February 8, 2021 • 66 mins
The military of Myanmar institutes a coup (and later internet blackout). Scientists believe they may have finally solved the mystery of Dyatlov Pass -- and their argument is pretty convincing! More and more organizations realize they need to be prepared for the end of Adobe Flash. All this and more in this week's Strange News segment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's the top of the week,
which means it's time for some strange news. Uh, We've
(00:46):
we've got a lot, got a lot going on today.
We sometimes will hop on our group thread and say,
you know, like kick ideas back and forth. And one
one beautiful thing that happened behind the behind the curtain
today is leading up to today's episode. We were kicking
(01:07):
around ideas that we were all kind of on the
same page about, uh, where do you where do you
guys want to go? First? You want to go to
Do you want to go to China? Do you want
to go to uh Myanmar formerly Burma? Do you want
to go to Russia? We're going to all of these places.
By the way, folks. So I hope at least one
(01:29):
of those sounded exciting to you in the audience. I
feel like Myanmar might be the top story. Sure, absolutely.
Now I bring this story to the table today knowing
some things, but not many things, and I will be
leaning on you folk, to you gents, just to help
(01:49):
me get through some of this. Just putting that out
there as a disclaimer before we jump in. I am
using a timeline, a chronology of events in the history
of Myanmar and Burma um. It is on BBC dot com.
The title, if you're looking for it, is Meanmar Profile
dash Timeline. It's just got everything going back all the
(02:12):
way to ten fifty seven ce. BBC is great for those,
by the way, they have one for pretty much every
country exactly. If you ever just want to get a
basic idea of important things that have happened, check it out.
Turns out Brits are very organized and good at chronology.
Well they're a little biased, but yeah, yeah we um. Also,
(02:36):
if you're looking for a little bit of vicarious travel
and you want to learn more, I think we've recommended
this on the air before. Check out Wiki travel articles.
Take them with a wheelbarrow of salt, but do check
them out. There are a lot of fun absolutely, and
for the purposes of this story, there's a second timeline
(02:56):
for more recent events that is very helpful to look
at if you wanted to follow along or think about
what's occurring here, just get some more some more info
for yourself is on Al Jazeera. It's called Me and
Mar Timeline of a Fragile Democracy. I believe it starts
in seven Yeah, so that'll be helpful. Just keep those
things in mind. All right. I'm actually going to a
(03:19):
very different news source, something very much US based, CBS
News for the article that kind of brought me into
the conversation and down the rabbit hole. It is titled
European leaders condemn coup as Me and Mars military seizes power,
detains a song su Chi. Now this kind of just
(03:43):
popped up in my news feed and started learning about it.
Let's talk about what's happening, um ben. I would just
say again at the top here, this feels like an
episode like very much worth our time. So we may
not hit everything right now, but we'll give you the
lay of the land. Something very interesting happened in Me
(04:04):
and Mar again, formerly Burma has been mentioned there. It's
uh oh wow, I got rid of my map, but
you can check out me and more of the country.
It is in Asia. It is to the east of
India and to the west of Thailand. You can think
about it being over there. It's got a very interesting
(04:26):
history over the years. The most important thing for you
to know in this context is that for for a
number of years up until two thousand eleven, I believe
Ben correct me if I'm wrong here, UH, it was
controlled by essentially a military junta. The military was largely
in control of what happened in the country and functioned
(04:49):
as a government. And then some things changed in two
thousand eleven where the military kind of took a step
back and some elections were held, and then the trajectory
of the country felt like it was moving towards democracy,
if not fully taking up democracy as its new way forward.
(05:10):
And then after a large series of events in November
of that year, UH, this this party called the Opposition
National League for Democracy. UH. They which is led by
on San su Chi, which is the person that was
detained very recently. So what a lot of the hubub
(05:30):
is about. Um she was actually able well, she and
her party were able to get enough parliamentary seats in
order to form a government, which is a big deal.
It's very then we can talk about this maybe just
for a moment. Democracies in a lot of countries function
very differently than here in the United States with our
(05:51):
two party system, where essentially whoever wins the presidency kind
of controls that House over here, and then whoever you know,
within the House and Congress. Each seat is individually elected,
rather than you know, one person or one majority wins
a certain number of votes and then they get to
form their own group in parliament. Right, Yeah, we're looking
(06:14):
in in many democracies outside of the United States. What
we're looking at is the formation of coalitions. So say
you have a party, say you have like a Green Party,
and then you have um, I don't know, mad live
the words. However you want the Conservative Socialist Party or
the Democratic Libertarian Party or whatever, and they can't all
(06:37):
quite get a majority rules, so they vultron up together
and do their best to create a coherent platform based
on the goals that each of those groups prioritizes. So
we can get messy and make for strange bedfellows at times,
but it is it does tend to be better for
(06:59):
the average citizen in those countries because they are more
likely to have at least some of their values represented
in government versus you know, um, look how ridiculously difficult
it is by design to start a viable third party
in the US with any chance of winning significant positions
(07:22):
in office. M hm. Such a good point then, So
so we're talking about this occurring in things are infinitely
complicated up until this year, in this month, February. Um,
in in November, I believe of last year there were elections.
(07:45):
I want to say that's true. Yeah, I believe there
were elections in November, and and there was there appeared
to be a landslide victory for that same party Unsung
Succi was leading. And the army itself took kind of
kind of mirrors what was happening in the United States
(08:06):
here with our elections. The army just said, there is
this is not right. The there has been voter manipulation.
There has been someone has messed with these numbers. This
is this election is a fraud. And the army itself,
there's a chief Minong Klang. He he took power. Essentially,
(08:28):
the military took power in the country in a full
on coup, and that is what's happening right now. They
ended up detaining many members of that party that won
the election and others who essentially opposed the military rule.
I'm gonna jump back to that CBS article to actually
read some of this to you. It's weird the way
(08:48):
with the way it happened. On television there in Mayan
mar there is a military run network, and on in
this network, someone one of the one of the anchors,
I assumer, someone who was regularly appearing, came on and
just announced that the military has taken control of the
country and it will be in control for one year.
(09:10):
And it's just kind of all happened at once. People
were detained and then the announcement came through, and all
of a sudden life in Myanmar as just a regular
citizen has has changed. Um, everything got flipped turned upside down,
as they say, sorry, sorry, you know. And of course
(09:33):
on the western side, in the United States and in
many parts of Europe, everyone is coming out of the
woodwork and saying this is terrible, this is awful. I mean,
obviously it is right anytime a democratic election is overthrown
by the might essentially of a military power within that government.
It's probably not a good thing in the long run,
(09:54):
at least, it's kind of a hard, hard thing to
put a value judgment on. But generally when when a
strong arm comes through and just forces action, it's less
good than if the people decide something. Yeah, he says,
just to clarify. Essentially, a military junta is it's like
a coup from within. I mean, it's it's like a
(10:14):
a strong man military official usurping the power of elected
officials or of whomever is supposedly in charge, and then
wielding his influence over the military and using that to
you know, cause a sea change in government. And it's
it's pretty controversial because of military. Uh. Military intervention of
(10:35):
this sort has has often been portrayed as a good
thing in other cases across the world and over time,
like interfering to prevent the rise of extremism or fascism.
These things are can be considered part of a military's
constitutional duty, you know, enemies abroad, domestic and abroad. But
(11:00):
in this case, there is a big, big red badger
just over the horizon that has that has a lot
of influence in Miamar and Matt, I think we'll get
to that in a in a second. Well, yeah, well,
I mean it's it's exactly what you're talking about. The
Constitution of Myanmar was formed jointly with the military, UM
(11:23):
and there is a at least according to the television
station that is owned by the military. When they announced this,
they said that there was there's a section of the
constitution that allows the military to take over in a
time of national emergency. So essentially an emergency was declared
(11:44):
for the length of one year, and the moment it
was declared, the military is now in power at least
according to the people who are causing this coup um,
and they will stay in power for one year UM.
And they specifically said the takeover was in part due
to this is this is what I'm getting from CBS News.
(12:04):
The government's failure to act on the military's claims. Now
that's important, the military's claims of voter fraud in the
November election, and it's it's failure to postpone the election
because of the coronavirus crisis. Well, they demanded they demanded
a recounts, which was not granted because from what I understand,
(12:26):
the country's election commission, Uh did not see evidence of fraud.
But yeah, but if you look at the military's perspectives
from their public statements, they say they're doing this as
a legal, proactive, and preventative move to maintain stability, which
is an odd thing to say with a straight face,
(12:48):
given that these events forced all the banks to close, shops,
running out of food, communication infrastructures could put these those
three things alone. Are surprised. Is not the hallmarks of
a stable government. Yeah, it's a serious issue, and it's
panic that comes from this kind of action, right you,
(13:10):
and uncertainty about what's to come. So you know, every everyday,
people like you listening and me and everybody on this
zoom call, if something like this starts going down, one
of the first things you try and do is prepare
yourself and your family with whatever essentials you need, with
maybe cash if you can get as much cash out
(13:32):
as you can, just in case you have to make
moves um and the banks stopped working all of a
sudden at some point. Uh. That's yeah, that kind of
panic is is happening right now and we'll probably continue
for quite a while. I can only imagine the fear
that's generated in a moment like this. One important point
to make here is that like what, yes, this is
(13:56):
this can be considered a coup, but how much of
a change is it? Because the military dictatorship went out
of power ostensibly in but not really, not really if
you look at it, because it was able to force
a compromise with the new government where it was granted
(14:17):
of the seats in parliament. And so if you asked
the average person familiar with the situation, the real see,
the real secret, not a secret here is that the
military and the junta could close its hands around the
neck of the government any time it wanted to. They
just didn't for a while until you know this week.
(14:40):
Jeez oh, they also had a veto over any constitutional changes. Wow,
I did. I didn't even realize that. There's so much
to be learned here. And I'm just gonna say one
more time, this is worth us looking at for a
full episode, really giving you a good background on me
and mar and what's been happening there and then all
the d hills, because we're gonna be learning a lot
(15:01):
more over the course of this week of what's going down.
A couple more things we can tell you here before
we wrap this section. That same military TV network stated
that the generals in charge of the country now because
I remember immediately they become in charge of the country,
had removed a total of twenty four government ministers and
(15:22):
deputy ministers and replaced them with eleven handpicked replacements. So
they just picked out their own people and put them
in power there. They also mentioned that the new commander
in chief would be a person who this this person
that took over that already mentioned General Menong Klang h
(15:43):
l A I n g would be in charge, but
there's a sitting vice president Mint Sway m y i
n T s w E would be elevated to acting
president um And this person is also a general who
who is apparently at least according to CBS News and
I don't I don't know the full story here yet,
(16:06):
but is best known for a crackdown on Buddhist monks
and that occurred in two thousand seven. And this person
was it is a close ally of former junta leader
uh Faun Sway s h w V can I put
in two points place. Succi is also has also come
under fire for persecution of the Rohinga Muslims. Uh you
(16:29):
may have heard that headline in the news in past years. UH.
And one crazy thing that I hope that will explore
for sure in the full episode is I am wondering,
not without basis you guys, I am wondering whether this
newest coup was in part uh motivated by astrology. What
(16:50):
are we talking about? Don't ruin yourself, don't search, don't
search yet We'll make it worth your while. Astrology. All
of this, UH makes me think of, you know, the idea, oh,
this would never happen in the United States. Um. But
then you mentioned the kind of potential positive version of this,
where a military coup could overtake, you know, a power
(17:13):
grab by an overreaching president or or or or whatever government, right. Um.
And it seems like, you know, we got to a
place pretty recently that the borderline approach that. But it
also makes me think of the plot of the fantastic
Stanley Kubrick movie UH, Doctor Strange Love, where in a
lone rogue high level military general essentially hijacks the entire
(17:35):
military and orders a an attack on the U s
SR that will ultimately result in UH mutual destruction. UM.
And there are certain safeguards in place that he uses
that prevent any intervention in this. If anyone hasn't seen that,
I think that's a really great, uh, you know, satirical
example of what can happen when one person has too
(17:59):
much our Yeah, no, for sure. I I want to
just remind everybody and imagine the scenario. Imagine you are
wherever you are, UM, maybe in Kansas somewhere, maybe in
the middle of Los Angeles, wherever you are listening to this.
Imagine that all of a sudden you go to turn
(18:21):
on the television and none of the stations are coming in.
For some reason, you can't get access to you know,
Verizon or whatever it is you know, a T and T.
Nothing's just no signals coming through. So you try to
log in, but for some reason your WiFi can't connect
out to the internet, and you don't understand what's going on.
(18:42):
You try and make a phone call to a relative
or some of a friend that lives nearby, but the
phone isn't making connections to anybody else. Just just imagine
that that begins occurring, um and imagine living through that.
And how I know I would be in a state
of serious panic if that were occurring, and I would
be hunkered down immediately. Um. That happened to many, many,
(19:07):
many people when this When this went down, dude, people
freaked out the season finale of The Sopranos when their
TV went black for a split second, like what happened?
Like the world collectively kind of lost their minds, thinking
that like the cable had all gone out at the
same time or something. I mean, absolutely, dude, if if
I felt like all of a sudden communication was cut
off from more than one source, I would absolutely be panicking.
(19:32):
Pro tip, if you can you have the ability to
do so, highly recommend keeping a landline phone. They're antiquated. Uh,
they're not super useful the way that mobile phones are,
but they have one important advantage that a lot of
people are not aware of. If you have a corded phone,
a landline phone, it'll work during a power outage. It's
(19:56):
because because the same thing that allows voy to carry
also powers the phone. So keep one. If you're feeling
especially paranoid or you think that your ability to communicate
might be compromised. Is a coupever good thing? It's a
good question, at least typically the way these are supposed
(20:17):
to occur. If it's in a good case is that
the military intervenes for a limited window of time, and
during that window of time they facilitate free and fair elections,
and then they transfer back to a civilian government. They're
just supposed to come in and cameo. They're not supposed
to rule for you know, fifty four years or something.
(20:38):
So that's that's part of why there's that limited time
frame of one year. But will that result in a
free and fair election, I don't know, because the civilians
in the military don't seem to agree on what constitutes
of real election exactly. All right, So well, we will
keep looking out for update, done this and hopefully come
(21:01):
back with more info very soon. For now, we're going
to take a quick break. Here's some sponsors, and then
we'll be right back. And we've returned. I want to
thank everybody who's reached out to me on Instagram or
(21:21):
on Twitter, or has reached out to us on the
Facebook group page. Here's where it gets crazy. Uh, there
is an awesome story that just came out solving a
very old mystery. Uh. This is going to be familiar
to any of our long time listeners and fellow conspiracy
realist folks. Dealt Love Pass. This is a tale that
(21:45):
is um core conspiracy lore. You know, I I love
the classic stuff. They don't want you to know vibe
about this. Uh, it's it's a hell of us story.
I'll give you a breakdown of the story itself, quicking dirty,
and then we can explore the problems with that story
(22:06):
and we can explore the news. So, Ben, before you
get into this, you're saying Pass is solved. Uh maybe, Okay, Okay, good,
there's still maybe some mystery. All right, let's keep going.
So the Dat Love Pass incident refers to a series
of events that occurred in February nineteen fifty nine, exactly
(22:30):
sixty two years to the day as we record today.
Strange news. So back in February nine fifty nine and
the Northern Ural Mountains, nine Russian hikers died somehow during
the nights while they were camping in a site they
had cut from the snow slope of the mountains. Uh,
(22:54):
something happened. No one was sure what, but whatever happened
was fatal, and there were were puzzling things at the
crime scene. First, several, uh, several folks were inadequately dressed.
It seemed they had thrown off their clothes. One hiker's
tongue was missing. Uh Also, there was a lot of
(23:15):
physical trauma, and then later rumors would muddy the story.
But we know that the Soviet authorities who investigated this
determined that six had died from hypothermium, three had been
killed by physical trauma. And there's a phrase they used
(23:36):
which was an unknown overwhelming force depending on how you translated.
This was seen immediately as a cover up and very soon.
To remember, the story circulated before the rise of civilian internet,
so very soon new stuff got added to the mix.
You'll hear allegations that there were high radiation levels. You'll
(23:59):
hear allegations that people were even glowing, or that there
was unidentified aerial phenomena in the sky in the in
the days leading up to this incident. The problem with this,
for skeptics and true believers and conspiracy realist alike is
that one this occurred under the purview of a notoriously
(24:23):
secretive government, uh to a lot of time passed before
this story really got its uh like due diligence research
wise outside of the USSR. And then the next part
is and the skeptics hated this is that there wasn't
(24:44):
really solid proof that a mundane event could explain this.
So you could say, you could say it was just
hypothermia all you want, But then someone who believed something
different could say, well, hypothermia the doesn't tear people's tongues out,
or hypothermia doesn't crack your skull or give you incredible
(25:07):
chest trauma. That's These are just the facts, and it
was it was not consistent UH injury to all of them.
It wasn't like the same thing. I mean, there were
there are variations, right, and it seemed like some intervening
force was at play right amidst the various individual victims.
So the mystery stands, and it does so much so
(25:30):
much for UH shows like stuff they don't want you
to know. Matt and I were in the trenches and
dat love for a long time. And interestingly enough, it's
one of those stories since it never had an explanation
that was solid, it's one of those stories that we
still get emails about. People still reach out to me
on social about this and have for a number of years.
(25:51):
We just pointed them to our video on this, and
I think several years ago we also did an audio
podcast on on these events. So one thing I noticed
is that the frequency of people asking about this began
to increase. Over you'll see trends like this come and go,
depending on any number of factors. But for everyone who
(26:15):
wrote in about this, especially if you wrote in congratulations,
you're plugged in your oddly prescient my friends, because a
new study released claims to have solved this enduring mystery
very recently. A study published in Communications, Earth and Environment
(26:40):
walked through several computer models too. In their opinion, uh,
maybe not conclusively proved, but strongly suggests that we know
the murderer of those nine hikers in a weird way.
It might have been a self inflicted disaster kind of avalanche.
(27:00):
Not the kind you're picturing, folks, not the kind from
films about avalanches, not the not the kind of thing, uh,
triggered by Sorrowman in Lord of the Rings when they're
when you know, the thing that drives them back to
the minds of Maria. Instead, this is something called a
slab avalanche. Um. Not to sound dismissive her clib but
(27:25):
I feel like they missed an opportunity to call it
a slab balanche, which is just it was right there. Uh,
here's what happened. The reason that we say this doesn't
really compare to the avalanches of film and fiction is
because typically those avalanches appear to happen as an instant
(27:46):
a to b if then reaction. But the truth is
these actual avalanches, the ones that they're describing in the study,
which we'll get into in a second, Uh, they have
kind of a timer on them. An avalanche can happen
minutes after the event that creates it, or it can
happen hours and hours later. And this snow slide, this
(28:10):
slab blanche, according to the authors of this study, could
account for a lot of the missing pieces of information
the bedeviled skeptics and conspiracy realist alike for for decades.
For again, in sixty two years comes to us from
Johan Guam, who is the head of the snow Avalanche
(28:32):
Simulation Laboratory, and Alexander Pouzin, who is the chair of
Geotechnical Engineering at e t H Zurich. They dug deep, guys.
They poured over as much declassified Soviet research on this
as they could, and then they took the latest avalanche
research and simulations and tried to plug in this data
(28:55):
trying to essentially recreate the crime scene on a computer.
I want to pause here. When we have talked about
thatt Love in the past, what what did you guys think.
I didn't think it was just an avalanch. I thought
it was some kind of like murderer situation or some
kind of ritualistic something. When you hear about smashed skulls
(29:17):
and missing tongues, my brain immediately goes to psychopath on
the loose. It was he was always cryptid for me, Eddie,
or some some type of large creature was causing me him.
I was into the idea of secret technology myself, you know,
I thought I thought that would work with the Cold
(29:39):
War era experimentation that was so frequent back in the day.
By the way, that doesn't mean that's what we actually
think happened. That's just kind of our well what how
did you call it? Our pet theory? I guess so
you Here are some of the missing pieces that the
(30:00):
authors of the study were bothered by. First, this is
your grizzly fact for today, folks. First, most people in avalanches,
if they die, they don't die due to broken bones
or brain trauma or anything like that. They die bi asphyxiation,
they're buried alive. It's a very unclean way to go.
(30:23):
And this is where challengers to the avalanche theory really
butter their bread, because if you look at the slope
and the incline of where the hikers chose to camp,
it doesn't look like a hill. It doesn't look like
very avalanche friendly territory, you know what I mean. It's
a slope, but it's not like a harsh mountain face
(30:46):
and a steep incline. Uh. And they it's quite likely
that the hikers, who knew what they were doing, purposely
selected this site because it looked like there's it's not
avalanche territory. But when they camping, according to the authors here,
what they did is they cut into the snow, into
(31:08):
the uh, into the slope the same way that you
might see like a ranch style home built into a
hill on the in the suburbs split level, or a
hobbit hole built into the side of a of a hill. Sure,
and the thing that happened was that they triggered an avalanche,
and the avalanche took several hours to get to them, uh,
(31:34):
several hours to reach kind of a critical mass and
and ensue. You know, think they would have noticed that
or it would have awakened them the vibrations or even
off further in the distance. Uh well maybe, but not
not giving them enough time to run away, because they
would have when it happened. It happened very quickly, and
the tensions leading up to it, according to this idea,
(31:57):
would not have been super easy to certain if you're
just a human hiking with the technology they had. So
a slab avalanche occurs when there's a dense slab of
snow that's sitting over a snow layer that's weaker, so
it's already kind of heavy and haphazard, and when there's
(32:19):
some sort of trigger that compromises that weaker snow or
you know, pushes harder on that that strong slab than
it eventually tips over it falls, it creates a snow slide.
And this can occur on slopes with an angle of
fewer than thirty degrees. So something that doesn't look like
(32:40):
avalanche territory again, And the other thing is another question.
Avalanches are big, right why didn't somebody else notice this?
And Soviet authorities are well acquainted with avalanches. Russia is
a snow filled country. This avalanche could have been comparatively small,
(33:01):
and if it were small enough, rescuers wouldn't see signs
of an avalanche later. But even the smallest of these
slab avalanches can weigh hundreds and hundreds of pounds, meaning
that if you were depending on where you're standing when
it hit, you could have your bones broken, you could
(33:22):
have your skull cracked, you could have your ribs crushed.
So this is this is where they're at. And they
did various simulations not just of how this would occur,
but of how people would be injured like in this scenario. Well,
and the other thing then is is we know that
(33:44):
some people some of the group did die there. They
perished in the tent or right near the tent, But
then there are others who died further away. Is there
anything discussing what may have happened to them? Great question, Matt,
and something that I'm glad to say the authors are
aware of, because they still they don't claim with certitude
(34:09):
that this is the silver bullet solution. Instead, they say
in a documentary about this paper that was just released,
they say, personally, we do not believe that the mystery
can ever be solved because no one survived to tell
the story. What we did in our paper is to
show the plausibility of the avalanche hypothesis based on solid
(34:30):
physical and experimental evidence in a way. Matt Um, I
guess you could call this a kind of non living
cryptod because it's such an unusual kind of avalanche, you
know what I mean, It hasn't it took our species
sixty two years to think about this, and it's just
(34:51):
really quickly, like I mean, when you're talking about the
way it moves, you know, you think of an avalanche
as being like powdery snow, and people would typically die
from a fixiation. This is literally huge rigid pieces that
coming down this uh, the side of the mountain where
there camped, could have hit them on the edge, coming
down like almost like a giant slab of marble and
(35:13):
then knocked you know, their skulls open, or literally you know,
could have caught someone by the jaw and and and
rip their tongue out. Is that the conjecture here? Yeah, yeah,
quite possibly. I mean at that point we're still talking
about um various likelihoods with no with no solid proof, right,
(35:33):
so we have to remember it also took the original
rescuers several months to recover the bodies of all nine hikers.
They were definitely on a man hunts. I would like
to shout out Vice and Smithsonian mag for some excellent
reporting on this, as well as the St. Petersburg Times. Uh,
(35:56):
here's the thing about missing organs. And this is kind
of gross and explicit, but I think a lot of
a lot of folks have spent time in the wild
are familiar with this. Uh. Scavengers go for the soft
stuff first. Those are the delicacies. The eyeballs, the tongue,
the you know, your unmentionables. Those those things are easy
(36:19):
for creatures to access, and there are a lot less
work than say, trying to uh gnaw at bone marrow
things like that. Right, you have to be a scavenger
specifically adapted to that sort of diet. So it's completely
plausible that one of the victims, such as uh Ludomelia Dubinina,
(36:40):
was missing both eyeballs and her tongue because something happened
along after the avalanche occurred and after she expired, and
then it ate the eyes and the tongue and continued
upon its way. Yeah, So then do just positives. What
I'm imagining is, does avalanche occurs at the side of
(37:02):
the tent where they dug out from the side right,
causing that avalanche to the slab to slide on top
of one of the other layers. The heavy stuff kills
some people almost immediately or at least gravely injures them.
Then maybe people who have survived that initial sliding slab
(37:24):
gather each other up, who are able to walk, and
try to get the heck out of there, and then
maybe freeze and that's what that's how they Yeah, yeah,
the idea is that, uh, they were sleeping the slab struck. Uh.
The they those who could ran searching for shelter at
(37:44):
a at a ridge nearby to get a sense of
the weather conditions. They couldn't see much further than maybe
fifty ft in front of them themselves, and so they
froze to death as they were trying to find shelter,
and then as they were trying to make their back
to the tent. Perhaps and again, the Soviet government's lack
(38:05):
of transparency, uh, the official findings, lack of scientific details
made for a perfect storm of conspiracy. And you know,
in oddly enough, the current Russian government had announced plans
to reinvestigate this incident, so reframing of this is um
(38:28):
was in the cards for a while. They they opened
a new investigation, and part of it, I think is
just recognize the importance I enclosure for the families and
relatives of those who passed away, and hopefully taking lessons
learned so that we understand situations like these when they
(38:49):
occur in the future again, which is again just it's
a statistical certainty that something like this would occur again.
But it has critics. That's the other thing. The slab
a blanche has has some folks poking holes in it already.
Here are here are some of the objections. One the
(39:11):
lack of physical traces of an avalanche found by rescuers.
We mentioned that it would have to be a pretty
small avalanche comparatively speaking to not leave behind a ton
of evidence. Uh. Secondly, and I think this is a
little more valid, uh, the gap we mentioned These can
occur minutes after the snow is compromised or hours. But
(39:35):
when we're looking at this slab blanche as an explanation here,
we have to remember there was a nine hour gap
between the hikers building their camp cutting into the mountain
to form a barrier against the wind and then the
snow hitting the fan managed to keep it a family show,
(39:57):
And then they also talked about the shallow slope of
the campsite and of course the traumatic injuries. So it's
not it's not conclusive yet, but the investigators are one
of the investigators least poserin is certain that if the
group had not cut into the sloope, nothing would have happened.
(40:18):
But when they cut into the slope, they created a crack,
and it propagated, it expanded over time. If you have
ever been unfortunate enough to crack your smartphone, you are
well aware of how this process works. That crack will
slowly expand and branch off if you have shield. Wind
(40:41):
shield was the mighty X example. Yeah, exactly. Uh boy,
A one shield crack is one of the most like
existentially depressing problems to have because you see it every
day wherever you're driving. Yeah, just a little a little,
a little bit closer, you know. It makes it about mortality.
(41:01):
The seventh Seal, all of all the all the hits,
how much you need that extra fifty dollars to get
it replaced? But you just can't seem to find it.
I feel like you and I were going through that
the same period man, in the Discovery days. Uh, there
is there is a fun like note here I thought
was enjoyable. Then we can end on this. The researchers
(41:24):
credit a surprising source for helping them unravel this puzzle.
You're not gonna You're probably not gonna be able to
guess what it is. Uh, So we'll just tell you, folks,
is Frozen. That's right, the Disney film from Frozen. Let
it go, the whole nine. Uh. According to some reporting
(41:46):
from National Geographic, one of the authors of the study
was watching Frozen, and remember this, this is an avalanche expert.
He was watching Frozen and he was thinking, Wow, I
am so impressed by how good they are depicting snow.
In fact, I am so impressed because I am an
(42:07):
avalanche specialist. I'm gonna reach out to the people who
made Frozen and I'm gonna ask them for the code
they used to animate snow, because it's amazing. They should
be working for me. Why are you in Hollywood? It's
about more than the money, you guys. I'm editorializing maybe
(42:27):
a bit, but he've reached out and they gave him
the code, and then they used that along with grizzly
research on cadavers conducted by GM General Motors back in
the nineties seventies. Why I have there's a pretty creepy
car stuff episode about this too. It's a true story.
(42:48):
Once upon a time General Motors used real dead bodies
instead of crash test dummies. Did you know that that
we ever talked about? We we did talk about that,
maybe not on the air, but that was just one
of those moments where in the office one of us
looked over at the other one, uh from the computer,
(43:10):
and then like cursed softly under their breath, and then
we lost two hours from whatever we're supposed to be doing.
So it's not you know. When we had that conversation,
it was the first time I ever imagined a haunting
of a vehicle. And you know, yeah, I don't know
if you remember this. There's the concept of ghost ships
(43:31):
has always been around, but I had never thought about
a ship like on the sea in on the its
interior being haunted until that terrible, terrible horror movie came
out called ghost Ship or whatever it was called. But
that one happened but then we had this conversation about
crash the dummies being cadavers, and I imagined, just like
(43:52):
a camera getting haunted over the years, with an actual
apparition like attached to the physical play. I think people
would pay extra for it. I think, I don't know,
advertised as a feature. It feels like a real hazard
if you're on the highway, and yeah, yeah, I guess
it depends on the ghost, you know. But if it's
(44:12):
like helpful ghost mode, why use a defroster when you
can have somebody Oh, that's true, that's true. We okay,
we need to workshop this. First, proved ghosts exist. Secondly,
figure out how to modify them and put them in
an automobile coming to a dealer near you on it.
(44:36):
Thank you, love fast for anybody who feels that this
is kind of a downer um that this, or feels
that this is itself the continuation of a cover up.
There's one last thing I want to leave you with
that may be of interest. Remember earlier I mentioned that
twenty nineteen reopened investigation on part of the Russian government.
(44:59):
They were not investigating all the proposed causes. They went
for the three most likely ones, and so This means
that they squarely in advance decided to ignore the idea
of anything like um an individual human or cryptid murderer,
(45:20):
unexplainable unidentified flying objects, or of course secret Soviet tech.
So if you are feeling very x files, you still
want to believe there may be something else still buried
beneath the avalanche of reporting on this story. We're gonna
pause for word from our sponsor. We'll be back with
(45:41):
more strange news. And we're back with more strange news.
I guess this is it. This is our third segment.
I guess I have the honor and the privilege of
going last today, and it is kind of a momentous
day in the history of of technology. Maybe not day,
(46:03):
it's week perhaps, um, But you guys are children of
the Internet, like myself. We all grew up with dial
up modems, and remember the first day that a cable
modem was a thing, and Spotify and all that, uh,
you know, and even before that, geo cities and animated
gifts and all of the little things a little beautiful
(46:24):
treasures that the Internet has bestowed upon us over the years,
and one of the things that we can all absolutely
thank for many of those treasures, UH is the Adobe company.
Uh and Adobe Flash. You guys remember Flash? Oh yeah,
when the first band I was in had a website
(46:45):
that was this amazing flash animation a friend of ours
made of just the name of our band, but like
forming in Flash, it was it was, it was beautiful.
And it's the first program I ever used to edit
a video. The first video ever made was like a
terrible Flash thing where I just I wasn't animating, I
was just shooting video and then putting it into Flash
(47:07):
and trying to put together a thing. Some of my
favorite NERRK games are in Flash or were that's Uh,
it's the thing in the past. I tried to figure
it out, but I went ahead and just played them
all one last time. That's right, You've got it, Ben,
you nailed it. Because Flash is dead as of January
twelve of this year. Uh, Flash has has bit the dust.
(47:31):
It is it is absolutely um no longer supported by
Adobe in that it won't be patched anymore. There will
be no more updates. And depending on who you ask.
And I'm not a super duper you know in the
weeds computer expert, in this way, I have enough of
a working understanding to understand the basics of things like
(47:51):
coding and line commands, command lines and all that. But
apparently there is some kind of built in thing in
the latest verse in a FLASH that deactivates it in
some way. We'll get into what that could mean or
does mean, But I just wanted to do just a
little bit of a brief kind of history of Flash
because a lot of this stuff it was kind of
nostalgic and fun for me. Uh. Flash originally started in
(48:15):
n when two friends by the name of Jonathan Gay
and Charlie Jackson met at a Macintosh users group and
decided that kind of that kind of became pals based
on their mutual mutual appreciation of programming for Max, because
that wasn't as much of a thing at the time.
We hadn't seen the mac renaissance that we you know,
(48:37):
that lad to where we are now with things like
the iPhone Max being the absolute gold standard for audio
and computer editing and animation all of that. So they
were very much ahead of the curve and they essentially
kind of put their heads together through their skills of
being able to kind of program basic graphic editors and
games and such, and decided they wanted to make something
that would use pen computers, essentially early forms of tablets
(49:02):
that use like a stylus. So they started building something
called smart Sketch, the graphics editor for Mac for pen computers,
and then it eventually evolved into something called future Splash
that was originally a component for Smart Sketch and then
became kind of a thing unto itself, and it was
an animator. And if you if you what you're talking about,
(49:23):
Matt with the really rudimentary kind of Flash editor, that's
sort of what this early version looked like. It was
essentially almost had the look of a word document with
like a big empty field at the bottom, and then
at the top you had a very rudimentary version of
what you might see today in after effects or in
any kind of editor where you have multiple tracks or
(49:44):
layers that you can drag things into. Its incorporated things
like tweening or in between, where you can like set
a beginning point an endpoint for like a rudimentary kind
of stick animation UM and or two D animation. Then
it would fill in the gaps um so in where
many of us probably came across Flash originally was the
(50:05):
company called Macromedia bought Flash in ninety six, uh, and
then it became Macromedia Flash turned from future Splash into
flash Um and that's kind of the the big heyday
of Flash was when it became basically it was so
popular because of early adoption from like Netscape if you
remember Netscape, or eventually it was called Mozilla because it
(50:29):
could do like animation headers for websites that didn't require
like real time video playback, and it was just like
much more versatile than an animated gift, which was all
just stored in one file, and it was interactive. You
could add little buttons almost like a DVD menu, things
called action scripts, and it became kind of the design
platform dujur for the Internet. And it's really what we
(50:49):
think of as the look of the Internet from the
mid to late nineties, and even the early days of
YouTube entirely based around Flash. The earliest versions of YouTube
were designed in Flash. UH. In fact, Chad Hurley, Stephen
Chen and Joe wad kareem Um were kind of toying
with the idea of maybe doing a dating site or
(51:10):
you know, something else, and they had a meeting with
an investor named Keith rebois. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing,
that's r A b O I s um. And he
mentioned they were working on a streaming video site and
he asked if they were designing in flash. When they
said yes, he agreed to invest because it was so ubiquitous. Um.
Then the you know, the tied for flash kind of
(51:32):
turned when the iPhone came out and Steve Jobs basically
unequivocally counted it out of any iPhone releases. He found
it to be uh buggy, He found it to be unstable,
He found it to have security flaws, so it was
not um part of the iPhone at all. And that
really kind of spelled the beginning of the end for flash.
(51:52):
UM so R I P Flash. But my real story
for today, I guess is what like what about? Surely
there are some you know, websites or god forbid, larger
institutions that are still relying on Flash and didn't get
the memo that it was gonna you know, go the
(52:13):
way of the dodo um and and that actually turns
out to be the case for a a small region
in China. And this wasn't like, you know, news to anybody.
You know. Adobe announced that they were sun setting flashback
in two thousand seventeen. UM, they would be deactivating the
plug in and its extensions by the end of so
(52:35):
they actually gave a little bit of a grace, you know,
a couple of weeks into UM. But earlier this month
when it happened a according to Apple Daily, officials at
the China Railway shen Yang had been using flash based
software to plan many aspects of their daily train routes
(53:00):
and shipping UM and as a result of of the
the sunsetting of the software, it caused about twenty hours
of absolute chaos UM. Apparently they weren't able to dispatch
trains uh and it led to the railroad shutting down
completely in Diean lion Ning Province. UM. And apparently they
(53:22):
were able to roll back the software to an earlier
version of flash player that didn't have this uh deactivating code. UM.
But again I've seen some some chatter on the internet
saying maybe that's not entirely the case. The idea of
the self deactivating code that does seem a little kind
of weird why they would do that. But it still
(53:43):
feels like if it wasn't being supported, or if there
was like some kind of it needed an update. I'm
not exactly sure. Um what what do you guys think
about this? Does this have the ring of truth? Or
does this seem like maybe somebody missed something along the way.
When you're talking about Flash itself being like deactivating activating itself,
the idea of why would they do that, Why would
(54:04):
they build a self deactivating clock into a piece of software.
I would think it would be more just them not
wanting to not supporting it anymore and not patching it
and not updating it. Well, it's a way to protect
end users because it really is Flash player really is
a massive vulnerability for attacks, and it has been for
(54:25):
a long time. And if it's no longer updated and
just supported and they left it dead on machines and
millions and millions of people across the world, then anyone
who wanted to could just find a machine that still
had it installed and get in through various ways. Two machine.
So I think I think it's a smart move on
Adobe's part to make sure it's self destructing. Um, actually,
(54:51):
you know what, I need to triple check and make
sure I actually took it off of this machine. Now, Yeah,
Flash and Flash had problem on the The exploits that
you mentioned, Matt are common, you know what I mean,
and they're not. They weren't necessarily high level hacker black
(55:12):
hats stuff. You could have script kitties just cut and
paste their way uh into into some pretty serious stuff
using Flash. The thing is, part of the problem is
not not just that was insecure, but that it was
powering a large portion of the Internet or of you know,
a lot of ways people encountered the Internet, and this
(55:35):
this was a heavy, heavy ways. The head that wears
the crown situation for Adobe because because they made it
so how many messages were they getting for years on
a daily basis saying what the hell is going on
with Flash? I bet they had some snarky titles to
like news flash, your plug in sucks or all kinds
(55:58):
of other weird mean messages uh. And the more popular
it got. It's kind of like the reason that the
Honda Civic is often listed as the most frequently stolen
car in the United States. It's not necessarily because it's
the most amazing car in the United States. It's because
it's super common. And because Flash was super common, hackers
(56:20):
were able to get more bang for their buck if
they built exploits that worked with this. If no, if like,
if a fewer people used Flash, than hackers would not
have paid near as much attention to it. Just just
gonna say, the civic is a lot easier to to
boost than I don't know what maserati. Well, you sell
(56:40):
for the part, never sell the whole car if you
want to make money. You know it's funny. Uh. There
was a little addendum on the The story originated on
a website called Apple Daily, and then there are other
websites that kind of reposted it and added some addendums.
But one that I got recently in a r S
Technica just posted an an update and it said a
(57:01):
reader found a blog post questioning whether the Flash problem
affected train dispatching. It also says that the railroad reverted
to an old version of Adobe Flash, but not a
pirated version. Um. That was actually the pirated version was
in the original Apple Daily article. But then, as a
non Chinese speaker, it's hard for me to be sure
if the Apple Daily article is accurate. Um. But then
(57:23):
this is the interesting part. The latest Flash client in
China can still be downloaded from flash dot CN as
per Adobe's end of life Flash support page, it has
no time bomb and we'll keep receiving six. So the
time bomb is reel security patches for a while. But
here's the most interesting part. There is a company called Harmon,
which is a subsidiary of Samsung that Adobe offloaded all
(57:44):
of its Flash related activities too, and apparently that you know,
support still exists for legacy flash based software that should
continue well passed the cut off date. So it sounds
to me like the administrators of this system in China
might have been more to blame than the software itself.
(58:04):
And if you were still running Flash at this point,
please remember to uninstall, uninstalled whatever you're doing there, because
in Adobe's own words, uh, they strongly recommend. Like a
month ago, they were strongly recommending all users immediately uninstalled
(58:25):
Flash because, like you were saying, Matt, it's been kind
of notoriously uh an entry point for you know, folks
wanting to do harm to systems, right, Yeah, Yeah, that's
that's why the update is always so important. The same
thing with Apple OS just recently strongly recommended everybody update. Um,
(58:47):
the same thing with the last Mac os that went through.
Just like every time a new exploit gets identified, you
gotta update and doesn't mean they go away. Doesn't mean
all of them go away or or there's never gonna
be another one. It just means the ones that are
that were aware of need to get fixed. It's a
beautiful dance of of trying to outsmart uh outsmart one another.
(59:13):
And the the disadvantage for the non hacker side of
the equation is that it's often reactionary. Right. That's why
you have white hat hackers who find exploits and notify
software creators. But remember, if you decide to keep Flash
because you have you have a soft spot for one
(59:35):
thing or another that's Flash related, remember it's not It's
not just a matter of whether you feel like you'll
be okay. Now you might be saying I don't have
a railroad direct, well good, and also you know, I'm sorry.
I know owning a railroad's dream for a lot of people.
But you have to remember that even if you keep
something around, Adobe is never going to update this again,
(59:59):
It's is going to get older and older and increasingly archaic,
which means the liability window you have there is just
going to enlarge overtotton some folks that I like, uh
YouTube channel of it's called the Internet Today. UM made
a really interesting point that it's something that you know,
we've probably all been in a situation we're wondering this
(01:00:21):
when you go to the airport and they're entering things
one finger at a time on these terminal computers you know,
that are clearly running some super old proprietary os you
know or think about like the types of operating systems
that run say, you know, nuclear power plants. They want
this to be as stable and uncomplicated as possible so
(01:00:42):
that they're dependable constantly and they don't constantly have to
update them. And these systems are not usually on the
wider web, you know a lot of the time, or
they're on some sort of intranet, uh, you know, for
the actual company, but it's not like they're connected or
have to you know, interface with all these other like
HTML five or or whatever her. So whenever you're at
the airport and you're wondering why it seems like such
(01:01:04):
an antiquated system, it's probably because it is, but it's
also probably for your benefit. And also, by the way, uh,
don't forget there was a massive US government hack there
there have been like state level hacks working off flash UM.
To your point about separating things from the wider Internet,
(01:01:24):
we're talking about two terms. There. There's fire walling and
then there's air gapping. Air Gapping means there is a
physical obstacle keeping something from ever being connected to the web.
That's why stuck snet, if anybody recalls, that was so impressive.
It had to be physically carried to the machines of
the Iranian government. But you're right, You're right. People want reliable.
(01:01:49):
They don't want I guess we can't say flashy in
this segment, but they don't want um, you know, really
showy impressive bells and whistle e stuff. They're completely okay
with the black and green text terminal screen as long
as they know it will always it will always work.
And shout out to the people, by the way, on
(01:02:09):
the development and maintenance side who have to keep those
dinosaurs breathing. I can't imagine, you know what I mean,
Like every large company, or many large companies have stuff
like this, especially oddly enough infrastructure related things, airlines, air
traffic control. I mean, anybody who's been into UM, the
(01:02:30):
the tech side of a lot of very powerful government
agencies will tell you war stories about legacy software. I
bet we have people who are listening today who have
some stories of their own. I'd love to hear them.
What's the oldest, weirdest thing you've seen? Totally tell us yeah,
and and shout out to Adobe in particular, because you're
only hearing this because I'm rolling right now in their
(01:02:53):
product called Audition. I think that might be the same
for you guys to ye. Don't feel bad for them this.
They're they're gonna be okay, folks. And you can also
think Premier for a lot of the videos that came
out on stuff they don't want you to know that
are still out there on stuff they don't want you
to know on the YouTube channel and you can find
that at YouTube dot com. Slash conspiracy stuff no longer
(01:03:16):
coded in flash like back in the day, but uh,
it's much much zippier. And you can see our heads
and boxes for every piece of content that we put out. Uh,
and let us know what you think, segue yes, Uh,
let us know. Let us know. Uh, you know that
sounds like let it snow, So let us know your
(01:03:37):
opinion about the new proposed explanation for dot Love Pass.
Do you feel vindicated, do you feel disappointed? Do you
feel there's more to the story? Also incredibly important here
if you are a resident of Myanmar or you have
spent time there, you have connections, let us know. We
(01:03:57):
would like we always liked your primary sources on the ground.
I do want to thank that people who have already
reached out with some with some questions and some accounts.
Uh this this is an area of the world that
is unfamiliar to a lot of the West, and we
hope that you explore with us in a future episode. Also,
(01:04:18):
if you own a railroad, what's that like? Let us know,
not counting railroad tycoon or whatever that simulator is, but
I hear good things. We try to be easy to
find on the internet, folks, unlike Adobe Flash. You can
you can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. We love
to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy,
(01:04:41):
where we have officially welcomed a brand new moderator. Say
hello to Jennifer when you get a chance. But I'm
not going to we might be saying, you, guys know,
I hate social media. It's not it's not my thing.
It doesn't wreck my trains. If that's the case, well
we've thought ahead on this and you are in luck
because we also have a phone number. That's right. You
(01:05:03):
can reach us at one three S T W I
t K. That's s T d W I t K.
I feel like I stuttered that one a little bit
the first time around. Leave us a message at the
sound of Ben's dulcet tones. Three minutes is the time
limit that you will have. That is your three minutes.
Do us a solid and try to stick to one
of those three minute blocks. Will be much more likely
to hear yourself on one of our weekly listener mail episodes.
(01:05:26):
And please let us know what to call you or
if this is absolutely off limits, to use your voice
on listener mail episode, in which case we may still
be able to recount your tail without using your audio,
but we prefer to be able to play the audio.
I think that has a nice dimension to it. That's right,
And if you don't want to do any of those things,
the best way to reach us. It's kind of old fashioned,
but we love it. We are conspiracy at I heart
(01:05:48):
radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(01:06:09):
Is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's the top of the week,
which means it's time for some strange news. Uh, We've
(00:46):
we've got a lot, got a lot going on today.
We sometimes will hop on our group thread and say,
you know, like kick ideas back and forth. And one
one beautiful thing that happened behind the behind the curtain
today is leading up to today's episode. We were kicking
(01:07):
around ideas that we were all kind of on the
same page about, uh, where do you where do you
guys want to go? First? You want to go to
Do you want to go to China? Do you want
to go to uh Myanmar formerly Burma? Do you want
to go to Russia? We're going to all of these places.
By the way, folks. So I hope at least one
(01:29):
of those sounded exciting to you in the audience. I
feel like Myanmar might be the top story. Sure, absolutely.
Now I bring this story to the table today knowing
some things, but not many things, and I will be
leaning on you folk, to you gents, just to help
(01:49):
me get through some of this. Just putting that out
there as a disclaimer before we jump in. I am
using a timeline, a chronology of events in the history
of Myanmar and Burma um. It is on BBC dot com.
The title, if you're looking for it, is Meanmar Profile
dash Timeline. It's just got everything going back all the
(02:12):
way to ten fifty seven ce. BBC is great for those,
by the way, they have one for pretty much every
country exactly. If you ever just want to get a
basic idea of important things that have happened, check it out.
Turns out Brits are very organized and good at chronology.
Well they're a little biased, but yeah, yeah we um. Also,
(02:36):
if you're looking for a little bit of vicarious travel
and you want to learn more, I think we've recommended
this on the air before. Check out Wiki travel articles.
Take them with a wheelbarrow of salt, but do check
them out. There are a lot of fun absolutely, and
for the purposes of this story, there's a second timeline
(02:56):
for more recent events that is very helpful to look
at if you wanted to follow along or think about
what's occurring here, just get some more some more info
for yourself is on Al Jazeera. It's called Me and
Mar Timeline of a Fragile Democracy. I believe it starts
in seven Yeah, so that'll be helpful. Just keep those
things in mind. All right. I'm actually going to a
(03:19):
very different news source, something very much US based, CBS
News for the article that kind of brought me into
the conversation and down the rabbit hole. It is titled
European leaders condemn coup as Me and Mars military seizes power,
detains a song su Chi. Now this kind of just
(03:43):
popped up in my news feed and started learning about it.
Let's talk about what's happening, um ben. I would just
say again at the top here, this feels like an
episode like very much worth our time. So we may
not hit everything right now, but we'll give you the
lay of the land. Something very interesting happened in Me
(04:04):
and Mar again, formerly Burma has been mentioned there. It's
uh oh wow, I got rid of my map, but
you can check out me and more of the country.
It is in Asia. It is to the east of
India and to the west of Thailand. You can think
about it being over there. It's got a very interesting
(04:26):
history over the years. The most important thing for you
to know in this context is that for for a
number of years up until two thousand eleven, I believe
Ben correct me if I'm wrong here, UH, it was
controlled by essentially a military junta. The military was largely
in control of what happened in the country and functioned
(04:49):
as a government. And then some things changed in two
thousand eleven where the military kind of took a step
back and some elections were held, and then the trajectory
of the country felt like it was moving towards democracy,
if not fully taking up democracy as its new way forward.
(05:10):
And then after a large series of events in November
of that year, UH, this this party called the Opposition
National League for Democracy. UH. They which is led by
on San su Chi, which is the person that was
detained very recently. So what a lot of the hubub
(05:30):
is about. Um she was actually able well, she and
her party were able to get enough parliamentary seats in
order to form a government, which is a big deal.
It's very then we can talk about this maybe just
for a moment. Democracies in a lot of countries function
very differently than here in the United States with our
(05:51):
two party system, where essentially whoever wins the presidency kind
of controls that House over here, and then whoever you know,
within the House and Congress. Each seat is individually elected,
rather than you know, one person or one majority wins
a certain number of votes and then they get to
form their own group in parliament. Right, Yeah, we're looking
(06:14):
in in many democracies outside of the United States. What
we're looking at is the formation of coalitions. So say
you have a party, say you have like a Green Party,
and then you have um, I don't know, mad live
the words. However you want the Conservative Socialist Party or
the Democratic Libertarian Party or whatever, and they can't all
(06:37):
quite get a majority rules, so they vultron up together
and do their best to create a coherent platform based
on the goals that each of those groups prioritizes. So
we can get messy and make for strange bedfellows at times,
but it is it does tend to be better for
(06:59):
the average citizen in those countries because they are more
likely to have at least some of their values represented
in government versus you know, um, look how ridiculously difficult
it is by design to start a viable third party
in the US with any chance of winning significant positions
(07:22):
in office. M hm. Such a good point then, So
so we're talking about this occurring in things are infinitely
complicated up until this year, in this month, February. Um,
in in November, I believe of last year there were elections.
(07:45):
I want to say that's true. Yeah, I believe there
were elections in November, and and there was there appeared
to be a landslide victory for that same party Unsung
Succi was leading. And the army itself took kind of
kind of mirrors what was happening in the United States
(08:06):
here with our elections. The army just said, there is
this is not right. The there has been voter manipulation.
There has been someone has messed with these numbers. This
is this election is a fraud. And the army itself,
there's a chief Minong Klang. He he took power. Essentially,
(08:28):
the military took power in the country in a full
on coup, and that is what's happening right now. They
ended up detaining many members of that party that won
the election and others who essentially opposed the military rule.
I'm gonna jump back to that CBS article to actually
read some of this to you. It's weird the way
(08:48):
with the way it happened. On television there in Mayan
mar there is a military run network, and on in
this network, someone one of the one of the anchors,
I assumer, someone who was regularly appearing, came on and
just announced that the military has taken control of the
country and it will be in control for one year.
(09:10):
And it's just kind of all happened at once. People
were detained and then the announcement came through, and all
of a sudden life in Myanmar as just a regular
citizen has has changed. Um, everything got flipped turned upside down,
as they say, sorry, sorry, you know. And of course
(09:33):
on the western side, in the United States and in
many parts of Europe, everyone is coming out of the
woodwork and saying this is terrible, this is awful. I mean,
obviously it is right anytime a democratic election is overthrown
by the might essentially of a military power within that government.
It's probably not a good thing in the long run,
(09:54):
at least, it's kind of a hard, hard thing to
put a value judgment on. But generally when when a
strong arm comes through and just forces action, it's less
good than if the people decide something. Yeah, he says,
just to clarify. Essentially, a military junta is it's like
a coup from within. I mean, it's it's like a
(10:14):
a strong man military official usurping the power of elected
officials or of whomever is supposedly in charge, and then
wielding his influence over the military and using that to
you know, cause a sea change in government. And it's
it's pretty controversial because of military. Uh. Military intervention of
(10:35):
this sort has has often been portrayed as a good
thing in other cases across the world and over time,
like interfering to prevent the rise of extremism or fascism.
These things are can be considered part of a military's
constitutional duty, you know, enemies abroad, domestic and abroad. But
(11:00):
in this case, there is a big, big red badger
just over the horizon that has that has a lot
of influence in Miamar and Matt, I think we'll get
to that in a in a second. Well, yeah, well,
I mean it's it's exactly what you're talking about. The
Constitution of Myanmar was formed jointly with the military, UM
(11:23):
and there is a at least according to the television
station that is owned by the military. When they announced this,
they said that there was there's a section of the
constitution that allows the military to take over in a
time of national emergency. So essentially an emergency was declared
(11:44):
for the length of one year, and the moment it
was declared, the military is now in power at least
according to the people who are causing this coup um,
and they will stay in power for one year UM.
And they specifically said the takeover was in part due
to this is this is what I'm getting from CBS News.
(12:04):
The government's failure to act on the military's claims. Now
that's important, the military's claims of voter fraud in the
November election, and it's it's failure to postpone the election
because of the coronavirus crisis. Well, they demanded they demanded
a recounts, which was not granted because from what I understand,
(12:26):
the country's election commission, Uh did not see evidence of fraud.
But yeah, but if you look at the military's perspectives
from their public statements, they say they're doing this as
a legal, proactive, and preventative move to maintain stability, which
is an odd thing to say with a straight face,
(12:48):
given that these events forced all the banks to close, shops,
running out of food, communication infrastructures could put these those
three things alone. Are surprised. Is not the hallmarks of
a stable government. Yeah, it's a serious issue, and it's
panic that comes from this kind of action, right you,
(13:10):
and uncertainty about what's to come. So you know, every everyday,
people like you listening and me and everybody on this
zoom call, if something like this starts going down, one
of the first things you try and do is prepare
yourself and your family with whatever essentials you need, with
maybe cash if you can get as much cash out
(13:32):
as you can, just in case you have to make
moves um and the banks stopped working all of a
sudden at some point. Uh. That's yeah, that kind of
panic is is happening right now and we'll probably continue
for quite a while. I can only imagine the fear
that's generated in a moment like this. One important point
to make here is that like what, yes, this is
(13:56):
this can be considered a coup, but how much of
a change is it? Because the military dictatorship went out
of power ostensibly in but not really, not really if
you look at it, because it was able to force
a compromise with the new government where it was granted
(14:17):
of the seats in parliament. And so if you asked
the average person familiar with the situation, the real see,
the real secret, not a secret here is that the
military and the junta could close its hands around the
neck of the government any time it wanted to. They
just didn't for a while until you know this week.
(14:40):
Jeez oh, they also had a veto over any constitutional changes. Wow,
I did. I didn't even realize that. There's so much
to be learned here. And I'm just gonna say one
more time, this is worth us looking at for a
full episode, really giving you a good background on me
and mar and what's been happening there and then all
the d hills, because we're gonna be learning a lot
(15:01):
more over the course of this week of what's going down.
A couple more things we can tell you here before
we wrap this section. That same military TV network stated
that the generals in charge of the country now because
I remember immediately they become in charge of the country,
had removed a total of twenty four government ministers and
(15:22):
deputy ministers and replaced them with eleven handpicked replacements. So
they just picked out their own people and put them
in power there. They also mentioned that the new commander
in chief would be a person who this this person
that took over that already mentioned General Menong Klang h
(15:43):
l A I n g would be in charge, but
there's a sitting vice president Mint Sway m y i
n T s w E would be elevated to acting
president um And this person is also a general who
who is apparently at least according to CBS News and
I don't I don't know the full story here yet,
(16:06):
but is best known for a crackdown on Buddhist monks
and that occurred in two thousand seven. And this person
was it is a close ally of former junta leader
uh Faun Sway s h w V can I put
in two points place. Succi is also has also come
under fire for persecution of the Rohinga Muslims. Uh you
(16:29):
may have heard that headline in the news in past years. UH.
And one crazy thing that I hope that will explore
for sure in the full episode is I am wondering,
not without basis you guys, I am wondering whether this
newest coup was in part uh motivated by astrology. What
(16:50):
are we talking about? Don't ruin yourself, don't search, don't
search yet We'll make it worth your while. Astrology. All
of this, UH makes me think of, you know, the idea, oh,
this would never happen in the United States. Um. But
then you mentioned the kind of potential positive version of this,
where a military coup could overtake, you know, a power
(17:13):
grab by an overreaching president or or or or whatever government, right. Um.
And it seems like, you know, we got to a
place pretty recently that the borderline approach that. But it
also makes me think of the plot of the fantastic
Stanley Kubrick movie UH, Doctor Strange Love, where in a
lone rogue high level military general essentially hijacks the entire
(17:35):
military and orders a an attack on the U s
SR that will ultimately result in UH mutual destruction. UM.
And there are certain safeguards in place that he uses
that prevent any intervention in this. If anyone hasn't seen that,
I think that's a really great, uh, you know, satirical
example of what can happen when one person has too
(17:59):
much our Yeah, no, for sure. I I want to
just remind everybody and imagine the scenario. Imagine you are
wherever you are, UM, maybe in Kansas somewhere, maybe in
the middle of Los Angeles, wherever you are listening to this.
Imagine that all of a sudden you go to turn
(18:21):
on the television and none of the stations are coming in.
For some reason, you can't get access to you know,
Verizon or whatever it is you know, a T and T.
Nothing's just no signals coming through. So you try to
log in, but for some reason your WiFi can't connect
out to the internet, and you don't understand what's going on.
(18:42):
You try and make a phone call to a relative
or some of a friend that lives nearby, but the
phone isn't making connections to anybody else. Just just imagine
that that begins occurring, um and imagine living through that.
And how I know I would be in a state
of serious panic if that were occurring, and I would
be hunkered down immediately. Um. That happened to many, many,
(19:07):
many people when this When this went down, dude, people
freaked out the season finale of The Sopranos when their
TV went black for a split second, like what happened?
Like the world collectively kind of lost their minds, thinking
that like the cable had all gone out at the
same time or something. I mean, absolutely, dude, if if
I felt like all of a sudden communication was cut
off from more than one source, I would absolutely be panicking.
(19:32):
Pro tip, if you can you have the ability to
do so, highly recommend keeping a landline phone. They're antiquated. Uh,
they're not super useful the way that mobile phones are,
but they have one important advantage that a lot of
people are not aware of. If you have a corded phone,
a landline phone, it'll work during a power outage. It's
(19:56):
because because the same thing that allows voy to carry
also powers the phone. So keep one. If you're feeling
especially paranoid or you think that your ability to communicate
might be compromised. Is a coupever good thing? It's a
good question, at least typically the way these are supposed
(20:17):
to occur. If it's in a good case is that
the military intervenes for a limited window of time, and
during that window of time they facilitate free and fair elections,
and then they transfer back to a civilian government. They're
just supposed to come in and cameo. They're not supposed
to rule for you know, fifty four years or something.
(20:38):
So that's that's part of why there's that limited time
frame of one year. But will that result in a
free and fair election, I don't know, because the civilians
in the military don't seem to agree on what constitutes
of real election exactly. All right, So well, we will
keep looking out for update, done this and hopefully come
(21:01):
back with more info very soon. For now, we're going
to take a quick break. Here's some sponsors, and then
we'll be right back. And we've returned. I want to
thank everybody who's reached out to me on Instagram or
(21:21):
on Twitter, or has reached out to us on the
Facebook group page. Here's where it gets crazy. Uh, there
is an awesome story that just came out solving a
very old mystery. Uh. This is going to be familiar
to any of our long time listeners and fellow conspiracy
realist folks. Dealt Love Pass. This is a tale that
(21:45):
is um core conspiracy lore. You know, I I love
the classic stuff. They don't want you to know vibe
about this. Uh, it's it's a hell of us story.
I'll give you a breakdown of the story itself, quicking dirty,
and then we can explore the problems with that story
(22:06):
and we can explore the news. So, Ben, before you
get into this, you're saying Pass is solved. Uh maybe, Okay, Okay, good,
there's still maybe some mystery. All right, let's keep going.
So the Dat Love Pass incident refers to a series
of events that occurred in February nineteen fifty nine, exactly
(22:30):
sixty two years to the day as we record today.
Strange news. So back in February nine fifty nine and
the Northern Ural Mountains, nine Russian hikers died somehow during
the nights while they were camping in a site they
had cut from the snow slope of the mountains. Uh,
(22:54):
something happened. No one was sure what, but whatever happened
was fatal, and there were were puzzling things at the
crime scene. First, several, uh, several folks were inadequately dressed.
It seemed they had thrown off their clothes. One hiker's
tongue was missing. Uh Also, there was a lot of
(23:15):
physical trauma, and then later rumors would muddy the story.
But we know that the Soviet authorities who investigated this
determined that six had died from hypothermium, three had been
killed by physical trauma. And there's a phrase they used
(23:36):
which was an unknown overwhelming force depending on how you translated.
This was seen immediately as a cover up and very soon.
To remember, the story circulated before the rise of civilian internet,
so very soon new stuff got added to the mix.
You'll hear allegations that there were high radiation levels. You'll
(23:59):
hear allegations that people were even glowing, or that there
was unidentified aerial phenomena in the sky in the in
the days leading up to this incident. The problem with this,
for skeptics and true believers and conspiracy realist alike is
that one this occurred under the purview of a notoriously
(24:23):
secretive government, uh to a lot of time passed before
this story really got its uh like due diligence research
wise outside of the USSR. And then the next part
is and the skeptics hated this is that there wasn't
(24:44):
really solid proof that a mundane event could explain this.
So you could say, you could say it was just
hypothermia all you want, But then someone who believed something
different could say, well, hypothermia the doesn't tear people's tongues out,
or hypothermia doesn't crack your skull or give you incredible
(25:07):
chest trauma. That's These are just the facts, and it
was it was not consistent UH injury to all of them.
It wasn't like the same thing. I mean, there were
there are variations, right, and it seemed like some intervening
force was at play right amidst the various individual victims.
So the mystery stands, and it does so much so
(25:30):
much for UH shows like stuff they don't want you
to know. Matt and I were in the trenches and
dat love for a long time. And interestingly enough, it's
one of those stories since it never had an explanation
that was solid, it's one of those stories that we
still get emails about. People still reach out to me
on social about this and have for a number of years.
(25:51):
We just pointed them to our video on this, and
I think several years ago we also did an audio
podcast on on these events. So one thing I noticed
is that the frequency of people asking about this began
to increase. Over you'll see trends like this come and go,
depending on any number of factors. But for everyone who
(26:15):
wrote in about this, especially if you wrote in congratulations,
you're plugged in your oddly prescient my friends, because a
new study released claims to have solved this enduring mystery
very recently. A study published in Communications, Earth and Environment
(26:40):
walked through several computer models too. In their opinion, uh,
maybe not conclusively proved, but strongly suggests that we know
the murderer of those nine hikers in a weird way.
It might have been a self inflicted disaster kind of avalanche.
(27:00):
Not the kind you're picturing, folks, not the kind from
films about avalanches, not the not the kind of thing, uh,
triggered by Sorrowman in Lord of the Rings when they're
when you know, the thing that drives them back to
the minds of Maria. Instead, this is something called a
slab avalanche. Um. Not to sound dismissive her clib but
(27:25):
I feel like they missed an opportunity to call it
a slab balanche, which is just it was right there. Uh,
here's what happened. The reason that we say this doesn't
really compare to the avalanches of film and fiction is
because typically those avalanches appear to happen as an instant
(27:46):
a to b if then reaction. But the truth is
these actual avalanches, the ones that they're describing in the study,
which we'll get into in a second, Uh, they have
kind of a timer on them. An avalanche can happen
minutes after the event that creates it, or it can
happen hours and hours later. And this snow slide, this
(28:10):
slab blanche, according to the authors of this study, could
account for a lot of the missing pieces of information
the bedeviled skeptics and conspiracy realist alike for for decades.
For again, in sixty two years comes to us from
Johan Guam, who is the head of the snow Avalanche
(28:32):
Simulation Laboratory, and Alexander Pouzin, who is the chair of
Geotechnical Engineering at e t H Zurich. They dug deep, guys.
They poured over as much declassified Soviet research on this
as they could, and then they took the latest avalanche
research and simulations and tried to plug in this data
(28:55):
trying to essentially recreate the crime scene on a computer.
I want to pause here. When we have talked about
thatt Love in the past, what what did you guys think.
I didn't think it was just an avalanch. I thought
it was some kind of like murderer situation or some
kind of ritualistic something. When you hear about smashed skulls
(29:17):
and missing tongues, my brain immediately goes to psychopath on
the loose. It was he was always cryptid for me, Eddie,
or some some type of large creature was causing me him.
I was into the idea of secret technology myself, you know,
I thought I thought that would work with the Cold
(29:39):
War era experimentation that was so frequent back in the day.
By the way, that doesn't mean that's what we actually
think happened. That's just kind of our well what how
did you call it? Our pet theory? I guess so
you Here are some of the missing pieces that the
(30:00):
authors of the study were bothered by. First, this is
your grizzly fact for today, folks. First, most people in avalanches,
if they die, they don't die due to broken bones
or brain trauma or anything like that. They die bi asphyxiation,
they're buried alive. It's a very unclean way to go.
(30:23):
And this is where challengers to the avalanche theory really
butter their bread, because if you look at the slope
and the incline of where the hikers chose to camp,
it doesn't look like a hill. It doesn't look like
very avalanche friendly territory, you know what I mean. It's
a slope, but it's not like a harsh mountain face
(30:46):
and a steep incline. Uh. And they it's quite likely
that the hikers, who knew what they were doing, purposely
selected this site because it looked like there's it's not
avalanche territory. But when they camping, according to the authors here,
what they did is they cut into the snow, into
(31:08):
the uh, into the slope the same way that you
might see like a ranch style home built into a
hill on the in the suburbs split level, or a
hobbit hole built into the side of a of a hill. Sure,
and the thing that happened was that they triggered an avalanche,
and the avalanche took several hours to get to them, uh,
(31:34):
several hours to reach kind of a critical mass and
and ensue. You know, think they would have noticed that
or it would have awakened them the vibrations or even
off further in the distance. Uh well maybe, but not
not giving them enough time to run away, because they
would have when it happened. It happened very quickly, and
the tensions leading up to it, according to this idea,
(31:57):
would not have been super easy to certain if you're
just a human hiking with the technology they had. So
a slab avalanche occurs when there's a dense slab of
snow that's sitting over a snow layer that's weaker, so
it's already kind of heavy and haphazard, and when there's
(32:19):
some sort of trigger that compromises that weaker snow or
you know, pushes harder on that that strong slab than
it eventually tips over it falls, it creates a snow slide.
And this can occur on slopes with an angle of
fewer than thirty degrees. So something that doesn't look like
(32:40):
avalanche territory again, And the other thing is another question.
Avalanches are big, right why didn't somebody else notice this?
And Soviet authorities are well acquainted with avalanches. Russia is
a snow filled country. This avalanche could have been comparatively small,
(33:01):
and if it were small enough, rescuers wouldn't see signs
of an avalanche later. But even the smallest of these
slab avalanches can weigh hundreds and hundreds of pounds, meaning
that if you were depending on where you're standing when
it hit, you could have your bones broken, you could
(33:22):
have your skull cracked, you could have your ribs crushed.
So this is this is where they're at. And they
did various simulations not just of how this would occur,
but of how people would be injured like in this scenario. Well,
and the other thing then is is we know that
(33:44):
some people some of the group did die there. They
perished in the tent or right near the tent, But
then there are others who died further away. Is there
anything discussing what may have happened to them? Great question, Matt,
and something that I'm glad to say the authors are
aware of, because they still they don't claim with certitude
(34:09):
that this is the silver bullet solution. Instead, they say
in a documentary about this paper that was just released,
they say, personally, we do not believe that the mystery
can ever be solved because no one survived to tell
the story. What we did in our paper is to
show the plausibility of the avalanche hypothesis based on solid
(34:30):
physical and experimental evidence in a way. Matt Um, I
guess you could call this a kind of non living
cryptod because it's such an unusual kind of avalanche, you
know what I mean, It hasn't it took our species
sixty two years to think about this, and it's just
(34:51):
really quickly, like I mean, when you're talking about the
way it moves, you know, you think of an avalanche
as being like powdery snow, and people would typically die
from a fixiation. This is literally huge rigid pieces that
coming down this uh, the side of the mountain where
there camped, could have hit them on the edge, coming
down like almost like a giant slab of marble and
(35:13):
then knocked you know, their skulls open, or literally you know,
could have caught someone by the jaw and and and
rip their tongue out. Is that the conjecture here? Yeah, yeah,
quite possibly. I mean at that point we're still talking
about um various likelihoods with no with no solid proof, right,
(35:33):
so we have to remember it also took the original
rescuers several months to recover the bodies of all nine hikers.
They were definitely on a man hunts. I would like
to shout out Vice and Smithsonian mag for some excellent
reporting on this, as well as the St. Petersburg Times. Uh,
(35:56):
here's the thing about missing organs. And this is kind
of gross and explicit, but I think a lot of
a lot of folks have spent time in the wild
are familiar with this. Uh. Scavengers go for the soft
stuff first. Those are the delicacies. The eyeballs, the tongue,
the you know, your unmentionables. Those those things are easy
(36:19):
for creatures to access, and there are a lot less
work than say, trying to uh gnaw at bone marrow
things like that. Right, you have to be a scavenger
specifically adapted to that sort of diet. So it's completely
plausible that one of the victims, such as uh Ludomelia Dubinina,
(36:40):
was missing both eyeballs and her tongue because something happened
along after the avalanche occurred and after she expired, and
then it ate the eyes and the tongue and continued
upon its way. Yeah, So then do just positives. What
I'm imagining is, does avalanche occurs at the side of
(37:02):
the tent where they dug out from the side right,
causing that avalanche to the slab to slide on top
of one of the other layers. The heavy stuff kills
some people almost immediately or at least gravely injures them.
Then maybe people who have survived that initial sliding slab
(37:24):
gather each other up, who are able to walk, and
try to get the heck out of there, and then
maybe freeze and that's what that's how they Yeah, yeah,
the idea is that, uh, they were sleeping the slab struck. Uh.
The they those who could ran searching for shelter at
(37:44):
a at a ridge nearby to get a sense of
the weather conditions. They couldn't see much further than maybe
fifty ft in front of them themselves, and so they
froze to death as they were trying to find shelter,
and then as they were trying to make their back
to the tent. Perhaps and again, the Soviet government's lack
(38:05):
of transparency, uh, the official findings, lack of scientific details
made for a perfect storm of conspiracy. And you know,
in oddly enough, the current Russian government had announced plans
to reinvestigate this incident, so reframing of this is um
(38:28):
was in the cards for a while. They they opened
a new investigation, and part of it, I think is
just recognize the importance I enclosure for the families and
relatives of those who passed away, and hopefully taking lessons
learned so that we understand situations like these when they
(38:49):
occur in the future again, which is again just it's
a statistical certainty that something like this would occur again.
But it has critics. That's the other thing. The slab
a blanche has has some folks poking holes in it already.
Here are here are some of the objections. One the
(39:11):
lack of physical traces of an avalanche found by rescuers.
We mentioned that it would have to be a pretty
small avalanche comparatively speaking to not leave behind a ton
of evidence. Uh. Secondly, and I think this is a
little more valid, uh, the gap we mentioned These can
occur minutes after the snow is compromised or hours. But
(39:35):
when we're looking at this slab blanche as an explanation here,
we have to remember there was a nine hour gap
between the hikers building their camp cutting into the mountain
to form a barrier against the wind and then the
snow hitting the fan managed to keep it a family show,
(39:57):
And then they also talked about the shallow slope of
the campsite and of course the traumatic injuries. So it's
not it's not conclusive yet, but the investigators are one
of the investigators least poserin is certain that if the
group had not cut into the sloope, nothing would have happened.
(40:18):
But when they cut into the slope, they created a crack,
and it propagated, it expanded over time. If you have
ever been unfortunate enough to crack your smartphone, you are
well aware of how this process works. That crack will
slowly expand and branch off if you have shield. Wind
(40:41):
shield was the mighty X example. Yeah, exactly. Uh boy,
A one shield crack is one of the most like
existentially depressing problems to have because you see it every
day wherever you're driving. Yeah, just a little a little,
a little bit closer, you know. It makes it about mortality.
(41:01):
The seventh Seal, all of all the all the hits,
how much you need that extra fifty dollars to get
it replaced? But you just can't seem to find it.
I feel like you and I were going through that
the same period man, in the Discovery days. Uh, there
is there is a fun like note here I thought
was enjoyable. Then we can end on this. The researchers
(41:24):
credit a surprising source for helping them unravel this puzzle.
You're not gonna You're probably not gonna be able to
guess what it is. Uh, So we'll just tell you, folks,
is Frozen. That's right, the Disney film from Frozen. Let
it go, the whole nine. Uh. According to some reporting
(41:46):
from National Geographic, one of the authors of the study
was watching Frozen, and remember this, this is an avalanche expert.
He was watching Frozen and he was thinking, Wow, I
am so impressed by how good they are depicting snow.
In fact, I am so impressed because I am an
(42:07):
avalanche specialist. I'm gonna reach out to the people who
made Frozen and I'm gonna ask them for the code
they used to animate snow, because it's amazing. They should
be working for me. Why are you in Hollywood? It's
about more than the money, you guys. I'm editorializing maybe
(42:27):
a bit, but he've reached out and they gave him
the code, and then they used that along with grizzly
research on cadavers conducted by GM General Motors back in
the nineties seventies. Why I have there's a pretty creepy
car stuff episode about this too. It's a true story.
(42:48):
Once upon a time General Motors used real dead bodies
instead of crash test dummies. Did you know that that
we ever talked about? We we did talk about that,
maybe not on the air, but that was just one
of those moments where in the office one of us
looked over at the other one, uh from the computer,
(43:10):
and then like cursed softly under their breath, and then
we lost two hours from whatever we're supposed to be doing.
So it's not you know. When we had that conversation,
it was the first time I ever imagined a haunting
of a vehicle. And you know, yeah, I don't know
if you remember this. There's the concept of ghost ships
(43:31):
has always been around, but I had never thought about
a ship like on the sea in on the its
interior being haunted until that terrible, terrible horror movie came
out called ghost Ship or whatever it was called. But
that one happened but then we had this conversation about
crash the dummies being cadavers, and I imagined, just like
(43:52):
a camera getting haunted over the years, with an actual
apparition like attached to the physical play. I think people
would pay extra for it. I think, I don't know,
advertised as a feature. It feels like a real hazard
if you're on the highway, and yeah, yeah, I guess
it depends on the ghost, you know. But if it's
(44:12):
like helpful ghost mode, why use a defroster when you
can have somebody Oh, that's true, that's true. We okay,
we need to workshop this. First, proved ghosts exist. Secondly,
figure out how to modify them and put them in
an automobile coming to a dealer near you on it.
(44:36):
Thank you, love fast for anybody who feels that this
is kind of a downer um that this, or feels
that this is itself the continuation of a cover up.
There's one last thing I want to leave you with
that may be of interest. Remember earlier I mentioned that
twenty nineteen reopened investigation on part of the Russian government.
(44:59):
They were not investigating all the proposed causes. They went
for the three most likely ones, and so This means
that they squarely in advance decided to ignore the idea
of anything like um an individual human or cryptid murderer,
(45:20):
unexplainable unidentified flying objects, or of course secret Soviet tech.
So if you are feeling very x files, you still
want to believe there may be something else still buried
beneath the avalanche of reporting on this story. We're gonna
pause for word from our sponsor. We'll be back with
(45:41):
more strange news. And we're back with more strange news.
I guess this is it. This is our third segment.
I guess I have the honor and the privilege of
going last today, and it is kind of a momentous
day in the history of of technology. Maybe not day,
(46:03):
it's week perhaps, um, But you guys are children of
the Internet, like myself. We all grew up with dial
up modems, and remember the first day that a cable
modem was a thing, and Spotify and all that, uh,
you know, and even before that, geo cities and animated
gifts and all of the little things a little beautiful
(46:24):
treasures that the Internet has bestowed upon us over the years,
and one of the things that we can all absolutely
thank for many of those treasures, UH is the Adobe company.
Uh and Adobe Flash. You guys remember Flash? Oh yeah,
when the first band I was in had a website
(46:45):
that was this amazing flash animation a friend of ours
made of just the name of our band, but like
forming in Flash, it was it was, it was beautiful.
And it's the first program I ever used to edit
a video. The first video ever made was like a
terrible Flash thing where I just I wasn't animating, I
was just shooting video and then putting it into Flash
(47:07):
and trying to put together a thing. Some of my
favorite NERRK games are in Flash or were that's Uh,
it's the thing in the past. I tried to figure
it out, but I went ahead and just played them
all one last time. That's right, You've got it, Ben,
you nailed it. Because Flash is dead as of January
twelve of this year. Uh, Flash has has bit the dust.
(47:31):
It is it is absolutely um no longer supported by
Adobe in that it won't be patched anymore. There will
be no more updates. And depending on who you ask.
And I'm not a super duper you know in the
weeds computer expert, in this way, I have enough of
a working understanding to understand the basics of things like
(47:51):
coding and line commands, command lines and all that. But
apparently there is some kind of built in thing in
the latest verse in a FLASH that deactivates it in
some way. We'll get into what that could mean or
does mean, But I just wanted to do just a
little bit of a brief kind of history of Flash
because a lot of this stuff it was kind of
nostalgic and fun for me. Uh. Flash originally started in
(48:15):
n when two friends by the name of Jonathan Gay
and Charlie Jackson met at a Macintosh users group and
decided that kind of that kind of became pals based
on their mutual mutual appreciation of programming for Max, because
that wasn't as much of a thing at the time.
We hadn't seen the mac renaissance that we you know,
(48:37):
that lad to where we are now with things like
the iPhone Max being the absolute gold standard for audio
and computer editing and animation all of that. So they
were very much ahead of the curve and they essentially
kind of put their heads together through their skills of
being able to kind of program basic graphic editors and
games and such, and decided they wanted to make something
that would use pen computers, essentially early forms of tablets
(49:02):
that use like a stylus. So they started building something
called smart Sketch, the graphics editor for Mac for pen computers,
and then it eventually evolved into something called future Splash
that was originally a component for Smart Sketch and then
became kind of a thing unto itself, and it was
an animator. And if you if you what you're talking about,
(49:23):
Matt with the really rudimentary kind of Flash editor, that's
sort of what this early version looked like. It was
essentially almost had the look of a word document with
like a big empty field at the bottom, and then
at the top you had a very rudimentary version of
what you might see today in after effects or in
any kind of editor where you have multiple tracks or
(49:44):
layers that you can drag things into. Its incorporated things
like tweening or in between, where you can like set
a beginning point an endpoint for like a rudimentary kind
of stick animation UM and or two D animation. Then
it would fill in the gaps um so in where
many of us probably came across Flash originally was the
(50:05):
company called Macromedia bought Flash in ninety six, uh, and
then it became Macromedia Flash turned from future Splash into
flash Um and that's kind of the the big heyday
of Flash was when it became basically it was so
popular because of early adoption from like Netscape if you
remember Netscape, or eventually it was called Mozilla because it
(50:29):
could do like animation headers for websites that didn't require
like real time video playback, and it was just like
much more versatile than an animated gift, which was all
just stored in one file, and it was interactive. You
could add little buttons almost like a DVD menu, things
called action scripts, and it became kind of the design
platform dujur for the Internet. And it's really what we
(50:49):
think of as the look of the Internet from the
mid to late nineties, and even the early days of
YouTube entirely based around Flash. The earliest versions of YouTube
were designed in Flash. UH. In fact, Chad Hurley, Stephen
Chen and Joe wad kareem Um were kind of toying
with the idea of maybe doing a dating site or
(51:10):
you know, something else, and they had a meeting with
an investor named Keith rebois. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing,
that's r A b O I s um. And he
mentioned they were working on a streaming video site and
he asked if they were designing in flash. When they
said yes, he agreed to invest because it was so ubiquitous. Um.
Then the you know, the tied for flash kind of
(51:32):
turned when the iPhone came out and Steve Jobs basically
unequivocally counted it out of any iPhone releases. He found
it to be uh buggy, He found it to be unstable,
He found it to have security flaws, so it was
not um part of the iPhone at all. And that
really kind of spelled the beginning of the end for flash.
(51:52):
UM so R I P Flash. But my real story
for today, I guess is what like what about? Surely
there are some you know, websites or god forbid, larger
institutions that are still relying on Flash and didn't get
the memo that it was gonna you know, go the
(52:13):
way of the dodo um and and that actually turns
out to be the case for a a small region
in China. And this wasn't like, you know, news to anybody.
You know. Adobe announced that they were sun setting flashback
in two thousand seventeen. UM, they would be deactivating the
plug in and its extensions by the end of so
(52:35):
they actually gave a little bit of a grace, you know,
a couple of weeks into UM. But earlier this month
when it happened a according to Apple Daily, officials at
the China Railway shen Yang had been using flash based
software to plan many aspects of their daily train routes
(53:00):
and shipping UM and as a result of of the
the sunsetting of the software, it caused about twenty hours
of absolute chaos UM. Apparently they weren't able to dispatch
trains uh and it led to the railroad shutting down
completely in Diean lion Ning Province. UM. And apparently they
(53:22):
were able to roll back the software to an earlier
version of flash player that didn't have this uh deactivating code. UM.
But again I've seen some some chatter on the internet
saying maybe that's not entirely the case. The idea of
the self deactivating code that does seem a little kind
of weird why they would do that. But it still
(53:43):
feels like if it wasn't being supported, or if there
was like some kind of it needed an update. I'm
not exactly sure. Um what what do you guys think
about this? Does this have the ring of truth? Or
does this seem like maybe somebody missed something along the way.
When you're talking about Flash itself being like deactivating activating itself,
the idea of why would they do that, Why would
(54:04):
they build a self deactivating clock into a piece of software.
I would think it would be more just them not
wanting to not supporting it anymore and not patching it
and not updating it. Well, it's a way to protect
end users because it really is Flash player really is
a massive vulnerability for attacks, and it has been for
(54:25):
a long time. And if it's no longer updated and
just supported and they left it dead on machines and
millions and millions of people across the world, then anyone
who wanted to could just find a machine that still
had it installed and get in through various ways. Two machine.
So I think I think it's a smart move on
Adobe's part to make sure it's self destructing. Um, actually,
(54:51):
you know what, I need to triple check and make
sure I actually took it off of this machine. Now, Yeah,
Flash and Flash had problem on the The exploits that
you mentioned, Matt are common, you know what I mean,
and they're not. They weren't necessarily high level hacker black
(55:12):
hats stuff. You could have script kitties just cut and
paste their way uh into into some pretty serious stuff
using Flash. The thing is, part of the problem is
not not just that was insecure, but that it was
powering a large portion of the Internet or of you know,
a lot of ways people encountered the Internet, and this
(55:35):
this was a heavy, heavy ways. The head that wears
the crown situation for Adobe because because they made it
so how many messages were they getting for years on
a daily basis saying what the hell is going on
with Flash? I bet they had some snarky titles to
like news flash, your plug in sucks or all kinds
(55:58):
of other weird mean messages uh. And the more popular
it got. It's kind of like the reason that the
Honda Civic is often listed as the most frequently stolen
car in the United States. It's not necessarily because it's
the most amazing car in the United States. It's because
it's super common. And because Flash was super common, hackers
(56:20):
were able to get more bang for their buck if
they built exploits that worked with this. If no, if like,
if a fewer people used Flash, than hackers would not
have paid near as much attention to it. Just just
gonna say, the civic is a lot easier to to
boost than I don't know what maserati. Well, you sell
(56:40):
for the part, never sell the whole car if you
want to make money. You know it's funny. Uh. There
was a little addendum on the The story originated on
a website called Apple Daily, and then there are other
websites that kind of reposted it and added some addendums.
But one that I got recently in a r S
Technica just posted an an update and it said a
(57:01):
reader found a blog post questioning whether the Flash problem
affected train dispatching. It also says that the railroad reverted
to an old version of Adobe Flash, but not a
pirated version. Um. That was actually the pirated version was
in the original Apple Daily article. But then, as a
non Chinese speaker, it's hard for me to be sure
if the Apple Daily article is accurate. Um. But then
(57:23):
this is the interesting part. The latest Flash client in
China can still be downloaded from flash dot CN as
per Adobe's end of life Flash support page, it has
no time bomb and we'll keep receiving six. So the
time bomb is reel security patches for a while. But
here's the most interesting part. There is a company called Harmon,
which is a subsidiary of Samsung that Adobe offloaded all
(57:44):
of its Flash related activities too, and apparently that you know,
support still exists for legacy flash based software that should
continue well passed the cut off date. So it sounds
to me like the administrators of this system in China
might have been more to blame than the software itself.
(58:04):
And if you were still running Flash at this point,
please remember to uninstall, uninstalled whatever you're doing there, because
in Adobe's own words, uh, they strongly recommend. Like a
month ago, they were strongly recommending all users immediately uninstalled
(58:25):
Flash because, like you were saying, Matt, it's been kind
of notoriously uh an entry point for you know, folks
wanting to do harm to systems, right, Yeah, Yeah, that's
that's why the update is always so important. The same
thing with Apple OS just recently strongly recommended everybody update. Um,
(58:47):
the same thing with the last Mac os that went through.
Just like every time a new exploit gets identified, you
gotta update and doesn't mean they go away. Doesn't mean
all of them go away or or there's never gonna
be another one. It just means the ones that are
that were aware of need to get fixed. It's a
beautiful dance of of trying to outsmart uh outsmart one another.
(59:13):
And the the disadvantage for the non hacker side of
the equation is that it's often reactionary. Right. That's why
you have white hat hackers who find exploits and notify
software creators. But remember, if you decide to keep Flash
because you have you have a soft spot for one
(59:35):
thing or another that's Flash related, remember it's not It's
not just a matter of whether you feel like you'll
be okay. Now you might be saying I don't have
a railroad direct, well good, and also you know, I'm sorry.
I know owning a railroad's dream for a lot of people.
But you have to remember that even if you keep
something around, Adobe is never going to update this again,
(59:59):
It's is going to get older and older and increasingly archaic,
which means the liability window you have there is just
going to enlarge overtotton some folks that I like, uh
YouTube channel of it's called the Internet Today. UM made
a really interesting point that it's something that you know,
we've probably all been in a situation we're wondering this
(01:00:21):
when you go to the airport and they're entering things
one finger at a time on these terminal computers you know,
that are clearly running some super old proprietary os you
know or think about like the types of operating systems
that run say, you know, nuclear power plants. They want
this to be as stable and uncomplicated as possible so
(01:00:42):
that they're dependable constantly and they don't constantly have to
update them. And these systems are not usually on the
wider web, you know a lot of the time, or
they're on some sort of intranet, uh, you know, for
the actual company, but it's not like they're connected or
have to you know, interface with all these other like
HTML five or or whatever her. So whenever you're at
the airport and you're wondering why it seems like such
(01:01:04):
an antiquated system, it's probably because it is, but it's
also probably for your benefit. And also, by the way, uh,
don't forget there was a massive US government hack there
there have been like state level hacks working off flash UM.
To your point about separating things from the wider Internet,
(01:01:24):
we're talking about two terms. There. There's fire walling and
then there's air gapping. Air Gapping means there is a
physical obstacle keeping something from ever being connected to the web.
That's why stuck snet, if anybody recalls, that was so impressive.
It had to be physically carried to the machines of
the Iranian government. But you're right, You're right. People want reliable.
(01:01:49):
They don't want I guess we can't say flashy in
this segment, but they don't want um, you know, really
showy impressive bells and whistle e stuff. They're completely okay
with the black and green text terminal screen as long
as they know it will always it will always work.
And shout out to the people, by the way, on
(01:02:09):
the development and maintenance side who have to keep those
dinosaurs breathing. I can't imagine, you know what I mean,
Like every large company, or many large companies have stuff
like this, especially oddly enough infrastructure related things, airlines, air
traffic control. I mean, anybody who's been into UM, the
(01:02:30):
the tech side of a lot of very powerful government
agencies will tell you war stories about legacy software. I
bet we have people who are listening today who have
some stories of their own. I'd love to hear them.
What's the oldest, weirdest thing you've seen? Totally tell us yeah,
and and shout out to Adobe in particular, because you're
only hearing this because I'm rolling right now in their
(01:02:53):
product called Audition. I think that might be the same
for you guys to ye. Don't feel bad for them this.
They're they're gonna be okay, folks. And you can also
think Premier for a lot of the videos that came
out on stuff they don't want you to know that
are still out there on stuff they don't want you
to know on the YouTube channel and you can find
that at YouTube dot com. Slash conspiracy stuff no longer
(01:03:16):
coded in flash like back in the day, but uh,
it's much much zippier. And you can see our heads
and boxes for every piece of content that we put out. Uh,
and let us know what you think, segue yes, Uh,
let us know. Let us know. Uh, you know that
sounds like let it snow, So let us know your
(01:03:37):
opinion about the new proposed explanation for dot Love Pass.
Do you feel vindicated, do you feel disappointed? Do you
feel there's more to the story? Also incredibly important here
if you are a resident of Myanmar or you have
spent time there, you have connections, let us know. We
(01:03:57):
would like we always liked your primary sources on the ground.
I do want to thank that people who have already
reached out with some with some questions and some accounts.
Uh this this is an area of the world that
is unfamiliar to a lot of the West, and we
hope that you explore with us in a future episode. Also,
(01:04:18):
if you own a railroad, what's that like? Let us know,
not counting railroad tycoon or whatever that simulator is, but
I hear good things. We try to be easy to
find on the internet, folks, unlike Adobe Flash. You can
you can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. We love
to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy,
(01:04:41):
where we have officially welcomed a brand new moderator. Say
hello to Jennifer when you get a chance. But I'm
not going to we might be saying, you, guys know,
I hate social media. It's not it's not my thing.
It doesn't wreck my trains. If that's the case, well
we've thought ahead on this and you are in luck
because we also have a phone number. That's right. You
(01:05:03):
can reach us at one three S T W I
t K. That's s T d W I t K.
I feel like I stuttered that one a little bit
the first time around. Leave us a message at the
sound of Ben's dulcet tones. Three minutes is the time
limit that you will have. That is your three minutes.
Do us a solid and try to stick to one
of those three minute blocks. Will be much more likely
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(01:05:26):
And please let us know what to call you or
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on listener mail episode, in which case we may still
be able to recount your tail without using your audio,
but we prefer to be able to play the audio.
I think that has a nice dimension to it. That's right,
And if you don't want to do any of those things,
the best way to reach us. It's kind of old fashioned,
but we love it. We are conspiracy at I heart
(01:05:48):
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