May 30, 2023 • 42 mins
It might surprise you to learn that the oldest raging fires on Earth are actually underground. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the world of eternal flames and coal seam fires. (originally published 04/26/2022)
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Rob and I are
out this week, so we are bringing you some episodes
from the vault. This one originally published April twenty sixth,
twenty twenty two. This is part one of our series
called Fire from the Rocks. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. When we think
about fire, and we do think about fire a lot
on this show, it's come out time and time again.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Are you confessing something that we love.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Fire, that we worship fire, that we delight in its
growth and its consumption. No, but it is be fed,
It must be fed. But it is an import an
aspect of Earth. You know, as we've discussed on past episodes.
You know, Earth is the only planet known to have fire,
and there was a time when there was no fire
(01:10):
on Earth because it wasn't possible yet. You know, fire.
When we think about fire, we think about its fleeting nature,
but also its potential. It's tremendous power provided conditions are
just right. It's always interesting to think about how fire
is in many ways more an event than a thing.
For it to happen, you need heat, fuel, and oxygen,
(01:33):
and the fuel and the oxygen were not always present
on our planet. Fire is more or less an aspect
of the New Earth, and the earliest evidence of charred
vegetation dates back a mere four hundred and forty million years.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Right, So today natural forest fires are just part of
the cycle of life on the surface of Earth. But
there was a time when Earth had its first forest fire.
Can you imagine that, like the first time that ever happened.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy to imagine. And so this is
this has been an aspect of life under the Earth
ever since. And yeah, with fire, it's interesting too because
there's this trifecta obviously that's necessary for it to exist,
but it is a delicate tripod. Remove one of the
legs of the fire tripod and the fire will perish.
(02:20):
So yeah, our relationship with fire is sometimes like whoa,
this is out of control, and other times it is
you know, I can't get this thing to light at all,
you know, So I think we're all familiar with that
with the dual nature of fire. So for today's episode,
and this will spill into into the next episode as well,
I thought we might start with just what I thought
(02:41):
was just a really tantalizing question because I'd never really
thought about it before, not until you brought up this topic,
And that is what is the longest that a single
fire has raged? And I guess there are all sorts
of sort of artificial parameters we might throw in, you know,
what constitutes a single fire versus multiple fires spread out
(03:02):
over time. I guess we kind of have to take
the human scenario of like a hearth or a campfire
and imagine that is sort of our basic principle, like
a single a single flame that keeps eating things, keeps consuming,
maybe it moves. But what is the longest that such
a fire has raged without snuffing out completely and having
(03:23):
to be reset one way or another.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Great question.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, so of course you know the answer that I
know the answer to now, But putting ourselves in the
mindset of someone who doesn't know the answer, you might
likely turn to a few different categories to start off,
And the first would be what we just talked about,
forest fires. So as long as we've had forests and fire.
(03:47):
This has been a possibility here on Earth. Many of
the worst forest fires in history, though, are measured in
terms of acres, destruction, and fatality rather than in time.
But if you dig down you can start seeing some
time stamps on things. Many of the worst are dated
to just a single day in human history. Others last longer, though.
(04:10):
Some of the consist of multiple blazes, so it becomes
perhaps a little more of a challenge to think of
a continuous fire in these cases, though in many of
the cases I think it does fit. Some wildfire seasons,
of course, span many months, and then you have particular
fires that have raged for a period of time. There's
the Coyote Fire of nineteen sixty four in Santa Barbara, California,
(04:32):
which lasted from September first to October first. So it
seems we might think if we're thinking about modern forest fires,
we're going to probably look at something lasting days, months
somewhere in that range. Now, as for wildfires of yesteryear,
as well as blazes caused by prehistoric extinction events, I
(04:53):
couldn't find many stats on this, but I suppose it's
worth thinking about. But it's also worth thinking about the
fact that when you have a particularly large energetic fire,
it can ultimately become something entirely different. You've become this
fire storm which creates and sustains its own wind system.
So I mean, I guess that's one of the reasons
when we start looking at some of these big blazes,
(05:16):
they do tremendous damage, they can cover a pretty large area,
but they're still not lasting that long in time because
they're just eating through all of that fuel in a
relatively short period of time. And of course, with when
we're talking about wildfires, we also have to think about
the fact that, you know, the human civilization has an
(05:37):
impact as well on just how wildfires will play out
through a given forest scenario, you know, and to a
certain extent, you know, we've been able to jump in
with with orchestrated burns, control burns to try and simulate
sort of the natural cycle of fires that would normally occur.
(05:59):
But another area where you have to factor in human
civilization is of course, when you're dealing with urban fires,
where the trees and various other aspects of the natural
world have been remade into an artificial environment a city,
and then what happens when that catches fire. Well, I
think a lot of the same practicalities are involved here
(06:20):
as well. Some of the great fires to ravaged cities
are often measured to a single date and time, though
there are some exceptions. There's the one forty six BCE
burning of Carthage, which reportedly took seventeen days, but this
was also said to be a systematic burning of the
city by the Romans, So I'm not sure that would
(06:41):
count so much because it was one of these situations obviously,
where the Romans are like, let's burn the city down,
let's make sure everything burns through. There are some other
fires that are worth mentioning. There's the Great Fire of
Utricht in the Netherlands that lasted nine days reportedly in
twelve fifty three. There's the eighteen eighty nine first Great
(07:03):
Fire of Lynn, Massachusetts, reportedly last two weeks, destroying roughly
one hundred buildings. So it looks like if we were
going to say, look to the world of like urban
fires for some sort of a candidate for longest fire,
you're going to be looking at something in the realm
of days to weeks. But figures beyond that seem kind
of doubtful. All right, The next area to think about, though,
(07:25):
would be, of course, human sustained fires. What about situations
in which a human cultivated flame, a flame that's kept
and fed more or less like a pet, either for
technological purposes, say like a forge or a pilot light,
or something that's more religious or secular, or a secular
symbol in nature, you know, something like a holy fire
(07:47):
that's kept going, or some sort of a monument that
has an eternal flame hooked up to it.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I was shocked to discover how many monuments there are
that have so called eternal flames on them because I
don't know, maybe it's just my morbid brain, but it
seems like calling a flame eternal is just tempting the fates,
Like you know, this is not this flame will not
burn forever. It's like settled down. You can't call it eternal.
I was trying to think what you should call it instead.
(08:15):
I can't come up with them. You think, I don't know,
maybe the long burning flame or something, or the attempted
eternal flame. It's just eternal is not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Right, Yeah, I mean I guess to a certain extent,
I guess this is obvious, Like they're getting into the
idea of like the fire is something that is that
it can go out and it has to be cultivated.
And you know a lot of these are tied to
to causes and memories with the with the idea of
saying like, hey, let's let's let's make a point of
remembering this individual or remembering this cause, and we'll use
(08:46):
the fire as a symbol. But that Yeah, there have
been a number of these that that have sprung up
just at the end of the twentieth century and even
you know, in the twenty first century, and it's certainly
with the older ones it gets more difficult to really
figure out, Okay, has this been truly a perpetual eternal
(09:08):
fire or has it gone out at least once, if
not multiple times over the span of time that is
attributed to it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I'm sorry that Roger Korman is invading my brain right now,
but I'm thinking of a line and Attack of the
Crab monsters where the giant psychic crab they are assaulting
it with different types of weapons. The humans are trying
to defeat it, and at some point they use a
fire based weapon and the crab counters by telling them
he says something like that was quick thinking, Dale. But
(09:34):
the pity is that all fires must one day burn out.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
True, it's true. But by the way, more fairly recently,
someone was asking, I think in the discord for stuff
to blow your mind, what are all the episodes in
which Joe has mentioned attack of the crab monsters. No
one had a clear answer, but a few episodes were
brought up in which people remembered you mentioning it. We'll
(09:59):
add this the list. Okay, So, out of the various
examples that come up, one that I thought was pretty
interesting is that of the Dasho in Temple complex in
Japan that has a flame that is said to have
been burning for about twelve hundred years. Obviously, it's impossible
to say one hundred percent with something like this, and
(10:20):
ultimately I guess it's the idea of the continuous flame
that is most important here. But still, this is an
example of one that has supposedly been burning for over
a thousand years. Now, this is not quite a flame,
but I ran across this as well, and I thought
i'd mentioned it just because it's amusing, and maybe we
have some listeners who can report on this first hand.
(10:43):
But there is something known as the Centennial light bulb
in Livermore, California, specifically in the firehouse there. It's been
burning there the bulb since nineteen oh one, though this
has not been continuous. There have been power outages and
electrical issues, etc. So I'm not sure exactly like what
the ratio is between the time during that century plus
(11:07):
that the light has been out versus on, but it's
certainly a very old light bulb that still lights up.
And there is a webcam you can like check in
on its status at centennialbulb dot org.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
So this is same filament, no replaced parts, it's the
same bulb and it still works.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Still works, yeah, and you can go visit it like
on the website. It has information about how you can
see this bulb for yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That is very impressive because obviously this is not an
LED bulb or something. This is Lord knows how they
were making light bulbs in nineteen oh one, but this
was in some form an incandescent filament based light bulb.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes. Now, now getting back to the idea of fire
and technology, I will say that I don't have an
answer regarding things like pilot lights or you know, forge fires,
industrial flames so there might be a really good example
out there that I just couldn't find a of a
verified long burning pilot light or long burning forge fire,
(12:07):
that sort of thing. But if listeners out there have
something to submit on that count, let us have it. Yeah. So,
based on everything I've mentioned here and then this very
much reflects my mindset going into this. I was thinking,
you know, before we did any research, before we brought
(12:28):
up the idea of the episode, I would have guessed, well,
the longest raging fire. You know, maybe maybe it's gone,
you know, a few weeks, a few months, and you know,
if the conditions are just right. But beyond that, I mean,
how how long can a fire rage? Joe, would you
like to get into one of the answers that we're
(12:48):
going to discuss in these episodes.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well, for the rest of the series, we wanted to
talk about naturally fueled flames, Flames that can burn for
a long long time because humans weren't e been necessary
to create them that there, they can arise in various ways.
We're going to talk about some major categories, I think
more in the next part of this series, but there
are various kinds of burning and ignition processes that it
(13:15):
turns out have been going on on the surface of
the Earth for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Which of course absolutely just dwarfs everything that I've mentioned
so far. It really puts things on an entirely different timescale.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Right, So I wanted to talk in this episode about
one example that really struck me when I was reading
up for this that's sort of an odd man out.
It's not exactly fitting into the other categories that we're
going to be talking about in part two, so I
figured it'd be good to start with this one. So
in the Northwest Territories of Canada, there is a stretch
(13:54):
of seaside, cliff faces and hills along the eastern coast
of a place called Cape Bathurst, where the earth and
the rocks themselves seem to be perpetually burning, and they
have been that way, probably for thousands of years. In English,
(14:14):
this place is known as the Smoking Hills, or sometimes
the Smoky Mountains, not to be confused with the ones
along the Tennessee North Carolina border. Different smoking mountains literally
smoking in this case, but in the language of the Inuvialuit,
and these are the people native to the western Canadian
Arctic region. It is known as ingnir Yuat, which means
(14:37):
big fire, and I was poking around for good historical
resources on this place. A lot of the articles I
dug up actually seemed rather confused, offering contradictory details about
early observations. So the best thing I found was a
piece in a magazine called tusai Osat, which is a
publication devoted to the language, culture in history of the
(15:00):
inuvialu It. This article is by Charles Arnold and it's
called ing near yat the Smoking Hills of Franklin Bay.
So Arnold identifies the earliest written account of the Smoking
Hills as one tracing back to a Scottish naturalist, explorer
and naval surgeon named Sir John Richardson, who wrote about
(15:21):
the hills in the eighteen twenties while documenting an expedition
that he made to chart the coastlines of northern Canada.
And as a side note, this mission was actually organized
in cooperation with another Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin, who
many years later, in eighteen forty five, would head up
the infamous Lost Franklin Expedition, the goal of which was
(15:45):
to fully chart a Northwest Sea passage through Canada. They
were hoping to find a way to get around the
northern part of the continent by water. Obviously, this is
even though you know, if you look at a map
you'll see a lot of gaps between the islands of
northern Canada. This is more difficult than it might sound
because often these waterways are choked with ice. So when
(16:06):
Franklin got lost in the eighteen forties, he was trying
to find this Northwest passage. And if you want to
know more, you can look up what's known and unknown
about the voyage of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.
If you want some good hair raising mystery with hints
of cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a fabulous story, you know what we've
been able to piece together over the years through the
original history and then the finding of the wreckage and
so forth. Dan Simons wrote a fictional take on the
Terror and the Arabis titled The Terror, which was a
brick of a book that was then made to an
(16:42):
excellent AMC mini series a few years back. In this
Franklin is played by the actor Kieran Hines. But I
highly recommend this series. It's a wonderful mix of detailed
historic depiction as well as fantasy and horror. Jared Harris
and Tobias Menzies also star in that.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It's really good, Rob, can you do a short version
of what we actually do know about the Lost Franklin Expedition.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Well, there's a killer monster that shows up. No, No,
that's the that's the that's the miniseries I'm thinking of.
I mean, it's really really sorry. We could get into
the full episodes really, but but basically, you have these
two vessels that were that were seeking the Northwest Passage
and they went missing, and you get into like what
(17:28):
happened to the crew? Like how long were they marooned
out there in the ice and there's ships locked in
frozen in Where where did they get to? Did anybody actually,
you know, make it out. It's presumed, I think still
that they all died, but you know, there's a lot
of there's been a lot of analysis over the years about,
you know, what happened to them and then and then
(17:50):
later on we actually found the wreckages.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
There's a famous painting I think that has to do
with this, with this lost voyage called It's Got a
real Metal album name is called something like Man proposes,
God disposes or something, and it's the painting is just
of polar bears fighting over scraps of the wreckage.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah. Yeah, for the longest the wreckage was was just
lost entirely, but it was yeah. Twenty fourteen. In September
of twenty fourteen, an expedition by Parks Canada discovered first
the Arabis and then two years later they found the
terror as well.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well. Anyway, coming back to the story, sorry, so, doctor
John Richardson, the author of the account on about to site,
was not involved in the lost expedition. He just was
an early collaborator with Franklin. So turning back to his
survey several decades earlier, in traveling along the shore of
the place that would come to be known as Franklin Bay,
(18:47):
Richardson made some observations of something marvelous cliffs that themselves
appeared to be quote on fire giving out smoke, and
where the ground appeared to consists of quote, burnt clays
variously colored yellow, white, and deep red. I found another
source quoting one of Richardson's accounts, where he says, quote
(19:11):
at Cape Bathurst, the northern end of Franklin Bay, bituminous
shale is exposed in many places, and in my visit
there in eighteen twenty six was in a state of ignition,
and the clays which had been thus exposed to the
heat were baked and vitrified, so that the spot resembled
an old brickfield. And I will say I understand what
(19:33):
Richard is getting at here. Of course, brickfields are places
where bricks are manufactured. You can look these up on
the Internet and you can see the resemblance with the
unnatural look of the baked earth. But when I look
at pictures of the smoking Hills, my computer ruined brain
sees these landscapes, and unfortunately, the first place it goes
is that it looks like a level in doom.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah, it does. It. Also, I have to say it
kind of delicious, like I'm also reminded of I don't
like red velvet cake. It's like red velvet cake emerging
from the earth.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And it's very interesting the way they produce these protruding
rock formations. They're very jagged, and they seem to be
rather resistant to weathering compared to the unbaked rock all
around them, which is more smoothed over.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, very jagged, very and very bloody looking in some cases.
So yeah, it looks like some sort of rock formation
that has just gouged into the flash of a titan totally.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
So that's what Richardson saw in the eighteen twenties. He says, Hey,
you know, we went past these cliffs. They appeared to
be on fire. They're giving off smoke. We see a
lot of burnt clay. It's yellow, white and deep red,
very weird. Looks like an old brickfield. But then the
written history of the Smoking Hills continues after the disappearance
of the Franklin expedition in the eighteen forties. So Franklin,
(20:53):
the two ships Franklin, and the crews go missing, and
in the year eighteen fifty, a ship called the HMS Investigator,
under the command of Captain Robert McClure, was searching for
survivors of the Franklin party in the area around Franklin
Bay once again, when the crew of this ship came
across the same weird site cliffs by the sea that
(21:15):
were strangely covered and were giving off plumes of smoke.
And at first they thought these might be campfires or
signals from the Franklin survivors, so they sent out a
small boat to check it out, see what's going on.
But no, it was not survivors of the Franklin mission.
Arnold in his article identifies testimony left by a Moravian
(21:37):
missionary named Johann Mirtsching, who was a member of the
shore party. And this is one where I really wanted
to find the original text, but I don't. I can't
if this has been digitized anywhere, I could not find it.
It appears to be from what's called the Arctic Diary
of Johan Mirching eighteen fifty to eighteen fifty four, that
(21:58):
those published in print form in Toronto in nineteen sixty seven,
but I couldn't find the digital version, So I'm relying
on Arnold's summaries of what Merching says. But he says
that when they got to the source of the smoke,
they found no human life alive or dead. Only quote
a thick smoke emerging from various vents in the ground,
(22:19):
and a smell of sulfur so strong that we could
not approach the smoke pillar nearer than ten or fifteen
feet flame there was none, but the ground was so
hot that it scorched the soles of our feet. Arnold
says that Mirching compared the landscape to a huge chemical factory.
He says that water from nearby ponds had been fouled
(22:40):
by something from the earth, and that the water tasted sour,
and they brought back samples of rocks from the smoking hills,
brought them back to the ship where Merching apparently claims
that they ended up burning a hole in the mahogany
table where Captain McClure kept them. So they took some
rocks back to the captain and they're burning up his furnish.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
You know, this reminds me again of the mini series
of The Terror, because one of the things that they
stress in that show, and they have some of the
people involved in the production that they'd mentioned this as well.
They mentioned that when they were researching the ships to
portray them on the show, there was this this realization that,
(23:22):
you know, these were some of the most advanced vessels
of any kind of that time period, and if we
were to compare them to our modern world, we might
well compare them to spaceships. We might well think of
them in terms of something that is meant to venture
beyond our atmosphere, and here we have one of the specifically,
(23:46):
this was referring to the terror and the Arabis. I'm
not quite sure about the investigator, but I'm assuming that
it may have been a similar in a similar fashion,
may have been a very advanced ship. But here they are,
with this ship essentially arriving at an alien landscape. You know,
it must have just been such a strange site to behold.
Here you are this far flung an ultimately very very hostile,
(24:10):
very dangerous environment, and here here are shores where things
are bloody and burning, and it's like a chemical vat.
You bring a piece of it inside the ship and
it begins to burn a hole through the table in
front of you. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah. Yeah, So here I guess we come to the
question of what is actually causing these hills to smoke.
You might assume, based on background knowledge, that well, okay,
if there's heat and sulfurous gas coming out of the ground,
the source is volcanic, right, that would be the obvious assumption.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, that's that's where your mind it simply goes.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
But in this case, no, I found one source on
this that was pretty helpful. It was a paper called
why do the Smoking Hills Smoke?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Why?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
in nineteen eighty four by W. H. Matthews and R. M. Buston.
And this paper invokes a term that I'd never heard before.
It refers to areas of fire baked rock. As I
think this word is French, so I think it would
be pronounced bocan, but its boc a n n ees
(25:27):
and the authors write that you find these these fire
baked rocks in quote cretaceous mudstones along sea cliffs and
in areas of recent slumping. So the fire baking of
the rocks and the earth lead to these weird patterns
of coloration that can easily be seen with the naked eye,
and that we heard described in the literary sources we
just mentioned. So these color changes include bleaching and reddening
(25:50):
of the mudstone, which is otherwise dark in color. And
these colors can remain even after one of the bocans
has stopped burning. And in places where these rocks are
still burning and baking, you get smoke pouring out, you
get sulfurous fumes as well as high ground temperatures. So
the earth you walk on gets hot, So what's the cause. Well,
(26:13):
the authors of this paper, they performed a number of
different analyzes including petrographic, mineralogical, chemical, and calorific analyzes, and
they determined that quote the bocan are fumed by oxidation
of pyrite and organic matter. With heating of the strata
by oxidation, combustible gases are driven off that may burn
(26:35):
in restricted areas, resulting in localized melting of the strata. So,
in reading this and a few other sources and putting
things together, I think I understand this now and trying
to put my understanding into other words, A lot of
the rock in this area is mudstone or type of
shale rock. Mudstone is a sedimentary rock that can contain
(26:59):
hydrocarbon or organic content. So some amount of fossil fuel
is naturally present in this rock, even if in low concentrations,
And in this case, one of the main carbon constituents
seems to be a form of lignite, which is a
soft brown type of coal that is generally formed by
the underground compression of peat. But this rock also contains
(27:22):
a significant amount of iron pyrite, a mineral form of
iron sulfide. Which is also known as fools gold.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, and you know, I think it's always a shame
we call it fools gold because it implies that it's
in to a certain extent, that it's ugly and it's
without value. But pyrite can look quite impressive, you know.
I've seen examples of it in in mineral museums before,
and of course in the fact that it can be
used to ignite something. I believe it was used in
(27:55):
firearms in the past.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I did not know that, but that would make sense
now reading about this, because so what's going on here
is that when the cliff faces erode here at the
smoking Hills and new faces of the mudstone strata are
exposed to oxygen in the atmosphere, the carbon based fuel
and the natural iron pyrite together undergo oxidation, a chemical
(28:23):
reaction which leads to heating. The oxidation of the iron
pyrite here is an exothermic reaction. It heats up the
surrounding rock and this oxidation based heating leads to the
release of flammable gases that are embedded in the rock.
And so the authors think when these gases are released,
they become a form of fuel evaporating in an environment
(28:46):
of extreme heat with exposured oxygen. So here you have
the three magic ingredients, right, you have fuel escaping, it's
very hot, and you have oxygen nearby. So they burn,
and these fires further heat and melt the st of
the rock. And I believe the implication is that this melting,
this melting and baking helps continue to reveal new faces
(29:09):
of strata to the atmosphere so that more oxidation can
happen and the process can just continue. It's auto ignition.
It ignites automatically by being exposed to the oxygen, and
the process is self sustaining. The author's right that you
tend to find these bocan only in places where the
strata of sedimentary rock has been suddenly exposed to the atmosphere,
(29:31):
maybe by a landslide or some of their form of
erosion or erosion that's left behind after the retreat of glaciers. Now,
coming back to these historical accounts, While the stories from
Richardson and the McClure expedition are the earliest written accounts
of the Smoking Hills in New Vialuet, oral traditions about
(29:51):
the mountains have been in circulation for much longer. As
I mentioned, the traditional name for this place is ing
near Youuat, which means big fire. And this article by
Charles Arnold. Then after it recounts the literary section, it
goes into a section on the oral tradition, including one
excellent story that was told to the Danish anthropologist Canued
(30:15):
Rasmussen in nineteen twenty four by a person living in
the Cape Bathhurst, Aia named Alnaaritsayik. So this is the
story told by alnaarit Sayik, recounted to Rasmusen and quoted
in Arnold. Here in the early infancy of man, people
were never alone, whether they lived in a settlement or
were traveling on long journeys. They were surrounded by a
(30:38):
spirit people who lived as human beings, and were in
fact human beings, except that they were invisible. Their bodies
were not for our eyes, or their voices for our ears.
And when people traveled and pitched camp and began to
build their snow huts, one might see round about the
snow drifts that the snow blocks began to move, being
(31:00):
lifted out of the drifts and piled together into a
snow house, which seemed to grow of itself. Occasionally one
might see the glitter of a copper knife, and that
was all. They did not mind people coming into their houses,
which were arranged just like those of human beings. All
their belongings were visible, and people could trade with them
very profitably. If one wished to buy something, all that
(31:23):
was necessary was to point to it and at the
same time show what one was prepared to give for it.
If the spirit people agreed the object required, lifted itself
up and moved towards the man who wanted it. But
if they declined the bargain, the object remained where it was.
So people were never alone. They always had small, silent
(31:44):
and invisible spirits around them. But one day it happened
that during a halt, a man seized his knife and cried,
what do we want with these people who were always
right on our heels. Saying this, he flourished his knife
in the air and thrust it in the direction of
the snow huts that had made themselves. Not a sound
was heard, but the knife was covered in blood. From
(32:07):
that moment the spirits went away. Never again did anyone
see the wondrous sight of snow drifts forming themselves into
snow huts when one made camp and forever the people
lost their silent, invisible guardian spirits. It was said that
they had gone to live inside the mountains in order
to hide from man who had mocked and wounded their feelings.
(32:29):
That is why to this day one can see the
mountains smoking from the enormous cooking fires flaming inside them.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Oh wow, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, I thought this was beautiful. It also made me
so sad that like the humans betrayed their invisible companions.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah yeah, But it also of course reminds me of
various other accounts that you see, particularly like Irish traditions,
where you have these traditions of the former people or
other intelligent being be they some sort of spirit folk
or what have you, or something very humanoid in form
(33:06):
and they've been driven into the earth by the newer people.
And we see a similar trend here. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Arnold Site's story is remembered by other Inuvialuate people of
the present describing their memories of the stories about these people,
describing the smoke from the hills as the cooking fires
of the little people who live inside the mountains. And
there was one story he recorded that really struck me.
This was wonderful. This was quoting a source named Fred
(33:34):
Wolke who said, quote, they are as big as a
fork that you eat with. They use a caribou's ear
for a parka. They turn it inside out and they
just have to put it on, just take the inside
off skin it already made parka.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
One thing that strikes me as interesting is how there's
a convergence on everyone identifying in some way the smoking
hills or in near you at as as artificial in nature.
So in these oral traditions, the smoke coming off of
the hills or the cooking fires of the little people
or the invisible people living inside the mountain, but also
(34:13):
some of the earliest written records, like Mirching's compared the
area to a huge chemical factory. Richard compared it to
a brick field. Both of these are products of human industry.
It's interesting that everybody seems to look at these things
and think artificial, made by people.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, I mean we just as Earth as the fire planet,
like we are the people of fire. We are the
only organism that has come to master it and created
works with it. So yeah, it makes sense that the
various cultures would look to this and their mind would
at least temporarily go in the same direction.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
In any case, coming back to the question about some
of the longest burning fires, I guess part of this
would be dependent on what you're what you're counting as
a fire when you look at some thing, So, like
I think the Smoking Hills, you will often not maybe
sometimes you will, but you will often not be seeing
big gouts of flames like you would see at a campfire.
(35:13):
You'll just see this continuous smoking and baking of the rock.
And so the burning there I think would be more
akin to what you'd see probably with like a burning coal,
you know, a piece of coal that has been ignited.
But considering that, we can know for pretty sure that
the Smoking Hills have probably been burning for hundreds or
(35:35):
thousands of years. And there are multiple ways you know this.
I think there are some geological methods. But actually came
across one study offering one interesting piece of evidence for
how long these hills had been burning that I wouldn't
have thought of, which is archaeology. So there was a
paper by Raymond J. LeBlanc in American Antiquity in nineteen
(35:55):
ninety one called prehistoric clinkery use on the Cape Bathurst Peninsula,
Northwest Territories, Canada, the dynamics of formation and procurement, and
talking about the background going into this study, LeBlanc says,
quote fieldwork conducted on the Cape Bathurst Peninsula and that's
where the Smoking Hills are has resulted in the discovery
(36:16):
of seventy five sites representing occupation spanning more than three
thousand years. Nearly all of these sites are characterized by
the predominant use of a distinctive rock called a clinker,
resembling a basalt to obsidian like material. It is formed
by the spontaneous combustion of local organic rich shales. So
(36:37):
some of the weird baked rocks left over at these
auto ignition Sitesking Neruat these rocks have been used to
make tools by the people living in the area, spanning
back thousands of years. And I found that so interesting too,
that you would take these these strange clinker rocks and
turn them into technology.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
From this site that we interpret through the lens of fiotechnology. Interesting.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Now, one more paper I wanted to mention before I'm
done with the Smoking Hills is by Magda Havas and
Thomas C. Hutchinson, published in Nature in nineteen eighty three
called the Smoking Hills natural acidification of an aquatic ecosystem.
So you remember how those early reports of the area
they said that the water of nearby ponds was foul
(37:29):
and sour. Well, we know why that happens now. This
is due to the acidification of the water by the
sulfur dioxide produced by these mineral burning sites. So the
water is very acidic, and this has actually changed the
composition of the local microbial life and insect life and
stuff the life that inhabits the area. So the author
(37:51):
is here right quote. In an area of typically alkaline
ponds with pH above eight point zero, ponds within the
fumigation zone have been acidified below a pH of two
point zero. Elevated concentrations of metals including aluminium, iron, zinc, nickel, manganase,
and cadmium occur in these acidic ponds. Soils and sediments
(38:13):
have also been chemically altered. The biota in these acidic
ponds are characteristic of acidic environments worldwide, in contrast to
the typically arctic biota in adjacent alkaline ponds. So the
burning of the earth alters the chemical characteristics of the landscape,
which in turn changed the bioecology. The chain reaction started
(38:35):
thousands of years ago when these cliff faces and rocks
were eroded and exposed the minerals to oxygen. The oxidation
of the pyride and the organic contents of the mudstone
and the burning began. And this led to, over the
thousands of years, a complete transformation of the surrounding ecosystem
into one of these strange extremophile, acid rich biosystems.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Wow, that's import pressive, you know. And in thinking about
this and thinking about you know, extreme environments and and
so forth, and then also kind of going back to
the idea of these these these these ships being sort
of like space ships sailing upon these these strange, alien
seeming environment. I ran across a twenty twenty two paper
(39:24):
in Chemical Geology the Journal Chemical Geology by Graspy at
All that looked at the Smoking Hills as a possible
analog for some geological conditions that have been observed on Mars.
Just to read a quick quote, oxidative weathering of this
unit creates extensive gerocite rich deposits and banded gerocite and
(39:48):
pilos silicate rich mudstones similar to those observed on Mars.
So I read through this paper here and it's it's
it's pretty pretty deeply. It's the Chemical Geology Journals.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Bit dense for my taste anyway, but the author is,
if I'm understanding this correctly, they're suggesting that such signs
on Mars, some similar looking details that we've observed on
Mars via the probes we've sent there, if we interpret
them through the lens of the smoking hills, it could
possibly suggest a more habitable period in mars ancient past.
(40:26):
So that's fascinating to think about that as well.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Absolutely so, I think maybe this is where we need
to cap it for part one here, But there's so
much more to talk about because the world is full
of surprising and fascinating naturally fueled flames, and I think
it will make for a carnival of geological wonders to
explore in the next part of this series.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
That's right, So tune in on Thursday as we continue
with more Fire from the Rocks. In the meantime, if
you'd like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow your mind, you can find them on Tuesdays and
Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
I think most of the invention episodes that we recorded,
several of which had dealt with fire technology and fire
(41:09):
related technology. I think most of those have been republished,
if not all of them have been republished in this feed,
but if not, you can also find the podcast feed
for Invention out there. That was a fun though short
lived show that we did on the side dealing with
inventions in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed,
though we also do listener mail. On Mondays, we do
(41:31):
a short form artifact or monster fact on Wednesdays, and
on Friday we do something called Weird House Cinema. That's
our time to set aside most serious concerns and just
talk about a strange film.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
(42:05):
Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Rob and I are
out this week, so we are bringing you some episodes
from the vault. This one originally published April twenty sixth,
twenty twenty two. This is part one of our series
called Fire from the Rocks. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. When we think
about fire, and we do think about fire a lot
on this show, it's come out time and time again.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Are you confessing something that we love.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Fire, that we worship fire, that we delight in its
growth and its consumption. No, but it is be fed,
It must be fed. But it is an import an
aspect of Earth. You know, as we've discussed on past episodes.
You know, Earth is the only planet known to have fire,
and there was a time when there was no fire
(01:10):
on Earth because it wasn't possible yet. You know, fire.
When we think about fire, we think about its fleeting nature,
but also its potential. It's tremendous power provided conditions are
just right. It's always interesting to think about how fire
is in many ways more an event than a thing.
For it to happen, you need heat, fuel, and oxygen,
(01:33):
and the fuel and the oxygen were not always present
on our planet. Fire is more or less an aspect
of the New Earth, and the earliest evidence of charred
vegetation dates back a mere four hundred and forty million years.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Right, So today natural forest fires are just part of
the cycle of life on the surface of Earth. But
there was a time when Earth had its first forest fire.
Can you imagine that, like the first time that ever happened.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy to imagine. And so this is
this has been an aspect of life under the Earth
ever since. And yeah, with fire, it's interesting too because
there's this trifecta obviously that's necessary for it to exist,
but it is a delicate tripod. Remove one of the
legs of the fire tripod and the fire will perish.
(02:20):
So yeah, our relationship with fire is sometimes like whoa,
this is out of control, and other times it is
you know, I can't get this thing to light at all,
you know, So I think we're all familiar with that
with the dual nature of fire. So for today's episode,
and this will spill into into the next episode as well,
I thought we might start with just what I thought
(02:41):
was just a really tantalizing question because I'd never really
thought about it before, not until you brought up this topic,
And that is what is the longest that a single
fire has raged? And I guess there are all sorts
of sort of artificial parameters we might throw in, you know,
what constitutes a single fire versus multiple fires spread out
(03:02):
over time. I guess we kind of have to take
the human scenario of like a hearth or a campfire
and imagine that is sort of our basic principle, like
a single a single flame that keeps eating things, keeps consuming,
maybe it moves. But what is the longest that such
a fire has raged without snuffing out completely and having
(03:23):
to be reset one way or another.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Great question.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, so of course you know the answer that I
know the answer to now, But putting ourselves in the
mindset of someone who doesn't know the answer, you might
likely turn to a few different categories to start off,
And the first would be what we just talked about,
forest fires. So as long as we've had forests and fire.
(03:47):
This has been a possibility here on Earth. Many of
the worst forest fires in history, though, are measured in
terms of acres, destruction, and fatality rather than in time.
But if you dig down you can start seeing some
time stamps on things. Many of the worst are dated
to just a single day in human history. Others last longer, though.
(04:10):
Some of the consist of multiple blazes, so it becomes
perhaps a little more of a challenge to think of
a continuous fire in these cases, though in many of
the cases I think it does fit. Some wildfire seasons,
of course, span many months, and then you have particular
fires that have raged for a period of time. There's
the Coyote Fire of nineteen sixty four in Santa Barbara, California,
(04:32):
which lasted from September first to October first. So it
seems we might think if we're thinking about modern forest fires,
we're going to probably look at something lasting days, months
somewhere in that range. Now, as for wildfires of yesteryear,
as well as blazes caused by prehistoric extinction events, I
(04:53):
couldn't find many stats on this, but I suppose it's
worth thinking about. But it's also worth thinking about the
fact that when you have a particularly large energetic fire,
it can ultimately become something entirely different. You've become this
fire storm which creates and sustains its own wind system.
So I mean, I guess that's one of the reasons
when we start looking at some of these big blazes,
(05:16):
they do tremendous damage, they can cover a pretty large area,
but they're still not lasting that long in time because
they're just eating through all of that fuel in a
relatively short period of time. And of course, with when
we're talking about wildfires, we also have to think about
the fact that, you know, the human civilization has an
(05:37):
impact as well on just how wildfires will play out
through a given forest scenario, you know, and to a
certain extent, you know, we've been able to jump in
with with orchestrated burns, control burns to try and simulate
sort of the natural cycle of fires that would normally occur.
(05:59):
But another area where you have to factor in human
civilization is of course, when you're dealing with urban fires,
where the trees and various other aspects of the natural
world have been remade into an artificial environment a city,
and then what happens when that catches fire. Well, I
think a lot of the same practicalities are involved here
(06:20):
as well. Some of the great fires to ravaged cities
are often measured to a single date and time, though
there are some exceptions. There's the one forty six BCE
burning of Carthage, which reportedly took seventeen days, but this
was also said to be a systematic burning of the
city by the Romans, So I'm not sure that would
(06:41):
count so much because it was one of these situations obviously,
where the Romans are like, let's burn the city down,
let's make sure everything burns through. There are some other
fires that are worth mentioning. There's the Great Fire of
Utricht in the Netherlands that lasted nine days reportedly in
twelve fifty three. There's the eighteen eighty nine first Great
(07:03):
Fire of Lynn, Massachusetts, reportedly last two weeks, destroying roughly
one hundred buildings. So it looks like if we were
going to say, look to the world of like urban
fires for some sort of a candidate for longest fire,
you're going to be looking at something in the realm
of days to weeks. But figures beyond that seem kind
of doubtful. All right, The next area to think about, though,
(07:25):
would be, of course, human sustained fires. What about situations
in which a human cultivated flame, a flame that's kept
and fed more or less like a pet, either for
technological purposes, say like a forge or a pilot light,
or something that's more religious or secular, or a secular
symbol in nature, you know, something like a holy fire
(07:47):
that's kept going, or some sort of a monument that
has an eternal flame hooked up to it.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I was shocked to discover how many monuments there are
that have so called eternal flames on them because I
don't know, maybe it's just my morbid brain, but it
seems like calling a flame eternal is just tempting the fates,
Like you know, this is not this flame will not
burn forever. It's like settled down. You can't call it eternal.
I was trying to think what you should call it instead.
(08:15):
I can't come up with them. You think, I don't know,
maybe the long burning flame or something, or the attempted
eternal flame. It's just eternal is not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Right, Yeah, I mean I guess to a certain extent,
I guess this is obvious, Like they're getting into the
idea of like the fire is something that is that
it can go out and it has to be cultivated.
And you know a lot of these are tied to
to causes and memories with the with the idea of
saying like, hey, let's let's let's make a point of
remembering this individual or remembering this cause, and we'll use
(08:46):
the fire as a symbol. But that Yeah, there have
been a number of these that that have sprung up
just at the end of the twentieth century and even
you know, in the twenty first century, and it's certainly
with the older ones it gets more difficult to really
figure out, Okay, has this been truly a perpetual eternal
(09:08):
fire or has it gone out at least once, if
not multiple times over the span of time that is
attributed to it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I'm sorry that Roger Korman is invading my brain right now,
but I'm thinking of a line and Attack of the
Crab monsters where the giant psychic crab they are assaulting
it with different types of weapons. The humans are trying
to defeat it, and at some point they use a
fire based weapon and the crab counters by telling them
he says something like that was quick thinking, Dale. But
(09:34):
the pity is that all fires must one day burn out.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
True, it's true. But by the way, more fairly recently,
someone was asking, I think in the discord for stuff
to blow your mind, what are all the episodes in
which Joe has mentioned attack of the crab monsters. No
one had a clear answer, but a few episodes were
brought up in which people remembered you mentioning it. We'll
(09:59):
add this the list. Okay, So, out of the various
examples that come up, one that I thought was pretty
interesting is that of the Dasho in Temple complex in
Japan that has a flame that is said to have
been burning for about twelve hundred years. Obviously, it's impossible
to say one hundred percent with something like this, and
(10:20):
ultimately I guess it's the idea of the continuous flame
that is most important here. But still, this is an
example of one that has supposedly been burning for over
a thousand years. Now, this is not quite a flame,
but I ran across this as well, and I thought
i'd mentioned it just because it's amusing, and maybe we
have some listeners who can report on this first hand.
(10:43):
But there is something known as the Centennial light bulb
in Livermore, California, specifically in the firehouse there. It's been
burning there the bulb since nineteen oh one, though this
has not been continuous. There have been power outages and
electrical issues, etc. So I'm not sure exactly like what
the ratio is between the time during that century plus
(11:07):
that the light has been out versus on, but it's
certainly a very old light bulb that still lights up.
And there is a webcam you can like check in
on its status at centennialbulb dot org.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
So this is same filament, no replaced parts, it's the
same bulb and it still works.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Still works, yeah, and you can go visit it like
on the website. It has information about how you can
see this bulb for yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That is very impressive because obviously this is not an
LED bulb or something. This is Lord knows how they
were making light bulbs in nineteen oh one, but this
was in some form an incandescent filament based light bulb.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes. Now, now getting back to the idea of fire
and technology, I will say that I don't have an
answer regarding things like pilot lights or you know, forge fires,
industrial flames so there might be a really good example
out there that I just couldn't find a of a
verified long burning pilot light or long burning forge fire,
(12:07):
that sort of thing. But if listeners out there have
something to submit on that count, let us have it. Yeah. So,
based on everything I've mentioned here and then this very
much reflects my mindset going into this. I was thinking,
you know, before we did any research, before we brought
(12:28):
up the idea of the episode, I would have guessed, well,
the longest raging fire. You know, maybe maybe it's gone,
you know, a few weeks, a few months, and you know,
if the conditions are just right. But beyond that, I mean,
how how long can a fire rage? Joe, would you
like to get into one of the answers that we're
(12:48):
going to discuss in these episodes.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well, for the rest of the series, we wanted to
talk about naturally fueled flames, Flames that can burn for
a long long time because humans weren't e been necessary
to create them that there, they can arise in various ways.
We're going to talk about some major categories, I think
more in the next part of this series, but there
are various kinds of burning and ignition processes that it
(13:15):
turns out have been going on on the surface of
the Earth for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Which of course absolutely just dwarfs everything that I've mentioned
so far. It really puts things on an entirely different timescale.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Right, So I wanted to talk in this episode about
one example that really struck me when I was reading
up for this that's sort of an odd man out.
It's not exactly fitting into the other categories that we're
going to be talking about in part two, so I
figured it'd be good to start with this one. So
in the Northwest Territories of Canada, there is a stretch
(13:54):
of seaside, cliff faces and hills along the eastern coast
of a place called Cape Bathurst, where the earth and
the rocks themselves seem to be perpetually burning, and they
have been that way, probably for thousands of years. In English,
(14:14):
this place is known as the Smoking Hills, or sometimes
the Smoky Mountains, not to be confused with the ones
along the Tennessee North Carolina border. Different smoking mountains literally
smoking in this case, but in the language of the Inuvialuit,
and these are the people native to the western Canadian
Arctic region. It is known as ingnir Yuat, which means
(14:37):
big fire, and I was poking around for good historical
resources on this place. A lot of the articles I
dug up actually seemed rather confused, offering contradictory details about
early observations. So the best thing I found was a
piece in a magazine called tusai Osat, which is a
publication devoted to the language, culture in history of the
(15:00):
inuvialu It. This article is by Charles Arnold and it's
called ing near yat the Smoking Hills of Franklin Bay.
So Arnold identifies the earliest written account of the Smoking
Hills as one tracing back to a Scottish naturalist, explorer
and naval surgeon named Sir John Richardson, who wrote about
(15:21):
the hills in the eighteen twenties while documenting an expedition
that he made to chart the coastlines of northern Canada.
And as a side note, this mission was actually organized
in cooperation with another Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin, who
many years later, in eighteen forty five, would head up
the infamous Lost Franklin Expedition, the goal of which was
(15:45):
to fully chart a Northwest Sea passage through Canada. They
were hoping to find a way to get around the
northern part of the continent by water. Obviously, this is
even though you know, if you look at a map
you'll see a lot of gaps between the islands of
northern Canada. This is more difficult than it might sound
because often these waterways are choked with ice. So when
(16:06):
Franklin got lost in the eighteen forties, he was trying
to find this Northwest passage. And if you want to
know more, you can look up what's known and unknown
about the voyage of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.
If you want some good hair raising mystery with hints
of cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a fabulous story, you know what we've
been able to piece together over the years through the
original history and then the finding of the wreckage and
so forth. Dan Simons wrote a fictional take on the
Terror and the Arabis titled The Terror, which was a
brick of a book that was then made to an
(16:42):
excellent AMC mini series a few years back. In this
Franklin is played by the actor Kieran Hines. But I
highly recommend this series. It's a wonderful mix of detailed
historic depiction as well as fantasy and horror. Jared Harris
and Tobias Menzies also star in that.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It's really good, Rob, can you do a short version
of what we actually do know about the Lost Franklin Expedition.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Well, there's a killer monster that shows up. No, No,
that's the that's the that's the miniseries I'm thinking of.
I mean, it's really really sorry. We could get into
the full episodes really, but but basically, you have these
two vessels that were that were seeking the Northwest Passage
and they went missing, and you get into like what
(17:28):
happened to the crew? Like how long were they marooned
out there in the ice and there's ships locked in
frozen in Where where did they get to? Did anybody actually,
you know, make it out. It's presumed, I think still
that they all died, but you know, there's a lot
of there's been a lot of analysis over the years about,
you know, what happened to them and then and then
(17:50):
later on we actually found the wreckages.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
There's a famous painting I think that has to do
with this, with this lost voyage called It's Got a
real Metal album name is called something like Man proposes,
God disposes or something, and it's the painting is just
of polar bears fighting over scraps of the wreckage.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah. Yeah, for the longest the wreckage was was just
lost entirely, but it was yeah. Twenty fourteen. In September
of twenty fourteen, an expedition by Parks Canada discovered first
the Arabis and then two years later they found the
terror as well.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well. Anyway, coming back to the story, sorry, so, doctor
John Richardson, the author of the account on about to site,
was not involved in the lost expedition. He just was
an early collaborator with Franklin. So turning back to his
survey several decades earlier, in traveling along the shore of
the place that would come to be known as Franklin Bay,
(18:47):
Richardson made some observations of something marvelous cliffs that themselves
appeared to be quote on fire giving out smoke, and
where the ground appeared to consists of quote, burnt clays
variously colored yellow, white, and deep red. I found another
source quoting one of Richardson's accounts, where he says, quote
(19:11):
at Cape Bathurst, the northern end of Franklin Bay, bituminous
shale is exposed in many places, and in my visit
there in eighteen twenty six was in a state of ignition,
and the clays which had been thus exposed to the
heat were baked and vitrified, so that the spot resembled
an old brickfield. And I will say I understand what
(19:33):
Richard is getting at here. Of course, brickfields are places
where bricks are manufactured. You can look these up on
the Internet and you can see the resemblance with the
unnatural look of the baked earth. But when I look
at pictures of the smoking Hills, my computer ruined brain
sees these landscapes, and unfortunately, the first place it goes
is that it looks like a level in doom.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah, it does. It. Also, I have to say it
kind of delicious, like I'm also reminded of I don't
like red velvet cake. It's like red velvet cake emerging
from the earth.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And it's very interesting the way they produce these protruding
rock formations. They're very jagged, and they seem to be
rather resistant to weathering compared to the unbaked rock all
around them, which is more smoothed over.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, very jagged, very and very bloody looking in some cases.
So yeah, it looks like some sort of rock formation
that has just gouged into the flash of a titan totally.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
So that's what Richardson saw in the eighteen twenties. He says, Hey,
you know, we went past these cliffs. They appeared to
be on fire. They're giving off smoke. We see a
lot of burnt clay. It's yellow, white and deep red,
very weird. Looks like an old brickfield. But then the
written history of the Smoking Hills continues after the disappearance
of the Franklin expedition in the eighteen forties. So Franklin,
(20:53):
the two ships Franklin, and the crews go missing, and
in the year eighteen fifty, a ship called the HMS Investigator,
under the command of Captain Robert McClure, was searching for
survivors of the Franklin party in the area around Franklin
Bay once again, when the crew of this ship came
across the same weird site cliffs by the sea that
(21:15):
were strangely covered and were giving off plumes of smoke.
And at first they thought these might be campfires or
signals from the Franklin survivors, so they sent out a
small boat to check it out, see what's going on.
But no, it was not survivors of the Franklin mission.
Arnold in his article identifies testimony left by a Moravian
(21:37):
missionary named Johann Mirtsching, who was a member of the
shore party. And this is one where I really wanted
to find the original text, but I don't. I can't
if this has been digitized anywhere, I could not find it.
It appears to be from what's called the Arctic Diary
of Johan Mirching eighteen fifty to eighteen fifty four, that
(21:58):
those published in print form in Toronto in nineteen sixty seven,
but I couldn't find the digital version, So I'm relying
on Arnold's summaries of what Merching says. But he says
that when they got to the source of the smoke,
they found no human life alive or dead. Only quote
a thick smoke emerging from various vents in the ground,
(22:19):
and a smell of sulfur so strong that we could
not approach the smoke pillar nearer than ten or fifteen
feet flame there was none, but the ground was so
hot that it scorched the soles of our feet. Arnold
says that Mirching compared the landscape to a huge chemical factory.
He says that water from nearby ponds had been fouled
(22:40):
by something from the earth, and that the water tasted sour,
and they brought back samples of rocks from the smoking hills,
brought them back to the ship where Merching apparently claims
that they ended up burning a hole in the mahogany
table where Captain McClure kept them. So they took some
rocks back to the captain and they're burning up his furnish.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
You know, this reminds me again of the mini series
of The Terror, because one of the things that they
stress in that show, and they have some of the
people involved in the production that they'd mentioned this as well.
They mentioned that when they were researching the ships to
portray them on the show, there was this this realization that,
(23:22):
you know, these were some of the most advanced vessels
of any kind of that time period, and if we
were to compare them to our modern world, we might
well compare them to spaceships. We might well think of
them in terms of something that is meant to venture
beyond our atmosphere, and here we have one of the specifically,
(23:46):
this was referring to the terror and the Arabis. I'm
not quite sure about the investigator, but I'm assuming that
it may have been a similar in a similar fashion,
may have been a very advanced ship. But here they are,
with this ship essentially arriving at an alien landscape. You know,
it must have just been such a strange site to behold.
Here you are this far flung an ultimately very very hostile,
(24:10):
very dangerous environment, and here here are shores where things
are bloody and burning, and it's like a chemical vat.
You bring a piece of it inside the ship and
it begins to burn a hole through the table in
front of you. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah. Yeah, So here I guess we come to the
question of what is actually causing these hills to smoke.
You might assume, based on background knowledge, that well, okay,
if there's heat and sulfurous gas coming out of the ground,
the source is volcanic, right, that would be the obvious assumption.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, that's that's where your mind it simply goes.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
But in this case, no, I found one source on
this that was pretty helpful. It was a paper called
why do the Smoking Hills Smoke?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Why?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
in nineteen eighty four by W. H. Matthews and R. M. Buston.
And this paper invokes a term that I'd never heard before.
It refers to areas of fire baked rock. As I
think this word is French, so I think it would
be pronounced bocan, but its boc a n n ees
(25:27):
and the authors write that you find these these fire
baked rocks in quote cretaceous mudstones along sea cliffs and
in areas of recent slumping. So the fire baking of
the rocks and the earth lead to these weird patterns
of coloration that can easily be seen with the naked eye,
and that we heard described in the literary sources we
just mentioned. So these color changes include bleaching and reddening
(25:50):
of the mudstone, which is otherwise dark in color. And
these colors can remain even after one of the bocans
has stopped burning. And in places where these rocks are
still burning and baking, you get smoke pouring out, you
get sulfurous fumes as well as high ground temperatures. So
the earth you walk on gets hot, So what's the cause. Well,
(26:13):
the authors of this paper, they performed a number of
different analyzes including petrographic, mineralogical, chemical, and calorific analyzes, and
they determined that quote the bocan are fumed by oxidation
of pyrite and organic matter. With heating of the strata
by oxidation, combustible gases are driven off that may burn
(26:35):
in restricted areas, resulting in localized melting of the strata. So,
in reading this and a few other sources and putting
things together, I think I understand this now and trying
to put my understanding into other words, A lot of
the rock in this area is mudstone or type of
shale rock. Mudstone is a sedimentary rock that can contain
(26:59):
hydrocarbon or organic content. So some amount of fossil fuel
is naturally present in this rock, even if in low concentrations,
And in this case, one of the main carbon constituents
seems to be a form of lignite, which is a
soft brown type of coal that is generally formed by
the underground compression of peat. But this rock also contains
(27:22):
a significant amount of iron pyrite, a mineral form of
iron sulfide. Which is also known as fools gold.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, and you know, I think it's always a shame
we call it fools gold because it implies that it's
in to a certain extent, that it's ugly and it's
without value. But pyrite can look quite impressive, you know.
I've seen examples of it in in mineral museums before,
and of course in the fact that it can be
used to ignite something. I believe it was used in
(27:55):
firearms in the past.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I did not know that, but that would make sense
now reading about this, because so what's going on here
is that when the cliff faces erode here at the
smoking Hills and new faces of the mudstone strata are
exposed to oxygen in the atmosphere, the carbon based fuel
and the natural iron pyrite together undergo oxidation, a chemical
(28:23):
reaction which leads to heating. The oxidation of the iron
pyrite here is an exothermic reaction. It heats up the
surrounding rock and this oxidation based heating leads to the
release of flammable gases that are embedded in the rock.
And so the authors think when these gases are released,
they become a form of fuel evaporating in an environment
(28:46):
of extreme heat with exposured oxygen. So here you have
the three magic ingredients, right, you have fuel escaping, it's
very hot, and you have oxygen nearby. So they burn,
and these fires further heat and melt the st of
the rock. And I believe the implication is that this melting,
this melting and baking helps continue to reveal new faces
(29:09):
of strata to the atmosphere so that more oxidation can
happen and the process can just continue. It's auto ignition.
It ignites automatically by being exposed to the oxygen, and
the process is self sustaining. The author's right that you
tend to find these bocan only in places where the
strata of sedimentary rock has been suddenly exposed to the atmosphere,
(29:31):
maybe by a landslide or some of their form of
erosion or erosion that's left behind after the retreat of glaciers. Now,
coming back to these historical accounts, While the stories from
Richardson and the McClure expedition are the earliest written accounts
of the Smoking Hills in New Vialuet, oral traditions about
(29:51):
the mountains have been in circulation for much longer. As
I mentioned, the traditional name for this place is ing
near Youuat, which means big fire. And this article by
Charles Arnold. Then after it recounts the literary section, it
goes into a section on the oral tradition, including one
excellent story that was told to the Danish anthropologist Canued
(30:15):
Rasmussen in nineteen twenty four by a person living in
the Cape Bathhurst, Aia named Alnaaritsayik. So this is the
story told by alnaarit Sayik, recounted to Rasmusen and quoted
in Arnold. Here in the early infancy of man, people
were never alone, whether they lived in a settlement or
were traveling on long journeys. They were surrounded by a
(30:38):
spirit people who lived as human beings, and were in
fact human beings, except that they were invisible. Their bodies
were not for our eyes, or their voices for our ears.
And when people traveled and pitched camp and began to
build their snow huts, one might see round about the
snow drifts that the snow blocks began to move, being
(31:00):
lifted out of the drifts and piled together into a
snow house, which seemed to grow of itself. Occasionally one
might see the glitter of a copper knife, and that
was all. They did not mind people coming into their houses,
which were arranged just like those of human beings. All
their belongings were visible, and people could trade with them
very profitably. If one wished to buy something, all that
(31:23):
was necessary was to point to it and at the
same time show what one was prepared to give for it.
If the spirit people agreed the object required, lifted itself
up and moved towards the man who wanted it. But
if they declined the bargain, the object remained where it was.
So people were never alone. They always had small, silent
(31:44):
and invisible spirits around them. But one day it happened
that during a halt, a man seized his knife and cried,
what do we want with these people who were always
right on our heels. Saying this, he flourished his knife
in the air and thrust it in the direction of
the snow huts that had made themselves. Not a sound
was heard, but the knife was covered in blood. From
(32:07):
that moment the spirits went away. Never again did anyone
see the wondrous sight of snow drifts forming themselves into
snow huts when one made camp and forever the people
lost their silent, invisible guardian spirits. It was said that
they had gone to live inside the mountains in order
to hide from man who had mocked and wounded their feelings.
(32:29):
That is why to this day one can see the
mountains smoking from the enormous cooking fires flaming inside them.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Oh wow, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, I thought this was beautiful. It also made me
so sad that like the humans betrayed their invisible companions.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah yeah, But it also of course reminds me of
various other accounts that you see, particularly like Irish traditions,
where you have these traditions of the former people or
other intelligent being be they some sort of spirit folk
or what have you, or something very humanoid in form
(33:06):
and they've been driven into the earth by the newer people.
And we see a similar trend here. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Arnold Site's story is remembered by other Inuvialuate people of
the present describing their memories of the stories about these people,
describing the smoke from the hills as the cooking fires
of the little people who live inside the mountains. And
there was one story he recorded that really struck me.
This was wonderful. This was quoting a source named Fred
(33:34):
Wolke who said, quote, they are as big as a
fork that you eat with. They use a caribou's ear
for a parka. They turn it inside out and they
just have to put it on, just take the inside
off skin it already made parka.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
One thing that strikes me as interesting is how there's
a convergence on everyone identifying in some way the smoking
hills or in near you at as as artificial in nature.
So in these oral traditions, the smoke coming off of
the hills or the cooking fires of the little people
or the invisible people living inside the mountain, but also
(34:13):
some of the earliest written records, like Mirching's compared the
area to a huge chemical factory. Richard compared it to
a brick field. Both of these are products of human industry.
It's interesting that everybody seems to look at these things
and think artificial, made by people.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, I mean we just as Earth as the fire planet,
like we are the people of fire. We are the
only organism that has come to master it and created
works with it. So yeah, it makes sense that the
various cultures would look to this and their mind would
at least temporarily go in the same direction.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
In any case, coming back to the question about some
of the longest burning fires, I guess part of this
would be dependent on what you're what you're counting as
a fire when you look at some thing, So, like
I think the Smoking Hills, you will often not maybe
sometimes you will, but you will often not be seeing
big gouts of flames like you would see at a campfire.
(35:13):
You'll just see this continuous smoking and baking of the rock.
And so the burning there I think would be more
akin to what you'd see probably with like a burning coal,
you know, a piece of coal that has been ignited.
But considering that, we can know for pretty sure that
the Smoking Hills have probably been burning for hundreds or
(35:35):
thousands of years. And there are multiple ways you know this.
I think there are some geological methods. But actually came
across one study offering one interesting piece of evidence for
how long these hills had been burning that I wouldn't
have thought of, which is archaeology. So there was a
paper by Raymond J. LeBlanc in American Antiquity in nineteen
(35:55):
ninety one called prehistoric clinkery use on the Cape Bathurst Peninsula,
Northwest Territories, Canada, the dynamics of formation and procurement, and
talking about the background going into this study, LeBlanc says,
quote fieldwork conducted on the Cape Bathurst Peninsula and that's
where the Smoking Hills are has resulted in the discovery
(36:16):
of seventy five sites representing occupation spanning more than three
thousand years. Nearly all of these sites are characterized by
the predominant use of a distinctive rock called a clinker,
resembling a basalt to obsidian like material. It is formed
by the spontaneous combustion of local organic rich shales. So
(36:37):
some of the weird baked rocks left over at these
auto ignition Sitesking Neruat these rocks have been used to
make tools by the people living in the area, spanning
back thousands of years. And I found that so interesting too,
that you would take these these strange clinker rocks and
turn them into technology.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
From this site that we interpret through the lens of fiotechnology. Interesting.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Now, one more paper I wanted to mention before I'm
done with the Smoking Hills is by Magda Havas and
Thomas C. Hutchinson, published in Nature in nineteen eighty three
called the Smoking Hills natural acidification of an aquatic ecosystem.
So you remember how those early reports of the area
they said that the water of nearby ponds was foul
(37:29):
and sour. Well, we know why that happens now. This
is due to the acidification of the water by the
sulfur dioxide produced by these mineral burning sites. So the
water is very acidic, and this has actually changed the
composition of the local microbial life and insect life and
stuff the life that inhabits the area. So the author
(37:51):
is here right quote. In an area of typically alkaline
ponds with pH above eight point zero, ponds within the
fumigation zone have been acidified below a pH of two
point zero. Elevated concentrations of metals including aluminium, iron, zinc, nickel, manganase,
and cadmium occur in these acidic ponds. Soils and sediments
(38:13):
have also been chemically altered. The biota in these acidic
ponds are characteristic of acidic environments worldwide, in contrast to
the typically arctic biota in adjacent alkaline ponds. So the
burning of the earth alters the chemical characteristics of the landscape,
which in turn changed the bioecology. The chain reaction started
(38:35):
thousands of years ago when these cliff faces and rocks
were eroded and exposed the minerals to oxygen. The oxidation
of the pyride and the organic contents of the mudstone
and the burning began. And this led to, over the
thousands of years, a complete transformation of the surrounding ecosystem
into one of these strange extremophile, acid rich biosystems.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Wow, that's import pressive, you know. And in thinking about
this and thinking about you know, extreme environments and and
so forth, and then also kind of going back to
the idea of these these these these ships being sort
of like space ships sailing upon these these strange, alien
seeming environment. I ran across a twenty twenty two paper
(39:24):
in Chemical Geology the Journal Chemical Geology by Graspy at
All that looked at the Smoking Hills as a possible
analog for some geological conditions that have been observed on Mars.
Just to read a quick quote, oxidative weathering of this
unit creates extensive gerocite rich deposits and banded gerocite and
(39:48):
pilos silicate rich mudstones similar to those observed on Mars.
So I read through this paper here and it's it's
it's pretty pretty deeply. It's the Chemical Geology Journals.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Bit dense for my taste anyway, but the author is,
if I'm understanding this correctly, they're suggesting that such signs
on Mars, some similar looking details that we've observed on
Mars via the probes we've sent there, if we interpret
them through the lens of the smoking hills, it could
possibly suggest a more habitable period in mars ancient past.
(40:26):
So that's fascinating to think about that as well.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Absolutely so, I think maybe this is where we need
to cap it for part one here, But there's so
much more to talk about because the world is full
of surprising and fascinating naturally fueled flames, and I think
it will make for a carnival of geological wonders to
explore in the next part of this series.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
That's right, So tune in on Thursday as we continue
with more Fire from the Rocks. In the meantime, if
you'd like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow your mind, you can find them on Tuesdays and
Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
I think most of the invention episodes that we recorded,
several of which had dealt with fire technology and fire
(41:09):
related technology. I think most of those have been republished,
if not all of them have been republished in this feed,
but if not, you can also find the podcast feed
for Invention out there. That was a fun though short
lived show that we did on the side dealing with
inventions in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed,
though we also do listener mail. On Mondays, we do
(41:31):
a short form artifact or monster fact on Wednesdays, and
on Friday we do something called Weird House Cinema. That's
our time to set aside most serious concerns and just
talk about a strange film.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
(42:05):
Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you're listening to your favorite shows.
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