January 28, 2026 • 59 mins
If you travel out to Missouri, you'll love the views of Coldwater Creek — at least, that is, at first. In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel uncover a multi-generational radioactive cover up dating back decades… with consequences that continue in the modern day.
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
argue you are here. That makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. And please forgive this mustache
from Rocking Netflix. I got a thing going on.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
I forget it's needed. Ben. You just strike a dashing
figure with a mustache.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Oh you're too kind ul as ever, guys, Tonight's episode
is very, very exciting for us because it comes to us,
Curtis see of the best part of this show, our
fellow conspiracy realists. This is a listener suggestion from our pal,
Kill deer, fake out, So kill deer fake out. If
(01:11):
you're watching this, if you're hearing this, thank you. You
have brought us to some hidden history, some cover ups.
We've been obsessed with this forever, guys, and as we've
discovered over the years, more than a decade Now, there
are a lot of strange and very true conspiracies about
(01:32):
covering up disasters. And you know, forget what your textbooks
tell you, a lot of those cover ups occur right
here where we record, in the United States of America.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, our government has this tendency to do things quietly
in the dark, sometimes underground, sometimes in facilities that leak
stuff out into waterways, and then we just don't talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Maybe a little rugsweep, yeah, for sure, M little little
suspicious burial of drums and containers, and sometimes right there
out in the open, which functions.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
On multiple levels in open pits, you know, super fun sites. Now,
it's fun. But yes, that's.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Just our green goo supply that we're keeping on the
river bed.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It's fine, So let's get to it. This is a
story of a true conspiracy, one whose consequences reverberate as
we record in the modern evening. This, friends and Neighbors,
is the true radioactive story of Cold Water Creek. Here
(02:41):
are the facts. Okay, cool name, innocuous name. I don't
know about you, guys, but I've been weirded out by
innocuous names for a long time.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
Sure, right, especially when it comes to government programs.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yes, one hundred percent and all right. Cold Water Creek Okay,
it sounds like it could be the name of a
subdivision for instance.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, especially here in Georgia, we get a lot of
those creaks and streams and ship shops in the creek.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Shops at the Creek Placid Streams, you know, something like that.
Dylan is coming in hot with one. Let's see what
we've got in the chat here. A Chico's clothing competitor name.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Yes, no, it's true, it is actually is a clothing brand.
I was what Yeah, yeah, I was thrown off on
my research earlier.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I had I had that
issue when I was diving into this as well. Everybody
like kill deer. Uh. One of the one of the
things that we almost wrote for this episode was it
exploration of the Cold Water Creek brand.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Vests and sweaters.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yes, who doesn't love a vest? Who doesn't love a.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Sweater both at the same time.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Right, and who doesn't love water? You know? The Coldwater
Creek in question for tonight's exploration is a tributary of
the Missouri River. It's technically a creek. It's a very
long creek. It's almost twenty miles long, and it starts
starts over in Overland, Missouri.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Right, flowing through several cities before going under ground in
an area near Lambert International Airport, where then winds northeast
through other communities and dumps out into the Missouri River.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah. And like a lot of creeks, like a lot
of water ways that you'll find across these great lands
and every other land really in the world, most of
them that have creeks. That creek goes underneath some stuff,
and that's one of the big problems in this episode.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah. Yeah, This creek moves through all kinds of public spaces, utility, infrastructure.
It's not always under as well. Because people like a
good view, so it goes through playgrounds, schools, golf courses
get shouted out often. The views can be awesome, right.
It's a selling point for real estate, which becomes interested later.
(05:16):
And it's fortunate that the views when the creek's above
ground are pretty nice because in some of the areas
that the creek passes through, you literally cannot avoid exposure
to it. You might drive by it every day to work, right,
you might drive by it all the time to pick
up your kids. Or drop them off at school or
(05:38):
from school. This is we wanted to start with some
good news, folks. This is not a primary source of
drinking water for the current communities there. We were going
to see why. That is awesome news in just a
few minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
But it is weird to think about exposure to a
creek as being open potentially bad things right precise. I
feel that's what you've exposed me to a view.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
A factor that's going to come into play a little
later too, is like kids literally playing in creeks as kids.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Want to always. Yeah, and this idea of drinking water
and the sources for it in the cold Water Creek
adjacent communities, it wasn't always the case that this was
not a primary source of drinking water, because we have
to remember the history of water treatment in the United
(06:34):
States is surprisingly recent. It is crazy when you think
about it. I don't want to date myself, but we
all remember, I would hope back in eighteen sixty there
were very few people in the United States as compared
to now. There was a population boom. There were like
twenty five million people by around nineteen hundred, and water
(06:56):
treatment took a while to catch up with the population.
It was very ad hoc emergent technology.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
A bit of a checkered past, not to mention some
rural communities that to this day still rely on well water.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, people were for a lot of US history. People
were getting water from wells or scooping it from local lakes, springs, rivers, creeks,
and as as they'll pointed out here, some of our
fellow conspiracy realists tuning in today may still well depend
on well water. May still well depend on well water. Yeah,
(07:33):
and that could be a problem. I mean, I have
you guys ever beenerever spent time in a place that
is dependent on groundwater wells?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Yes? Yeah, yeah, and it tastes it tastes different, for sure,
It's got a little more of an earthy quality to it.
But yeah, it's usually in like more rural areas.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, what about you, Matt.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I'm still trying to understand that you remember the eighteen sixties,
but I don't know well water. I've been to a
couple places.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
We've all been to a few places. Yeah, right, thank
you for that. Okay, So these communities, these towns, later
they grow into cities. They're located along or near this
tributary that we call Coldwater Creek again about nineteen twenty
miles and we walked through the direction there. They grew
(08:24):
in step with the nation, and more and more people
gathered to these areas, right, And like all humans, these
folks are thirsty, and like all other human industries are
so many other human industries. The stuff they make is
thirsty too, crops, livestock, et cetera. And you got to
(08:46):
know this, folks, if you are new to the game,
don't travel back in time. Don't ever try to be
a reverse time traveler. It's just weird. The first thing
that's going to amaze you is everything stinks. For a
lot of post industrial revolution human civilization, water sources in
(09:08):
any dense community were pretty frick and filthy.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Sure, I mean, in the absence of like oversight. A
lot of these new industries are just gonna dump that
stuff right into the water.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Oh yeah, sanitation virtually nonexistent pollution. The consequent contamination accelerates.
The science is racing to catch up with the problems.
Water borne illness, other medical conditions. They proliferate, and some
conditions things are around today, like dysentery, they would become
readily apparent in the short term, right, a very short
(09:44):
time window, and folks in town could figure out, hey,
something's wrong with the water, right, but other conditions could
take a much longer time to be recognized and then
an even longer time to be linked back to the
drinking water.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, this's a just thinking about We discussed germ theory
on the show many a time, right, and how long
it took humanity to kind of realize, Oh, there are
microscopic organisms in this water and that could be not good,
and maybe that's what's making us sick. And then just
thinking about sorry, the poop water.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
All of the poop water. Yeah, And in this conversation
about unclean water, Coldwater Creek as a tributary is not
inherently unique. The challenges that the local communities face in
step with population growth are relatively and frighteningly common in
(10:45):
industrial America of the time. But in this case, as
history moves forward, we see the good people of this
area got a little something extra in the worst possible way.
What followed those may not be appropriate for all listeners
who care about other people. Dare we say it is
(11:07):
a nuclear revelation for sure? Here's where it gets crazy,
Okay the resident, Let's just put the cards on the table,
put the water in the tank on this When the
residents of various Coldwater Creek adjacent communities are victims of
(11:30):
exposure to radioactive waste, this is an active cover up,
or has been an active cover up for decades by
the US government. It has resulted in high rates of cancer,
other medical conditions, genetic malformations. Uncle Sam knew the entire
beat me here, Dylan, please, Uncle Sam knew the whole time.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And it all goes back to America's desire to build
a bomb would use the atom, right.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
We got to hop in the Hyms.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Well, we all saw that movie. If you haven't go
see it, it is worth your time. But it is
about a secret project to build an atomic weapon, something
that would be able to end the Second World War
with enough strength and terror, right that it would all
just be over.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
One of the most successful conspiracies in all of American history,
the creation of weaponized nuclear armament. You have probably heard
this name before, folks, the Manhattan Project. Now you might
be saying, wait, guys, didn't you say Coldwater Creek is
in Missura? Did you get your names mixed up? What
(12:41):
is Manhattan doing in Missoura? And Matt, I also want
to take a second and thank you for recommending to
me the phenomenal graphic novel Trinity, which traces the nuts
and bolts of the Manhattan Project. But how do we
explain that Manhattan Project in a nutshell?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
It's a secret.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Everybody nobody talk about it.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well, yeah, it's there was such a need to have
a secrecy around the development of an advanced weapon at
that time, especially how World War Two was, you know,
turning out at the time as what we just talked
about Operation paper Clip not long ago. How some of
that is starting to trickle and occur in the brain
(13:32):
drain on on the axis side. Brilliant scientists coming together
to try and do this herculean thing, right, this almost
impossibly achievable thing, and you needed a ton of space
to do all of this science. You needed testing grounds
(13:53):
to try it out, you needed facilities where scientists could live, right.
That's that's the reason it had to be such a secret,
is because you didn't they build an entire town.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Yes, yeah, yeah, building the town of Oakridge, which will
be familiar, a familiar tale to folks like Tennessee, Dylan
Fagan and yours truly.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Uh, we actually knew one of the primary official historians
of Oakridge. And it's funny you mentioned that. In the
weeks leading up to this episode, I was talking with
some folks about the story of the secrecy, the successful
conspiracy of the atomic bomb. Did you guys know that? Okay,
(14:38):
Oakridge wasn't on the map right when it was a
secret science town, but other towns were aware of it,
and they knew to keep their mouths shut. So if
you were a stranger passing through and you would say, hey,
is there a secret town here, they would probably say
there are a few people who like go to the woods,
(15:01):
you know, they go camping, and hey, maybe you should
move on, stranger.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Yeah, nobody.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Let's not talk about processing plants and other weird things.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I don't speak English for the purposes of this conversation, right, So, yeah,
we're setting the stage. It's back in the nineteen forties,
nineteen thirty nine or so. The world is anticipating the
chaos of World War two, and so, as you were saying, Matt,
uncle Sam embarks on one of the most successful and
(15:35):
one of the most dangerous true conspiracies and all of
human history making an atomic bomb. We've got scientists who
become newly minted Americans. They're fleeing fascist regimes in Europe.
Not for nothing. Did we do a brain drain episode recently?
And these folks are super into the idea of nuclear fission.
(15:58):
It's still got that new car smell. And the more
hawkish people in the upper echelods of American society, private
and public, like by the way, they say, oh, you
know what we should do well, like, we could make
a way to provide energy for people who need you know,
electricity and stuff like that, or we could build big
(16:20):
ass bombs, like the most dangerous bombs.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Why not do both?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Sure this this is cinematic. We're talking larger than life
characters because there were still, you know, a celebrity scientists
at that time in world's history. And this is when
we get our buddy, the star of Einstein's dreams, a
guy named Albert Einstein presents the military potential of what
(16:49):
they call an uncontrolled fish and chain to President Roosevelt.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
He knew what he was doing at the time, was
he like thinking that they would take this and do
something horrific with it.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
He later regretted it seems like that. Yeah, he was
haunted by it for the rest of his life. Albert
not Frank.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I really thought you were going to say silly and
Murphy when you were talking about the guy in Einstein's dreams.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
But on Febuary of the next year, we start to
see research taking that idea that nine Time presented, you know,
kicking off in full. And on December sixth of nineteen
forty one, the project was put under the direction of
the Office of Scientific Research and Development, headed by a
person named Vanever Bush. Cool name, a pretty good name,
(17:37):
not of the Bush dynasty, politicalized different Bush, not my Bush.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Not Noles Bush. So in June of nineteen forty two,
the US Corps of Engineers gets a signed to manage
construction work to build this thing we call the Manhattan Project,
and they name it the Manhattan Project because a lot
of the early research in to atomic weaponry into this
(18:02):
fission chain process. It occurs at Columbia University in Manhattan.
And then this project gets the casual name Manhattan Engineer District, right,
just vague enough to throw off any spies or any
wayward eyes. Manhattan Engineer District is an agency of the
(18:24):
US Department of Energy. But yet, however, fellow conspiracy realist,
you may be recalling again that we started talking about Missouri.
The reason we're talking about Missouri the Manhattan Project is
because this conspiracy extended far beyond the geographical bounds of Manhattan.
(18:45):
That same year, nineteen forty two, an outfit called at
the time Melencroft Chemical Works gets an exclusive and soup's
secret contract with Uncle Sam to produce weapons grade uranium
at a factory just north of downtown Saint Louis. This
(19:07):
is not a remote place. This is not you know,
this is not like the middle of Nowherd desert where
the bomb ultimately gets tested. If you live in Saint Louis,
this is in your metro area.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
And certainly a lot of these contracts, the consideration would
have been, like with any war effort, It's like, we're
going to convert the use of this facility to aid
the war effort. We need a ton of weapons grade uranium,
so we're going to find the places that are most
suited to make it for US population or be damned greater,
good hell of a drug, dude.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I just want to talk about that move from Columbia
University on the island again, the island of Manhattan on
the coast of New York there to the center of
the United States. Like I mean, it's tough to get
more center of the United States than Saint Louis, Missouri.
And just as a strategic move, right, if you're imagining
(20:03):
there are potentially enemies that have navies that could target
Manhattan fairly easily if you've got to ship close enough, right,
And if you're trying to develop this kind of technology,
why not do it in a place.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
That at least, uh, you can see him coming.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Well, yeah, you'd have enough of a warning. Again, even
if it was an air force of some sort that
was going to attack that facility, you'd have plenty of
time to have some kind of countermeasures.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Not for nothing, are a lot of the super fun
toys in the Upper Midwest and in Colorado where COG
will continue.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Right, Yeah, Continuity of government.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Continuity of government is what COG stands for.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Ed.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I want to get I want us to get to
Malancratz at least with the spelling for this, because it's
not the way it's not spelled. The way we're going
to be pronouncing it. It's m A L L well
I N C A R O D T cool.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Simple.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, yes, it's so simple. It's so English spelling is
so sensible and right right, don't kidding weirdly though, Irish American?
Speaker 4 (21:18):
That makes sense. I could see that too.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
How does that make sense?
Speaker 4 (21:21):
I don't know. Well, what's the crack?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You know?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
It just sounds Gaelic. It sounds vaguely Gaelic to me
now that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
In here you go. Spoiler, folks, The Manhattan Project pays off.
It changes the world. The bomb does work. Japan is devastated, Nagasaki, Hiroshimak.
Go to the museums if you are able to visit
that part of the world. The Allies, so called win
(21:50):
World War Two, but in several ways this is a
pyrrhic victory for a lot of the Allies. Europe is demolished,
Russia is devastated. A vast swath of Asia is so
much in shambles that it's almost pushed back into time
(22:11):
development wise. And so it comes to pass that the
United States of America is the world's last remaining superpower
because they're the last big dogs that still have working factories.
You know, this leads to the post World War two
economic boom, which really launches the idea of you know,
(22:31):
two point five kids, everybody's got a car and a
TV calling the American dream. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And then with the build up to the dropping of
the bomb, there were a lot of tests to see
how this uranium stuff is going to work out, you know,
as a bomb, even more so than as a rod
that can superheat water really fast, right to provide that
energy that we talked about. So the big question is
now that we've tested all this stuff and we've got
(23:00):
a lot of it, got to say, we have a
surplus of waste products.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Shut all this book. We need to do something.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Oh no, the consequences of my actions.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Well, and there's a lot of understanding. Well, let's put
it this way. There is an active at this point
understanding and learning about what this stuff does and what
effects it has. But I would say there's probably not
a full understanding at this moment, and it's a little.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Late, right, And that not late, I mean, it's just
one of those things like when we see industries rolling
things out before they fully understand it. That's all I'm
saying that's exact point.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
You nailed it there, guys. I think we can all
agree that this is seen as a work in progress
to this day where right, yeah, where people or powerful
forces sacrifice that the altar of the greater good. Right,
there was an urgency, there was immediacy, there was need.
(23:55):
So just to be clear, when we're talking about the
horrors that occur in Japan, we're talking about August of
nineteen forty five, August sixth and August ninth, the world
soldiers on and in nineteen forty seven, just two years later,
our pals at this Irish American company, Mellenkrot, they team
(24:18):
up with those guys from earlier, the US Corps of Engineers,
and they attempt to they're the ones who, Okay, think
about it this way. Have you have you, guys, ever
had a kick ass wild house party? Sure, like the
kind of thing that would go in a film, A
real razor.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yeah, every weekend crazy just at the coming Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Okay, for any of us who have had the dubious
fortune to be the person who lives at the house
where a crazy house party happens, you wake up the
next morning, right, and you see all the junk scattered around.
You might see a strangers on the couch right or
(25:03):
sleeping in places humans were not meant to sleep. And
now you got to you gotta partner up with your
roommates and say we got to clean the house. It's
like Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
And mentioned the neighbors that had to deal with the
party while it was going on. Let's not forget about them.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah. Yeah, it turns out somebody blew up our neighbor's house,
so let's at least clean up before the cops and
the consequences arrive. That's what happens in Cold Water Creek.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
You're telling me you're not supposed to go down to
the basement and play drums super loud at five am
in a passive aggressive move, that you're not supposed to
do that.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Who will? Yeah? I support you.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
I'm pretty lucky my basement is facing away from other
adjacent properties, so I can very much do that thing.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You gotta franchise out the basements, guys. So here's this
was perhaps an overlog analogy, but we like to speak
an analogy because it really brings the experience to the
front of the mind. Melancrat and the corp of engineers
are attempting to clean up the house after the party.
(26:18):
But they don't have a bunch of natty light cans
or PBR cans crushed. They don't have a bunch of
you know, popcorn on the floor. What have you put?
What kind of parties are you throwing? Pop?
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Paper hats, lemonade cups?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I love it? What kind of parties is who throwing?
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Oh just I don't think of popcorn as being a
razor thing, but I love the idea of a very
very with their wholesome rager where everyone's just snacking on popelorn.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
That's a kick ass movie party, you know what I mean.
We're like, if you're putting on an awesome movie, everybody's
got popcorn or just a movie theater. That's what it
looks like, like just nasty stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I know what you're talking about. Yeah, thank you, Matt,
and we in this case, the corp of Engineers and melancrime.
Their party detritus is radioactive waste.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Ah crap.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, from the rush to process weapons grade your radium.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Everything everything is. I think you should leave now in
my head.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Oh crap, that's what they said.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
A lot harder to sweep up than that than some
some some straight popcorn kernels and Natty light cans.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Uh. And we are not brought to you by Natty light.
We are brought to you by bigcorn. And we are
brought to you by uh bud light. The beer is
so good you can drink it with your mouth. Or
is that Miller light?
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Yeah, all right, it's Miller I think, But like, what
was it kid Rock? That like the but light anyway?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh, no, okay, Miller light that dacab. So they chose
these folks are in a bit of a panic mode
and no one should know. They say privately to each other.
They have the support of the US government. Obviously the
army has been called in. They choose a site that's
kind of small, considering it's about around about twenty two
(28:11):
acres twenty one point seven acres. And it's get this,
it's near the airport. It's near the Lambert airport. This
is where they're going to bury their sins.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Yeah, it's classic Simpsons type stuff. They're literally burying steel
drums with those radioactive symbols on them in the ground.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Well, it doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, Like,
surely they put a giant concrete structure down there first.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Right, Oh, yeah, that's a great question. They did not. Also,
you know, it's it's important for us to note at
this time, in the late forties and forty seven, they
may not have known the full They probably did not
(28:56):
know the full countermeasures you have to take to cont
radioactive waste. They were probably making their best effort, but
they also wanted to save money and keep things quiet,
and they and they got stuff shipped not just from
the original factory there north of town, they got waste
(29:19):
from other locations that were associated with the Manhattan Project.
So imagine you've got the house party and then one
of your friends calls you and says, hey, we had
a sick house party too. I've got a truck of
when we choose Miller lite and popcorn kernels and crushed
solo cups, and I'm just gonna dump them in your backyard.
(29:39):
Role is that that's tight?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Right out in my backyard.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
All these people with house parties have a mutual friend
who works in air traffic control, and they're like, hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Jeremy, what's up, man, it's your boy? Oh Darren called
you too. Yeah, more space down there, since you're up
you know, you already started doing it.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
This becomes known as the Saint Louis Airport storage site
or we love an acronym slaps.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, and it definitely did not slap, not in a
good way. No, Yeah, there was a bit of a
slap in the face to the people living in the area.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Eventually, they didn't even bother with the steel drums. They
just rolled up the container and then dumped stuff on
the ground. Yikes, man, And we're like, yeah, checked their
you know, probably checked their watches and said, oh, it's
it's Friday. It's like four thirty five. I don't know, guys, I.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Say, we call it back to what we were saying earlier.
It's like, you know, rolling the stuff out before fully
understanding the aftermath and understanding the ramifications big picture. I
don't it's not a pass right like the best There
is not a good faith effort particularly, but it also
is like a problem that they have to have a
logistical solution to. They got to put it somewhere right.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
But in intention Yeah, yeah, that's a great point because
we talked about this in a previous episode and it's
haunted me ever since. Intention does not indemnify one from consequence,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
It just seems so inherently sloppy. I mean, the intention
doesn't seem to be good at all. It just seems
to be, like you said, then, a bit of a
panic mode.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Imagine though, if okay, just this scenario, it's a secret
that they made all this stuff somewhat of a secret
at this point. It's a little past the time that
people know about the thing a little bit at least,
but it's a secret. You're trying to get rid of it.
You just put it away somewhere. If it was not
radioactive in the way they knew it was, it wouldn't
(31:45):
have been a problem. There's a potential there for somebody
taking that action right of dumping all this stuff there,
that nothing happens, nobody ever knows about it. It just goes away,
It gets absorbed back into the earth the way somebody
in an office somewhere said it might right, because you
don't take that action if there isn't a possibility that
that everything's fine and it just goes away.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
True. Also, speaking of intention and motivation, we have to
realize that everybody in charge of that situation is probably
dead at this point. And so even if even if
there were concerns that should have been actionable, there could
well have been people who said, not my problem.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
You know, you know, people knew about nukes for sure,
but radioactive waste and the byproducts that was that was
still being covered up to some mean no pun intended,
but like I mean, this was not general knowledge, the
fact that this stuff even existed, that these weapons and
this technology produced this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great point too. It's
a it calls to mind shades of the Smoking Man
from X Files. You know, there's like one guy who
talks to some people. There are some scientists and some
academics that nobody really listens to. And the media is
(33:08):
not doing a super great job reporting this because everybody
is still in an intense, horrific hangover from the atrocity
called World War Two. So for fifteen years, fellow conspiracy realist,
this company continues its uranium refining activities at its downtown site,
(33:32):
just you know, north of Saint Louis, and they keep
dumping the waist in as well.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, and you might think, okay, well, surely it gets
better from there, Like they figured something out right, something
good happens now in the story.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
We love that because you know, we have improv backgrounds.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
We love it.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yes and so yes, and it gets worse. We shamlaned ourselves. Okay,
it's sixty six. It's nineteen sixty six. There's this company
called the Potter Corporation. They get in the mix and
they do a thing where they're purchasing minerals from Malancrat
(34:12):
and they you know, they're a corporation, they're for profit.
They're trying to extract these minerals and they say, oh man,
we're losing money on this. We've done something dumb like
make the Atari links. That's a that's a reference for
ridiculous history.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
You hush your mouth. That was the best gaming system
I had, as.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
You had a Lynx that was later. That was sort
of them trying to become relevant again. Right, I don't care.
All I know is I had it and I loved it.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Silver.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Okay, there's the Jaguar as well.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
That's what I played California games on that until my fingers.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Were was that like skateboarding and jets gains, things like that, surfing.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I'm where singers are feeling better. Yeah. Wow, we have
a two part series on Atari for our shower ridiculous history.
Please check it out anyway, not to cast dispersions on
the good folks Sedatari. It's really inspiring story. But there
the profits for this potter corporation were not where they
(35:15):
needed to be, and so they had they had to
take things, really dodgy things, radiological extraction substances, stuff like
barium sul fight. They dumped it in a different landfill
site at a place called Latty Avenue, La t t Y,
(35:38):
and then another site in a nearby place called Bridgeton.
So now if we're playing along at home and counting,
there are three identified sites with very dangerous stuff all
around the Coldwater Creek area, which is.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Right by Saint Louis. Can't We can't stress that enough.
It's like right north of the Saylo. Yeah, it's like
you can drive there easily. It's not a day trip,
it's a there and back trip.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And again, the reason I'm positing this is a true
and successful conspiracy is that even the people who were
literally holding this stuff to these dump sites did not
know what they were hauling, Like they had no idea.
We don't want to make it seem as though these
(36:30):
folks were all being villainous or intending to do evil things.
They didn't know they were part of a system.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
As it turns out, it's going to turn out they
were victims as well, because they were being exposed potentially
to some of this low level radiated material.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Absolutely, absolutely, And now we're starting to talk about consequences.
So how about we pause for a quick word from
our sponsors and get into where the radioactivity had the road.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
We've returned, all right. For anybody who checked out our
earlier episode on the salt plume or on other hidden
environmental disasters, it is possibly not going to surprise you
that the radioactive gunk and junk and gobbledygoot from slaps
and that latty landfill and that bridged in landfill, they
(37:30):
leached into the soil. They made it to the nearby
creek bed. They made it to the well water if
anybody was drinking from a well. They made it therefore,
to the homes and the properties and the public spaces
of communities living nearby. Ah Rep.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
I know I've mentioned this before, but I've spent a
lot of time researching and hanging out around another site
for legacy nuclear waste near Augusta, Georgia, where I grew up,
called the Savannah Rivers, and there's a lot of legacy
clean up activities on going there to this day where
they do research into like how reached, how clean up
(38:08):
is going by, you know, tagging wildlife and things like that.
But even in those open pits they had like liners
on them, which even that was just not nearly enough
and a lot of those would get compromise and things
like that. So the fact that they I don't know
if it's just a timing thing where they just didn't
know or didn't care, but we're literally talking about this
stuff just being dumped in like open pits or just
(38:31):
literally being dumped on the ground.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
In a drum, right in a drum in a container,
like an oil drum, not like a snare drum. But yes,
your point holds. I would say these are some of
the deadliest substances known to human kide there essentially because
they're leached in the are, they may as well have
(38:54):
been directly dumped in Coldwater Creek, again a tributary of
the Missouri River, going for some twenty miles. We're talking
stuff like the usual suspects, you know, a rogues gallery
of stuff that is bad. Uranium two thirty eight, thorum
two thirty two, strontium ninety oh man, strontium, strontium.
Speaker 4 (39:16):
Interesting. We're gonna get to this too in this study
over there in the Saint Louis area. But the midwest,
uh was had some of the most contaminated milk because
of strontium from other activities, not not this, it was
something unrelated.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Man.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
So we're imagining all this stuff right getting into the water,
into the ground all over here where a ton of
people are living. You and this we've got a long
timeline here right from the sixties all until let's just
say until the two thousands, even.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
I'd say forty seven to the two thousands. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
So like even from the early the early stuff that's
happening there, you've got individual and even groups of people
who are attempting to come forward, let's say, to a
doctor to say, hey, something is wrong here, right going
to a water treatment plants, like something is wrong with
this water, something is wrong with this creek, something is
wrong with this But there's no real full answer for
(40:17):
a while there.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, and just to add the strontium and cow's milk thing.
It was as a result of numerous other nuclear tests
that were happening, you know in Middle America.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yep, yep, and the consequences would prove inevitable. Right, everything
led you to me, says cancer. They would take time
to become fully apparent, because again, this is not like dysentery.
This is not like other outbreaks that are readily visible
(40:47):
over a short time window. This is something that takes
years to notice and then takes, as we'll see, decades
to acknowledge because the powers the bee often cover them up.
And I don't usually love using the phrase the powers
that be, but in this case it is fairly accurate.
(41:08):
When elephants make war, it is the grass that suffers,
goes the old proverb, right, and we want to go
to something that's often cited in this conversation from Saint
Louis Magazine by the journalist Ray Hartman in twenty thirteen.
He sums up the situation perfectly. He says, for most
(41:30):
of the past seven decades, authorities didn't appear to make
a serious effort to get rid of the waste. That's true, Ray.
In recent years, he continues. The government has made a
fair amount of cleanup progress, but as recently as late
April twenty thirteen, the US Army Corps of Engineers indicated
(41:50):
there is more testing and more removal to be done.
So even in the modern era, the federal government is saying,
not only do we have to do our best to
try to get rid of some of this stuff, but
we also don't know how much stuff there is to
get rid of, which is damning.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
And then.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
This is the worst part.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
It's the effects because human beings, children, adults, elderly folks,
everybody is exhibiting weird stuff going on. In particular cancer,
different types of cancer, because remember cancer isn't just one thing, right.
Cancer can happen anywhere in the body, different types of cancers,
different ways sells morph and then grow, and it's tough
(42:44):
to pin down one particular thing. So you've got some
of these huge studies we're going to talk about that
look at such a range of different cancers.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Oh and this is the other surprising thing, and I
love that you're bringing this up. A lot of the
cancer that are occurred at unprecedented rates. By the way,
in the cold water Creek communities. These are very rare
cancers in medical literature. These are things that are a
(43:13):
dark lottery ordinarily, the kind of stuff that would be
the kind of stuff such that if you had a
population of five thousand in a town and only two
people had this specific type of cancer, you would be
baffled and you would need to dig deeper. That's how
(43:35):
rare a lot of these cancers are.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
When with all the disparate types of cancers and symptoms
that we're talking about here, it's almost the kind of
thing that could be limped in with the sorts of
syndromes we've been talking about recently, like Havana syndrome and
the mysterious brain disease and where was that that was
also somewhere in the midwek crust disease was in Canada,
i think. But in any case, it's easy to spin
(44:00):
this into like, well, is this really connected to something
bad that we did?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Right? And people are still at this point not to
be all hill and knowlton about it, but people are
still at this point trying to wage a bit of
a silent information war and cover things up. This is
ignored by the mainstream press for quite a while, and
we're talking not just rare cancers, we're talking to autoimmune disorders,
(44:26):
other as you said, no mysterious illnesses. Studies start pouring.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
In and as they're doing these studies, the one thing
in common that they found, right, is that these are
people who grew up specifically near Cold Water Creek, but
not just like in the area, but near.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
The creek, right right near the creek.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
And also originally they start looking at people who were
born or spend time there in a specific window of years.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Right, and I believe they're finding it to be more
prevalent in boy is who had more of a likelihood
of playing in the creek, splashing around, rough housing, you know,
in the creek when they were kids.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
En of particular interest to us is the infamous Saint
Louis baby tooth later life health study. Weird it is,
but it's really good science, and that's important. It's solid science.
This is inarguable research. This is not speculation. This is
(45:28):
not dare I say, a couple of pals kicking it
on a podcast. They go deep into what we call
some longitudinal studies. They're analyzing baby teeth from Saint Louis
from the surrounding Coldwater Creek community to science that we're
(45:51):
pointing that out that their mission is to learn how
locals have been exposed to any radioactive isotopes over time,
and it turns out teeth are great for this, which
is maybe a second act for the tooth fairy there.
(46:13):
Let's point out as well that they're excellent research, which
you can read in depth on the website, notes that
all this stuff that can get dismissed as academic or
abstract science, it can have a real impact on policy,
It can have a real impact upon day to day lives.
(46:33):
We're also going to get to some public champions and
Facebook groups as we continue. But there's one quote we
had to mention from the website, none other than the
President of the United States at the time, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy cited this research into baby teeth and radioactive exposure
(46:55):
when he signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in
nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
I mean, that's a huge deal, just so just to
show that even at those levels of the executive branch,
it's acknowledged that this is a real problem and we
can't allow this kind of thing to continue because of
how bad it is. Yeah, if you jump back to
that study and really dive into it has been as suggesting,
and we certainly hope you do. You can find writing
(47:25):
on a lot of places, but it's very interesting to
see specifically how rates of cancer increase as you get
closer and closer in the Saint Louis Greater area to
that creek. It's crazy to see it written out like
this and just imagining, just imagining how unaware people were
(47:46):
as it's happening. I think that's maybe the most terrifying thing.
Speaker 4 (47:49):
And we're talking about the new Ish study as well,
that was released on JAMA.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah, that's what one I'm looking at. It's written this well,
this one is written about at least when I'm looking
at in the th H. Chan School of Public Health
from Harvard, Harvard in July.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Twenty twenty five, right, And that's the one that I
was pointing to about the incidents of males being more
likely to have been exposed because of you know, all
of that stuff about kids playing in creeks.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
And the research continues today. That is very important. This
is an ongoing this is an ongoing investigation, you know,
for the good people at Coldwater Creek. This led to
genuine concern. As the work got out, the science was
coming in, things were being acknowledged, and there's no wonder
(48:38):
why people are concerned this type of cancer, these rare
types of cancer, they do not occur at this prevalence
in the natural world. There has to be another variable.
That variable is the radioactive waste and the dump sites.
In a very real way, Uncle Sam by hook or
(48:59):
by crook killing innocent people. There's just no way around it.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
No, there's not, and not to like, you know, like
Uncle Sam needs an adda boy. But there was legislation
that expired last year called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act
that ultimately paid out around two point six billion dollars
to folks who were exposed and sickened by radiation from
either exposure in their environments or you know, some of
(49:26):
the people that we were talking about that could have
been considered victims who were moving some of this stuff
to these sites, mining operations, et cetera. You know, hauling
uranium to Nevada test sites and things like that. And
in the recent big beautiful bill that was passed, which
had a lot of stuff in it, there's one part
of it that I didn't know anything about. That was
(49:47):
sponsored by Joshua Holly from Missouri. And that is a
kind of new reinstatement of something very similar to that
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that would payments of twenty five
grand of families of people who died as a result
of this, or fifty thousand dollars to those who developed
(50:08):
cancers and survived.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Right. And how much of that will end up going
to the medical cost that's, you.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Know, certainly a big part of what it's intended for, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
And we know that this may of Pulpa may come
a dollar short, a day late, because government records clearly
show that radioactive waste was known to pose a threat
to people living near Coldwater Creek. Get this as early
as nineteen forty nine, Good god, as early as nineteen
(50:41):
forty nine, we made the devil's bargain for the greater good.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
That's horrifying. May at least they're getting forty million dollars
in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Sure, twenty twenty six off to a heck of a run.
We're recording this on Friday, January sixteenth. Gosh, January sixteenth,
what a year already?
Speaker 3 (51:02):
How is it this far into it, you're already I
know different.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
This is some eccentricity coming out. But have you, guys
ever had the moment where you wish you could just
do a fast forward or like hold down a button
in real life and skip the cut scene.
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Yeah, it'd be cool.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
It'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
Yeah that said, I told you, guysn't watching X Files again.
I watch the intro every time.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
I love the intro. I watched the Twilight z Owe
intro every time, the X Files intro. I sometimes watch
them back to back. I might have an issue.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Okay, so that's the only thing I really associate with that,
like fast forward thing, skip the segment around.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
You don't skip the cut scenes in video games?
Speaker 3 (51:47):
No, no, my god, well okay, first place, no game plus.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
And off Mike, we were talking about another really cool
sci fi show called Dark. Many folks might be familiar
with German language show that also involves nuclear waste and
some of the more sci fi tiny whimy things that
it could potentially cause. And I never skipped the intro
to that because it is gorgeous, the h I love
the intros, mirror image things, and it's just really, really
(52:16):
well done.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Intros are ritualized. They're so important. They key you in,
they get into your brain. They're like appetizers at a restaurant,
you know what I mean, wet the palette.
Speaker 4 (52:30):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
I also have uh, of course, uh true detective right. Uh,
that's that's a banger. And you know the best part
of nineties and eighties sitcoms. No offense to the writers
if you're tuning in, but the best part was the intro.
Always the introthetic. Yeah, explain the whole premise, like, here's
(52:52):
a horse and he could talk, or more appropriately, uh,
here's a here's a weird British butler.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
How did too many cooks?
Speaker 2 (53:08):
To many cooks? And so it wasn't until December of
nineteen eighty nine that the US Department of Energy officially
confirmed the presence of radioactive waste in Coldwater Creek.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
And that's when the super Fund eight situation came into
play across the country.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Yeah, the same year, the EPA finally designated these Coldwater
dump sites into the Superfund program. There have been tons
of lawsuits. There are several that are grinding on into
the modern day. We shouted out some some of the
You know, we give social media a hard time on
this show, and not without validity, but social media can
(53:51):
do good things. And one of the good things social
media has done is uniting residents of Coldwater Creek to
be able to communicate what has happened. Uh in there
in there lived on the ground experience, which I think
is a tremendously important thing.
Speaker 4 (54:07):
Which you found as well as I did through a
friend of mine who's in a born and bred Saint
Louis native. A group it's called Just Mom's st L
which had some really great local perspective and an incredible,
very moving video that they produced with some perspective and
(54:27):
commentary from mothers of you know, children who were affected
by this kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
And you can also see Facebook groups like Coldwater Creek
Just the Facts Please There There. There are multiple groups
out there, and we we want to emphasize that the
stories don't stop when the headline stop, you know, the
stories don't stop when the zeitgeist shifts in one direction
to another. This is not a podcast sponsored by the
(54:55):
band one direction, but we do need to mention it's
worth it's your time to learn more about this stuff.
It's worth our time, and the question eternally becomes what
does this mean for the future. Malancrat pharmaceuticals still around,
still in the game, and thankfully so are the good
people of Coldwater Creek. For sure.
Speaker 3 (55:18):
Everybody needs those minerals.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
I agree with you, man, that's the game is great
and the game continues.
Speaker 3 (55:26):
Oh hey, something good here, guys. The study that came
out of Harvard recently last year is being written about
in July. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
So that's just a reminder sometimes government science funding is good.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Yeah, oh man, we were talking about that previously. I
can't remember what show was on. We were talking about
FDA cuts and up to Seclaire and the jungle. You know,
should go into the grocery store, be like rolling the dice.
What's in that can?
Speaker 4 (56:00):
Is it beans?
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Is it a finger?
Speaker 4 (56:01):
We were also talking about transparency in terms of pharmaceutical
manufacturing and some rewards showing really awful jungle esque conditions
in some of these factories that make generic drugs.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
And I've been starting this list you guys of authors
that warned us that I think would be disappointed if
they came back. Now. Upton Sinclair's on the list. I
don't know if we should talk to George orwell, because
he might be a little too mug. He might be
a little smug about it.
Speaker 4 (56:33):
Can well be he might.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Be a little bit like reading a Pitchfork review which
you agree with that well deserved.
Speaker 4 (56:41):
I know we have to play dumb question.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Is Upton Sinclair it could happen here? Or is that
a different guy who did it could happen here?
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Sinclair? Lewis it can't happen here?
Speaker 3 (56:54):
Oh ah, it's I got the title wrong. It's it
can't happen here. It could happen here. It's a different show.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Right, yes, bye. Our good friend of the show, the
legendary Robert Evans, bills himself as the only Robert Evans,
and we have chosen to believe him in that regard.
If you dig us, you'll also dig his show. Behind
the Bastard. You can catch us appearing on there every
so often. There are Netflix now, and there are Netflix Now.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
Welcome to the team.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Thank you again, by the way, to our fellow conspiracy
realist kill Deer, as well as to the countless members
of our crew who reached out to help us with
this episode. The tireless advocates, parents, locals, lawyers, champions, activists,
and more who continue to fight for justice right now
(57:44):
in twenty twenty six. This proves that some conspiracies are
not just conspiracy theories. Some conspiracies are true. The US
government actively covered up traces of its sins. And if
we take nothing else away from this, let's ask ourselves
what else is the stuff they don't want you to know?
(58:06):
Tell us find us online, give us an email, call
us on the phone.
Speaker 4 (58:10):
That's right, you can find us all over the internet
at the handle Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending
on your platform of choice. And there's another way to
get in touch with us as well, isn't there Matt?
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Oh yes, we have a phone number. It is one
eight three three std WYTK. So go ahead, pick up
your phone, turn those letters into numbers and give us
a call. It's our voicemail system. You might hear it
appear on one of our listener mail episodes wherever you
get your favorite podcasts. Now, there's one other thing you
can do. Oh yes, send us an awesome email.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
We are the entities, the red piece of correspondence we receive.
Be well aware yet I'd afraid sometimes the void writes back.
In fact, some of the stuff that ends up on
our audio Weekly Listener mail segment informs actual episodes, so
you might appear on Netflix. Conspiracy At iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 3 (59:01):
Com, Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a
(59:22):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio 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.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
argue you are here. That makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. And please forgive this mustache
from Rocking Netflix. I got a thing going on.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
I forget it's needed. Ben. You just strike a dashing
figure with a mustache.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Oh you're too kind ul as ever, guys, Tonight's episode
is very, very exciting for us because it comes to us,
Curtis see of the best part of this show, our
fellow conspiracy realists. This is a listener suggestion from our pal,
Kill deer, fake out, So kill deer fake out. If
(01:11):
you're watching this, if you're hearing this, thank you. You
have brought us to some hidden history, some cover ups.
We've been obsessed with this forever, guys, and as we've
discovered over the years, more than a decade Now, there
are a lot of strange and very true conspiracies about
(01:32):
covering up disasters. And you know, forget what your textbooks
tell you, a lot of those cover ups occur right
here where we record, in the United States of America.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, our government has this tendency to do things quietly
in the dark, sometimes underground, sometimes in facilities that leak
stuff out into waterways, and then we just don't talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Maybe a little rugsweep, yeah, for sure, M little little
suspicious burial of drums and containers, and sometimes right there
out in the open, which functions.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
On multiple levels in open pits, you know, super fun sites. Now,
it's fun. But yes, that's.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Just our green goo supply that we're keeping on the
river bed.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It's fine, So let's get to it. This is a
story of a true conspiracy, one whose consequences reverberate as
we record in the modern evening. This, friends and Neighbors,
is the true radioactive story of Cold Water Creek. Here
(02:41):
are the facts. Okay, cool name, innocuous name. I don't
know about you, guys, but I've been weirded out by
innocuous names for a long time.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
Sure, right, especially when it comes to government programs.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yes, one hundred percent and all right. Cold Water Creek Okay,
it sounds like it could be the name of a
subdivision for instance.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, especially here in Georgia, we get a lot of
those creaks and streams and ship shops in the creek.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Shops at the Creek Placid Streams, you know, something like that.
Dylan is coming in hot with one. Let's see what
we've got in the chat here. A Chico's clothing competitor name.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Yes, no, it's true, it is actually is a clothing brand.
I was what Yeah, yeah, I was thrown off on
my research earlier.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I had I had that
issue when I was diving into this as well. Everybody
like kill deer. Uh. One of the one of the
things that we almost wrote for this episode was it
exploration of the Cold Water Creek brand.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Vests and sweaters.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yes, who doesn't love a vest? Who doesn't love a.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Sweater both at the same time.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Right, and who doesn't love water? You know? The Coldwater
Creek in question for tonight's exploration is a tributary of
the Missouri River. It's technically a creek. It's a very
long creek. It's almost twenty miles long, and it starts
starts over in Overland, Missouri.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Right, flowing through several cities before going under ground in
an area near Lambert International Airport, where then winds northeast
through other communities and dumps out into the Missouri River.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah. And like a lot of creeks, like a lot
of water ways that you'll find across these great lands
and every other land really in the world, most of
them that have creeks. That creek goes underneath some stuff,
and that's one of the big problems in this episode.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah. Yeah, This creek moves through all kinds of public spaces, utility, infrastructure.
It's not always under as well. Because people like a
good view, so it goes through playgrounds, schools, golf courses
get shouted out often. The views can be awesome, right.
It's a selling point for real estate, which becomes interested later.
(05:16):
And it's fortunate that the views when the creek's above
ground are pretty nice because in some of the areas
that the creek passes through, you literally cannot avoid exposure
to it. You might drive by it every day to work, right,
you might drive by it all the time to pick
up your kids. Or drop them off at school or
(05:38):
from school. This is we wanted to start with some
good news, folks. This is not a primary source of
drinking water for the current communities there. We were going
to see why. That is awesome news in just a
few minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
But it is weird to think about exposure to a
creek as being open potentially bad things right precise. I
feel that's what you've exposed me to a view.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
A factor that's going to come into play a little
later too, is like kids literally playing in creeks as kids.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Want to always. Yeah, and this idea of drinking water
and the sources for it in the cold Water Creek
adjacent communities, it wasn't always the case that this was
not a primary source of drinking water, because we have
to remember the history of water treatment in the United
(06:34):
States is surprisingly recent. It is crazy when you think
about it. I don't want to date myself, but we
all remember, I would hope back in eighteen sixty there
were very few people in the United States as compared
to now. There was a population boom. There were like
twenty five million people by around nineteen hundred, and water
(06:56):
treatment took a while to catch up with the population.
It was very ad hoc emergent technology.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
A bit of a checkered past, not to mention some
rural communities that to this day still rely on well water.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, people were for a lot of US history. People
were getting water from wells or scooping it from local lakes, springs, rivers, creeks,
and as as they'll pointed out here, some of our
fellow conspiracy realists tuning in today may still well depend
on well water. May still well depend on well water. Yeah,
(07:33):
and that could be a problem. I mean, I have
you guys ever beenerever spent time in a place that
is dependent on groundwater wells?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Yes? Yeah, yeah, and it tastes it tastes different, for sure,
It's got a little more of an earthy quality to it.
But yeah, it's usually in like more rural areas.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, what about you, Matt.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I'm still trying to understand that you remember the eighteen sixties,
but I don't know well water. I've been to a
couple places.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
We've all been to a few places. Yeah, right, thank
you for that. Okay, So these communities, these towns, later
they grow into cities. They're located along or near this
tributary that we call Coldwater Creek again about nineteen twenty
miles and we walked through the direction there. They grew
(08:24):
in step with the nation, and more and more people
gathered to these areas, right, And like all humans, these
folks are thirsty, and like all other human industries are
so many other human industries. The stuff they make is
thirsty too, crops, livestock, et cetera. And you got to
(08:46):
know this, folks, if you are new to the game,
don't travel back in time. Don't ever try to be
a reverse time traveler. It's just weird. The first thing
that's going to amaze you is everything stinks. For a
lot of post industrial revolution human civilization, water sources in
(09:08):
any dense community were pretty frick and filthy.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Sure, I mean, in the absence of like oversight. A
lot of these new industries are just gonna dump that
stuff right into the water.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Oh yeah, sanitation virtually nonexistent pollution. The consequent contamination accelerates.
The science is racing to catch up with the problems.
Water borne illness, other medical conditions. They proliferate, and some
conditions things are around today, like dysentery, they would become
readily apparent in the short term, right, a very short
(09:44):
time window, and folks in town could figure out, hey,
something's wrong with the water, right, but other conditions could
take a much longer time to be recognized and then
an even longer time to be linked back to the
drinking water.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, this's a just thinking about We discussed germ theory
on the show many a time, right, and how long
it took humanity to kind of realize, Oh, there are
microscopic organisms in this water and that could be not good,
and maybe that's what's making us sick. And then just
thinking about sorry, the poop water.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
All of the poop water. Yeah, And in this conversation
about unclean water, Coldwater Creek as a tributary is not
inherently unique. The challenges that the local communities face in
step with population growth are relatively and frighteningly common in
(10:45):
industrial America of the time. But in this case, as
history moves forward, we see the good people of this
area got a little something extra in the worst possible way.
What followed those may not be appropriate for all listeners
who care about other people. Dare we say it is
(11:07):
a nuclear revelation for sure? Here's where it gets crazy,
Okay the resident, Let's just put the cards on the table,
put the water in the tank on this When the
residents of various Coldwater Creek adjacent communities are victims of
(11:30):
exposure to radioactive waste, this is an active cover up,
or has been an active cover up for decades by
the US government. It has resulted in high rates of cancer,
other medical conditions, genetic malformations. Uncle Sam knew the entire
beat me here, Dylan, please, Uncle Sam knew the whole time.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And it all goes back to America's desire to build
a bomb would use the atom, right.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
We got to hop in the Hyms.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Well, we all saw that movie. If you haven't go
see it, it is worth your time. But it is
about a secret project to build an atomic weapon, something
that would be able to end the Second World War
with enough strength and terror, right that it would all
just be over.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
One of the most successful conspiracies in all of American history,
the creation of weaponized nuclear armament. You have probably heard
this name before, folks, the Manhattan Project. Now you might
be saying, wait, guys, didn't you say Coldwater Creek is
in Missura? Did you get your names mixed up? What
(12:41):
is Manhattan doing in Missoura? And Matt, I also want
to take a second and thank you for recommending to
me the phenomenal graphic novel Trinity, which traces the nuts
and bolts of the Manhattan Project. But how do we
explain that Manhattan Project in a nutshell?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
It's a secret.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Everybody nobody talk about it.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well, yeah, it's there was such a need to have
a secrecy around the development of an advanced weapon at
that time, especially how World War Two was, you know,
turning out at the time as what we just talked
about Operation paper Clip not long ago. How some of
that is starting to trickle and occur in the brain
(13:32):
drain on on the axis side. Brilliant scientists coming together
to try and do this herculean thing, right, this almost
impossibly achievable thing, and you needed a ton of space
to do all of this science. You needed testing grounds
(13:53):
to try it out, you needed facilities where scientists could live, right.
That's that's the reason it had to be such a secret,
is because you didn't they build an entire town.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Yes, yeah, yeah, building the town of Oakridge, which will
be familiar, a familiar tale to folks like Tennessee, Dylan
Fagan and yours truly.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Uh, we actually knew one of the primary official historians
of Oakridge. And it's funny you mentioned that. In the
weeks leading up to this episode, I was talking with
some folks about the story of the secrecy, the successful
conspiracy of the atomic bomb. Did you guys know that? Okay,
(14:38):
Oakridge wasn't on the map right when it was a
secret science town, but other towns were aware of it,
and they knew to keep their mouths shut. So if
you were a stranger passing through and you would say, hey,
is there a secret town here, they would probably say
there are a few people who like go to the woods,
(15:01):
you know, they go camping, and hey, maybe you should
move on, stranger.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Yeah, nobody.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Let's not talk about processing plants and other weird things.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I don't speak English for the purposes of this conversation, right, So, yeah,
we're setting the stage. It's back in the nineteen forties,
nineteen thirty nine or so. The world is anticipating the
chaos of World War two, and so, as you were saying, Matt,
uncle Sam embarks on one of the most successful and
(15:35):
one of the most dangerous true conspiracies and all of
human history making an atomic bomb. We've got scientists who
become newly minted Americans. They're fleeing fascist regimes in Europe.
Not for nothing. Did we do a brain drain episode recently?
And these folks are super into the idea of nuclear fission.
(15:58):
It's still got that new car smell. And the more
hawkish people in the upper echelods of American society, private
and public, like by the way, they say, oh, you
know what we should do well, like, we could make
a way to provide energy for people who need you know,
electricity and stuff like that, or we could build big
(16:20):
ass bombs, like the most dangerous bombs.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Why not do both?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Sure this this is cinematic. We're talking larger than life
characters because there were still, you know, a celebrity scientists
at that time in world's history. And this is when
we get our buddy, the star of Einstein's dreams, a
guy named Albert Einstein presents the military potential of what
(16:49):
they call an uncontrolled fish and chain to President Roosevelt.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
He knew what he was doing at the time, was
he like thinking that they would take this and do
something horrific with it.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
He later regretted it seems like that. Yeah, he was
haunted by it for the rest of his life. Albert
not Frank.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I really thought you were going to say silly and
Murphy when you were talking about the guy in Einstein's dreams.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
But on Febuary of the next year, we start to
see research taking that idea that nine Time presented, you know,
kicking off in full. And on December sixth of nineteen
forty one, the project was put under the direction of
the Office of Scientific Research and Development, headed by a
person named Vanever Bush. Cool name, a pretty good name,
(17:37):
not of the Bush dynasty, politicalized different Bush, not my Bush.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Not Noles Bush. So in June of nineteen forty two,
the US Corps of Engineers gets a signed to manage
construction work to build this thing we call the Manhattan Project,
and they name it the Manhattan Project because a lot
of the early research in to atomic weaponry into this
(18:02):
fission chain process. It occurs at Columbia University in Manhattan.
And then this project gets the casual name Manhattan Engineer District, right,
just vague enough to throw off any spies or any
wayward eyes. Manhattan Engineer District is an agency of the
(18:24):
US Department of Energy. But yet, however, fellow conspiracy realist,
you may be recalling again that we started talking about Missouri.
The reason we're talking about Missouri the Manhattan Project is
because this conspiracy extended far beyond the geographical bounds of Manhattan.
(18:45):
That same year, nineteen forty two, an outfit called at
the time Melencroft Chemical Works gets an exclusive and soup's
secret contract with Uncle Sam to produce weapons grade uranium
at a factory just north of downtown Saint Louis. This
(19:07):
is not a remote place. This is not you know,
this is not like the middle of Nowherd desert where
the bomb ultimately gets tested. If you live in Saint Louis,
this is in your metro area.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
And certainly a lot of these contracts, the consideration would
have been, like with any war effort, It's like, we're
going to convert the use of this facility to aid
the war effort. We need a ton of weapons grade uranium,
so we're going to find the places that are most
suited to make it for US population or be damned greater,
good hell of a drug, dude.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I just want to talk about that move from Columbia
University on the island again, the island of Manhattan on
the coast of New York there to the center of
the United States. Like I mean, it's tough to get
more center of the United States than Saint Louis, Missouri.
And just as a strategic move, right, if you're imagining
(20:03):
there are potentially enemies that have navies that could target
Manhattan fairly easily if you've got to ship close enough, right,
And if you're trying to develop this kind of technology,
why not do it in a place.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
That at least, uh, you can see him coming.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Well, yeah, you'd have enough of a warning. Again, even
if it was an air force of some sort that
was going to attack that facility, you'd have plenty of
time to have some kind of countermeasures.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Not for nothing, are a lot of the super fun
toys in the Upper Midwest and in Colorado where COG
will continue.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Right, Yeah, Continuity of government.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Continuity of government is what COG stands for.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Ed.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I want to get I want us to get to
Malancratz at least with the spelling for this, because it's
not the way it's not spelled. The way we're going
to be pronouncing it. It's m A L L well
I N C A R O D T cool.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Simple.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah, yes, it's so simple. It's so English spelling is
so sensible and right right, don't kidding weirdly though, Irish American?
Speaker 4 (21:18):
That makes sense. I could see that too.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
How does that make sense?
Speaker 4 (21:21):
I don't know. Well, what's the crack?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You know?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
It just sounds Gaelic. It sounds vaguely Gaelic to me
now that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
In here you go. Spoiler, folks, The Manhattan Project pays off.
It changes the world. The bomb does work. Japan is devastated, Nagasaki, Hiroshimak.
Go to the museums if you are able to visit
that part of the world. The Allies, so called win
(21:50):
World War Two, but in several ways this is a
pyrrhic victory for a lot of the Allies. Europe is demolished,
Russia is devastated. A vast swath of Asia is so
much in shambles that it's almost pushed back into time
(22:11):
development wise. And so it comes to pass that the
United States of America is the world's last remaining superpower
because they're the last big dogs that still have working factories.
You know, this leads to the post World War two
economic boom, which really launches the idea of you know,
(22:31):
two point five kids, everybody's got a car and a
TV calling the American dream. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And then with the build up to the dropping of
the bomb, there were a lot of tests to see
how this uranium stuff is going to work out, you know,
as a bomb, even more so than as a rod
that can superheat water really fast, right to provide that
energy that we talked about. So the big question is
now that we've tested all this stuff and we've got
(23:00):
a lot of it, got to say, we have a
surplus of waste products.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Shut all this book. We need to do something.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Oh no, the consequences of my actions.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Well, and there's a lot of understanding. Well, let's put
it this way. There is an active at this point
understanding and learning about what this stuff does and what
effects it has. But I would say there's probably not
a full understanding at this moment, and it's a little.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Late, right, And that not late, I mean, it's just
one of those things like when we see industries rolling
things out before they fully understand it. That's all I'm
saying that's exact point.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
You nailed it there, guys. I think we can all
agree that this is seen as a work in progress
to this day where right, yeah, where people or powerful
forces sacrifice that the altar of the greater good. Right,
there was an urgency, there was immediacy, there was need.
(23:55):
So just to be clear, when we're talking about the
horrors that occur in Japan, we're talking about August of
nineteen forty five, August sixth and August ninth, the world
soldiers on and in nineteen forty seven, just two years later,
our pals at this Irish American company, Mellenkrot, they team
(24:18):
up with those guys from earlier, the US Corps of Engineers,
and they attempt to they're the ones who, Okay, think
about it this way. Have you have you, guys, ever
had a kick ass wild house party? Sure, like the
kind of thing that would go in a film, A
real razor.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yeah, every weekend crazy just at the coming Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Okay, for any of us who have had the dubious
fortune to be the person who lives at the house
where a crazy house party happens, you wake up the
next morning, right, and you see all the junk scattered around.
You might see a strangers on the couch right or
(25:03):
sleeping in places humans were not meant to sleep. And
now you got to you gotta partner up with your
roommates and say we got to clean the house. It's
like Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
And mentioned the neighbors that had to deal with the
party while it was going on. Let's not forget about them.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah. Yeah, it turns out somebody blew up our neighbor's house,
so let's at least clean up before the cops and
the consequences arrive. That's what happens in Cold Water Creek.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
You're telling me you're not supposed to go down to
the basement and play drums super loud at five am
in a passive aggressive move, that you're not supposed to
do that.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Who will? Yeah? I support you.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
I'm pretty lucky my basement is facing away from other
adjacent properties, so I can very much do that thing.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You gotta franchise out the basements, guys. So here's this
was perhaps an overlog analogy, but we like to speak
an analogy because it really brings the experience to the
front of the mind. Melancrat and the corp of engineers
are attempting to clean up the house after the party.
(26:18):
But they don't have a bunch of natty light cans
or PBR cans crushed. They don't have a bunch of
you know, popcorn on the floor. What have you put?
What kind of parties are you throwing? Pop?
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Paper hats, lemonade cups?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I love it? What kind of parties is who throwing?
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Oh just I don't think of popcorn as being a
razor thing, but I love the idea of a very
very with their wholesome rager where everyone's just snacking on popelorn.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
That's a kick ass movie party, you know what I mean.
We're like, if you're putting on an awesome movie, everybody's
got popcorn or just a movie theater. That's what it
looks like, like just nasty stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I know what you're talking about. Yeah, thank you, Matt,
and we in this case, the corp of Engineers and melancrime.
Their party detritus is radioactive waste.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Ah crap.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, from the rush to process weapons grade your radium.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Everything everything is. I think you should leave now in
my head.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Oh crap, that's what they said.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
A lot harder to sweep up than that than some
some some straight popcorn kernels and Natty light cans.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Uh. And we are not brought to you by Natty light.
We are brought to you by bigcorn. And we are
brought to you by uh bud light. The beer is
so good you can drink it with your mouth. Or
is that Miller light?
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Yeah, all right, it's Miller I think, But like, what
was it kid Rock? That like the but light anyway?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh, no, okay, Miller light that dacab. So they chose
these folks are in a bit of a panic mode
and no one should know. They say privately to each other.
They have the support of the US government. Obviously the
army has been called in. They choose a site that's
kind of small, considering it's about around about twenty two
(28:11):
acres twenty one point seven acres. And it's get this,
it's near the airport. It's near the Lambert airport. This
is where they're going to bury their sins.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Yeah, it's classic Simpsons type stuff. They're literally burying steel
drums with those radioactive symbols on them in the ground.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Well, it doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, Like,
surely they put a giant concrete structure down there first.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Right, Oh, yeah, that's a great question. They did not. Also,
you know, it's it's important for us to note at
this time, in the late forties and forty seven, they
may not have known the full They probably did not
(28:56):
know the full countermeasures you have to take to cont
radioactive waste. They were probably making their best effort, but
they also wanted to save money and keep things quiet,
and they and they got stuff shipped not just from
the original factory there north of town, they got waste
(29:19):
from other locations that were associated with the Manhattan Project.
So imagine you've got the house party and then one
of your friends calls you and says, hey, we had
a sick house party too. I've got a truck of
when we choose Miller lite and popcorn kernels and crushed
solo cups, and I'm just gonna dump them in your backyard.
(29:39):
Role is that that's tight?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Right out in my backyard.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
All these people with house parties have a mutual friend
who works in air traffic control, and they're like, hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Jeremy, what's up, man, it's your boy? Oh Darren called
you too. Yeah, more space down there, since you're up
you know, you already started doing it.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
This becomes known as the Saint Louis Airport storage site
or we love an acronym slaps.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, and it definitely did not slap, not in a
good way. No, Yeah, there was a bit of a
slap in the face to the people living in the area.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Eventually, they didn't even bother with the steel drums. They
just rolled up the container and then dumped stuff on
the ground. Yikes, man, And we're like, yeah, checked their
you know, probably checked their watches and said, oh, it's
it's Friday. It's like four thirty five. I don't know, guys, I.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Say, we call it back to what we were saying earlier.
It's like, you know, rolling the stuff out before fully
understanding the aftermath and understanding the ramifications big picture. I
don't it's not a pass right like the best There
is not a good faith effort particularly, but it also
is like a problem that they have to have a
logistical solution to. They got to put it somewhere right.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
But in intention Yeah, yeah, that's a great point because
we talked about this in a previous episode and it's
haunted me ever since. Intention does not indemnify one from consequence,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
It just seems so inherently sloppy. I mean, the intention
doesn't seem to be good at all. It just seems
to be, like you said, then, a bit of a
panic mode.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Imagine though, if okay, just this scenario, it's a secret
that they made all this stuff somewhat of a secret
at this point. It's a little past the time that
people know about the thing a little bit at least,
but it's a secret. You're trying to get rid of it.
You just put it away somewhere. If it was not
radioactive in the way they knew it was, it wouldn't
(31:45):
have been a problem. There's a potential there for somebody
taking that action right of dumping all this stuff there,
that nothing happens, nobody ever knows about it. It just goes away,
It gets absorbed back into the earth the way somebody
in an office somewhere said it might right, because you
don't take that action if there isn't a possibility that
that everything's fine and it just goes away.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
True. Also, speaking of intention and motivation, we have to
realize that everybody in charge of that situation is probably
dead at this point. And so even if even if
there were concerns that should have been actionable, there could
well have been people who said, not my problem.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
You know, you know, people knew about nukes for sure,
but radioactive waste and the byproducts that was that was
still being covered up to some mean no pun intended,
but like I mean, this was not general knowledge, the
fact that this stuff even existed, that these weapons and
this technology produced this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great point too. It's
a it calls to mind shades of the Smoking Man
from X Files. You know, there's like one guy who
talks to some people. There are some scientists and some
academics that nobody really listens to. And the media is
(33:08):
not doing a super great job reporting this because everybody
is still in an intense, horrific hangover from the atrocity
called World War Two. So for fifteen years, fellow conspiracy realist,
this company continues its uranium refining activities at its downtown site,
(33:32):
just you know, north of Saint Louis, and they keep
dumping the waist in as well.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, and you might think, okay, well, surely it gets
better from there, Like they figured something out right, something
good happens now in the story.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
We love that because you know, we have improv backgrounds.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
We love it.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yes and so yes, and it gets worse. We shamlaned ourselves. Okay,
it's sixty six. It's nineteen sixty six. There's this company
called the Potter Corporation. They get in the mix and
they do a thing where they're purchasing minerals from Malancrat
(34:12):
and they you know, they're a corporation, they're for profit.
They're trying to extract these minerals and they say, oh man,
we're losing money on this. We've done something dumb like
make the Atari links. That's a that's a reference for
ridiculous history.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
You hush your mouth. That was the best gaming system
I had, as.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
You had a Lynx that was later. That was sort
of them trying to become relevant again. Right, I don't care.
All I know is I had it and I loved it.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Silver.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Okay, there's the Jaguar as well.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
That's what I played California games on that until my fingers.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Were was that like skateboarding and jets gains, things like that, surfing.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I'm where singers are feeling better. Yeah. Wow, we have
a two part series on Atari for our shower ridiculous history.
Please check it out anyway, not to cast dispersions on
the good folks Sedatari. It's really inspiring story. But there
the profits for this potter corporation were not where they
(35:15):
needed to be, and so they had they had to
take things, really dodgy things, radiological extraction substances, stuff like
barium sul fight. They dumped it in a different landfill
site at a place called Latty Avenue, La t t Y,
(35:38):
and then another site in a nearby place called Bridgeton.
So now if we're playing along at home and counting,
there are three identified sites with very dangerous stuff all
around the Coldwater Creek area, which is.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Right by Saint Louis. Can't We can't stress that enough.
It's like right north of the Saylo. Yeah, it's like
you can drive there easily. It's not a day trip,
it's a there and back trip.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And again, the reason I'm positing this is a true
and successful conspiracy is that even the people who were
literally holding this stuff to these dump sites did not
know what they were hauling, Like they had no idea.
We don't want to make it seem as though these
(36:30):
folks were all being villainous or intending to do evil things.
They didn't know they were part of a system.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
As it turns out, it's going to turn out they
were victims as well, because they were being exposed potentially
to some of this low level radiated material.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Absolutely, absolutely, And now we're starting to talk about consequences.
So how about we pause for a quick word from
our sponsors and get into where the radioactivity had the road.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
We've returned, all right. For anybody who checked out our
earlier episode on the salt plume or on other hidden
environmental disasters, it is possibly not going to surprise you
that the radioactive gunk and junk and gobbledygoot from slaps
and that latty landfill and that bridged in landfill, they
(37:30):
leached into the soil. They made it to the nearby
creek bed. They made it to the well water if
anybody was drinking from a well. They made it therefore,
to the homes and the properties and the public spaces
of communities living nearby. Ah Rep.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
I know I've mentioned this before, but I've spent a
lot of time researching and hanging out around another site
for legacy nuclear waste near Augusta, Georgia, where I grew up,
called the Savannah Rivers, and there's a lot of legacy
clean up activities on going there to this day where
they do research into like how reached, how clean up
(38:08):
is going by, you know, tagging wildlife and things like that.
But even in those open pits they had like liners
on them, which even that was just not nearly enough
and a lot of those would get compromise and things
like that. So the fact that they I don't know
if it's just a timing thing where they just didn't
know or didn't care, but we're literally talking about this
stuff just being dumped in like open pits or just
(38:31):
literally being dumped on the ground.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
In a drum, right in a drum in a container,
like an oil drum, not like a snare drum. But yes,
your point holds. I would say these are some of
the deadliest substances known to human kide there essentially because
they're leached in the are, they may as well have
(38:54):
been directly dumped in Coldwater Creek, again a tributary of
the Missouri River, going for some twenty miles. We're talking
stuff like the usual suspects, you know, a rogues gallery
of stuff that is bad. Uranium two thirty eight, thorum
two thirty two, strontium ninety oh man, strontium, strontium.
Speaker 4 (39:16):
Interesting. We're gonna get to this too in this study
over there in the Saint Louis area. But the midwest,
uh was had some of the most contaminated milk because
of strontium from other activities, not not this, it was
something unrelated.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Man.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
So we're imagining all this stuff right getting into the water,
into the ground all over here where a ton of
people are living. You and this we've got a long
timeline here right from the sixties all until let's just
say until the two thousands, even.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
I'd say forty seven to the two thousands. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
So like even from the early the early stuff that's
happening there, you've got individual and even groups of people
who are attempting to come forward, let's say, to a
doctor to say, hey, something is wrong here, right going
to a water treatment plants, like something is wrong with
this water, something is wrong with this creek, something is
wrong with this But there's no real full answer for
(40:17):
a while there.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, and just to add the strontium and cow's milk thing.
It was as a result of numerous other nuclear tests
that were happening, you know in Middle America.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yep, yep, and the consequences would prove inevitable. Right, everything
led you to me, says cancer. They would take time
to become fully apparent, because again, this is not like dysentery.
This is not like other outbreaks that are readily visible
(40:47):
over a short time window. This is something that takes
years to notice and then takes, as we'll see, decades
to acknowledge because the powers the bee often cover them up.
And I don't usually love using the phrase the powers
that be, but in this case it is fairly accurate.
(41:08):
When elephants make war, it is the grass that suffers,
goes the old proverb, right, and we want to go
to something that's often cited in this conversation from Saint
Louis Magazine by the journalist Ray Hartman in twenty thirteen.
He sums up the situation perfectly. He says, for most
(41:30):
of the past seven decades, authorities didn't appear to make
a serious effort to get rid of the waste. That's true, Ray.
In recent years, he continues. The government has made a
fair amount of cleanup progress, but as recently as late
April twenty thirteen, the US Army Corps of Engineers indicated
(41:50):
there is more testing and more removal to be done.
So even in the modern era, the federal government is saying,
not only do we have to do our best to
try to get rid of some of this stuff, but
we also don't know how much stuff there is to
get rid of, which is damning.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
And then.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
This is the worst part.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
It's the effects because human beings, children, adults, elderly folks,
everybody is exhibiting weird stuff going on. In particular cancer,
different types of cancer, because remember cancer isn't just one thing, right.
Cancer can happen anywhere in the body, different types of cancers,
different ways sells morph and then grow, and it's tough
(42:44):
to pin down one particular thing. So you've got some
of these huge studies we're going to talk about that
look at such a range of different cancers.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Oh and this is the other surprising thing, and I
love that you're bringing this up. A lot of the
cancer that are occurred at unprecedented rates. By the way,
in the cold water Creek communities. These are very rare
cancers in medical literature. These are things that are a
(43:13):
dark lottery ordinarily, the kind of stuff that would be
the kind of stuff such that if you had a
population of five thousand in a town and only two
people had this specific type of cancer, you would be
baffled and you would need to dig deeper. That's how
(43:35):
rare a lot of these cancers are.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
When with all the disparate types of cancers and symptoms
that we're talking about here, it's almost the kind of
thing that could be limped in with the sorts of
syndromes we've been talking about recently, like Havana syndrome and
the mysterious brain disease and where was that that was
also somewhere in the midwek crust disease was in Canada,
i think. But in any case, it's easy to spin
(44:00):
this into like, well, is this really connected to something
bad that we did?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Right? And people are still at this point not to
be all hill and knowlton about it, but people are
still at this point trying to wage a bit of
a silent information war and cover things up. This is
ignored by the mainstream press for quite a while, and
we're talking not just rare cancers, we're talking to autoimmune disorders,
(44:26):
other as you said, no mysterious illnesses. Studies start pouring.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
In and as they're doing these studies, the one thing
in common that they found, right, is that these are
people who grew up specifically near Cold Water Creek, but
not just like in the area, but near.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
The creek, right right near the creek.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
And also originally they start looking at people who were
born or spend time there in a specific window of years.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
Right, and I believe they're finding it to be more
prevalent in boy is who had more of a likelihood
of playing in the creek, splashing around, rough housing, you know,
in the creek when they were kids.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
En of particular interest to us is the infamous Saint
Louis baby tooth later life health study. Weird it is,
but it's really good science, and that's important. It's solid science.
This is inarguable research. This is not speculation. This is
(45:28):
not dare I say, a couple of pals kicking it
on a podcast. They go deep into what we call
some longitudinal studies. They're analyzing baby teeth from Saint Louis
from the surrounding Coldwater Creek community to science that we're
(45:51):
pointing that out that their mission is to learn how
locals have been exposed to any radioactive isotopes over time,
and it turns out teeth are great for this, which
is maybe a second act for the tooth fairy there.
(46:13):
Let's point out as well that they're excellent research, which
you can read in depth on the website, notes that
all this stuff that can get dismissed as academic or
abstract science, it can have a real impact on policy,
It can have a real impact upon day to day lives.
(46:33):
We're also going to get to some public champions and
Facebook groups as we continue. But there's one quote we
had to mention from the website, none other than the
President of the United States at the time, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy cited this research into baby teeth and radioactive exposure
(46:55):
when he signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in
nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
I mean, that's a huge deal, just so just to
show that even at those levels of the executive branch,
it's acknowledged that this is a real problem and we
can't allow this kind of thing to continue because of
how bad it is. Yeah, if you jump back to
that study and really dive into it has been as suggesting,
and we certainly hope you do. You can find writing
(47:25):
on a lot of places, but it's very interesting to
see specifically how rates of cancer increase as you get
closer and closer in the Saint Louis Greater area to
that creek. It's crazy to see it written out like
this and just imagining, just imagining how unaware people were
(47:46):
as it's happening. I think that's maybe the most terrifying thing.
Speaker 4 (47:49):
And we're talking about the new Ish study as well,
that was released on JAMA.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah, that's what one I'm looking at. It's written this well,
this one is written about at least when I'm looking
at in the th H. Chan School of Public Health
from Harvard, Harvard in July.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Twenty twenty five, right, And that's the one that I
was pointing to about the incidents of males being more
likely to have been exposed because of you know, all
of that stuff about kids playing in creeks.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
And the research continues today. That is very important. This
is an ongoing this is an ongoing investigation, you know,
for the good people at Coldwater Creek. This led to
genuine concern. As the work got out, the science was
coming in, things were being acknowledged, and there's no wonder
(48:38):
why people are concerned this type of cancer, these rare
types of cancer, they do not occur at this prevalence
in the natural world. There has to be another variable.
That variable is the radioactive waste and the dump sites.
In a very real way, Uncle Sam by hook or
(48:59):
by crook killing innocent people. There's just no way around it.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
No, there's not, and not to like, you know, like
Uncle Sam needs an adda boy. But there was legislation
that expired last year called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act
that ultimately paid out around two point six billion dollars
to folks who were exposed and sickened by radiation from
either exposure in their environments or you know, some of
(49:26):
the people that we were talking about that could have
been considered victims who were moving some of this stuff
to these sites, mining operations, et cetera. You know, hauling
uranium to Nevada test sites and things like that. And
in the recent big beautiful bill that was passed, which
had a lot of stuff in it, there's one part
of it that I didn't know anything about. That was
(49:47):
sponsored by Joshua Holly from Missouri. And that is a
kind of new reinstatement of something very similar to that
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that would payments of twenty five
grand of families of people who died as a result
of this, or fifty thousand dollars to those who developed
(50:08):
cancers and survived.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Right. And how much of that will end up going
to the medical cost that's, you.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Know, certainly a big part of what it's intended for, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
And we know that this may of Pulpa may come
a dollar short, a day late, because government records clearly
show that radioactive waste was known to pose a threat
to people living near Coldwater Creek. Get this as early
as nineteen forty nine, Good god, as early as nineteen
(50:41):
forty nine, we made the devil's bargain for the greater good.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
That's horrifying. May at least they're getting forty million dollars
in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Sure, twenty twenty six off to a heck of a run.
We're recording this on Friday, January sixteenth. Gosh, January sixteenth,
what a year already?
Speaker 3 (51:02):
How is it this far into it, you're already I
know different.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
This is some eccentricity coming out. But have you, guys
ever had the moment where you wish you could just
do a fast forward or like hold down a button
in real life and skip the cut scene.
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Yeah, it'd be cool.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
It'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
Yeah that said, I told you, guysn't watching X Files again.
I watch the intro every time.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
I love the intro. I watched the Twilight z Owe
intro every time, the X Files intro. I sometimes watch
them back to back. I might have an issue.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Okay, so that's the only thing I really associate with that,
like fast forward thing, skip the segment around.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
You don't skip the cut scenes in video games?
Speaker 3 (51:47):
No, no, my god, well okay, first place, no game plus.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
And off Mike, we were talking about another really cool
sci fi show called Dark. Many folks might be familiar
with German language show that also involves nuclear waste and
some of the more sci fi tiny whimy things that
it could potentially cause. And I never skipped the intro
to that because it is gorgeous, the h I love
the intros, mirror image things, and it's just really, really
(52:16):
well done.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Intros are ritualized. They're so important. They key you in,
they get into your brain. They're like appetizers at a restaurant,
you know what I mean, wet the palette.
Speaker 4 (52:30):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
I also have uh, of course, uh true detective right. Uh,
that's that's a banger. And you know the best part
of nineties and eighties sitcoms. No offense to the writers
if you're tuning in, but the best part was the intro.
Always the introthetic. Yeah, explain the whole premise, like, here's
(52:52):
a horse and he could talk, or more appropriately, uh,
here's a here's a weird British butler.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
How did too many cooks?
Speaker 2 (53:08):
To many cooks? And so it wasn't until December of
nineteen eighty nine that the US Department of Energy officially
confirmed the presence of radioactive waste in Coldwater Creek.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
And that's when the super Fund eight situation came into
play across the country.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Yeah, the same year, the EPA finally designated these Coldwater
dump sites into the Superfund program. There have been tons
of lawsuits. There are several that are grinding on into
the modern day. We shouted out some some of the
You know, we give social media a hard time on
this show, and not without validity, but social media can
(53:51):
do good things. And one of the good things social
media has done is uniting residents of Coldwater Creek to
be able to communicate what has happened. Uh in there
in there lived on the ground experience, which I think
is a tremendously important thing.
Speaker 4 (54:07):
Which you found as well as I did through a
friend of mine who's in a born and bred Saint
Louis native. A group it's called Just Mom's st L
which had some really great local perspective and an incredible,
very moving video that they produced with some perspective and
(54:27):
commentary from mothers of you know, children who were affected
by this kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
And you can also see Facebook groups like Coldwater Creek
Just the Facts Please There There. There are multiple groups
out there, and we we want to emphasize that the
stories don't stop when the headline stop, you know, the
stories don't stop when the zeitgeist shifts in one direction
to another. This is not a podcast sponsored by the
(54:55):
band one direction, but we do need to mention it's
worth it's your time to learn more about this stuff.
It's worth our time, and the question eternally becomes what
does this mean for the future. Malancrat pharmaceuticals still around,
still in the game, and thankfully so are the good
people of Coldwater Creek. For sure.
Speaker 3 (55:18):
Everybody needs those minerals.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
I agree with you, man, that's the game is great
and the game continues.
Speaker 3 (55:26):
Oh hey, something good here, guys. The study that came
out of Harvard recently last year is being written about
in July. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
So that's just a reminder sometimes government science funding is good.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Yeah, oh man, we were talking about that previously. I
can't remember what show was on. We were talking about
FDA cuts and up to Seclaire and the jungle. You know,
should go into the grocery store, be like rolling the dice.
What's in that can?
Speaker 4 (56:00):
Is it beans?
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Is it a finger?
Speaker 4 (56:01):
We were also talking about transparency in terms of pharmaceutical
manufacturing and some rewards showing really awful jungle esque conditions
in some of these factories that make generic drugs.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
And I've been starting this list you guys of authors
that warned us that I think would be disappointed if
they came back. Now. Upton Sinclair's on the list. I
don't know if we should talk to George orwell, because
he might be a little too mug. He might be
a little smug about it.
Speaker 4 (56:33):
Can well be he might.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Be a little bit like reading a Pitchfork review which
you agree with that well deserved.
Speaker 4 (56:41):
I know we have to play dumb question.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
Is Upton Sinclair it could happen here? Or is that
a different guy who did it could happen here?
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Sinclair? Lewis it can't happen here?
Speaker 3 (56:54):
Oh ah, it's I got the title wrong. It's it
can't happen here. It could happen here. It's a different show.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Right, yes, bye. Our good friend of the show, the
legendary Robert Evans, bills himself as the only Robert Evans,
and we have chosen to believe him in that regard.
If you dig us, you'll also dig his show. Behind
the Bastard. You can catch us appearing on there every
so often. There are Netflix now, and there are Netflix Now.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
Welcome to the team.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Thank you again, by the way, to our fellow conspiracy
realist kill Deer, as well as to the countless members
of our crew who reached out to help us with
this episode. The tireless advocates, parents, locals, lawyers, champions, activists,
and more who continue to fight for justice right now
(57:44):
in twenty twenty six. This proves that some conspiracies are
not just conspiracy theories. Some conspiracies are true. The US
government actively covered up traces of its sins. And if
we take nothing else away from this, let's ask ourselves
what else is the stuff they don't want you to know?
(58:06):
Tell us find us online, give us an email, call
us on the phone.
Speaker 4 (58:10):
That's right, you can find us all over the internet
at the handle Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending
on your platform of choice. And there's another way to
get in touch with us as well, isn't there Matt?
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Oh yes, we have a phone number. It is one
eight three three std WYTK. So go ahead, pick up
your phone, turn those letters into numbers and give us
a call. It's our voicemail system. You might hear it
appear on one of our listener mail episodes wherever you
get your favorite podcasts. Now, there's one other thing you
can do. Oh yes, send us an awesome email.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
We are the entities, the red piece of correspondence we receive.
Be well aware yet I'd afraid sometimes the void writes back.
In fact, some of the stuff that ends up on
our audio Weekly Listener mail segment informs actual episodes, so
you might appear on Netflix. Conspiracy At iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 3 (59:01):
Com, Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a
(59:22):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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