storm on
Jupiter was re emerging. I could not correlate those two
things together just in my own independent research, but it's
been discussed about this.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, and there are other earthquake related things too. Oh yeah,
so we know some of these things are true. Weather
manipulation is a real thing that occurs. China regularly practices this.
Other countries have certainly dabbled with it. The US engaged
in weather manipulation during the Vietnam War. For some people
(36:35):
who believe this vortex exists, the world powers are cooperating
to combat weather related shenanigans. But the people who spice
this up with claims of extraterrestrial or even interdimensional contact
alleged that world governments in secret have been able to
contact or confront something not of this world.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah. I'm gonna go out on a lemon and say
we probably didn't confront something from out of this world,
because we would be squashed like a bug.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I don't know, man, front are get fronted, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah, do you have it? We're just mostly throwing iron
and different metals that are just propelled at high speed
at these things.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
It's true, we don't have any really cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Yet, explosives, I guess, sir.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Well, I mean, if you detonated a nuclear weapon, you
would it's kind of cutting off your nose despite your face,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
You'd find a seismic activity, some seismic activity though.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
That is true. That is true, and you will find
reports that say a forty one earthquake or thirty five
earthquakes occurred in a twenty four hour period in the
Gulf of Aiden. And also a ton of military vessels
and commercial vessels are in the Gulf of Aiden. It's
a huge shipping lane for the world, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
But yes, but there's also one major problem, right, what's
that the location? Location?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
That is okay, yes, yes, that is true. So the
Gulf of Aiden is a seven hour plane flight away
from Mayo. So while it could be considered sort of
in the region, sure, it's not nearby. You don't pop
over to the Gulf of Aiden to you know, pick
up milk.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I don't Knoweah, Well, you know, unless you're in some
kind of vessel that is interdimensional in nature, or can
travel faster than light, or even just travel extremely extremely
fast and travel underwater, maybe you could get there really quickly.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, what is really happening at the Gulf of Aiden?
And where did these reports come from? So? Wiki leaks
has been associated with legitimate stuff. The way they release
it may have some sort of angle, right, but what
they just I guess the better way to say it
is WikiLeaks definitely has its own agenda. They do display
(39:02):
editorial bias in the way that they release certain things
and hold other ones in confidence. But usually when they
release stuff, it's true or it's written in what it's
written by someone who believes it to be true.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Right, Yeah, and it was a this is part of
a strap for email at least a leak that came
from the Global Intelligence files. Okay, this has occurred in
twenty twelve. February twenty seventh, that's when this specific email
was released with the subject huh mysterious vortex warned it's
(39:38):
creating warned is creating global weather catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah. So for context, Stratfor is a intelligence platform, publisher
kind of subscription service. You can also get some free
emails from them. That was founded in Austin, Texas, and
they report on geo political stuff, a lot of state
craft and a lot of things that would be helpful
(40:05):
to multinational corporations.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yeah, and specifically weapons companies are built into this whole
thing and intelligence and all that.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
So where can where can you get the best price
selling guns things like that, honestly? Or where where our
market's unstable? And so of course they would be concerned
with these weird reports. I know what a lot of
us are thinking. Did this email come out on April first? No?
Speaker 3 (40:31):
No, did not.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
First?
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Well, it was from a website called pack alert press
dot com, and I mean it was a it was
a news story at the time. But here's the thing.
The source that was being like mentioned in this email
that was sent or found within this leak. That's really
(40:55):
what we're talking about here. The person that wrote the
article or at least provided the information for the article.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah, there's another conspiracy here. This is this is an
author or propagandist or group of authors or group of
propagandists going by the handle sort of Fall, which sounds
like a cool name from Star Wars.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
It really does. But they're known for putting out this
kind of bogus. Again, it's propaganda or just disinformation, or
just headlining or grabbing headlines that are completely false or
at least based on this tiny little morsel of truth,
and then just nothing.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Okay, so I'm with you my question, Yeah, to what
end does this story of some strange vortex over the
Gulf of Aiden help or hinder Russian operations if it
really is, if it really is some sort of propaganda.
I mean, have you read the It's essentially lore at
this point.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah, right, So.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
I guess the best way to say it is, do
we all remember the film Stargate?
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Oh yeah, yeah? All right, so Stargate the villain is
also the love interest in the Crying Game, correct, right.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
So.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Stargate. The gist of Stargate is that ancient civilization was
founded by extraterrestrials who possess a gate that lets one
travel through time and space in an unorthodox, much more
efficient manner, a stargate, if you will. And for some
people have looked into the Gulf of Aden. What's actually happening,
(42:38):
in their interpretation is that the US has found or
created or resurrected some sort of thing like this, some
sort of passage to other dimensions or to distant places
in time and space several like this is very closely
related to the idea that the US invaded Iraq to
(43:00):
find a stargate. Did you ever hear that one?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah? I loved that. I loved that theory. That was
so much fun. Again for me, these are so exciting
and I don't know, they reawakened the kid in me
that watched the X Files, you know, before going to
bed and then had glorious dreams and nightmares about the
monsters that you could find within or the aliens and
(43:23):
what they would actually be like. But unfortunately, in my mind,
to my mind, that's what this is. Because we're still
talking about seismic activity that occurred in a place that
is a seven hour airplane ride from this other place
that allegedly maybe had something weird going on with the
(43:44):
vortex that some propaganda's ward about.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Okay, yes, totally true. Also, I think I'm pretty biased here.
I'm just gonna say I've never been to the Gulf
of Aden. Okay, same, yeah, all right, that's what they
get up to around there.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
It might be stargates all day. Man. It might be
like a mall that is also a stargate so that
you can get pretzels.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I would picture the stargate would be sort of in
the center where Santa Claus usually sits. You have to
wait in line to the stargate.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, either that or like an anchor store, you know.
Oh yeah, it's because I think you're right, man, it's
basically wherever they put the Santa that's where they would.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Put the start.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
And to be further fair, I think it's safe to
say that all of us are just holding our breaths
until the ancient ancient ones come back, right.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
I personally will welcome them with open arms. Yeah, and
pledge my allegiance to them instantly.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Oh yeah, I mean you'll only exist for a few seconds,
but those seconds will just be not.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
If I pledge my allegiance quickly enough, you think, so, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
You got to know the customs man, like what is
considered pledging allegiance? You know, what if they communicate by
smell and the first person to just rip an obnoxious
fart because like they'reputized. Yeah, they're human, like Les Petelint,
the professional French Flageli.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
These are all very important things to consider.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
These are all very We want you all to go
into this prepared. Uh. It's true though this this stargate
theory sounds wild. The Gulf of Aiden isn't really that close.
But there is that report from Wiki leaks, and even
though the Strafford people themselves seem pretty I don't know,
(45:33):
dismissive of it. Maybe they they're they're probably dismissive because
they couldn't find any other source to confirm it, right,
or they couldn't find any source that existed independently. It
all ultimately goes back to this Russian report, and still
it doesn't explain this earthquake, this series of earthquakes, this thing,
(45:54):
this low key rumble that is not supposed to happen
this way.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
With the weird metronomic hmm clicks.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
It's kind of like the bloop remember that. Yeah, the
unexplained noise that I think ultimately people no one conclusively
solved it, but people did seem to think overwhelmingly there
was the sound of ice moving in a glacier.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Right, Yeah, but I don't believe that for a second.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
You think it was you think it was an eldritch
it was something that goes. So at this point in time,
it looks like the most plausible explanation for the strange
global shiver, let's call it, is the underwater drainage of
a massive amount of magma. And reading the descriptions of this,
(46:43):
I don't know about you guys, but it made me
think of when people talk about popping or draining a
ZiT or something. You know what I mean? Is this
an earth ZiT like under the skin? What's it called
if it's under the skin and it hasn't popped yet?
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Dermal something? Okay, I don't know, there's a name for Yeah,
that's it.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
No, No, not a doctor, But that's so. So it
looks like this may have a mundane explanation, but that's
not a guaranteed cause. And at this point, as we
record this episode, we still don't understand how this happened
the way it did. And that's very, very important because
(47:25):
you know what happens when there's a lack of transparency
and a lack of clarity.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Colin Ritman comes along and he's like, he needs more time,
he needs more time to finish that video game. Holy
crappy guys.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
You know, a z it under the skin is called
what's called an underground temple.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
An underground Well, we've solved that mystery conclusively, and think,
you know, in the case of the global seismic event,
Until it can be proven that there is a definitive
answer to this mystery, questions are going to remain, and
fringe researchers will continue asking whether this is just an
(48:04):
oddly well organized earthquake that has a great sense of rhythm,
or if it's evidence of something else, something they don't
want you to know. But then I don't know, man,
what do you think? I want it to be? A
sorry gape, But I'm pretty sure it's magma. I'm pretty
sure it's an undergrounds it.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, it's it's for me. Is that one piece of
the puzzle that the rhythmic nature of the one the
the one set of frequencies are just making that weird
little monochromatic? I think mono mono chromatic? Wait, monoch chronomic? Well,
what does that? How does that work?
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Is it in terms of sound?
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Monophonic? No, I mean, monophon just means one voice at
a time. It doesn't, there's not that only happens as
a single instance, not stacked like chords or whatever.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Monophone just means a single tone that only mon simp
on its own. It's never like joined by other sounds.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
But it's weird, right, This thing is weird. Yeah, it's
not doesn't sound the way an earthquake is supposed to sound,
and it doesn't move like one either.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
It's not cool, not cool at all.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
I think it's super cool, man.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
I think it's probably just packs. You know, pa X
hanging out down there, k Pax now just packs. It's
a demon, pac Man, it's a demon that you're.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Supposed to worship. Packman's a demon.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, yeah, programming control man.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Have you seen that? You have you guys seen that?
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Man, conspiracy realist. Let us know what you thought of that.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
He escapes one he escapes out in the maze one way,
only to come in on the other side.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
That's a good one. That's a good voice of that kid.
And I forget his name, but he's excellent movie.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
He's also in Yes, uh, you can let us know
your opinion of Bander snatch the possible secrets of unexplained
earthquakes and more by finding us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
That's it. Yeah, we're we're conspiracy stuff and or conspiracy
stuff show. You'll figure it out. If you don't want
to do that, come join us on Facebook and hang out.
And here's where it gets crazy. That's our page where
we all get together and discuss things like this. I'm
looking forward to hearing what you believe or don't believe.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
A Matt don't we have a phone number.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three st d WYTK. Call us, leave a message you
might get on the air.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
And hey, do us as solid Give us a nice
review on iTunes only if it's a nice review, yeah,
otherwise stay away. As Thumper's mom said in Bambi, if
you don't have anything nice to say, don't say nothing.
And on that imply that applies to internet reviews.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yeah least yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
And also if you would like to follow us personally,
we each have our own instagrams. I am I think
I'm at Ben Bullen in a burst of creativity, nice and.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Carry over from my sad boy kind of goth band days.
My Instagram handle is at embryonic insider nice.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
And I don't have one, so enjoy you do, so
follow my stories at Kim Kardashian. It's you guy the
whole time. I don't know, I don''t I don't really do,
I don't do one that's outward facing. Okay, and that's
the end of this classic episode. If you have any
(51:29):
thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into
contact with us in a number of different ways. One
of the best is to give us a call. Our
number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you don't
want to do that, you can send us a good
old fashioned email.
Speaker 5 (51:45):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
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. I feel the earth move under my feet.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's a banger, dude. You can't remember when like they
made movies where like natural disasters were the big bad guy.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Yeah, like Twister.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Oh boy, there is I was just exactly what I
was thinking, Matt.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
This one's called twisters plural. Yeah, there's Inferno. Now there's
two where the bad guys a fire.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, the towering one, right, isn't that right? Towering fron
I mean maybe there was a there's probably another one
in the two thousands that was just Inferno.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
There's I believe there's one.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Where like the moon is the bad guy because it's
gonna hit the earth moonshot.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
I'm thinking the one with Purece Brosnan, that Inferno.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm certain it's just the Towering. Inferno is a seventies movie,
so I'm certain that just they just dropped the Towering
because that sounds dated and put Pierce Brosen in it
because he was James Bond. That'll probably sell tickets. But
while that may be sort of a dated format, you know,
for for tent pole Hollywood action movies, seismic activity is
no oak, y'all.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
No, if you've ever been in an earthquake. You know,
I've never been in a big one, just ten blowers.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Now, neither of I've really I've not been in. I've
only heard sound from it or like you know, I
saw reports on the news, but I've never actually felt
a tremor in my life.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, guys, today's episode may not even be about a tremor.
This is one of the weirdest events that I can recall.
We talked about it. This is an earthquake type event
that was released as a perfect clean sin wave that
happened underneath the ocean. But earthquakes don't do that, So
(01:37):
what the heck was down there?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
November eleventh, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Cuthulu wakes, Oh man, you have me at sine wave?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Matt, Oh, I know I would.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
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 3 (02:16):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Dol They call me Ben. We are joined with our
guest super producer, Casey the quake Pegram, So everybody say
hello to him. And most importantly, you are you, you
are here that makes this stuff. They don't want you
to know. A groundbreaking episode in a number of ways. Oh,
earth shattering perhaps. Yeah, it's our first it's our first
(02:40):
time getting back together after the in the new year,
after the relatively arbitrary end of December twenty eighteen. I mean,
just it's just me going out of my way to
be disrespectful to the Gregorian calendar system, Yeah, which is
a man made thing.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
It is that we've discussed on the show.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
They say it's the anniversary of our obsession with arbitrary time.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I think Hallmark's going to put some cards out that
just say that, right.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
But yeah, you can almost breathe now by the way.
I went out outside like last night, the night before,
and you just can not breathe because of all the
leftover smoke and stuff that's in the air.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And it's weird because overnight everything outside looks like Blade Runner. Now, yes,
this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Just switched really like that meme that was making the
rounds in December reminding everyone to dress and Blade Runner
appropriate clothing. H So unlike Blade Runner and unlike the
Gregorian calendar. Earthquakes like that segue are a natural phenomenon.
We didn't make those up. They've just been around. It's
kind of like, I don't know if we talked about
(03:51):
it on the show before, but do you ever No,
I know you hate birds, but I walk around sometimes
these our modern days and think, you know, have we
as humans really figured out things of significance. I mean, sure,
we can put stuff into space, but birds can still
(04:13):
fly around and shut on anyone whenever they want to,
because you only have an umbrella if it's raining, and
we also can't do much about that. Earthquakes are kind
of like that. They're kind of like a Mother Nature's
way of reminding you that you can get shot upon
at any given point, you know, unless you're on the
moon or something. But earthquakes have been around. They've been
(04:38):
terrorizing humanity since before the dawn of recorded history.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And it comes about because the planet appears to be
a stable surface. We even have cliches about it, figures
of speech, like a rock, right, the old Chevy campaign, Oh,
like a rock.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
And the thing is that this is misleading because the planet,
as I'm sure many of us know, is not a
stable surface, not remotely. It may look like it's a
stable surface, kind of the way that everyone looks like
they might be cool and chill on the first date.
But then once you get into the layers, you see
this is a complex network of interacting catastrophic traumatic forces.
(05:21):
Am I saying that? Am I comparing dates to earthquakes? Maybe?
I don't know. Twenty nineteen, we're all figuring it out together.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I certainly we both have the potential for some bumping
and grinding.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Hey, there we go, good save. And it's weird when
you think about how strange and upsetting these things have been.
Have you guys ever been in an earthquake? Do we
talk about this on the air before?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well, it was apparently one that everyone felt here at Atlanta.
The other a couple weeks ago, but I slept right
through it.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, it was in the night.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
My kid woke up and told me she had a
dream about an earthquake, which is kind of weird. No way,
So maybe she made it happen with her dream mind.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Super EmPATH over there. I've never been in one, but
I was in San Francisco recently and we went over
the Bay Bridge, and on the radio, as we're going
over this huge bridge, they're discussing how it was the
anniversary it was in October of this massive earthquake in
nineteen eighty nine. I think that actually flattened part of
that bridge, like while people were driving underneath it. It
(06:18):
was a really really horrifying to think about.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, I've never been in a major earthquake, which I guess,
I guess, go me, but it's a but I have been.
When I was living abroad, earthquakes were more common than
they are here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I was freaked out.
I was just eating breakfast with a host family and
(06:42):
then everything just sort of jiggles. Yeah, that I'm shaking
the table. Everyone everything jiggles just for a little bit.
Nobody else loses skips a beat, right, really loses a step.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, it was the structure really sound that you were in.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
No, it was just a small one. It was just
a little, well, little shiver, little Central American shiver in
the soil. And then they explained to me that that
wasn't anything to get excited about. That probably wouldn't even
make a decent landslide. And the idea that was rated
is a decent landslide. It's also strange but these things
have been around, and we'll talk about how people win
(07:19):
the dark lottery that is an earthquake. But this might
surprise some of us to learn that although these things
have been around forever or much longer than people, we
as a species didn't really start understanding what causes them
until maybe like maybe a century ago we started. And
it's true, way back in the thirteen hundreds and other
(07:41):
periods of time, there were inventors who had figured out
ways to detect earthquakes right, detect seismic disturbance, but we
didn't really understand why it happened, much less were we
capable of developing technology to measure the magnitudeness signif way,
and today's episode is about the latest unexplained seismic event
(08:06):
because spoiler alert, we still don't know near as much
as we thought we knew about earthquakes, and Matt, this
is something that you hipped us to off the air. Recently,
there was a global wave of earthquakes that somehow rang
the earth like a bell? Right, what was even mean?
I mean, I guess first things first, if we want
(08:26):
to figure out what happened recently, we have to understand
what an earthquake is. And luckily we are affiliated with
a website called how Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, and that writes articles about these kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
We're also remembering a lot of this from our physical
science classes.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
That's right, That's right, Noel is going off solely physical
science from what is that Houghton Mithlin is.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
That the they put out the textbooks.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I'm pretty sure it may have been a different company,
but I know they did a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
It rings true, just like the Earth was not long ago.
So technically, an earthquake is just that it's a vibration
that travels through the Earth's Earth's crust, that that thing
that we walk around on every day and pretend like
it's completely stable and everything's okay. And like we've kind
of discussed, earthquakes can be caused by all kinds of
(09:20):
different things, everything from if a meteor happens to travel,
you know, into the Earth's atmosphere and then impact with
the Earth's crust, you will get a nice earthquake that
will also end a lot of lives, probably if not
in the entire human species. They can also be caused
by volcanic eruptions that are occurring beneath the crust and
sometimes as a part of the crust. And it can
(09:41):
also sometimes be made by man made things, you know,
mind collapses, underground nuclear tests, which is a topic that
we've discussed before. There's a lot of technology trying to
get those fracking and fracking that's the big one. Even
saying it sounds like it's a bad thing. Oh but
(10:02):
here's the thing. Most naturally occurring earthquakes are caused by this, uh,
the Earth's crust itself, when there are these moving pieces
of the Earth's crust called tectonic plates. Now there's really
getting back to that physical science class.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I confirmed it. Tote Mifflin did make physical science books
so good they're still in print, new editions every year.
It's a racket. It's beautiful, it's not, it's it's awful.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Well, there's Macmillan's huge, that's true.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
McMillan's also big. But don't you remember like the whole idea,
like the textbook racket, how it's like, you know, you
have to buy it from this exact monopoly on them.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Oh no, that's a whole episode probably that we should do.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I think you're right.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
So plates, so plates, Yeah, let's let's just keep going.
Scientists didn't come up with any real solid theory that
explained exactly what an earthquake was or what caused it
until the mid nineteen sixties, and they call this theory
plate tectonics. There you go.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So here's the gist. Earth has a crust, which you
mentioned earlier, Matt, and people who want to sound authoritative
or accurate, we'll call it the lithosphere. You hear it,
smart people, usually because they're seismologists, you know what I mean,
And they probably think crust is for cake. I don't
know if you're a seismologist. Right in, this crust is
(11:20):
not a single seamless shell. Instead, it is composed of
layers of plates, and these things every day are sort
of bumping into each other while they float on this
lubricant layer called the esthenosphere. And all the hijinks seismically speaking,
in the world on the planet happens at the boundaries
(11:42):
of these plates. Sort of the way, since I'm just
doing terrible comparisons for twenty nineteen, apparently, is sort of
the way that a lot of the really crazy stuff
that happens in many countries happens at the border towns,
you know what I mean. That's and these high jinks
take a number of forms, so we don't want to
get to into the weeds here, but just so you
(12:03):
have the gist first, there's something called the divergent plate boundary.
Plates might move apart, allowing magma ok molten rock to
reach the surface as lava, and this stuff, once it
reaches the surface, cools and adds to the crust, essentially
functioning the way that kulk functions, filling in the space
between tiles. If you've ever you know, if you've ever
(12:26):
laid tiles somewhere.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yes, And then there are convergent plate boundaries, which is
pretty much the exact opposite of that, where at the
boundary of two plates they are kind of squishing together,
and that's when you can get mountains formed where a
lot of volcanic activity occurs. That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
It's literally pushing up volcanoes too, right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And also sometimes pushing down like it's kind of weird.
They just they've you can imagine all the different things
that two very strong and heavy things do when they
push against.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Each other very insistent forces. Yeah, they can subduct and
that creates mountains for our purposes today. The next category
is the most important. It's where two plates sort of
slide by one another, like two ships in the night
or two trucks on an interstate, just sideswiping each other.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
They very slowly, and that is what is known as
a transform boundary, where energy builds up in the region
between the two plates, and that forms a fault line
or a break in the earth crust where blocks of
crust are moving in different directions. And I'm already picturing
the beautifully color coded image from that physical science book
(13:39):
where it has big fat arrows going in either direction
and the plate pieces, one in purple and one in
like red, kind of overlapping each other and like grinding
against each other in different directions, and that's what creates.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That fault in a weird way. This one is the
scariest to me for some reason, and I don't know why.
I think it should be the one where the plates
are actually moving away from each other, because that's in
my head, when you get the lava coming out, when
you get the whole opening up with a fissure or something.
But these two, if you've ever seen the images in
I believe it was in Japan during the last major
(14:13):
tsunami that occurred there where you can actually see parts
of the street that are doing this movement, like moving
in parallel next to each other, that for some reason
terrifies me.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Yeah, we're talking about fault lines, right, and the majority
of earthquakes, not all, but the majority happen along these
transform boundary fault lines. And there are some there are
different types of fault lines, there are different types of
seismic waves. But again, this is just the gist. This
(14:44):
is just what we need to know. That's it's how
an earthquake works. So how many quakes are we talking?
This is where it starts to get pretty interesting, because
the US Geological Survey estimates that there are as many
as one point three million quakes with a magnitude greater
than two point zero on the Richter scale. That's the
(15:05):
threshold at which humans can feel the vibrations. Stuff less
than that might really freak out your household pet. Yeah,
you know what I mean. But this two point zero
is where you get to the legit people, spider sense
goes off for it.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
And there are one point three million of them.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Which is pretty nuts, right, Yeah, I guess because we
only hear about the real terrible ones on the news
that we have a lot of these pass without ever,
you know, registering on our radar, so to speak. So
in general, the majority of earthquakes are not going to
be particularly powerful. They're also not going to last for
(15:45):
very long at all, even the catastrophic ones. Strong ground
shaking during a moderate or large earthquake lasts maybe thirty seconds,
ten to thirty seconds. And then after that, after you
you know, you shake up one part of the of
the earth, other parts around it start to shake as well.
(16:05):
So then you can have timblers, and you can have
aftershocks and things like that. And most of these things,
these aftershocks can happen for like weeks or months later,
but you probably still won't notice them, because again, most
earthquakes are not very powerful, and many, many, many of
them occur in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I always thought the word timbler sounded like a cute,
like diminutive earthquake, but apparently they can be quite catastrophic
as well.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
What is it that is true?
Speaker 4 (16:30):
A timbler?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Timbler?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, or timble?
Speaker 2 (16:32):
It sounds like a timble.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
You know, it sounds like an app It just sounds cute, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
But no, it's a big deal. And like you said, Ben,
it's a chain reaction and it all depends on the
magnitude of the first one. I guess as to how
bad the aftershock and the other things that it causes
later will be.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, and we are enormously fortunate too that most earthquakes
are so very small, and it's this brutal lottery. You
know that in case of the rare quake capable of
touching up population center, it can destroy the city in minutes,
just like you were talking about Matt with the with
the road moving in different directions, things that should be
(17:10):
solid appearing fluid for even a moment's time. You know,
these things can wreak enormous amounts of property damage and
more importantly, they can claim thousands of lives. And we
have some statistics about that as well.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
I think, oh yeah, over the last decade alone, earthquakes
and then the tsunamis avalanches landslides that follow because of
these earthquakes, they've killed over six hundred and eighty eight
thousand people around the world. That that's insane over the
course of ten years, and arguably the most lethal quake
(17:46):
in history had a magnitude of eight point zero and
this one occurred quite a long time ago in China
and the Shengxi province in fifteen fifty six. And you
can imagine this structural engineering has come a long way
since fifteen fifty six. And just the devastation that occurred
(18:07):
when that eight point zero struck that city.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
It goes close to a million people, Yeah, were killed. Yeah,
that's I mean, I just can't imagine. And one fell swoop.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And they didn't expect it too, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And it was the earth itself attacking in a way.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
That's a poetic way to put it.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
And it's interesting, Matt, like you mentioned San Francisco, and
especially in places that are more prone to earthquakes, they
build out their infrastructure with that in mind, like houses
on stilts and things of that nature. And that's probably
not something they would have even considered at this time.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
This is about several hundred years after they built maybe
the first early earthquake detector, which looks really cool. It's
the way that it works is if certain parts of
the world shake, then these balls rolled down into this
dragon's mouth and points in whatever cardinal direction that the
(19:00):
astrophe occurred who but they didn't know how to build
something that would stand and act of the heavens right,
and the survivors adapted as best they could. There was
one scholar who survived the quake and later provided us
what may very well be the first earthquake preparedness advice
in history. He said, at the very beginning of the earthquake,
(19:21):
people indoors should not go out immediately, just crouched down
and wait for chances. Even if the nest is collapsed,
some eggs in it may still be kept intact.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yikes.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I mean, it's eloquent, but it's also frightening, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, and it's counterintuitive as well. And again I've never
experienced it personally, but my first instinct would be get
out into open land where there's nothing above fall on you.
But then you have to imagine trees and all the
other buildings, and especially if you're in a city, just
all the things that could be falling on you in
debris and.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The ground opening up beneath you. Yeah, yea, or landslides
much slides, right. So that's that's the science and those
are the stakes. So let's fast forward to the morning
of November eleventh, nine thirty Universal time quick note for everyone.
(20:17):
Universal time or UT is the modern version of Greenwich meantime.
So nine thirty Universal Time nine thirty AM would be
four to thirty am here on the east coast of
the North American continent.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
So these seismic waves begin roughly fifteen miles off the
shore of Mayote. This is a French island that's kind
of sandwiched between Africa and the northern tip of Madagascar.
You can look it up. It's a cool looking little place.
The waves just started buzzing across Africa and there it
started ringing sensors all across the Earth, in Zambia, at
(20:53):
least in this area, Kenya, Ethiopia. They traversed across the oceans.
There were hum all the way over to Chile, all
the way to New Zealand, to Canada, even Hawaii nearly
eleven thousand miles away. So just this one tiny place
on Earth just starts.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Well, that's a really good sound effect, kind of a gurgle.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
But here's the thing. Unlike the earthquakes that we've talked about,
with these waves, you can feel and again the waves
versus what you can feel can be slightly different depending
on the frequency, but they didn't just you know, ding
or and go by. It lasted for over twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes of this And here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Not only was no one hurt by this event or
no one hurt during this event, no one knew it happened,
at least that is until a lone Twitter user noticed
the ODDS signal on the US Geological Surveys real time
seismogram displays, and this set off another chain of events.
No all right, Seismologists around the world tried to figure
(21:59):
out why this quake was so unusual and how it happened.
So what did they find? We will tell you after
a word from our sponsor. Years where it gets crazy.
No one knows.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, still right now, nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Nobody knows what happened.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So this this occurred on November eleventh, again, November eleventh
of twenty eighteen, and as of right now we're in
twenty nineteen. I guess that's not that far of a runway.
But we still don't know what happened. And we've been
studying these earthquakes for a while. We have very sensitive
equipment across the globe, like we said it was noticed
(22:41):
in all these different places, but we're still in the dark.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
So yeah, one of the reasons we're in the dark
is that this quake is unusual, add several strange attributes.
Not only did it last for a cartoonishly long amount
of time, it also did not behave like any other
known quake in a normal earthqua. These built up tensions
again along that transform boundary, right, These built up tensions
(23:07):
in the lithosphere release with a jolt in seconds, and
this sends out a series of others, smaller pops, a
series of waves known as a wave train, which sounds
like something way more cool, doesn't it. Yeah, I love it.
A wavetrain is not this awesome car and an Amtrak line.
It's the series of seismic waves that radiate out from
(23:30):
the point of wherever this rupture occurs, like ripples in water,
Like ripples of water. That's excellent. Yeah, And we have
descriptions from seismologists like Stephen Hicks at the University of
Southampton who he breaks down the order in which these
waves occur. So the fastest traveling signals are the ones
(23:50):
called They're called the primary waves, and the seismologists call
them the pee waves, I know, but they move in
bunches like what happens to an extended slinky when you
suddenly push it at one end. Yes, you can see
that wave occur, and then they're you know, the wave
chain continues. Yea.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Then you get secondary waves or S waves, and these
have more of a side to side motion. And both
these two, the primary and the S waves, have relatively
high frequencies, and Hicks describes them as a sort of
ping rather than a rumbling.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
And after that then you have these slow, kind of
longer period surface waves that show up. And these are
the ones that most closely resemble the signals from Mayot.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, which is weird because there's no big earthquake, right,
they're supposed to come third in line.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Here they are again just sort of happening. It's a
little irritating to scientists, right, well.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah, because you get just get these surface waves all
of a sudden, and what the hell is happening here? Guys?
Anyone go on Twitter, Hey what's this? And then just
a Twitter storm occurred?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Right exactly what the hell is going on? Is there
no order to this chaotic and uncarrying, inexplicable universe? Right,
seismologists weren't grappling with philosophical quandtries of that nature. They
were they were more focused on figuring out why this
thing is happening. Right, And now we're at the point
(25:26):
where there are several theories, some that are more plausible
than others. We can we can walk through some of these.
They get increasingly exciting. One what about a meteor What
if a meteorite somehow caused earthquakes? Initially, scientists searched the
region around this island to see whether there was any
(25:47):
evidence that a non terrestrial object could be the culprit
behind the quake. So far, no one has found any
compelling proof. So this theory, while it has some sand
to it, can be safe dismissed.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
And I guess in a way this could make sense,
I guess to someone theorizing about it because you don't
have those those P and S waves that are associated
with that quick jolt, right, That's why this one was
thought to be possible.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, good point.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Just because I guess if you had the surface waves
of or the surface and literally the surface of the
water being impacted without that deep cracking, I guess that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
That makes sense to me, But again not that yes,
so not that they So what if it were not
an act of nature in its random you know, infinite
monkeys typing nine infinite typewriters sort of scenario, What if
somehow human beings are responsible.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, but here's the thing. Scientists tend to want to
take care to not accidentally veer into bananas conspiracy theory territory.
But the way these waves behaved, the regularity of them
was quite extraordinary, quite remarkable. So you see that long
(27:09):
low frequency grumble is kind of punctuated by a series
of high frequency blips signals. It turns out that have
very regular intervals like this often tend to be artificially generated.
That's just how it is.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And yeah, as you're reading about this event, because you
can find it in places from Gizmoto to Big Think,
they are they discuss how these tiny little pings occurred,
as Nola was saying, like clockwork. That's just if you're
looking at the wave forms, it would literally be as
(27:46):
though someone is playing an instrument or hitting something or
a mechanical device is triggering at an exact time. It's
so weird.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And it's spooky. This is kind of a matter of interpretation,
but it is it feels way more plausible or way
more probable, rather that this is somehow man made. When
you hear it, yes, you know what I mean. It
sounds similar to machinery in terms of the intervals. But
(28:18):
our species has been fooled before, right, we First we
have to admit we have found no evidence of heavy
industry in the area, at least nothing that people know
of so far. Right, and to be fair, we have
encountered other natural processes and phenomena and objects that have
(28:38):
the appearance of regularity. When pulsars came out in the
we're discovered, I guess it's a better way to say it.
When pulsars were discovered in the nineteen sixties, people were
convinced they were generated by intelligent life.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Oh, hands down.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And even looking at a pulsar now it's like, okay.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Really, you're gonna make that light exactly that many times
at that rate?
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Okay, cool, Because pulsars, you know, rapidly rotate and they
have this kind of lighthouse appearance, and the flashes seem
to be on a regular calculated frequency, right or interval.
So the original source of pulsars. When it's discovered they
were called lgms, which stood for little Green men. So
(29:29):
we've been fulled before. This still could be some This
still could be a natural phenomenon rather than you know,
a large scale fracking or something. So there's no evidence
of something man made that's large enough to produce this kind.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Of global event that we know about.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That we know about, that's correct, So what if we
look more closely under the water.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And for that we go to the French Geological Survey
or the BRGM, and it's closely monitoring the recent shaking
and it's suggests that there's a new center of volcanic
activity that may be developing off the coast of Mayote.
Because Mayote was formed from volcanism or volcanoes volcanic activity,
(30:12):
but the volcanoes in this area have just they haven't
erupted in over four thousand years. So basically the thinking was, well,
perhaps that's not the first go to just because it's
been dormant for so long. But the BRGM, again, the
French Geological Survey's analysis, it suggests that this new activity
may point to magmatic movement offshore. And we're talking we're
(30:35):
not talking like, take a few steps. We're talking miles
from the coast under thousands of feet of water.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Oh oh, Matt, Matt, So yeah, I have to interject
because this is one of my I propose this be
the word of the day. Okay, episode that was Some
people may have thought that you were mispronouncing magnetic, but
you're not. Oh you're saying magmatic.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Yes, magmatic.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
What a great word.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, buddy, magmatic.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
I like volcanism too, volcanism magmatic. Yeah. I think the
reason a lot of people get into the science of
this stuff is because the names are so cool.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It's fun to say.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Man, So if this is the case, then well here's
my question. First of all, if they haven't rupted in
four thousand years, doesn't that mean they're due for an eruption? Guys?
I mean, I don't really know how it works. And
you think they could predict it, they could see if
there was something. Where's all the lava?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, exactly where's the lava? And if you think about
some of the things we've discussed in a slightly different capacity,
but with oh what the hell am I thinking here?
The super volcano in the middle of the United Yes,
and you think about that when you're talking about the
interval of time, noal where it's been so long, we're
(31:51):
just waiting for it to occur.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
But also it's the margin of error here is in
terms of geologic geological time, right, we are but a blip,
We are a we are an awkward thought in the
very fleeting ephemera of Earth's mind. So this is when
we see another proposal. And so folks at the E. N.
S University in Paris say, hey, maybe it's not a meteor.
(32:18):
Maybe there's magma draining from a site somewhere and it's
caused in its magma draining from a subterranean reservoir. And
when the magma is moving, the reservoir is collapsing, and
this is causing quakes. And they looked at the GPS
data and from that they said, okay, we think this
(32:40):
kind of thing might happen if zero point three cubic
miles of magma all moved at once, or they said,
possibly sea monsters, the eldritchge dead and dreaming beast from
the darkness between the stars, slumbering until the constellations reach
a predetermined position. Not can I mean scientists did propose
(33:02):
that multiple people.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Actually they did some kind of eldritch beast.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I'm pretty sure they were joking. But you know, what
would the show be if we don't include that part?
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
And speaking of the weird out there stuff, we did
save the best theory. Sorry, I can't speak for everyone
in my opinion the best theory.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Oh no, no, I'm right there with you, Ben Concur, Oh.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Great, we saved the best one. Then we're unanimous on this.
Who saved the best one? For last? Learn all about
the vortex after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Wait the Vortex, huge dramatic music, the war.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
War, war tech tech tech text.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Back in twenty thirteen, Wiki leaks released an article alleging
that a mysterious vortex opened over the Gulf of Aden,
just off the Horn of Africa, which created catastrophic weather
in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
So like a portal, Just like a portal, but a vortex.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Fortse Yeah, but this is what we're talking wikiliks, right, Yeah,
WikiLeaks did release this. It was according to a report
allegedly prepared by an Admiral Maximov of Russia's Northern Fleet
for Vladimir Putin. What they said was in late two thousand,
the specific year two thousand, there was a magnetic vortex
(34:28):
that was discovered in this area that you just described,
matt in the Gulf of Aden. And according to the story, Russia,
the People's Republic of China, and the USA joined together,
cast aside their paltry human differences to study what this
vortex was, and they discovered that it defied logic and
(34:49):
the laws of physics. This sent the world the conspiracy sphere,
kind of like the lithosphere, I guess, on fire. And
with the recent reports of audun events near mayott More,
theorists are resurrecting this story, and who can blame them?
Speaker 3 (35:04):
It's a great story, dude, doe. The cover story from
the governments was that all of these navies were joining
forces to combat Somali pirates.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
That's true, Yeah, that's true, which is strange when you
think about how much firepower that.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Would be, you know what I mean, Yeah, to fight
a vortex or whatever was going to emerge from the vortex.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And that's yeah, you've stump you've stumbled on it. So
people have also connected this with something called the Norway
spiral or Norway vortex, and people started I guess pretty
quickly people began bringing aliens into the picture, right, Yeah,
because why else would these geopolitical adversaries or at best
(35:47):
frenemies cooperate.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yeah, there's an alleged connection to Jupiter, which is which
is fun about one of the large storms that's on
Jupiter and the vortex showing up when the storm on
Jupiter was re emerging. I could not correlate those two
things together just in my own independent research, but it's
been discussed about this.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, and there are other earthquake related things too. Oh yeah,
so we know some of these things are true. Weather
manipulation is a real thing that occurs. China regularly practices this.
Other countries have certainly dabbled with it. The US engaged
in weather manipulation during the Vietnam War. For some people
(36:35):
who believe this vortex exists, the world powers are cooperating
to combat weather related shenanigans. But the people who spice
this up with claims of extraterrestrial or even interdimensional contact
alleged that world governments in secret have been able to
contact or confront something not of this world.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah. I'm gonna go out on a lemon and say
we probably didn't confront something from out of this world,
because we would be squashed like a bug.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I don't know, man, front are get fronted, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah, do you have it? We're just mostly throwing iron
and different metals that are just propelled at high speed
at these things.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
It's true, we don't have any really cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Yet, explosives, I guess, sir.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Well, I mean, if you detonated a nuclear weapon, you
would it's kind of cutting off your nose despite your face,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
You'd find a seismic activity, some seismic activity though.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
That is true. That is true, and you will find
reports that say a forty one earthquake or thirty five
earthquakes occurred in a twenty four hour period in the
Gulf of Aiden. And also a ton of military vessels
and commercial vessels are in the Gulf of Aiden. It's
a huge shipping lane for the world, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
But yes, but there's also one major problem, right, what's
that the location? Location?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
That is okay, yes, yes, that is true. So the
Gulf of Aiden is a seven hour plane flight away
from Mayo. So while it could be considered sort of
in the region, sure, it's not nearby. You don't pop
over to the Gulf of Aiden to you know, pick
up milk.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I don't Knoweah, Well, you know, unless you're in some
kind of vessel that is interdimensional in nature, or can
travel faster than light, or even just travel extremely extremely
fast and travel underwater, maybe you could get there really quickly.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, what is really happening at the Gulf of Aiden?
And where did these reports come from? So? Wiki leaks
has been associated with legitimate stuff. The way they release
it may have some sort of angle, right, but what
they just I guess the better way to say it
is WikiLeaks definitely has its own agenda. They do display
(39:02):
editorial bias in the way that they release certain things
and hold other ones in confidence. But usually when they
release stuff, it's true or it's written in what it's
written by someone who believes it to be true.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Right, Yeah, and it was a this is part of
a strap for email at least a leak that came
from the Global Intelligence files. Okay, this has occurred in
twenty twelve. February twenty seventh, that's when this specific email
was released with the subject huh mysterious vortex warned it's
(39:38):
creating warned is creating global weather catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah. So for context, Stratfor is a intelligence platform, publisher
kind of subscription service. You can also get some free
emails from them. That was founded in Austin, Texas, and
they report on geo political stuff, a lot of state
craft and a lot of things that would be helpful
(40:05):
to multinational corporations.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yeah, and specifically weapons companies are built into this whole
thing and intelligence and all that.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
So where can where can you get the best price
selling guns things like that, honestly? Or where where our
market's unstable? And so of course they would be concerned
with these weird reports. I know what a lot of
us are thinking. Did this email come out on April first? No?
Speaker 3 (40:31):
No, did not.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
First?
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Well, it was from a website called pack alert press
dot com, and I mean it was a it was
a news story at the time. But here's the thing.
The source that was being like mentioned in this email
that was sent or found within this leak. That's really
(40:55):
what we're talking about here. The person that wrote the
article or at least provided the information for the article.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah, there's another conspiracy here. This is this is an
author or propagandist or group of authors or group of
propagandists going by the handle sort of Fall, which sounds
like a cool name from Star Wars.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
It really does. But they're known for putting out this
kind of bogus. Again, it's propaganda or just disinformation, or
just headlining or grabbing headlines that are completely false or
at least based on this tiny little morsel of truth,
and then just nothing.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Okay, so I'm with you my question, Yeah, to what
end does this story of some strange vortex over the
Gulf of Aiden help or hinder Russian operations if it
really is, if it really is some sort of propaganda.
I mean, have you read the It's essentially lore at
this point.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah, right, So.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
I guess the best way to say it is, do
we all remember the film Stargate?
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Oh yeah, yeah? All right, so Stargate the villain is
also the love interest in the Crying Game, correct, right.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
So.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Stargate. The gist of Stargate is that ancient civilization was
founded by extraterrestrials who possess a gate that lets one
travel through time and space in an unorthodox, much more
efficient manner, a stargate, if you will. And for some
people have looked into the Gulf of Aden. What's actually happening,
(42:38):
in their interpretation is that the US has found or
created or resurrected some sort of thing like this, some
sort of passage to other dimensions or to distant places
in time and space several like this is very closely
related to the idea that the US invaded Iraq to
(43:00):
find a stargate. Did you ever hear that one?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah? I loved that. I loved that theory. That was
so much fun. Again for me, these are so exciting
and I don't know, they reawakened the kid in me
that watched the X Files, you know, before going to
bed and then had glorious dreams and nightmares about the
monsters that you could find within or the aliens and
(43:23):
what they would actually be like. But unfortunately, in my mind,
to my mind, that's what this is. Because we're still
talking about seismic activity that occurred in a place that
is a seven hour airplane ride from this other place
that allegedly maybe had something weird going on with the
(43:44):
vortex that some propaganda's ward about.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Okay, yes, totally true. Also, I think I'm pretty biased here.
I'm just gonna say I've never been to the Gulf
of Aden. Okay, same, yeah, all right, that's what they
get up to around there.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
It might be stargates all day. Man. It might be
like a mall that is also a stargate so that
you can get pretzels.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I would picture the stargate would be sort of in
the center where Santa Claus usually sits. You have to
wait in line to the stargate.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, either that or like an anchor store, you know.
Oh yeah, it's because I think you're right, man, it's
basically wherever they put the Santa that's where they would.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Put the start.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
And to be further fair, I think it's safe to
say that all of us are just holding our breaths
until the ancient ancient ones come back, right.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
I personally will welcome them with open arms. Yeah, and
pledge my allegiance to them instantly.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Oh yeah, I mean you'll only exist for a few seconds,
but those seconds will just be not.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
If I pledge my allegiance quickly enough, you think, so, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
You got to know the customs man, like what is
considered pledging allegiance? You know, what if they communicate by
smell and the first person to just rip an obnoxious
fart because like they'reputized. Yeah, they're human, like Les Petelint,
the professional French Flageli.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
These are all very important things to consider.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
These are all very We want you all to go
into this prepared. Uh. It's true though this this stargate
theory sounds wild. The Gulf of Aiden isn't really that close.
But there is that report from Wiki leaks, and even
though the Strafford people themselves seem pretty I don't know,
(45:33):
dismissive of it. Maybe they they're they're probably dismissive because
they couldn't find any other source to confirm it, right,
or they couldn't find any source that existed independently. It
all ultimately goes back to this Russian report, and still
it doesn't explain this earthquake, this series of earthquakes, this thing,
(45:54):
this low key rumble that is not supposed to happen
this way.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
With the weird metronomic hmm clicks.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
It's kind of like the bloop remember that. Yeah, the
unexplained noise that I think ultimately people no one conclusively
solved it, but people did seem to think overwhelmingly there
was the sound of ice moving in a glacier.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Right, Yeah, but I don't believe that for a second.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
You think it was you think it was an eldritch
it was something that goes. So at this point in time,
it looks like the most plausible explanation for the strange
global shiver, let's call it, is the underwater drainage of
a massive amount of magma. And reading the descriptions of this,
(46:43):
I don't know about you guys, but it made me
think of when people talk about popping or draining a
ZiT or something. You know what I mean? Is this
an earth ZiT like under the skin? What's it called
if it's under the skin and it hasn't popped yet?
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Dermal something? Okay, I don't know, there's a name for Yeah,
that's it.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
No, No, not a doctor, But that's so. So it
looks like this may have a mundane explanation, but that's
not a guaranteed cause. And at this point, as we
record this episode, we still don't understand how this happened
the way it did. And that's very, very important because
(47:25):
you know what happens when there's a lack of transparency
and a lack of clarity.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Colin Ritman comes along and he's like, he needs more time,
he needs more time to finish that video game. Holy
crappy guys.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
You know, a z it under the skin is called
what's called an underground temple.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
An underground Well, we've solved that mystery conclusively, and think,
you know, in the case of the global seismic event,
Until it can be proven that there is a definitive
answer to this mystery, questions are going to remain, and
fringe researchers will continue asking whether this is just an
(48:04):
oddly well organized earthquake that has a great sense of rhythm,
or if it's evidence of something else, something they don't
want you to know. But then I don't know, man,
what do you think? I want it to be? A
sorry gape, But I'm pretty sure it's magma. I'm pretty
sure it's an undergrounds it.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, it's it's for me. Is that one piece of
the puzzle that the rhythmic nature of the one the
the one set of frequencies are just making that weird
little monochromatic? I think mono mono chromatic? Wait, monoch chronomic? Well,
what does that? How does that work?
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Is it in terms of sound?
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Monophonic? No, I mean, monophon just means one voice at
a time. It doesn't, there's not that only happens as
a single instance, not stacked like chords or whatever.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Monophone just means a single tone that only mon simp
on its own. It's never like joined by other sounds.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
But it's weird, right, This thing is weird. Yeah, it's
not doesn't sound the way an earthquake is supposed to sound,
and it doesn't move like one either.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
It's not cool, not cool at all.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
I think it's super cool, man.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
I think it's probably just packs. You know, pa X
hanging out down there, k Pax now just packs. It's
a demon, pac Man, it's a demon that you're.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Supposed to worship. Packman's a demon.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, yeah, programming control man.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Have you seen that? You have you guys seen that?
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Man, conspiracy realist. Let us know what you thought of that.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
He escapes one he escapes out in the maze one way,
only to come in on the other side.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
That's a good one. That's a good voice of that kid.
And I forget his name, but he's excellent movie.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
He's also in Yes, uh, you can let us know
your opinion of Bander snatch the possible secrets of unexplained
earthquakes and more by finding us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
That's it. Yeah, we're we're conspiracy stuff and or conspiracy
stuff show. You'll figure it out. If you don't want
to do that, come join us on Facebook and hang out.
And here's where it gets crazy. That's our page where
we all get together and discuss things like this. I'm
looking forward to hearing what you believe or don't believe.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
A Matt don't we have a phone number.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three st d WYTK. Call us, leave a message you
might get on the air.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
And hey, do us as solid Give us a nice
review on iTunes only if it's a nice review, yeah,
otherwise stay away. As Thumper's mom said in Bambi, if
you don't have anything nice to say, don't say nothing.
And on that imply that applies to internet reviews.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yeah least yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
And also if you would like to follow us personally,
we each have our own instagrams. I am I think
I'm at Ben Bullen in a burst of creativity, nice and.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Carry over from my sad boy kind of goth band days.
My Instagram handle is at embryonic insider nice.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
And I don't have one, so enjoy you do, so
follow my stories at Kim Kardashian. It's you guy the
whole time. I don't know, I don''t I don't really do,
I don't do one that's outward facing. Okay, and that's
the end of this classic episode. If you have any
(51:29):
thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into
contact with us in a number of different ways. One
of the best is to give us a call. Our
number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you don't
want to do that, you can send us a good
old fashioned email.
Speaker 5 (51:45):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
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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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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