February 11, 2021 • 50 mins
Why are there billboards warning about radioactive brine in parts of the US? What exactly is Australia's Stolen Generation? What's the insider scoop on the fracking industry and earthquakes? All this and more in this week's listener mail segment.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code Enave, doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This week's listener mail has a
little bit of a theme, gentleman, I propose, maybe, Matt,
(00:47):
we we start with the correspondence you found and then uh,
and then we'll go from there. We'll do like a
three act structure thing. Oh, most excellent bill Ben. Uh, sorry, Ted,
I don't know what wild stallions. Yes, this message is
an email. It came from Lauren E. Lauren, you know
(01:07):
who you are, you said. My husband and I are
currently driving through rural Ohio and a billboard caught my eye.
Something something radioactive, groundwater, something something visit Radium Valley dot org. Okay, well, okay,
I thought it's rural Ohio and I can only read
so much Wikipedia. First, The website is brilliant early Internet
(01:28):
design being revived, but it piques my interest in this
entire idea of radioactive brine. M I. T. Says it's
an interesting supply chain. Scientific Americans says it's questionable either way.
I get this visual of our roads glowing green because
of it all. Anyway, I've always wanted to find a
random thing that might be interesting enough to send to
(01:49):
you all, and maybe this is it. Stay safe, Lauren, Well,
thank you so much Lauren for writing in, because you
know that the three of us as well as Doc
holiday and just now I'm guarantee you just now, this
is what she did. We all went to Radium Valves
dot org. It is a delight. It's beautiful, you cause, guys,
(02:15):
you're right, You're right, You're right, you're right. The first
thing you get is a giant full on purple This
site is owned and published by C. E C A Inc.
Whatever that is. Then below that you get a great
photoshopped image of thunderstorms and lightning and a nice little
quaint wooden sign that's got a pretty noticeable radioactive symbol
(02:39):
on it, and it says welcome to Radium Valley, where
radioactive waste is good for business and good for you
not to mention the class at glow effects on the
words radium Valley like photoshop one O one. You know
what I mean As a partially color blind person, A
dig in this because if these colors are bright enough
(03:01):
for me to differentiate, I can only imagine what it
looks like to you guys. Oh man screaming. It is
an awful thing, knowing that I'm getting some like small
little extra experience than you. And I just look at
a photo bend that really does hurt me, and I'm sorry, No, no,
it's great, It's I wouldn't have it any other way.
(03:21):
Tried on those uh color blind corrective classes, which was
a super cool experience, nothing to do with radium, I hope,
and uh. And then you know, I went back, I
went back to the way. Yeah, I like it. I
like where I'm at. I dig it. I support your Yeah,
(03:42):
it says the A B c's and Brian. All right,
well let's jump into what else this thing says. It says,
stop spreading radioactive Brian, b R I N E on
our roads and land. And then it gives you the
A B C s of Brian. Hey, all over the place.
Brian is being spread all over Ohio on township roads,
county roads, private land, and public land. But after it
(04:05):
rains or the snow is melted, it all flows into
the wells, springs, ponds, rivers, and aquifers that we all
share and use. B brine is radioactive brine is really
oil field waste from gas and oil wells. Oh D
and R test proved that it contains high levels of
radioactive radium. This is true. This is true. C is
(04:29):
for cancer. Cancer is caused by high levels of radium
or can be caused cancer and can or radium is
one cause of cancer. I love that. And then and
then and then a nice big old just stop brine,
ye sign the position, talk to your neighbor's opinion, give
years to a politician, put a sign in your yard.
(04:50):
So this is a website that is attempting to give
anyone who visits it information about this issue radioactive brine,
and it kind of tells you what It is, a
byproduct of the creation of gas and oil, or at
least the pulling of those substances from the earth. So
(05:11):
let's learn a little bit more about it by going
to the E P. A. Now there is a site
on the e p A. It is e p A
dot gov slash Radiation and then you'll be able to
find this from there. It's on ten orm T E
N O r M Oil and Gas Production Wastes. On
this website, it gives you the information that fracking this
(05:32):
new thing that we've talked about many times on this
show where substances are shot into the earth to break
up shale which is a type of stone, type of rock,
and other formations of you know, varying chemicals and substances.
It breaks that stuff up and that stuff shoots up
(05:53):
through the ground up into you know, an oil pipeline
and then it can be processed from there. Now, there
are all kinds of issues with this substance. Let's but
let's let's specifically talk about what this Radium Valley website
is about. There are other things that come up within
(06:15):
that shale, other materials, other byproducts. Some of them are
uranium and it's decay products, thorium and it's stuff radium,
potassium forty lead to ten and polonium to ten. These
are all radioactive substances. They are naturally occurring radio nuclide
(06:37):
new new clients. Okay, radio nuclides. For some reason, my
brain wanted to change that into something else, nucleotides. I
remember that, not the same thing, I guess I don't know, yes,
but these are also referred to as naturally occurring radioactive
materials or NORM and uh, this is a big problem.
(06:58):
So what do you do with that stuff when you've
got some of it, even just a little bit of it,
Because a little bit of it is a problem. You
can't just throw that stuff in, you know, any old landfill.
You can't just put it in a lake or a stream.
You gotta really take care of it. That's radioactive waste,
my friends. It sticks around for a long long time,
(07:19):
and it hurts everything that it's near. Well, here's why
it's a major problem, and why we even know a
lot about this. There is a Rolling Stone article published
January twenty one. It's written by Justin Noble and it
is titled America's Radioactive Secret. This is a large investigation,
(07:42):
a large article. We recommend you take a look if
you have the time, and we recommend you take the
time to look at it. But it is going to
it's gonna be a chunk of your afternoon set some
more morning or whenever you get to it. If you
do look through it, it shows you in and it's
splaines that this Brian that we're talking about, it's really
(08:04):
salty water with some other stuff in it. There are
ten gallons of this stuff produced for every one gallon
of natural gas or petroleum that you know, the stuff
that will become petroleum that comes out of the ground,
So ten to one ratio this stuff. Sometimes it's pretty
contaminated with radioactive materials. Other times it is ridunculously contaminated.
(08:29):
And there's no real way to know how much radio
radioactive material is in this brine or like one truckload
of the brine, until you test the contents of a
truck or a container that this stuff is put into.
There are so many problems been I no, I know
you've looked at some of this stuff. I'll just hit
a couple of them, um, because it may not be
(08:50):
good for us to go all the way down the
rabbit hole here. But uh, truck drivers who move this stuff. Again,
we're talking about ten to one ratio for duction here,
so we're talking about dozens and dozens and dozens of
truck loads per day. Per site that is fracking and
creating this stuff. Uh, they aren't wearing protective clothing for
(09:13):
radioactive materials in many times, many times, in most of
the time at least that this article found in. They
aren't trained and they aren't even aware that radioactive materials
are on board their their load that there that they're
taking around to a dump site. The dump sites where
they end up if they end up at a landfill,
(09:35):
many times are not capable of handling radioactive waste. So
then that material ends up leaching back into the groundwater
into all other you know, all kinds of water sources
that exist wherever that landfill is. There are even some
programs that are using this brine because remember it's salty water.
(09:55):
They're using it in Ohio and a couple other places
to e ice the roads or two pre d ice
the roads as a preventive measure. Right, Yeah, yeah, that's
the There's there's so many, man, you're right, so many issues.
So one thing we have to say is, uh, shout
out to Science Daily as well, that's cited some research
(10:18):
on how this stuff is created. So we want to
be very clear the company's fracking are not purposely pouring
radium into the ground so far that we know of.
When the water and the hydrochloric acid and other acids
that they use are injected with sand and interact with
(10:39):
this ancient shale. Uh, that's that reaction is where we
see these radioactive things being created. Uh. The point about
informed consent is huge. We can't recommend the Rolling Stone
article enough because you'll be introduced to some truckers who
were the main canaries in this dubious coal mine. Uh.
(11:04):
That's where also I learned this one of the street
names for radium, which is terrified. You guys caught this too, right,
bone seeker? Yeah, because I mean assumedly it gets it.
It actually can be responsible for a bone cancer. Yes, yes,
it goes. It can be incorporated into the skeleton and
(11:26):
caused sarcomas. H Yeah, it's really scary stuff. This is
this is a gentleman named Peter who was driving a
truck and believe he was getting paid sixteen dollars an
hour at least according to that article. So that would
be and we know how the dollar fluctuates. Just kidding, um.
(11:48):
He was saying, quote, a lot of guys are coming
up with cancer or sores and skin lesions that take
months to heal. And he goes on to say that
he experiences regular headaches and nausea, numbness in his fingertips,
and face in joint pain like fire. And if that's
because again they aren't wearing anything, you know, to protect them.
They're wearing a hard hat, steel toed boots and some
(12:10):
standard you know, fairer on their torso and everything. And
that's about it. Um, really really creepy stuff. And again,
if you continue down that that article, you'll learn exactly
how radioactive some of these substances have been. Uh, there's
a gentleman, a specialist, and I'm not even looking at
full article honestly because zoom and recording and everything is
(12:34):
causing this giant article to the load super slowly. But
there's an expert here that was saying if he had
a beaker, like a small standard scientific beaker of this
stuff sitting in his lab and he was using it
for testing, and it happened to just fall, the glass
broke and this brine spread across the floor. He's saying,
(12:54):
and this is theoretically, they would shut down that entire building,
or at least that side of the lab. Because it
would be dangerous for anyone else to work in there
until it was fully cleaned up, and it's very difficult
to do that, and studies are currently limited. This is
this is an ongoing story. UH. To represent the industry's view,
(13:15):
the people who condone or advocate for this practice as
as it's currently instituted, UH, they'll say something like, yes,
there is radiation exposure, but it is statistically insignificant. UM.
Long time listeners, you know, we've pointed this out before.
(13:36):
A lot of stuff can give you low level exposures
to radiation, like bananas, for instance, but they're not gonna
give you cancer. That That is what I would say
is the difference that industry advocates seem to be missing
radium is UH. I hope it's not a hot take.
Radium is more dangerous than a banana. Something called a
(14:00):
bone seeker, again, is very different from stuff you would
find in the produce aisle. I think I I haven't
seen bone seekers in in the produce aisle. Maybe they're
next to the other weird stuff like dragon fruit. Well,
and one of the big problems with bone seeker is
that it's radiation within these substances that then kind of
(14:23):
shoots off and attaches itself to anything in the environment. Right,
That could be your skin, It could be blocked by
your skin. It doesn't get into your inside, you may
be all right. But the worst part is if it
gets onto dust particles in the air that are small
enough for you to inhale or ingest, then that gets
into your body. That's when the bone seeking comes in
(14:44):
um and it's it's really really dangerous. And if you're
just thinking about the thousands of driver truck drivers and
the other specialists who are who are actively interacting with
the substances, taking a giant hose, putting it into a container,
opening it up, getting the brine into that other container.
(15:05):
Some of it gets off, gets on their hands, maybe
they're breathing. Maybe they're breathing. Sometimes humans breathe. Generally we
do that. But it's a very trendy thing, it really is.
It's it's just got popular and it just stayed uh
and that's super dangerous for them, and that's terrible, and
(15:26):
hopefully there's gonna be something to change what's going on
there to help the workers. The scariest part is everybody else,
all the bystandards that have nothing to do with anything
that's occurring here. And the stuff's getting into their drinking water,
it's going into the land, it's hurting the animals, it's
it's scary. And again we're not saying that the companies
(15:47):
fracking are purposefully trying to irradiate everything. It's just a
really unfortunate side product, one of the unfortunate side products
of the process itself. Well said, this feels like a
call for us to do an updated episode, uh, an
addendum to our previous work on fracking itself, which goes deep,
(16:11):
goes deep, not just not just into the surface of
the earth. Wonderful. All right, Well, with that, we're gonna
take a word from our sponsor and we will be
right back. And we have returned. Our next piece of
(16:33):
correspondence comes from Benson S. Benson wrote an awesome and
important letter to us. We'd like to share it with you.
Here it goes. Good day, Ben, Matt and Noel, longtime listener,
first time writer. Love the show, the variety of topics
covered and the critical yet sensitive nature you present topics
(16:53):
in mature and informative way. I'm an Australian of English
descent with family members traced back to the Third Fleet. Yes,
they were convicts slash criminals. And I've known a little
bit about this topic, but not enough to hold a conversation,
nor enough to comprehend its impact on Australia's Aboriginal and
(17:14):
Tories Straight Islander community. It is a government conspiracy that
actually took place, with the effects still being felt today,
more than fifty years after the fact. I am unsure
if this topic is known outside of Australia, unsure if
you've covered or touched on the topic on previous episodes.
And I'm certain that more Australians should try to understand
(17:35):
the damaging ramifications of these government policies and how they
have impacted so many lives and continue to do so today.
I'm speaking of Australia's stolen generation. Would be thrilled for
you and the team to take a look through the
stuff they don't want you to know, Lens and get
your thoughts or even if this is something that you've
come across in the past, I feel the lessons that
(17:57):
should have been learned during this time of Australia's dark
history could well be taught across the globe to learn
from our mistakes and remedy them more so now than
ever before. UH and Benson, you have included a couple
of great leads starting links. One thing that I really
appreciate that you did here was you went directly to
(18:22):
the official government sites, which will always have a stance
on this sort of stuff. Um, how effective is that
stance versus how performative? Well, that's a that's a matter
of debate. We have not talked about the Stolen Generation
in depth on the show before, but Matt Noel, I
(18:43):
know that as you guys were hearing this letter, you
were immediately thinking of some disturbingly similar situations in other countries,
often in the Anglo sphere as well. Yeah, we have
talked numerous times on the show about indigenous peoples that
were either move moved out forcibly or we're indoctrinated, or
(19:05):
just usually stricken with plague or something right like sent
to UH sent to schools, boarding schools. The children are
stolen and UH forced to no longer speak their native language.
Usually religious ideology is forced upon them. This has happened
in Canada, that's happened in the United States, and this
(19:29):
occurred in Australia as well. The victims of this multigenerational
practice are known collectively as the stolen generations or the
stolen children. It's terrifying because somewhere around the beginning of
the twentieth century or early nineteen hundreds, this practice began
(19:50):
and it continued into get this, the nineteen seventies. Some
of our listeners today were alive in this was happening,
which is insane and and the the high level part
of this, the easiest way to explain it is that
there were a lot of Aboriginal children that were, in
(20:14):
the parlance of the time described as mixed race. And
the government of Australia noticed exactly what you would referenced
earlier in all uh, the catastrophic decline of the native
population after after Europeans arrived. So this this is due
to a number of factors. Of course, violence on the
part of the colonizer's side, and of course introduction of
(20:40):
new diseases, right, which is tremendously dangerous and not necessarily intentional. Right. Uh.
What the government did was they made this assumption and said,
look at how the population is just plummeting. There is
no way that this native population will be able to
sustain itself. They are doomed to extinction. And so uh,
(21:04):
they said, we can take mixed race children away from
their families and their communities, and we can train them
to quote work in white society, and they will grow
up and naturally marry white people and be further assimilated. Uh.
They a lot of the phrases that were used in
(21:24):
this reasoning, are you know, tremendously tremendously offensive today? Um? Sure, folks,
And I'm sure we're familiar with a lot of these phrases.
We don't need to give them maritime. Uh. But what
what happens then? What happens when you steal children? That's
the question. And it's the same one that occurred in Canada,
(21:47):
same one that occurred in the US. Uh. It seems
like there are tons of knock on effects. Anxiety depression PTSD,
suicide rates rise, alcohol abuse. Uh, kids are missing school.
There are other like stress causes, so many other physiological ailments.
(22:09):
And this situation got more recognition in a book published
in one by an a Storian professor named Peter read
this book, The Stolen Generations really propagated the story and
I would pause it. Uh, lead a lot of people
who felt like maybe they had a limited, terrible experience
(22:32):
and let them know they were not alone, but were
in fact victims of a much larger conspiracy. It just
blows my mind, you guys, the nineteen and seventies Faulkner
was right. History is not over. It really is. I mean,
it's it's the same like way I felt when I
realized that apartheid was in like the early nineties. You know,
(22:53):
just you think stuff like that, it's relegated to the
like trash dump of history. But it is uh much
closer than many of us would like to believe. And
in two thousand eight, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued
a public apology to the Indigenous people of Australia. But
that doesn't that doesn't put the horseback in the barn
(23:18):
as it were. Uh, there's a known ongoing problem with
what they call under policing of child welfare in Aboriginal communities.
Tons of discrimination, m tons of like. My my question
here for you guys, it's it goes back to our
(23:40):
earlier episode. Does this count as a form of genocide
or an attempt at it? It's it sure feels genocide adjacent.
Let us say, well, yeah, it's it's it's just on
a longer scale. I mean, really it is when you're
talking about the innerger generational trauma that gets passed down,
(24:00):
what how that affects each individual person and then weakening
a community to be able to work together and be
successful individually as well as together. Yeah, I mean it's
that is It is weird. It's slow motion genocide. And
you can look back at our previous episode on why
defining things as genocide is a very specific legal matter,
(24:28):
right per the win. Uh, please don't take my it's
not genci because I say it is, you know, I
mean it's Uh. I like the phrase genocide adjacent. It
sure feels like that's that's a fair linguistic compromise. This happened,
(24:48):
by the way, there there was another program that pertained
to non Indigenous children. Uh. And these the victims of
this one are just sscribed sometimes as the White Lost Generation. Uh.
These were non Indigenous children who were kidnapped from their
families if their mothers were deemed unfit, whatever unfit means
(25:14):
in this regard, and that continued until the nineties. Also
portrayed as a greater good scenario for society. I mean
then that that's terrible because as we talked about with
some of the foster care things we've discussed before, on
a case by case basis, you have to look at
some of that stuff where maybe there is a child
that needs to be removed, right, but then in a
(25:36):
lot of cases a child doesn't need to be removed
but gets removed anyway, or that. You know, they are
all kinds of really complicated scenarios at play there. But
to imagine it as a greater good thing, I don't know,
it seems tough. And of course to add add some
(25:56):
um abusive icing on this genocidal cake. Yes, if you
assumed that these children were abused while in this care system,
you are unfortunately very correct. Psychological abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. Uh.
And they were also kind of shamed, they were guilt
(26:16):
tripped about their original communities, you know, because they were
they were taught, they were taught that they could aspire
to improve themselves by complying with this other culture and
then assimilating as much as possible into it while still
(26:38):
never being quite as good, you know what I mean.
But a terrible situation to put this in. Uh. Right now,
we we'd have to dive into this further, but right now,
from what we see, there are various initiatives to help
the victims and the survivors, things like the Healing Foundation,
(27:00):
which was established in two thousand and nine, or the
Marumali Program, which was designed by a survivor of the
stolen generations, but there hasn't been at this point as
far as we can tell, there hasn't been like a
government wide reparations scheme or uh something to address the
(27:23):
overall issue. And it's tough because how do you how
on earth do you quantify that? You know what I mean, like,
how do you give someone their childhood back? The technology
is not there yet, which I it sounds like a
weird thing to say, but I mean by what I
mean is even if we wanted as a species to
(27:44):
make this right, uh, we do not know how to
do so. Yeah, besides helping this generation, you know, as
much as you can get a leg up, get them,
get them on more equal footing when it comes to opportunities.
I mean, that's one way to do it, especially monetarily. Yeah,
(28:06):
I mean, that's one of the only ways to try.
Right right now, how do you how do you trace it.
How do you unravel this Gordian knots um this this
labyrinthine tableau of tragedy. Uh we I think we should
examine this further in depth in a later episode, and
in the meantime, while we're preparing for that, we'd love
(28:28):
to hear from you. Um. You know we We've got
a lot of great listeners in Australia, so I I
can only assume that some of us in the audience
today have had secondhand or perhaps firsthand experience with either
this practice or the consequences and the ripple effects it created.
(28:49):
So we are on the case. We want to hear
from you as always, you are the most important part
of this show. To end on just a like a
slightly less bleak note. Well, there's one important thing we
missed from Matt's earlier segment, which is that Radium Valley
dot Org has a mascot. His name is Mortemus. I
(29:10):
was gonna say he's a little like bad clip art looking, uh,
spooky skeleton with a radioactive symbol medallion, sort of like
Allah the flavor flav clock. Uh. It looks like the
kind of thing you'd see like airbrushed on the side
of a bad carnival haunted house or definitely coming a
really kick ass van, but uh yeah, Mortemus also has
(29:36):
made the interesting fashion choice to have a sleeveless road
and maybe that radioactive sign is a brooch, but we're
just saying that so that this is not completely depressing,
and it's a little bit of foreshadowing because we're gonna
pause for a word from our sponsor and then we'll
return to a story that ties back to our early segment.
(30:00):
Are we gonna dig deeper into that oil? Well, let's
just let's shoot some fracking liquid down into the topic.
Let's go, and we're back, uh, following this red thread
down a very very deep uh and scary uh you know,
(30:25):
tube shaped rabbit hole. I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep
the fracking and drilling puns going, not really even puns,
just the imagery. But yeah, no, this is interesting. Only
we've ever done this before, like a fully themed kind
of triumvirate alas our compatriot Matthew had to hop for
this last segment to have adventures elsewhere. But um, this
(30:46):
really is kind of a nice bow on this whole
subject that we've been talking about everything from you know,
every kind of every side of what this very controversial
practice of fracking does, UM, and one of them, it's
the kind of thing that like the oil and gas
companies would like to think, what would like you as
the consumer, you, as you know, the average human person,
(31:09):
UH to think is a conspiracy But alas, UM pretty
sure it's it's not. It's actually very much cold, hard fact.
And we got this insider scoop uh from a listener
who asked very specifically to remain anonymous, and the email
goes like this specifically also, by the way, asked to
(31:30):
be anonymous because this is having their identity associated with
this email could have damaging effects on their career in
the oil and gas industry. UM, but also did leave
us their information so we could vet uh. This information
confirmed this human person is in fact who they say
they are and associated with this industry, and all that
(31:52):
checked out. So I'll start, UM. I live in Midland, Texas,
the heart of the oil and gas industry and one of,
if not the heaviest fracked locations in the world. Since
the rise in popularity and effectiveness of hydraulic fracturing in
the industry, we have begun to have minor tremmors over
the past decade, maybe longer with the occasional small scale earthquake.
(32:14):
About three months ago, we had a three point seven
it's not large, but very feelable magnitude earthquake that was
mentioned once in our local news and then never mentioned again,
as if it was some secret that accidentally slipped out.
Working closely with my company president of an O and
G pump company, he alluded that the epicenter of the
quake was very near a field where our pumps are utilized,
(32:37):
roughly ninety five of them. These things are massive. By
the way, I can't say we're responsible for the event,
but it's an open secret in the industry that we
fracking as a whole are definitely the cause of the
uptick in earthquakes in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Yep, yeah,
I mean that's that's about as close to an inside
(32:59):
scoop as you can get. And thank you so much
Anonymous for for sharing the story and as Noel said, uh,
cooperating with us like vetting a little bit. Uh, this
is legit. The facts about Midlands are correct. And want
to shout out again our earlier episode we had um
(33:24):
believe it was called something like hen people manufacture earthquakes.
The answer is yeah, kind of, but not on not
necessarily on purpose, and not in a way that is
uh targetable or useful, like we don't have we don't
have some kind of earthquake satellite right now we do
(33:47):
have is a disastrous consequence of the of tracking technology.
And just objectively, man fracking is it's impressive. It's an
impressive idea. It just we got into it without understanding
the true cost. I would say, what do you think.
I would completely agree And and as much as like
(34:07):
you know, pharmaceuticals have to be vetted and tested and
you know with trials and you know, control groups and
all of that, it's mind blowing to me. I would
be interested to know that the backstory of fracking or
how it was tested outside of the field. I mean,
it's eisly the kind of thing where you really have
to kind of field tested. There's no way to simulate.
Maybe there is, um let us know actually any uh
(34:30):
frackers out there or seismologists, but what we do know.
One of the states that the anonymous listener mentioned was Oklahoma,
and there is a pretty fantastic article and Scientific American
um by Anna Couchment that was released on September nine,
twenty nineteen. The headline, even if injection of fracking wastewater
(34:54):
stops quakes won't And the reason for that is, I
mean just a little bit of fracking one on one.
This is really oversimplified, but essentially, these drills are carried
to the site in numerous heavy you know trucks and assembled.
I think sometimes it's like twenty or thirty truckloads for
one single drill, uh put together. And then there is
(35:18):
a like a like a pilot hole that's drilled down
to about a hundred feet below the deepest aquifer. And
the aquifers are important because these you know, contaminated radium
contaminated water we're talking about can actually seep into the
aquifer the groundwater and all of that, um but that's
a separate issue. Then there's like a cemented steel casing
that's inserted down and then that goes down to about
(35:40):
a thousand feet above the underground area where like the
pockets of oil and gas are trapped, and that's when
they end. They do some other things cementing and testing
and make sure the pipe is is solid in terms
of like how much it will you know, hold if
it's like, you know, actually not gonna leak any of
this fluid. Um. And then they complete the well and
then the fracking begins, which is essentially just pumping this
(36:03):
liquid deep deep, deep down into the earth. And it's
not like magic. It's just water and sand point five um,
chemicals that you would typically find around your house, nothing
like super secret or proprietary right acids exactly um. And
that's us pumped in a mega high pressure to the
(36:24):
point where it starts to uh kind of seep into
these perforations in the rock and the shale, and that
then frees the oil it's trapped. And then this is
done repeatedly, you know, until the you know, and then
the water is also there's like wastewater that goes into
these wastewater wells. But here's the thing, Um, this causes
(36:44):
fractures in deep, deep, deep ancient plates. And we remember
from geology, you know, or physical science, I guess what
happens when plates fracture or rub against each other. They
create tremors, know that, and they can and those tremors
can then lead to earthquakes. And even after the rigs
(37:04):
have been you know, picked up and moved on those
cracks remain. Yeah, so step back a little bit. I
think I think we often can forget just how established
fracking is because a lot of people didn't hear about
it in the mainstream until several years ago. But you
can trace the birth of fracking all the way back
(37:26):
to the eighteen sixties, and the stuff that we're talking
about hydraulic fracking really begins in like the nineteen forties.
This has been around for a while. Uh, there was
an economic factor that made it more profitable to engage
in fracking on a you know, on a wider scale.
(37:46):
And now that the infrastructure is in place, Uh, of
course people are not going to be incentivized to stop it.
But the the Permian basin is what we're talking about.
We're talking about Texas. It seems like since February to June.
In that time frame, there were at least ten quakes
(38:09):
in the area, ranging from two point oh to five
point oh on the Richter scale. I don't know, have
you ever been in an earthquake or a ten blower?
I never, Yes, it's trippy and uh when it when
it happened, I was in an area that was prone
to these smaller quakes. So I looked like, by far,
(38:32):
the most cowardly person in the room. I was having
breakfast with uh lovely older family and the kids. There
were elderly people and there were kids. There was like
one person my age, and I was not having it.
I didn't understand how people just like everybody just kind
of braced and held whatever they were holding, Like they
(38:54):
picked up their glasses and the table was shaking a little,
and then when it was done, they put their glasses
down and they went back to eating again. It's so
weird how things can how quickly some things can become normal.
This is not normal, though. We need to point out
most of those quakes that I just mentioned are coming
from depths of about three miles in the ground or
(39:15):
five kilometers, So there is something there is something like
to your point, noal that's messing with the surface. The
industry is careful how they talk about this, UH, and
you'll get some conflicting reports depending on who you ask
about when you ask about the degree to which fracking
(39:37):
can affect or induce earthquakes. But to your point, seismologists
and geophysicists UH all agree that this technology plays a
role here. One weird thing I found a geophysicist Don
Blakeman from the National Earthquake Information Center who said it's
(39:57):
fairly common for places like West Texas to experience some
degree of small earthquakes. In fact, he said, you can
find like any almost any area of the US can
experience uh, small earthquakes, and some of them are so
small that you might not notice, you know what I mean,
unless you had a detector of some sort or you
(40:21):
had technology that could alert you to it. So, you know,
I have massive respect for the experts who are being
careful with the science and then trying not to be hyperbolic.
But man, it looks like there's a pretty solid case,
wouldn't you say absolutely? I mean, you know, it's it's
you don't want to get too deep into the where
(40:41):
there's smoke, there's fire situation. But I mean this again,
the Scientific American article really makes a great case, you know,
in terms of the science behind it, the seismology. In
the article, um, they actually speak to Oklahoma's chief seismologist,
Jacob Walter. Uh and the article starts that Jacob Walter
(41:01):
likes to remind people that what has transpired in Oklahoma
over the past decade is unprecedented in human history. He
is Oklahoma State seismologist, and he is referring specifically to
a surge of earthquakes unprecedented in the history of the state.
UM since fracking was introduced. And we're talking about a
(41:23):
significant increase in the percentage of high magnitude earthquakes that
originate at these depths where this fracking activity is taking place.
Because according to the seismologist and also a well known
hydrologist that was quoted for this article, UM, this is
where the connections happen between these deeper faults that are
(41:44):
under more and more stress, and they can release more
and more energy from deep down that starts a chain
reaction that can lead to these higher magnitude earthquakes. And
there's actually even a study that was published in July
of last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Science is that used modeling to explain how pressure from
this wastewater disposal that I was talking about earlier can
(42:06):
also trigger earthquakes. So there's multiple elements in the in
the process of fracking that can lead to this kind
of stress on these deep ancient faults. Yeah, this is
an important point. Here's a question for everybody. I hope
it's I hope it's not too strange a question, But
are we going to reach a point where we can
(42:28):
no longer refer to some natural disasters as natural disasters?
What happens when a big one hits? In two thousand
and eight, uh, some eighty thousand people died or went
missing in China following a seven point nine earthquake seven
point nine on the Richter scale in Sichuan. And right now,
(42:50):
the experts believe this earthquake was triggered by a huge
reservoir three hundred twenty million tons of water just sitting
over a fault line. That doesn't feel like some super
villain plan to make an earthquake, but it does feel
like it does feel like we have to acknowledge human rule,
the human rule in this and and fracking, by the way,
(43:12):
is a huge, huge industry. No one's really sure about
how you can about how to continue fracking without running
an ever increasing risk of manufacturing earthquakes, you know what
I mean, Like, don't frack around the San Andreas, guys,
just don't do it. It's also become a really divisive
political issue because you know, as like progressive as the
(43:37):
new administration is, or as like you know, left leaning
politicians are in terms of like um environmentalism and and
you know, increasing regulation on these types of operations, especially
on things that pollute. Fracking is almost considered like off
limits because it's such a money maker and such a
slam duck to get the job done that it's almost
(43:59):
like even something the left doesn't want to even touch
because it would absolutely alienate so many industries and constituents. Right, Yeah,
it's true. It can be. How I said, we said
it in a previous episode, it's messing with the money.
One of the money. Yeah, one of the one of
the most harshly enforced unwritten laws in the United States.
(44:25):
So we right now we don't know where this will go,
but there there is a solid case that this practice
is approaching, you know, a conspiratorial level. We may be
in a situation where, not too many years from now,
leaked documents emerge that proves some of these large corporations
(44:49):
were explicitly aware of the dangers of this practice and
chase the profit line instead, just like the Pont and Taflon,
just like the sugar industry, just like UM oh god,
there there are actually too many examples. But what do
you think you think we'll we'll see some new stuff
come to light. I I do think that I think
(45:10):
it will take a long time because these are some
very protected entities, you know. Uh. And and also just
back briefly what I was saying. Biden has made a
move to limit new oil leases for the time being.
He imposed a sixty day suspension uh and then this
week when a step further, ordering a moratorium on new
(45:30):
oil and gas leases on federal land and water areas.
So he is putting in some restrictions. But his opponents,
you know, a big campaign thing, a divisive item or
something that was used against him was this idea that
he would ban fracking uh. And that is clearly not
going to happen. Yeah, yeah, you're right. The the potential
(45:56):
to uh sustain a massive energy into street is a
huge deal. And also, you know, we're talking we're we
can't forget that we're talking about human beings who have
careers in this in this industry. We're talking about real people. Um.
The problem is we're also talking about real earthquakes. I
(46:18):
mean our listeners. Case in point, this is someone who uh,
gets their livelihood from this type of activity, but also
clearly feels a little divided on the issue. Right Yeah,
I mean it's a problem that's gonna becoming increasingly widespread
in the age of the anthroposine, which is the fancy
name for humans are messing stuff up. This is what
(46:39):
history will remember this era as. But we, of course
don't want to be too dystopian about this. We know
we know that there is exciting science in this field.
We know that there are some pretty amazing, highly impressive
(47:00):
research initiatives into alternative forms of energy. And I hate
that the phrase alternative forms of energy got this kind
of hippie esque of my asthma attached to it, Like
when when people say alternative forms of energy, they're really
talking about super old technology in a new way, stuff
(47:22):
that existed way before we figured out this whole oil fad.
You know what I mean? Boats were wind powered, right,
That's it's not a crazy thing to say windmills existed. Uh.
People used the sun and the energy from it for
various other things. So I I think there's a world
where we can not manufacture earthquakes. Yeah, I would love
(47:45):
that super great. I think we could all we can
all get behind the idea that it would be great
to not have more earthquakes. I don't think that's super divisive,
but we appreciate your time, Anonymous, thank you for writing
in thank you to our two earlier listeners. We massively
appreciate your insight. As always, we want to hear from you,
(48:10):
so we try to make ourselves easy to find on
the Internet. You can hop on over to our Facebook
group page. Here's where it gets crazy, some of the
best mods in the business on the the officially the
best page on Facebook. I think that came straight from
Mark Zuckerberg, but I haven't checked this text. Uh, And
let us know what's on your mind. Let us know
(48:30):
if you've experienced the earthquakes you feel might be attributable
to fracking, let us know if you have experience with
Australia's Stolen Generation. And let us know if you too
have encountered billboards about radioactive Brian. If you don't want
to hop on the internet, we have a phone number
two we do. You can call us toll for you
(48:51):
A one three three S T d W y t
K leave a method to the sound of Ben's dulcet tones.
Three minutes is the time that you shall have it
as your time and your time alone. Try to make
it count. Get it all in that three minutes make
you much more likely to be included in one of
our weekly listener male segments, like the one we just
finished just now. Also make sure to let us know if,
(49:13):
like our anonymous emailer, you'd prefer to stay anonymous, or
if you'd rather us not use your voice recording on
the air. We prefer it, we like it. But if
you want and the story really does it for us,
we can just you know, do a kind of paraphrasing. Um,
but please do let us know. And if none of
that way irradiates your value, there's one way that you
(49:33):
can always get in contact with us. You can send
us a good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
(50:01):
to know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code Enave, doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This week's listener mail has a
little bit of a theme, gentleman, I propose, maybe, Matt,
(00:47):
we we start with the correspondence you found and then uh,
and then we'll go from there. We'll do like a
three act structure thing. Oh, most excellent bill Ben. Uh, sorry, Ted,
I don't know what wild stallions. Yes, this message is
an email. It came from Lauren E. Lauren, you know
(01:07):
who you are, you said. My husband and I are
currently driving through rural Ohio and a billboard caught my eye.
Something something radioactive, groundwater, something something visit Radium Valley dot org. Okay, well, okay,
I thought it's rural Ohio and I can only read
so much Wikipedia. First, The website is brilliant early Internet
(01:28):
design being revived, but it piques my interest in this
entire idea of radioactive brine. M I. T. Says it's
an interesting supply chain. Scientific Americans says it's questionable either way.
I get this visual of our roads glowing green because
of it all. Anyway, I've always wanted to find a
random thing that might be interesting enough to send to
(01:49):
you all, and maybe this is it. Stay safe, Lauren, Well,
thank you so much Lauren for writing in, because you
know that the three of us as well as Doc
holiday and just now I'm guarantee you just now, this
is what she did. We all went to Radium Valves
dot org. It is a delight. It's beautiful, you cause, guys,
(02:15):
you're right, You're right, You're right, you're right. The first
thing you get is a giant full on purple This
site is owned and published by C. E C A Inc.
Whatever that is. Then below that you get a great
photoshopped image of thunderstorms and lightning and a nice little
quaint wooden sign that's got a pretty noticeable radioactive symbol
(02:39):
on it, and it says welcome to Radium Valley, where
radioactive waste is good for business and good for you
not to mention the class at glow effects on the
words radium Valley like photoshop one O one. You know
what I mean As a partially color blind person, A
dig in this because if these colors are bright enough
(03:01):
for me to differentiate, I can only imagine what it
looks like to you guys. Oh man screaming. It is
an awful thing, knowing that I'm getting some like small
little extra experience than you. And I just look at
a photo bend that really does hurt me, and I'm sorry, No, no,
it's great, It's I wouldn't have it any other way.
(03:21):
Tried on those uh color blind corrective classes, which was
a super cool experience, nothing to do with radium, I hope,
and uh. And then you know, I went back, I
went back to the way. Yeah, I like it. I
like where I'm at. I dig it. I support your Yeah,
(03:42):
it says the A B c's and Brian. All right,
well let's jump into what else this thing says. It says,
stop spreading radioactive Brian, b R I N E on
our roads and land. And then it gives you the
A B C s of Brian. Hey, all over the place.
Brian is being spread all over Ohio on township roads,
county roads, private land, and public land. But after it
(04:05):
rains or the snow is melted, it all flows into
the wells, springs, ponds, rivers, and aquifers that we all
share and use. B brine is radioactive brine is really
oil field waste from gas and oil wells. Oh D
and R test proved that it contains high levels of
radioactive radium. This is true. This is true. C is
(04:29):
for cancer. Cancer is caused by high levels of radium
or can be caused cancer and can or radium is
one cause of cancer. I love that. And then and
then and then a nice big old just stop brine,
ye sign the position, talk to your neighbor's opinion, give
years to a politician, put a sign in your yard.
(04:50):
So this is a website that is attempting to give
anyone who visits it information about this issue radioactive brine,
and it kind of tells you what It is, a
byproduct of the creation of gas and oil, or at
least the pulling of those substances from the earth. So
(05:11):
let's learn a little bit more about it by going
to the E P. A. Now there is a site
on the e p A. It is e p A
dot gov slash Radiation and then you'll be able to
find this from there. It's on ten orm T E
N O r M Oil and Gas Production Wastes. On
this website, it gives you the information that fracking this
(05:32):
new thing that we've talked about many times on this
show where substances are shot into the earth to break
up shale which is a type of stone, type of rock,
and other formations of you know, varying chemicals and substances.
It breaks that stuff up and that stuff shoots up
(05:53):
through the ground up into you know, an oil pipeline
and then it can be processed from there. Now, there
are all kinds of issues with this substance. Let's but
let's let's specifically talk about what this Radium Valley website
is about. There are other things that come up within
(06:15):
that shale, other materials, other byproducts. Some of them are
uranium and it's decay products, thorium and it's stuff radium,
potassium forty lead to ten and polonium to ten. These
are all radioactive substances. They are naturally occurring radio nuclide
(06:37):
new new clients. Okay, radio nuclides. For some reason, my
brain wanted to change that into something else, nucleotides. I
remember that, not the same thing, I guess I don't know, yes,
but these are also referred to as naturally occurring radioactive
materials or NORM and uh, this is a big problem.
(06:58):
So what do you do with that stuff when you've
got some of it, even just a little bit of it,
Because a little bit of it is a problem. You
can't just throw that stuff in, you know, any old landfill.
You can't just put it in a lake or a stream.
You gotta really take care of it. That's radioactive waste,
my friends. It sticks around for a long long time,
(07:19):
and it hurts everything that it's near. Well, here's why
it's a major problem, and why we even know a
lot about this. There is a Rolling Stone article published
January twenty one. It's written by Justin Noble and it
is titled America's Radioactive Secret. This is a large investigation,
(07:42):
a large article. We recommend you take a look if
you have the time, and we recommend you take the
time to look at it. But it is going to
it's gonna be a chunk of your afternoon set some
more morning or whenever you get to it. If you
do look through it, it shows you in and it's
splaines that this Brian that we're talking about, it's really
(08:04):
salty water with some other stuff in it. There are
ten gallons of this stuff produced for every one gallon
of natural gas or petroleum that you know, the stuff
that will become petroleum that comes out of the ground,
So ten to one ratio this stuff. Sometimes it's pretty
contaminated with radioactive materials. Other times it is ridunculously contaminated.
(08:29):
And there's no real way to know how much radio
radioactive material is in this brine or like one truckload
of the brine, until you test the contents of a
truck or a container that this stuff is put into.
There are so many problems been I no, I know
you've looked at some of this stuff. I'll just hit
a couple of them, um, because it may not be
(08:50):
good for us to go all the way down the
rabbit hole here. But uh, truck drivers who move this stuff. Again,
we're talking about ten to one ratio for duction here,
so we're talking about dozens and dozens and dozens of
truck loads per day. Per site that is fracking and
creating this stuff. Uh, they aren't wearing protective clothing for
(09:13):
radioactive materials in many times, many times, in most of
the time at least that this article found in. They
aren't trained and they aren't even aware that radioactive materials
are on board their their load that there that they're
taking around to a dump site. The dump sites where
they end up if they end up at a landfill,
(09:35):
many times are not capable of handling radioactive waste. So
then that material ends up leaching back into the groundwater
into all other you know, all kinds of water sources
that exist wherever that landfill is. There are even some
programs that are using this brine because remember it's salty water.
(09:55):
They're using it in Ohio and a couple other places
to e ice the roads or two pre d ice
the roads as a preventive measure. Right, Yeah, yeah, that's
the There's there's so many, man, you're right, so many issues.
So one thing we have to say is, uh, shout
out to Science Daily as well, that's cited some research
(10:18):
on how this stuff is created. So we want to
be very clear the company's fracking are not purposely pouring
radium into the ground so far that we know of.
When the water and the hydrochloric acid and other acids
that they use are injected with sand and interact with
(10:39):
this ancient shale. Uh, that's that reaction is where we
see these radioactive things being created. Uh. The point about
informed consent is huge. We can't recommend the Rolling Stone
article enough because you'll be introduced to some truckers who
were the main canaries in this dubious coal mine. Uh.
(11:04):
That's where also I learned this one of the street
names for radium, which is terrified. You guys caught this too, right,
bone seeker? Yeah, because I mean assumedly it gets it.
It actually can be responsible for a bone cancer. Yes, yes,
it goes. It can be incorporated into the skeleton and
(11:26):
caused sarcomas. H Yeah, it's really scary stuff. This is
this is a gentleman named Peter who was driving a
truck and believe he was getting paid sixteen dollars an
hour at least according to that article. So that would
be and we know how the dollar fluctuates. Just kidding, um.
(11:48):
He was saying, quote, a lot of guys are coming
up with cancer or sores and skin lesions that take
months to heal. And he goes on to say that
he experiences regular headaches and nausea, numbness in his fingertips,
and face in joint pain like fire. And if that's
because again they aren't wearing anything, you know, to protect them.
They're wearing a hard hat, steel toed boots and some
(12:10):
standard you know, fairer on their torso and everything. And
that's about it. Um, really really creepy stuff. And again,
if you continue down that that article, you'll learn exactly
how radioactive some of these substances have been. Uh, there's
a gentleman, a specialist, and I'm not even looking at
full article honestly because zoom and recording and everything is
(12:34):
causing this giant article to the load super slowly. But
there's an expert here that was saying if he had
a beaker, like a small standard scientific beaker of this
stuff sitting in his lab and he was using it
for testing, and it happened to just fall, the glass
broke and this brine spread across the floor. He's saying,
(12:54):
and this is theoretically, they would shut down that entire building,
or at least that side of the lab. Because it
would be dangerous for anyone else to work in there
until it was fully cleaned up, and it's very difficult
to do that, and studies are currently limited. This is
this is an ongoing story. UH. To represent the industry's view,
(13:15):
the people who condone or advocate for this practice as
as it's currently instituted, UH, they'll say something like, yes,
there is radiation exposure, but it is statistically insignificant. UM.
Long time listeners, you know, we've pointed this out before.
(13:36):
A lot of stuff can give you low level exposures
to radiation, like bananas, for instance, but they're not gonna
give you cancer. That That is what I would say
is the difference that industry advocates seem to be missing
radium is UH. I hope it's not a hot take.
Radium is more dangerous than a banana. Something called a
(14:00):
bone seeker, again, is very different from stuff you would
find in the produce aisle. I think I I haven't
seen bone seekers in in the produce aisle. Maybe they're
next to the other weird stuff like dragon fruit. Well,
and one of the big problems with bone seeker is
that it's radiation within these substances that then kind of
(14:23):
shoots off and attaches itself to anything in the environment. Right,
That could be your skin, It could be blocked by
your skin. It doesn't get into your inside, you may
be all right. But the worst part is if it
gets onto dust particles in the air that are small
enough for you to inhale or ingest, then that gets
into your body. That's when the bone seeking comes in
(14:44):
um and it's it's really really dangerous. And if you're
just thinking about the thousands of driver truck drivers and
the other specialists who are who are actively interacting with
the substances, taking a giant hose, putting it into a container,
opening it up, getting the brine into that other container.
(15:05):
Some of it gets off, gets on their hands, maybe
they're breathing. Maybe they're breathing. Sometimes humans breathe. Generally we
do that. But it's a very trendy thing, it really is.
It's it's just got popular and it just stayed uh
and that's super dangerous for them, and that's terrible, and
(15:26):
hopefully there's gonna be something to change what's going on
there to help the workers. The scariest part is everybody else,
all the bystandards that have nothing to do with anything
that's occurring here. And the stuff's getting into their drinking water,
it's going into the land, it's hurting the animals, it's
it's scary. And again we're not saying that the companies
(15:47):
fracking are purposefully trying to irradiate everything. It's just a
really unfortunate side product, one of the unfortunate side products
of the process itself. Well said, this feels like a
call for us to do an updated episode, uh, an
addendum to our previous work on fracking itself, which goes deep,
(16:11):
goes deep, not just not just into the surface of
the earth. Wonderful. All right, Well, with that, we're gonna
take a word from our sponsor and we will be
right back. And we have returned. Our next piece of
(16:33):
correspondence comes from Benson S. Benson wrote an awesome and
important letter to us. We'd like to share it with you.
Here it goes. Good day, Ben, Matt and Noel, longtime listener,
first time writer. Love the show, the variety of topics
covered and the critical yet sensitive nature you present topics
(16:53):
in mature and informative way. I'm an Australian of English
descent with family members traced back to the Third Fleet. Yes,
they were convicts slash criminals. And I've known a little
bit about this topic, but not enough to hold a conversation,
nor enough to comprehend its impact on Australia's Aboriginal and
(17:14):
Tories Straight Islander community. It is a government conspiracy that
actually took place, with the effects still being felt today,
more than fifty years after the fact. I am unsure
if this topic is known outside of Australia, unsure if
you've covered or touched on the topic on previous episodes.
And I'm certain that more Australians should try to understand
(17:35):
the damaging ramifications of these government policies and how they
have impacted so many lives and continue to do so today.
I'm speaking of Australia's stolen generation. Would be thrilled for
you and the team to take a look through the
stuff they don't want you to know, Lens and get
your thoughts or even if this is something that you've
come across in the past, I feel the lessons that
(17:57):
should have been learned during this time of Australia's dark
history could well be taught across the globe to learn
from our mistakes and remedy them more so now than
ever before. UH and Benson, you have included a couple
of great leads starting links. One thing that I really
appreciate that you did here was you went directly to
(18:22):
the official government sites, which will always have a stance
on this sort of stuff. Um, how effective is that
stance versus how performative? Well, that's a that's a matter
of debate. We have not talked about the Stolen Generation
in depth on the show before, but Matt Noel, I
(18:43):
know that as you guys were hearing this letter, you
were immediately thinking of some disturbingly similar situations in other countries,
often in the Anglo sphere as well. Yeah, we have
talked numerous times on the show about indigenous peoples that
were either move moved out forcibly or we're indoctrinated, or
(19:05):
just usually stricken with plague or something right like sent
to UH sent to schools, boarding schools. The children are
stolen and UH forced to no longer speak their native language.
Usually religious ideology is forced upon them. This has happened
in Canada, that's happened in the United States, and this
(19:29):
occurred in Australia as well. The victims of this multigenerational
practice are known collectively as the stolen generations or the
stolen children. It's terrifying because somewhere around the beginning of
the twentieth century or early nineteen hundreds, this practice began
(19:50):
and it continued into get this, the nineteen seventies. Some
of our listeners today were alive in this was happening,
which is insane and and the the high level part
of this, the easiest way to explain it is that
there were a lot of Aboriginal children that were, in
(20:14):
the parlance of the time described as mixed race. And
the government of Australia noticed exactly what you would referenced
earlier in all uh, the catastrophic decline of the native
population after after Europeans arrived. So this this is due
to a number of factors. Of course, violence on the
part of the colonizer's side, and of course introduction of
(20:40):
new diseases, right, which is tremendously dangerous and not necessarily intentional. Right. Uh.
What the government did was they made this assumption and said,
look at how the population is just plummeting. There is
no way that this native population will be able to
sustain itself. They are doomed to extinction. And so uh,
(21:04):
they said, we can take mixed race children away from
their families and their communities, and we can train them
to quote work in white society, and they will grow
up and naturally marry white people and be further assimilated. Uh.
They a lot of the phrases that were used in
(21:24):
this reasoning, are you know, tremendously tremendously offensive today? Um? Sure, folks,
And I'm sure we're familiar with a lot of these phrases.
We don't need to give them maritime. Uh. But what
what happens then? What happens when you steal children? That's
the question. And it's the same one that occurred in Canada,
(21:47):
same one that occurred in the US. Uh. It seems
like there are tons of knock on effects. Anxiety depression PTSD,
suicide rates rise, alcohol abuse. Uh, kids are missing school.
There are other like stress causes, so many other physiological ailments.
(22:09):
And this situation got more recognition in a book published
in one by an a Storian professor named Peter read
this book, The Stolen Generations really propagated the story and
I would pause it. Uh, lead a lot of people
who felt like maybe they had a limited, terrible experience
(22:32):
and let them know they were not alone, but were
in fact victims of a much larger conspiracy. It just
blows my mind, you guys, the nineteen and seventies Faulkner
was right. History is not over. It really is. I mean,
it's it's the same like way I felt when I
realized that apartheid was in like the early nineties. You know,
(22:53):
just you think stuff like that, it's relegated to the
like trash dump of history. But it is uh much
closer than many of us would like to believe. And
in two thousand eight, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued
a public apology to the Indigenous people of Australia. But
that doesn't that doesn't put the horseback in the barn
(23:18):
as it were. Uh, there's a known ongoing problem with
what they call under policing of child welfare in Aboriginal communities.
Tons of discrimination, m tons of like. My my question
here for you guys, it's it goes back to our
(23:40):
earlier episode. Does this count as a form of genocide
or an attempt at it? It's it sure feels genocide adjacent.
Let us say, well, yeah, it's it's it's just on
a longer scale. I mean, really it is when you're
talking about the innerger generational trauma that gets passed down,
(24:00):
what how that affects each individual person and then weakening
a community to be able to work together and be
successful individually as well as together. Yeah, I mean it's
that is It is weird. It's slow motion genocide. And
you can look back at our previous episode on why
defining things as genocide is a very specific legal matter,
(24:28):
right per the win. Uh, please don't take my it's
not genci because I say it is, you know, I
mean it's Uh. I like the phrase genocide adjacent. It
sure feels like that's that's a fair linguistic compromise. This happened,
(24:48):
by the way, there there was another program that pertained
to non Indigenous children. Uh. And these the victims of
this one are just sscribed sometimes as the White Lost Generation. Uh.
These were non Indigenous children who were kidnapped from their
families if their mothers were deemed unfit, whatever unfit means
(25:14):
in this regard, and that continued until the nineties. Also
portrayed as a greater good scenario for society. I mean
then that that's terrible because as we talked about with
some of the foster care things we've discussed before, on
a case by case basis, you have to look at
some of that stuff where maybe there is a child
that needs to be removed, right, but then in a
(25:36):
lot of cases a child doesn't need to be removed
but gets removed anyway, or that. You know, they are
all kinds of really complicated scenarios at play there. But
to imagine it as a greater good thing, I don't know,
it seems tough. And of course to add add some
(25:56):
um abusive icing on this genocidal cake. Yes, if you
assumed that these children were abused while in this care system,
you are unfortunately very correct. Psychological abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. Uh.
And they were also kind of shamed, they were guilt
(26:16):
tripped about their original communities, you know, because they were
they were taught, they were taught that they could aspire
to improve themselves by complying with this other culture and
then assimilating as much as possible into it while still
(26:38):
never being quite as good, you know what I mean.
But a terrible situation to put this in. Uh. Right now,
we we'd have to dive into this further, but right now,
from what we see, there are various initiatives to help
the victims and the survivors, things like the Healing Foundation,
(27:00):
which was established in two thousand and nine, or the
Marumali Program, which was designed by a survivor of the
stolen generations, but there hasn't been at this point as
far as we can tell, there hasn't been like a
government wide reparations scheme or uh something to address the
(27:23):
overall issue. And it's tough because how do you how
on earth do you quantify that? You know what I mean, like,
how do you give someone their childhood back? The technology
is not there yet, which I it sounds like a
weird thing to say, but I mean by what I
mean is even if we wanted as a species to
(27:44):
make this right, uh, we do not know how to
do so. Yeah, besides helping this generation, you know, as
much as you can get a leg up, get them,
get them on more equal footing when it comes to opportunities.
I mean, that's one way to do it, especially monetarily. Yeah,
(28:06):
I mean, that's one of the only ways to try.
Right right now, how do you how do you trace it.
How do you unravel this Gordian knots um this this
labyrinthine tableau of tragedy. Uh we I think we should
examine this further in depth in a later episode, and
in the meantime, while we're preparing for that, we'd love
(28:28):
to hear from you. Um. You know we We've got
a lot of great listeners in Australia, so I I
can only assume that some of us in the audience
today have had secondhand or perhaps firsthand experience with either
this practice or the consequences and the ripple effects it created.
(28:49):
So we are on the case. We want to hear
from you as always, you are the most important part
of this show. To end on just a like a
slightly less bleak note. Well, there's one important thing we
missed from Matt's earlier segment, which is that Radium Valley
dot Org has a mascot. His name is Mortemus. I
(29:10):
was gonna say he's a little like bad clip art looking, uh,
spooky skeleton with a radioactive symbol medallion, sort of like
Allah the flavor flav clock. Uh. It looks like the
kind of thing you'd see like airbrushed on the side
of a bad carnival haunted house or definitely coming a
really kick ass van, but uh yeah, Mortemus also has
(29:36):
made the interesting fashion choice to have a sleeveless road
and maybe that radioactive sign is a brooch, but we're
just saying that so that this is not completely depressing,
and it's a little bit of foreshadowing because we're gonna
pause for a word from our sponsor and then we'll
return to a story that ties back to our early segment.
(30:00):
Are we gonna dig deeper into that oil? Well, let's
just let's shoot some fracking liquid down into the topic.
Let's go, and we're back, uh, following this red thread
down a very very deep uh and scary uh you know,
(30:25):
tube shaped rabbit hole. I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep
the fracking and drilling puns going, not really even puns,
just the imagery. But yeah, no, this is interesting. Only
we've ever done this before, like a fully themed kind
of triumvirate alas our compatriot Matthew had to hop for
this last segment to have adventures elsewhere. But um, this
(30:46):
really is kind of a nice bow on this whole
subject that we've been talking about everything from you know,
every kind of every side of what this very controversial
practice of fracking does, UM, and one of them, it's
the kind of thing that like the oil and gas
companies would like to think, what would like you as
the consumer, you, as you know, the average human person,
(31:09):
UH to think is a conspiracy But alas, UM pretty
sure it's it's not. It's actually very much cold, hard fact.
And we got this insider scoop uh from a listener
who asked very specifically to remain anonymous, and the email
goes like this specifically also, by the way, asked to
(31:30):
be anonymous because this is having their identity associated with
this email could have damaging effects on their career in
the oil and gas industry. UM, but also did leave
us their information so we could vet uh. This information
confirmed this human person is in fact who they say
they are and associated with this industry, and all that
(31:52):
checked out. So I'll start, UM. I live in Midland, Texas,
the heart of the oil and gas industry and one of,
if not the heaviest fracked locations in the world. Since
the rise in popularity and effectiveness of hydraulic fracturing in
the industry, we have begun to have minor tremmors over
the past decade, maybe longer with the occasional small scale earthquake.
(32:14):
About three months ago, we had a three point seven
it's not large, but very feelable magnitude earthquake that was
mentioned once in our local news and then never mentioned again,
as if it was some secret that accidentally slipped out.
Working closely with my company president of an O and
G pump company, he alluded that the epicenter of the
quake was very near a field where our pumps are utilized,
(32:37):
roughly ninety five of them. These things are massive. By
the way, I can't say we're responsible for the event,
but it's an open secret in the industry that we
fracking as a whole are definitely the cause of the
uptick in earthquakes in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Yep, yeah,
I mean that's that's about as close to an inside
(32:59):
scoop as you can get. And thank you so much
Anonymous for for sharing the story and as Noel said, uh,
cooperating with us like vetting a little bit. Uh, this
is legit. The facts about Midlands are correct. And want
to shout out again our earlier episode we had um
(33:24):
believe it was called something like hen people manufacture earthquakes.
The answer is yeah, kind of, but not on not
necessarily on purpose, and not in a way that is
uh targetable or useful, like we don't have we don't
have some kind of earthquake satellite right now we do
(33:47):
have is a disastrous consequence of the of tracking technology.
And just objectively, man fracking is it's impressive. It's an
impressive idea. It just we got into it without understanding
the true cost. I would say, what do you think.
I would completely agree And and as much as like
(34:07):
you know, pharmaceuticals have to be vetted and tested and
you know with trials and you know, control groups and
all of that, it's mind blowing to me. I would
be interested to know that the backstory of fracking or
how it was tested outside of the field. I mean,
it's eisly the kind of thing where you really have
to kind of field tested. There's no way to simulate.
Maybe there is, um let us know actually any uh
(34:30):
frackers out there or seismologists, but what we do know.
One of the states that the anonymous listener mentioned was Oklahoma,
and there is a pretty fantastic article and Scientific American
um by Anna Couchment that was released on September nine,
twenty nineteen. The headline, even if injection of fracking wastewater
(34:54):
stops quakes won't And the reason for that is, I
mean just a little bit of fracking one on one.
This is really oversimplified, but essentially, these drills are carried
to the site in numerous heavy you know trucks and assembled.
I think sometimes it's like twenty or thirty truckloads for
one single drill, uh put together. And then there is
(35:18):
a like a like a pilot hole that's drilled down
to about a hundred feet below the deepest aquifer. And
the aquifers are important because these you know, contaminated radium
contaminated water we're talking about can actually seep into the
aquifer the groundwater and all of that, um but that's
a separate issue. Then there's like a cemented steel casing
that's inserted down and then that goes down to about
(35:40):
a thousand feet above the underground area where like the
pockets of oil and gas are trapped, and that's when
they end. They do some other things cementing and testing
and make sure the pipe is is solid in terms
of like how much it will you know, hold if
it's like, you know, actually not gonna leak any of
this fluid. Um. And then they complete the well and
then the fracking begins, which is essentially just pumping this
(36:03):
liquid deep deep, deep down into the earth. And it's
not like magic. It's just water and sand point five um,
chemicals that you would typically find around your house, nothing
like super secret or proprietary right acids exactly um. And
that's us pumped in a mega high pressure to the
(36:24):
point where it starts to uh kind of seep into
these perforations in the rock and the shale, and that
then frees the oil it's trapped. And then this is
done repeatedly, you know, until the you know, and then
the water is also there's like wastewater that goes into
these wastewater wells. But here's the thing, Um, this causes
(36:44):
fractures in deep, deep, deep ancient plates. And we remember
from geology, you know, or physical science, I guess what
happens when plates fracture or rub against each other. They
create tremors, know that, and they can and those tremors
can then lead to earthquakes. And even after the rigs
(37:04):
have been you know, picked up and moved on those
cracks remain. Yeah, so step back a little bit. I
think I think we often can forget just how established
fracking is because a lot of people didn't hear about
it in the mainstream until several years ago. But you
can trace the birth of fracking all the way back
(37:26):
to the eighteen sixties, and the stuff that we're talking
about hydraulic fracking really begins in like the nineteen forties.
This has been around for a while. Uh, there was
an economic factor that made it more profitable to engage
in fracking on a you know, on a wider scale.
(37:46):
And now that the infrastructure is in place, Uh, of
course people are not going to be incentivized to stop it.
But the the Permian basin is what we're talking about.
We're talking about Texas. It seems like since February to June.
In that time frame, there were at least ten quakes
(38:09):
in the area, ranging from two point oh to five
point oh on the Richter scale. I don't know, have
you ever been in an earthquake or a ten blower?
I never, Yes, it's trippy and uh when it when
it happened, I was in an area that was prone
to these smaller quakes. So I looked like, by far,
(38:32):
the most cowardly person in the room. I was having
breakfast with uh lovely older family and the kids. There
were elderly people and there were kids. There was like
one person my age, and I was not having it.
I didn't understand how people just like everybody just kind
of braced and held whatever they were holding, Like they
(38:54):
picked up their glasses and the table was shaking a little,
and then when it was done, they put their glasses
down and they went back to eating again. It's so
weird how things can how quickly some things can become normal.
This is not normal, though. We need to point out
most of those quakes that I just mentioned are coming
from depths of about three miles in the ground or
(39:15):
five kilometers, So there is something there is something like
to your point, noal that's messing with the surface. The
industry is careful how they talk about this, UH, and
you'll get some conflicting reports depending on who you ask
about when you ask about the degree to which fracking
(39:37):
can affect or induce earthquakes. But to your point, seismologists
and geophysicists UH all agree that this technology plays a
role here. One weird thing I found a geophysicist Don
Blakeman from the National Earthquake Information Center who said it's
(39:57):
fairly common for places like West Texas to experience some
degree of small earthquakes. In fact, he said, you can
find like any almost any area of the US can
experience uh, small earthquakes, and some of them are so
small that you might not notice, you know what I mean,
unless you had a detector of some sort or you
(40:21):
had technology that could alert you to it. So, you know,
I have massive respect for the experts who are being
careful with the science and then trying not to be hyperbolic.
But man, it looks like there's a pretty solid case,
wouldn't you say absolutely? I mean, you know, it's it's
you don't want to get too deep into the where
(40:41):
there's smoke, there's fire situation. But I mean this again,
the Scientific American article really makes a great case, you know,
in terms of the science behind it, the seismology. In
the article, um, they actually speak to Oklahoma's chief seismologist,
Jacob Walter. Uh and the article starts that Jacob Walter
(41:01):
likes to remind people that what has transpired in Oklahoma
over the past decade is unprecedented in human history. He
is Oklahoma State seismologist, and he is referring specifically to
a surge of earthquakes unprecedented in the history of the state.
UM since fracking was introduced. And we're talking about a
(41:23):
significant increase in the percentage of high magnitude earthquakes that
originate at these depths where this fracking activity is taking place.
Because according to the seismologist and also a well known
hydrologist that was quoted for this article, UM, this is
where the connections happen between these deeper faults that are
(41:44):
under more and more stress, and they can release more
and more energy from deep down that starts a chain
reaction that can lead to these higher magnitude earthquakes. And
there's actually even a study that was published in July
of last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Science is that used modeling to explain how pressure from
this wastewater disposal that I was talking about earlier can
(42:06):
also trigger earthquakes. So there's multiple elements in the in
the process of fracking that can lead to this kind
of stress on these deep ancient faults. Yeah, this is
an important point. Here's a question for everybody. I hope
it's I hope it's not too strange a question, But
are we going to reach a point where we can
(42:28):
no longer refer to some natural disasters as natural disasters?
What happens when a big one hits? In two thousand
and eight, uh, some eighty thousand people died or went
missing in China following a seven point nine earthquake seven
point nine on the Richter scale in Sichuan. And right now,
(42:50):
the experts believe this earthquake was triggered by a huge
reservoir three hundred twenty million tons of water just sitting
over a fault line. That doesn't feel like some super
villain plan to make an earthquake, but it does feel
like it does feel like we have to acknowledge human rule,
the human rule in this and and fracking, by the way,
(43:12):
is a huge, huge industry. No one's really sure about
how you can about how to continue fracking without running
an ever increasing risk of manufacturing earthquakes, you know what
I mean, Like, don't frack around the San Andreas, guys,
just don't do it. It's also become a really divisive
political issue because you know, as like progressive as the
(43:37):
new administration is, or as like you know, left leaning
politicians are in terms of like um environmentalism and and
you know, increasing regulation on these types of operations, especially
on things that pollute. Fracking is almost considered like off
limits because it's such a money maker and such a
slam duck to get the job done that it's almost
(43:59):
like even something the left doesn't want to even touch
because it would absolutely alienate so many industries and constituents. Right, Yeah,
it's true. It can be. How I said, we said
it in a previous episode, it's messing with the money.
One of the money. Yeah, one of the one of
the most harshly enforced unwritten laws in the United States.
(44:25):
So we right now we don't know where this will go,
but there there is a solid case that this practice
is approaching, you know, a conspiratorial level. We may be
in a situation where, not too many years from now,
leaked documents emerge that proves some of these large corporations
(44:49):
were explicitly aware of the dangers of this practice and
chase the profit line instead, just like the Pont and Taflon,
just like the sugar industry, just like UM oh god,
there there are actually too many examples. But what do
you think you think we'll we'll see some new stuff
come to light. I I do think that I think
(45:10):
it will take a long time because these are some
very protected entities, you know. Uh. And and also just
back briefly what I was saying. Biden has made a
move to limit new oil leases for the time being.
He imposed a sixty day suspension uh and then this
week when a step further, ordering a moratorium on new
(45:30):
oil and gas leases on federal land and water areas.
So he is putting in some restrictions. But his opponents,
you know, a big campaign thing, a divisive item or
something that was used against him was this idea that
he would ban fracking uh. And that is clearly not
going to happen. Yeah, yeah, you're right. The the potential
(45:56):
to uh sustain a massive energy into street is a
huge deal. And also, you know, we're talking we're we
can't forget that we're talking about human beings who have
careers in this in this industry. We're talking about real people. Um.
The problem is we're also talking about real earthquakes. I
(46:18):
mean our listeners. Case in point, this is someone who uh,
gets their livelihood from this type of activity, but also
clearly feels a little divided on the issue. Right Yeah,
I mean it's a problem that's gonna becoming increasingly widespread
in the age of the anthroposine, which is the fancy
name for humans are messing stuff up. This is what
(46:39):
history will remember this era as. But we, of course
don't want to be too dystopian about this. We know
we know that there is exciting science in this field.
We know that there are some pretty amazing, highly impressive
(47:00):
research initiatives into alternative forms of energy. And I hate
that the phrase alternative forms of energy got this kind
of hippie esque of my asthma attached to it, Like
when when people say alternative forms of energy, they're really
talking about super old technology in a new way, stuff
(47:22):
that existed way before we figured out this whole oil fad.
You know what I mean? Boats were wind powered, right,
That's it's not a crazy thing to say windmills existed. Uh.
People used the sun and the energy from it for
various other things. So I I think there's a world
where we can not manufacture earthquakes. Yeah, I would love
(47:45):
that super great. I think we could all we can
all get behind the idea that it would be great
to not have more earthquakes. I don't think that's super divisive,
but we appreciate your time, Anonymous, thank you for writing
in thank you to our two earlier listeners. We massively
appreciate your insight. As always, we want to hear from you,
(48:10):
so we try to make ourselves easy to find on
the Internet. You can hop on over to our Facebook
group page. Here's where it gets crazy, some of the
best mods in the business on the the officially the
best page on Facebook. I think that came straight from
Mark Zuckerberg, but I haven't checked this text. Uh, And
let us know what's on your mind. Let us know
(48:30):
if you've experienced the earthquakes you feel might be attributable
to fracking, let us know if you have experience with
Australia's Stolen Generation. And let us know if you too
have encountered billboards about radioactive Brian. If you don't want
to hop on the internet, we have a phone number
two we do. You can call us toll for you
(48:51):
A one three three S T d W y t
K leave a method to the sound of Ben's dulcet tones.
Three minutes is the time that you shall have it
as your time and your time alone. Try to make
it count. Get it all in that three minutes make
you much more likely to be included in one of
our weekly listener male segments, like the one we just
finished just now. Also make sure to let us know if,
(49:13):
like our anonymous emailer, you'd prefer to stay anonymous, or
if you'd rather us not use your voice recording on
the air. We prefer it, we like it. But if
you want and the story really does it for us,
we can just you know, do a kind of paraphrasing. Um,
but please do let us know. And if none of
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(49:33):
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