June 21, 2019 • 46 mins
In October of 2012 a huge explosion rocked Camp Minden, a little-known government compound located in Louisiana. The explosion shattered windows 4 miles away. A 7,000-foot mushroom cloud contaminated the area and eyewitnesses understandably wondered whether they'd been the victims of a nuclear detonation. So what exactly did happen? Tune in to learn more about the conspiracy afoot at Camp Minden.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noman.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control deconds. Most importantly, you
are you, and you are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Quick check in, Matt,
how's it going. Are you doing? Hey? Doing well? Hey?
You like the fonds over? Yeah? Things, Yeah, things are
(00:49):
are going well. I had this weird hair last night
where I noticed on the back fence and my property
there's just a ton of junk growing up around the
fence and through offence and on its old chain link fence,
and it's mostly like vines of some sort, and I
just I couldn't help it. I just started destroying all
the vines and just clasping them out the earth with salt. Nice. Nice.
(01:16):
I've always literally to literally do that. Is that where
the expression salt of the earth comes from? Or is
that different? I'm not familiar with the etymology there. Yeah,
in this case, it's killing all this stuff that's trying
to grow out. You're doing more of a scorched earth approach. Yeah,
what about you know, old checking in? How's it going?
Doing well? Thanks? Man? I got to piggyback a business
(01:37):
trip with family vacation. I brought my kid with me
to New York City and she hung out with her
godmother for a couple days when I worked and we
had adventures and it was a lot of fun, awesome,
And the check in that we liked institute applies to
you as well listening. So if you have an event
in your life that you would like to uh to
tell us and your fellow listeners about, feel Free, you
(01:57):
don't have to wait till the episode is over. You
could just pose it and give us a call. Now
we are one eight three three std W y t K,
and today we are off to camp. No, not a
summer camp, not a religious camp. Uh, none of those
sorts of camps. Were going to a camp that is
much more dangerous. We're exploring a genuine, literally explosive conspiracy
(02:22):
as well as a conspiracy theory. How can both of
those exist concurrently? Well, we will tell you inter Camp Minden.
Here are the facts. So there's a place called Webster Parish.
It's off of US Highway eight near doy Line, Louisiana,
between Minden, Louisiana and Bossier or Bossier City, probably Bossier City, Louisiana.
(02:44):
This thing, Camp Minden, is part of a larger compound
called the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant or lap l a P. Yeah,
And the history of this place goes all the way
back the beginning of nineteen thirty nine and the government
and that is when the government used eminent domain, which
you were mentioning off airband. We have yet to do
(03:05):
an episode on I think we might need to correct that. Um.
They used this concept of eminent domain to acquire the
land before the United States entered a World War two. Yeah. This, uh,
this compound is just under fifteen thousand acres. Originally it
had a couple of different names. It was the Louisiana
Ordinance Plant or it was called the Shell Plant, alluding
(03:29):
to of course, artillery shells. And for the entirety of
its time since uh, since it was fully acquired, beginning
in thirty nine, going to forty one, it has been
owned by Uncle Sam but this is an important distinction.
It has been operated by private contractors. So back to
(03:49):
back to this this history, right, L A a P
was completed in just eleven months under the direction of
a contractor, Silas Mason. At the time time, this was
middle of nowhere country. It was well where a family show.
It was just east of bumble F, if you know
(04:10):
what I mean. And there were very few people here.
So from a uh, congressional or state pork budget kind
of perspective, it makes sense to have this kind of
operation there, especially if you're dealing with ordinance or something
that might be dangerous. You don't want that in downtown
New Orleans, right Yeah. And it also makes sense of
(04:32):
the time that there that they needed a lot of
ammunition was right around World War Two, right, So, uh,
in May ninety two, there were a total of eight
production lines that were opened, and then by December nineteen
forty four, the number of employees hit its peak at
just under eleven thousand, ten thousand, seven hundred and fifty
(04:53):
four And that was in the month of the Battle
of the Bulge. That is a major operation. Yeah. Well,
I mean, think about all the ammunition that was deployed
during that conflict during World War two. Um, you needed
a lot of it. This they were not They were
certainly not creating all of the ammunition, but a good
portion of it. And then the plant was deactivated after
(05:18):
after the Summer of nine, right with v j D.
But here's a spooky fact. This is one of my
favorite things from the research. This place, Camp Minden and L. A. A. P.
Are used interchangeably, so let's just call it Camp Menden.
Camp Minden is built on not one, but nine cemeteries.
(05:39):
Are any of those Native American burial grounds? Uh no, No,
there may be some people uh from Native American populations
buried there, but they were they were rural cemeteries. The
date through uh different time periods, and they are now.
You know, they got a little bit better treatment than
(06:00):
the the stories we hear about and things like Poultergeist. Right,
they weren't. They weren't just paved over. Uh. They are
under the care of the US government. So you can
see existing grave markers they took out. There were these
wooden grave markers, right, which you're not going to hold
up very well in the human environment of Louisiana. And
(06:20):
they were replaced with small concrete slabs. But the thing is,
the slabs don't have the names of the deceased listed
on the markers. They're just slabs, which is pretty sad, right.
The cemeteries are Allentown Crew, Jim Davis, Keene, Nottingham, uh Rain, Richardson,
Van Orsdell, and Walker, and the people who are buried
(06:44):
there have their dates of birth and death and maybe
a little bit of other information. But the problem is,
even if you are a descendant and you know where
your ancestors buried there, you can't visit the grounds to
look for the grave. Uh, you can't. You can't find
them by the name, you know what I mean. So
(07:05):
so it is that it is the site of nine
cemeteries that the public is largely prohibited from visiting. That
doesn't have a ton of stuff to do ostensibly with
today's episode, but it's weird. It is very weird that somehow,
through eminent Domain, the government just purchased without really realizing it,
nine cemeteries stole the dead, stole your dead. If you
(07:29):
if you are descended from someone buried in those cemeteries
and they're manufacturing ammunition that steals life, that's wow. Yeah,
maybe maybe we have an episode in the future on
the strangest cemeteries. We've never done that. Let's do it.
Let's do it like I'm keeping count eminent domain strangest cemeteries.
But anyway that that's a little bit of a side note.
(07:51):
We do know that to your point, Matt, we see
we see production Wax and Wayne with this, uh, with
global conflict, right, the thing is not always open and
pumping out bullets seven. Yeah, it was restored after World
War two during the Korean conflict. Uh. And this was
(08:12):
under Remington Rand the I'm assuming the company that actually
was there producing the stuff at the facility, and that
was in nineteen fifty one. Then employment at that time
went from roughly zero to five thousand in nineteen fifty three,
I guess, from zero before then up to five thousand three.
(08:32):
Now at Campmenden there was a metal forging a machining
plant area and it was known as the y Line
Chromic Acid Etching Facility, the y Line Chromic Acid Etching Facility.
And it's fun to say, even just in in full um,
but it manufactured these specific one five millimeter projectiles. Would
(08:55):
that be? What kind of weapon with that? Is that
just like a specific alber of bullet or is this
like almost like a larger that seems large? Certainly projectiles,
my friend, and there are a hundred and fifty five
millimeters Okay. A quick Google search indicated that these would
have fed an M seven seven seven howitzer, which is
one of those cannon looking things that are on wheels. Yeah,
(09:18):
they're also I think they're um kind of an all
purpose standard, at least in NATO. I don't. I don't
know about on the other side of the curtain at
this time as they called it. But yeah, these are Yeah,
these are not for handguns or enough for handguns that
you could actually use. These howitzers are the ones that
(09:39):
you have to click click, click and get them to
go up at an angle and they shoot. They kind
of lobb these this ordinance and has a nice arc
trajectory and then comes down almost like a mortar round.
I don't think it's quite a more around, but it
is definitely not something you would fire point blankets. Something
you would shoot it and have an arc sounds terrified
it does. So the plant is again reactivated during the
Vietnam conf like the Vietnam War that was September nineteen
(10:02):
sixty one, and this time by a different Rand, Sperry Rand,
and this contractor held it until nineteen seventy five. As
that conflict was continuing, it produced all kinds of things minds, fuses,
shaped charges, bombs, boosters, demolition blocks, projectiles, really all the hits,
all the things that make humans um no longer humans.
(10:26):
And during this time there were a couple of things
that went wrong in the facility, a couple of tragic
accidental explosions in nineteen sixty two and then again in
nineteen sixty eight. But the show must go on, whether
we're talking war or Broadway musical, right, So over the
next few decades, employment waxed waned in this facility, as
we said, depending upon the ammunition needs of the military. This,
(10:50):
by the way, played economic havoc with the local community
because this was one of the primary sources of employment
for the surrounding area. There are a lot of town
in Mississippi, UH in Louisiana, and even in Alabama as
well where the primary employer is a contractor or a
(11:11):
federal agency of some sort. I used to in another
life being close contact with people who would role play
for military training in Louisiana and their job was to
act either as you know, terrified civilians or belligerent civilians
in case of urban warfare reenactments, and it was terrible.
(11:34):
They were paid like six bucks an hour. Well that's
a really important skill because after the war ends, you've
got a pretty lucrative career as a reenactor on your hands.
There you go. Does remind me of the Lake City
Quiet Pills episode that we did, Yes, yes, which I
was thinking of earlier. That that's a real thing and
that we did. Okay, that was pretty well done. You know,
thanks for everyone who wrote in to check on that,
(11:56):
because that while that particular team we don't want to
spoil this for you, but while that particular team associated
with Lake City Quiet Pills is largely out of the
running now from what we understand, uh, there are multiple
other let's call them independent operatives, independent post military operatives
(12:18):
out there with surprisingly affordable rates. This is not a
recommendation to hire them. Just want you to know that
it's a real thing. So anyway, the whole role playing
thing that I mentioned is just to show how reliant
many rural communities can become on these things. So imagine
that the only solid job you can get in your
(12:39):
town is making making ammunition for the army. And then
the war stops and your job stops. What are you
gonna do? You know? So let's fast forward to the president.
This pattern exists, right, this waxing, this waning, this up
and down frequency. Uh, and explosions aren't gonna stop the show.
On August six, there's another explosion. And this is during
(13:03):
the time where the areas run by Enough it creatively
named Explosive Systems Incorporated. They had a site that was
least at Campmenden, and bombs there were disassembled and recycled
in theory. Uh. This explosion in two thousand six led
to the evacuation of six hundred school children nearby. Luckily
(13:25):
there were no injuries or fatalities that time around. However,
this was still not the last explosion. UM, maybe we
can hate mission control? Can we throw to a clip here?
Of First, I saw the sky light up in the west,
just allowed and I was no noise. Now, I just
lit up and I had caught my eye. I looked
(13:46):
out to the west and then at the light died down. Look, boys, hey,
what was that? He looked up? Now I saw that
and it lit up again, and then next week we
heard a lile boom. It was like a sunset, it
was so bright. So what's that guy describing in that clip, Well,
he is describing a massive explosion that he saw take
(14:08):
place at the plant. But yeah, and and this is
the one in two thousand twelve, or is that this
is and this is the one that was It was huge,
just fifteen million pounds of this stuff called M six
propellant UM. And this is again the Explode Systems Incorporated,
the company that's operating it. UM. It was uh huge.
(14:29):
I mean the way he's talking about it, it it sounds
like a nuclear explosion. When you see the old footage
of those or maybe one of the ones at a
chemical plant in China that I think many of us
have probably seen videos of, UM, it sounds massive it
and it was. It just just rocked Camp Minden. It
shattered windows up to four miles away, and it created
(14:49):
a seven thousand foot mushroom cloud that ended up like
the stuff that's in that cloud ended up contaminating much
of the surrounding area. We were talking a little bit
about this offt air and then I'm no spoilers for anyone,
But this is something that really happened. It reminds me
of the Chernobyl incident when which fantastic series on HBO
right now, when that explosion took place, people could see
it from miles away in the city, and it didn't
(15:10):
create a mushroom cloud, but it created this crazy like
light shining up in the sky and people were just
remarking upon it about how beautiful it was. It's very
upsetting the way it's portrayed in the show. So the
vast majority of people in two thousand and twelve and today,
and if we're being honest, any time after World War
two are going to equate a mushroom cloud with what
(15:34):
a nuclear detonation? So the question immediately becomes what the
hell happened? Encampmented, we'll explore the answers after a word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. So remember
(15:58):
those contractors we mentioned earlier. That's probably one of the
most important points of the first part of our show
is that while this is uh an Uncle Sam production,
well Uncle Sam is you know the studio or whatever.
The people doing the work. Are these private contractors, you know,
a panopoly of Rand's uh A number of any other contractors,
(16:22):
Explo Systems was one of the most prominent. So those
of us are hearing this name or starting to put
the pieces together, right, XPLO Systems not the not the
most brilliant, uh the most brilliant creative naming, but like
explo short for explosion, right or maybe exploration Maybe I'm profiling,
(16:43):
But what is slash was Explo Systems. They were a
private company whose primary business operations of all the demilitarization
of military munitions and then of course, uh selling those
things again like the red explosive materials. Um that you'll
find an operation, well, you'll find it, Okay, let's put
(17:05):
it this way. You find munitions that were used in war,
were meant for war, and then you're gonna resell or
repurpose those for mining. Okay, alright, so maybe mining maybe
also construction h such as the creation of roadways they
cut through mountains, you have to blast rock or through
(17:25):
or tunnel through rock exactly. Reminding like that, you can
even imagine using it for like demolition of something that
you need for a house or for a big facility
something like that. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, have you have
you guys seen actual demolition in real life, you have.
We had a big one here in town recently that
was an al archive building that they took down. Um,
(17:47):
and that's the kind of do it from the bottom down,
I guess. Yeah. I went to I went to see
that and one of our friends of the show producer
here named Ramsey Unt was filming it. It was weird.
We've met the governor who is dressed like a leather
cowboy at the time. It's it's very very strange. Also
very early in the morning because they don't want to
mess up traffic, so he was wearing his demolition outfit.
(18:10):
You know. Yeah, perhaps that was it. Perhaps that was it.
But but I asked that. I mentioned that just because
you know, these are legitimate uses for this, this kind
of substance, right, you know, there's nothing against the law
about demolition building. There are actually quite a few laws
about how to do it correctly. And just a little
background on on the substance and question. This M six propellant,
(18:33):
it's a military grade explosive propellant that's used for triggering
firing off this heavy artillery like those housers and we
were talking about um and it actually comes in bags
and these grains that are different shapes and sizes, and
they're very large. They can be up to an inch long.
And the bags almost picture it is like an explosive
bean bag that's packed into the bottom of the gun,
(18:55):
depending on how far the projectile needs to go. So
there's different they're grade at different for distance, right, right, right,
And there are different formulations of propellants. Right. M six
is only one of these. But the thing about is
that this is one of the most common, you know,
because it's it's easier when you manufacture a scale, it's
(19:16):
easier to manufacture the same thing repeatedly, right, rather than um,
a mixed fruit cup, you should probably launch itself. So
so yes, the U S Army one it xplode two
take all of this unused propellant and to store it
(19:37):
and then resell it. And they're already kind of sitting
pretty right. We're paying you, we're paying you millions of
dollars for this stuff that we're giving you. You just
have to pay to store it. But then you resell it,
and Explo says, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're
gonna sell it to uh to you know, like that
Chicago poem by Carl Sandberg. We're gonna We're gonna sell
(20:00):
it to the construction workers. We're gonna sell it to
the the butcher's, the hog stackers, or whatever of the world.
Anybody needs to blow something up, anyone who needs to
blow something up in a lawful way gets get some
of this M six. Everything must go. So the contract
had all the basic requirements, right, Explode needed to document
(20:23):
the sale of everything. They needed to certify its compliance
with federal law and submit official certificates to the Army,
just by the book, the way you would have to
handle any transaction with any hazardous material. Right spoiler alert.
They did not do that, not once, not never. So
what did they do? Okay, so let's just recap The U. S.
(20:45):
Army actually spent eight points Say they awarded XPLO. And
when I hear explo, what's the what's the second part?
XPLO two systems. I think of that tenaceous D song
explo Civo every time, So I'm just gonna call it
Explosivo from now. Yeah, they gave they awarded a splow
eight point six million dollars in contract funds to demilitarize
one point three five million propelling charges that contained this
(21:08):
M six propelling Okay, just to recap. So they didn't
do that? What did they do? Okay, it turns out
they entered into a very very real life conspiracy, which
we love here on stuff they don't want you to know. Uh,
the management of Explode didn't even make an attempt at
reselling any of these explosives. Instead, they stockpiled them super
(21:31):
weirdly stockpile, and I would say is a very generous term.
Stockpiling makes it sound orderly or labeled. Let's call it hoarded.
That yes, that's a yes, very unsafely right, because the
bags we mentioned that contained the M six are opened,
they're opened to the air, they're laying around in corners,
(21:52):
and they're intentionally hidden, you know, like in episodes of
Hoarders where someone says, all right, this pile of papers, uh,
this pile of entertainment weeklies from the early nine nineties
is fine, but I don't want them to know how
many dead cats I have. So I'm gonna put those
in a corner behind the used diapers, which are perfectly,
perfectly respectable things to hoard. So they so they treat
(22:15):
these things like dead cats, right, they hide them in
these various corners. They hide them away from the places
where they would legally be required to put them because
officially now these stockpiles do not exist. From January to November,
Explode ran a con game on the United States of America.
(22:36):
They submitted false certificates to the U. S. Army. They
were supposed to submit real certificates. Uh. They they under
cover of night. If we want to be dramatic. They
transported hazardous waste to facilities where it was illegal to
store them, and then they stored them, you know, like
(22:56):
just tossing bags around into the corner and some If anything,
it's a surprise that this stuff didn't explode earlier. And
the reason they did it this way is because they
were able to continue milking the government for money by
by saying, Okay, we've sold this to these people, or
(23:17):
but you know, just keep paying these invisible things that
we have set up. Uh. They even said that they
even made up sales. They just completely said, okay, we
sold this to this other company that may or may
not exist. Wait a minute, are you telling me that
a company that has like a name that sounds like
it's straight out of like idiocracy was not only up
(23:38):
and up, and then a company called Explode Court or
whatever systems Systems was going to make stuff that would
go boom? Is that what you're telling me? And hang
on to it? And they were not going to let
that stuff go. It makes you wonder who they were
really going to sell it to, what they were actually
going to do with it. Possibly some sort of strange
foreign deal with military militant groups. Right, I'm just conjecturing here,
(24:03):
we're gonna look into some of that. And it definitely
feels like they they wanted to make more money on it,
or they at least should have, because that's just more
money on top if you're you're already got a contract
to sell it and now you're selling it. Uh. But
that's officially what those false certificates are doing, right, They're
getting paid for nothing. Weren't they supposed to decommission it though?
And my misunderstanding here, like, weren't they supposed to like
(24:24):
render it inert or get rid of it? Like I
don't understand why were they holding onto it? Capitalism, baby,
skip the turkey goes straight for the gravy. Uh. Yeah,
Demilitarizing it would mean that they remove the propellant from
any associated uh paraphernali or equipment that would make it
a weapon of war. So it's like it's like, yeah,
(24:46):
maybe it's illegal to sell cars, but it's legal to
sell gasoline, right, That's what makes a car go. So
their job is to take the gasoline out of the
car and just sell the gas And what they did
instead was they took the cats out and then you
know again, they put it in open bags and threw
(25:07):
it in the corpa on top of and then they
said they sold it. It's I mean, it's and laughing
because it's ridiculous. It's catch twenty two level or idiocracy
level to to your point nal kind of stuff. So
the explo officials, including vice president Operations, a guy named
William Terry Wright, in addition to making up these sales,
(25:29):
they also did not tell the people uh in these
third parties that they that they were uh allegedly buying
this stuff, so these other companies have no idea what
the hell is going on. They also had their signatures
forged or fabricated, and then the people at the top
of the chain, the executives, order lower level employees too
(25:54):
not only move this stuff once, but to move it
multiple times whenever government officials come around to check in
on things. So imagine you get the call and say, okay,
we need to move again, like to your point, man's
millions of pounds of explosives or propellants and highly dangerous
and just continually moving it around in this big facility.
(26:17):
It just seems like a recipe for disaster totally, and
the and the uh, the forgery doesn't stop there. This
con game, like a lot of con games, is not
sustainable over the long terms, so it quickly kind of
spirals downward and they have to create more and more
false documents to try to cover up their original lie
(26:38):
or their mistake or their oversight or whatever you want
to call it, depending on how charitable you feel about
the human condition as you hear this today. So one
other example would be that they started making fake paperwork
for landfills in Louisiana and Arkansas to say that the
stuff they did they did actually ship to landfills, was
(27:00):
not hazardous. It was a spoiler alert. So all of
this added up to you said millions of pounds, that's
literally seven thousand, eight hundreds something tons of m six
propellant that is just hidden at Camp Minden, and eventually
they get discovered because of that enormous explosion. And we
(27:26):
played that clip to take a to take us all
back in that in that time and space. You know,
imagine where you live, whatever when you hear the word home,
whatever you think of when you hear the word home,
imagine that one one afternoon, you know, one night, whatever
you hear this, you don't even hear a sound. The
(27:49):
ground beneath you shakes, the windows shatter, you hear ten
thousand car alarms go off at once, right, dogs and
cats or going crazy? Uh in the and then the
sky lights up and you see things flying through the sky,
(28:10):
which is a detail that becomes very important later. Of course,
you think that it's an act of violence, right, It
doesn't feel like an accident. It's a violent act that
feels like an act of violence. Hey, I was very
well done, man. A violent act that feels like an
act of violence. Yes, just so. Uh So the news
(28:34):
goes crazy right there. They're trying to figure out what happened. Uh,
They're they're asking all these questions. Well, we'll bracket that
for a second. So let's just go to what the
authorities initially said. Captain Doug Kane, who was a spokesman
for the State Police, said that the surprise, surprise, the
(28:57):
cause of this massive explosion was all this M six
propellant used as as you had noted nol in Howitzer's
and other artillery. The pellets are mainly this compressed substance
called nitro cellulose. It's also sometimes called gun cotton. Authorities
initially said there was a total of four hundred and
(29:19):
fifty tons after an investigator looking into that October fifteenth
explosion saw cardboard boxes and rows and rows of palates
just chilling behind a building. But then they found more
stacked in sheds and warehouses and they started trying to
move They started trying to move it, uh, and it wasn't.
The problem they had was that for a minute, this
(29:42):
hoarding or hiding away of this stuff actually worked Legally.
They were supposed to put this in a thing called
a storage magazine, and they had instead hidden it away
because they wanted it to look like they were selling
this stuff. Stuff was also known as flash paper. You
might have heard it referred to as such. So they
had they had tried to move it back and forth.
(30:04):
The authorities are trying to move the stuff that hadn't exploded,
and that is the official narrative so far. That's the
official That's what you will hear on the news. That's
what you will hear when you read about the the
later court cases and stuff that come about because of this. However,
there is more to the story. Some people you see,
(30:28):
allege that a cover up exists. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor and
we're back. So, as we said, what we've explored thus
far is the official story. That's the thing that comes
(30:48):
across the news waves to you, the the pr documentation.
Let's you know, that's what's going on, and uh, that's
what goes down in the history books. But guess what,
there are other ex nations out there, some a little
more odd than others, but almost all of them reek
of some kind of cover up that was a foot here.
(31:09):
And like we said before, given that massive mushroom cloud,
it's completely understandable that some people would fear and nuclear detonation, right,
or some kind of attack at least, or you know,
something went wrong other than an accident, right, And the
the idea of nuclear powered terrorism is at the forefront
(31:29):
of a lot of people's minds due to active negotiations
with the DPRK in the attempt to verify just arm nukes,
the concerns of quote unquote rogue nukes or suitcase nukes,
the dirty bombs, dirty bombs, the dirty bombs that to
be confused with our local dirty birds, also sometimes bomb
(31:55):
sports jokes. So it's interesting because the Shreveports Times shortly
after this reported a number of what you could call
conspiracy theories or alternative theories, or at the very least
contract eyewitness reports that contradict the official narrative. But that
article and subsequent related articles appeared to have been scrubbed
(32:19):
from the Internet. It could not find them, even using
one of our favorite tools, the way back machine. Man,
I love that thing. Uh. One article that did survive
is pretty fascinating. Uh. If not, well, let's present it
first for everyone's consideration without commentary, and then maybe we
(32:40):
can go back and and and pick it apart a little.
This comes to us from Joe Quinn, who was writing
at op ed news dot com. So in op ed
news dot Com, Joe Quinn reports that folks across Texas Louisiana.
Mimmissippi saw bright flashes in the sky, and he described
them having seen fireball trails as well. And then Shreveport,
(33:00):
the Shreveport area of northwest Louisiana, a lot of folks
heard um earth shaking booms that caused houses to rattle
in their foundations and windows were broken all throughout Minden. Um.
And so here's a quote from Amy Mealy, who was
one of the residents who lived just a couple of
miles from Camp Menden. Yeah, she genuinely thought that she
(33:21):
was being bombed. That's what That's what she said. I
honestly thought we were being bombed. And she said it
was one of the scariest things that she's ever been through. Um.
And you know, she was like, she describes how she's
checking some emails. Right, she's about to go to bed.
You look at your phone or whatever you can do
your check your email, make sure everything's okay. And she
said she had an odd feeling in the pit of
(33:42):
her stomach. She said it was quote like a rolling
thunder in the distance. And and then she said it
was getting closer and closer, and she said she felt
everything moving with me. I could literally feel it moving
towards me. That's a that's pretty crazy, right and and
that's right before are the actual explosion hit. Ah See,
(34:03):
the chronology becomes interesting here yet because dozens of people
that's still from op ed news. Dozens of people Quinn
Rights called the Webster Parish Sheriff's office, as well as
the local news station k s l A News twelve,
and they reported seeing flashes of light in the sky
and hearing multiple loud booms that shook houses. The sheriff's
(34:24):
office initially stated that there was a quote possibility that
a meteor hit the ground in the area. The following morning, however,
they recanted, and the parish sheriff at the time, Gary Sexton,
said that has Matt Experts told him what people had
seen and heard was an underground bunker containing explosives that
(34:45):
blew up that late night on October fift Not only
was there nothing to see here, but the explosion quote
worked exactly as it was designed to do, and the
use of the phrase designed was somewhat unfortunate for the
sheriff department at that time because it left the door
open for conjecture. Quinn and other people who doubt the
(35:06):
official narratives still have questions. Quinn puts it this way beautifully.
He says, what are the odds that add around the
same time as people across three states Mississippi, Texas, and
Louisiana and hundreds of miles apart, we're seeing what was
clearly a meteorite comment fragment burning up in the lower
earth atmosphere, a munition stump would explode at the same time.
(35:30):
More to the point, if a munition stump did explode,
what are the odds that a meteorite or comment fragment
that many eyewitnesses believe hit the ground in the area
would be in no way connected to the explosion. So enticing, tantalizing, tempting, right,
But we also have to we also have to think
(35:50):
about how close the timeline can become. Here, it could
seem like a meteor right, depend on somewhere someone standing
and what they're seeing at the time. We've talked about
this before with moufon and different UFO observations. Right. Light, Yeah,
light in the atmosphere can be tricky. Yeah, the whole
(36:11):
thing is one big shamalan and the the problem is
that someone could be far enough away that they see
a light, but they don't hear a sound or necessarily
feel a tremor. Right, so they could see debris from
an explosion launched so high that they feel they're watching
(36:33):
a meteor crash. So it could just be the explosion.
But but that hasn't prevented people from saying, no, there
is a cover up a meteor hit. And then they
that's the thing for me. They blew up a military
base to cover it up. It's kind of like the
(36:53):
Titanic conspiracy. And they're like, the best way to kill
the people who don't like the Federal Reserve is to
get them on this mat of boat. So it seems
that if we're exercising Akam's razor here, the idea between
the two conspiracies, the idea that there's a cover up
of a cover up. Right. Uh, it seems that maybe
(37:15):
the mundane answer is the more accurate one, but it
doesn't make it any less disgusting in terms of corruption. Uh. Luckily,
and there are two pieces of good news here. First, thankfully,
no one that we know of was actually injured in
this in this debacle, And second, in a in a
(37:39):
rare example of corporate justice, the higher ups that explode
did end up going to court. So it wasn't just
you know the way it happens with banks. It wasn't
just that the bank was fined some portion of their
profits and was able to write it off as a
cost of doing business. Uh. The individuals involved actually had
(37:59):
lee consequences. Yes. The the co owner a man named
David Alan Smith who was sixty three years old at
the time. Uh. He was sentenced to fifty five months
in prison because of all this. Yeah and uh and
also three years of supervised I guess what what is
that super supervisor essentially? Um and uh after he was released,
(38:23):
and he was also find thirty four million dollars what
almost like almost, well, this guy is super rich man.
Well it was almost thirty five million. Again he's he's
the co owner of this company, right, and he was
taking part in that conspiracy we were talking about building
the government. There's a lot of rings of chernobyl in
(38:45):
this story. You know, not to spoil anything, but it's
like it's it's corruption, it's cover up, it's failure to
do the right thing to protect the people that live
in the vicinity of your you know, facility with very
dangerous things products at the center products at the center. Well,
and here's the thing, David Allen Smith, He's not the
only guy that went to prison. Right. There was William Terry, Right,
(39:07):
we mentioned him earlier. He was sentenced to sixty months
in prison, three years of supervised release. Uh. And he
because he wasn't an owner, I guess he was the
VP of operations, right. He had to pay just under
a hundred and fifty thousand in restitution for participating in
the criminal conspiracy. And there were three other big names
(39:27):
that also had to take a dive. Yeah. There was
a director of support technology, a man you know, Charles
Ferris Callahan. He was sixty nine UM from Shreveport. He
got twenty four months in the in the clink, one
year of supervised probation UM, and had to pay two
hundred and seven thousand, five nine nine bucks in restitution
(39:48):
for falsely representing facts in various documents. Then, of course
you get over to uh, Kenneth Wayne Lambkin. He was
the this is his title M six mill like as
in demolition program manager, all about the little snappy you
know shortenings. Well, yeah, and he got himself forty five
(40:09):
months in prison and three years of that old fun
thing supervised release or probation, and he was fined. And
you know again similarly um to William Terry Wright a
hundred forty nine thousand dollars in restitution and his was
for specifically making false statements. And last, but not least,
there was traffic and inventory control manager Lionel Wayne Coons
(40:31):
with a K who had to go with forty one
months in prison three years of supervised release, and he
got off relatively easily in terms of restitution. He only
had to pay ninety two thousand nine Only I don't
have that sitting around and how about you guys, But well,
it's kind of it's it's kind of like anchoring on menus,
you know, the psychological thing where you show people a
(40:53):
larger price first and then you get them to forget
how high the lowest price thing is. We could we
should go into psychology of menus one day. Uh So
these people did actually go, they did go to court,
they did get found guilty. It was a real conspiracy.
The question for people who are out there a little
(41:15):
more in the fringe of the reporting is whether or
not there was a that was, whether or not this
conspiracy is a cover up for something else at play.
We did not find a ton of evidence for that.
It seemed more like the fog of war and the
panic of trying to report things as they're happening. But hey,
(41:35):
if you are from the area and you know something
else that was a miss at the time, we would
love to hear from you. And also, if you're not
from the area, can you recall any other strange cases
like this in your neck of the Global Woods? What
popped up in the news only to disappear a few
days later, like one day true story, long time listeners,
(41:55):
remember this one day here in our fair semi metropolis
US of Atlanta, piece of the highway just collapsed. Uh,
Interstate eight five and four. For several months afterwards. Uh.
The story that the local government was pushing was that
a homeless person who struggled with substance abuse problems had
(42:19):
set a fire in a shopping cart and that that
resulted in the bridge collapsing. Yeah, because stone totally melts,
you know, with the garbage can fires. Right, Well, I mean,
you know, they're supposedly some other propellant down there are
things stockpiling Yeah, well under the bridge. Yeah, he recently
(42:43):
started an LLC. He was very Explode Party Incorporated. Ye, well,
they had to figure out some way to use all
those demilitarized ordinance you know, let's use it for a
nice fireworks display on the downtown Atlanta Skyline. It is alias,
of course, was Bridge Blowington. Yeah, so I I mean
(43:05):
that it's weird because that I A D five collapse
is a pretty good example of how quickly these things
can pop in and out of the news. So we
would be curious to hear your stories or your versions
of this, because the truth of the matter is now
that our biological attention spans have been surpassed by our
(43:27):
technological ability to disseminate stories. So it is difficult. There's
that old saying that you know, you can't keep your
eye you can't watch every falling sparrow or whatever. Uh.
For humans, that's always been difficult, and now it is impossible.
So it's quite it's it's it's not even possible. It
is plausible that some crazy thing happened in like Scranton, Pennsylvania,
(43:52):
and only the people in part of Scranton, Pennsylvania know
what went down. We want to hear those stories. We
want to share them with your fellow stlers. Yes, please
find us all over the place, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I
mean you can do all those things. Call our number
one eight three three s t W y t K.
Give us the scoops because we want to. We want
(44:14):
to spread those two scoops two and a half if possible,
but keep it to three minutes. How many scoops are
in Raisin brands? Just raisins that's on accounting the brand.
What size scoop though, that's the question. You know, they're
fairly vague about it. It looks, you know, they don't
give you the volume of the scoops, show the scoop,
(44:37):
and they kind of they kind of imply that all
other cereals are short scooping you I agree, I agree,
And then it says actual size underneath the scoop. It
doesn't actually And if you feel so compelled, uh, you
want to explore any of our private lives, um, you
can check me out on Instagram where I am. I've
changed it up, I am now at how now Noel Brown? Wow, Yeah,
(45:00):
it's time for a change. I like it. And Brionic
Insider that was that was a relic from my past.
Kind of move on, let's see you can see me. Uh. Currently,
I managed to get in and out of Belgium without
too much weird customs stuff. You can see some of
the stories from that over it at ben Bolan. Uh
funny story. I ran in the same customs agent going
(45:22):
out as they did going in, and I think I
made a friend, maybe a fan of the show. I
don't know. Yeah, if you, if you happen to be listening.
I mean conversely, you can check Matt out at at
t s A. Well. Yeah, you can also find me
at acts at XPLO summer um. It's you know, a
mission about education Matt. Matt has many aliases on the internet.
(45:46):
You can find me on at slightly darker sunglasses than yours.
These are all your kind of like heype beast kind
of accounts. Yes, uh, you know what if you don't
want to do any of that, I don't want to
go on Instagram. Who we likes Instagram? Anyway, here's feeding
the machine, feeding the beast. You can do the old
fashioned way. You can get in touch with us directly. Well, actually,
(46:06):
do we mention that Facebook group? Here's where it gets crazy.
I don't know if we did or not. If we didn't.
You can go to that, but if you want to
do that either, you can also just send us a
good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You to
(46:37):
Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noman.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control deconds. Most importantly, you
are you, and you are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Quick check in, Matt,
how's it going. Are you doing? Hey? Doing well? Hey?
You like the fonds over? Yeah? Things, Yeah, things are
(00:49):
are going well. I had this weird hair last night
where I noticed on the back fence and my property
there's just a ton of junk growing up around the
fence and through offence and on its old chain link fence,
and it's mostly like vines of some sort, and I
just I couldn't help it. I just started destroying all
the vines and just clasping them out the earth with salt. Nice. Nice.
(01:16):
I've always literally to literally do that. Is that where
the expression salt of the earth comes from? Or is
that different? I'm not familiar with the etymology there. Yeah,
in this case, it's killing all this stuff that's trying
to grow out. You're doing more of a scorched earth approach. Yeah,
what about you know, old checking in? How's it going?
Doing well? Thanks? Man? I got to piggyback a business
(01:37):
trip with family vacation. I brought my kid with me
to New York City and she hung out with her
godmother for a couple days when I worked and we
had adventures and it was a lot of fun, awesome,
And the check in that we liked institute applies to
you as well listening. So if you have an event
in your life that you would like to uh to
tell us and your fellow listeners about, feel Free, you
(01:57):
don't have to wait till the episode is over. You
could just pose it and give us a call. Now
we are one eight three three std W y t K,
and today we are off to camp. No, not a
summer camp, not a religious camp. Uh, none of those
sorts of camps. Were going to a camp that is
much more dangerous. We're exploring a genuine, literally explosive conspiracy
(02:22):
as well as a conspiracy theory. How can both of
those exist concurrently? Well, we will tell you inter Camp Minden.
Here are the facts. So there's a place called Webster Parish.
It's off of US Highway eight near doy Line, Louisiana,
between Minden, Louisiana and Bossier or Bossier City, probably Bossier City, Louisiana.
(02:44):
This thing, Camp Minden, is part of a larger compound
called the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant or lap l a P. Yeah,
And the history of this place goes all the way
back the beginning of nineteen thirty nine and the government
and that is when the government used eminent domain, which
you were mentioning off airband. We have yet to do
(03:05):
an episode on I think we might need to correct that. Um.
They used this concept of eminent domain to acquire the
land before the United States entered a World War two. Yeah. This, uh,
this compound is just under fifteen thousand acres. Originally it
had a couple of different names. It was the Louisiana
Ordinance Plant or it was called the Shell Plant, alluding
(03:29):
to of course, artillery shells. And for the entirety of
its time since uh, since it was fully acquired, beginning
in thirty nine, going to forty one, it has been
owned by Uncle Sam but this is an important distinction.
It has been operated by private contractors. So back to
(03:49):
back to this this history, right, L A a P
was completed in just eleven months under the direction of
a contractor, Silas Mason. At the time time, this was
middle of nowhere country. It was well where a family show.
It was just east of bumble F, if you know
(04:10):
what I mean. And there were very few people here.
So from a uh, congressional or state pork budget kind
of perspective, it makes sense to have this kind of
operation there, especially if you're dealing with ordinance or something
that might be dangerous. You don't want that in downtown
New Orleans, right Yeah. And it also makes sense of
(04:32):
the time that there that they needed a lot of
ammunition was right around World War Two, right, So, uh,
in May ninety two, there were a total of eight
production lines that were opened, and then by December nineteen
forty four, the number of employees hit its peak at
just under eleven thousand, ten thousand, seven hundred and fifty
(04:53):
four And that was in the month of the Battle
of the Bulge. That is a major operation. Yeah. Well,
I mean, think about all the ammunition that was deployed
during that conflict during World War two. Um, you needed
a lot of it. This they were not They were
certainly not creating all of the ammunition, but a good
portion of it. And then the plant was deactivated after
(05:18):
after the Summer of nine, right with v j D.
But here's a spooky fact. This is one of my
favorite things from the research. This place, Camp Minden and L. A. A. P.
Are used interchangeably, so let's just call it Camp Menden.
Camp Minden is built on not one, but nine cemeteries.
(05:39):
Are any of those Native American burial grounds? Uh no, No,
there may be some people uh from Native American populations
buried there, but they were they were rural cemeteries. The
date through uh different time periods, and they are now.
You know, they got a little bit better treatment than
(06:00):
the the stories we hear about and things like Poultergeist. Right,
they weren't. They weren't just paved over. Uh. They are
under the care of the US government. So you can
see existing grave markers they took out. There were these
wooden grave markers, right, which you're not going to hold
up very well in the human environment of Louisiana. And
(06:20):
they were replaced with small concrete slabs. But the thing is,
the slabs don't have the names of the deceased listed
on the markers. They're just slabs, which is pretty sad, right.
The cemeteries are Allentown Crew, Jim Davis, Keene, Nottingham, uh Rain, Richardson,
Van Orsdell, and Walker, and the people who are buried
(06:44):
there have their dates of birth and death and maybe
a little bit of other information. But the problem is,
even if you are a descendant and you know where
your ancestors buried there, you can't visit the grounds to
look for the grave. Uh, you can't. You can't find
them by the name, you know what I mean. So
(07:05):
so it is that it is the site of nine
cemeteries that the public is largely prohibited from visiting. That
doesn't have a ton of stuff to do ostensibly with
today's episode, but it's weird. It is very weird that somehow,
through eminent Domain, the government just purchased without really realizing it,
nine cemeteries stole the dead, stole your dead. If you
(07:29):
if you are descended from someone buried in those cemeteries
and they're manufacturing ammunition that steals life, that's wow. Yeah,
maybe maybe we have an episode in the future on
the strangest cemeteries. We've never done that. Let's do it.
Let's do it like I'm keeping count eminent domain strangest cemeteries.
But anyway that that's a little bit of a side note.
(07:51):
We do know that to your point, Matt, we see
we see production Wax and Wayne with this, uh, with
global conflict, right, the thing is not always open and
pumping out bullets seven. Yeah, it was restored after World
War two during the Korean conflict. Uh. And this was
(08:12):
under Remington Rand the I'm assuming the company that actually
was there producing the stuff at the facility, and that
was in nineteen fifty one. Then employment at that time
went from roughly zero to five thousand in nineteen fifty three,
I guess, from zero before then up to five thousand three.
(08:32):
Now at Campmenden there was a metal forging a machining
plant area and it was known as the y Line
Chromic Acid Etching Facility, the y Line Chromic Acid Etching Facility.
And it's fun to say, even just in in full um,
but it manufactured these specific one five millimeter projectiles. Would
(08:55):
that be? What kind of weapon with that? Is that
just like a specific alber of bullet or is this
like almost like a larger that seems large? Certainly projectiles,
my friend, and there are a hundred and fifty five
millimeters Okay. A quick Google search indicated that these would
have fed an M seven seven seven howitzer, which is
one of those cannon looking things that are on wheels. Yeah,
(09:18):
they're also I think they're um kind of an all
purpose standard, at least in NATO. I don't. I don't
know about on the other side of the curtain at
this time as they called it. But yeah, these are Yeah,
these are not for handguns or enough for handguns that
you could actually use. These howitzers are the ones that
(09:39):
you have to click click, click and get them to
go up at an angle and they shoot. They kind
of lobb these this ordinance and has a nice arc
trajectory and then comes down almost like a mortar round.
I don't think it's quite a more around, but it
is definitely not something you would fire point blankets. Something
you would shoot it and have an arc sounds terrified
it does. So the plant is again reactivated during the
Vietnam conf like the Vietnam War that was September nineteen
(10:02):
sixty one, and this time by a different Rand, Sperry Rand,
and this contractor held it until nineteen seventy five. As
that conflict was continuing, it produced all kinds of things minds, fuses,
shaped charges, bombs, boosters, demolition blocks, projectiles, really all the hits,
all the things that make humans um no longer humans.
(10:26):
And during this time there were a couple of things
that went wrong in the facility, a couple of tragic
accidental explosions in nineteen sixty two and then again in
nineteen sixty eight. But the show must go on, whether
we're talking war or Broadway musical, right, So over the
next few decades, employment waxed waned in this facility, as
we said, depending upon the ammunition needs of the military. This,
(10:50):
by the way, played economic havoc with the local community
because this was one of the primary sources of employment
for the surrounding area. There are a lot of town
in Mississippi, UH in Louisiana, and even in Alabama as
well where the primary employer is a contractor or a
(11:11):
federal agency of some sort. I used to in another
life being close contact with people who would role play
for military training in Louisiana and their job was to
act either as you know, terrified civilians or belligerent civilians
in case of urban warfare reenactments, and it was terrible.
(11:34):
They were paid like six bucks an hour. Well that's
a really important skill because after the war ends, you've
got a pretty lucrative career as a reenactor on your hands.
There you go. Does remind me of the Lake City
Quiet Pills episode that we did, Yes, yes, which I
was thinking of earlier. That that's a real thing and
that we did. Okay, that was pretty well done. You know,
thanks for everyone who wrote in to check on that,
(11:56):
because that while that particular team we don't want to
spoil this for you, but while that particular team associated
with Lake City Quiet Pills is largely out of the
running now from what we understand, uh, there are multiple
other let's call them independent operatives, independent post military operatives
(12:18):
out there with surprisingly affordable rates. This is not a
recommendation to hire them. Just want you to know that
it's a real thing. So anyway, the whole role playing
thing that I mentioned is just to show how reliant
many rural communities can become on these things. So imagine
that the only solid job you can get in your
(12:39):
town is making making ammunition for the army. And then
the war stops and your job stops. What are you
gonna do? You know? So let's fast forward to the president.
This pattern exists, right, this waxing, this waning, this up
and down frequency. Uh, and explosions aren't gonna stop the show.
On August six, there's another explosion. And this is during
(13:03):
the time where the areas run by Enough it creatively
named Explosive Systems Incorporated. They had a site that was
least at Campmenden, and bombs there were disassembled and recycled
in theory. Uh. This explosion in two thousand six led
to the evacuation of six hundred school children nearby. Luckily
(13:25):
there were no injuries or fatalities that time around. However,
this was still not the last explosion. UM, maybe we
can hate mission control? Can we throw to a clip here?
Of First, I saw the sky light up in the west,
just allowed and I was no noise. Now, I just
lit up and I had caught my eye. I looked
(13:46):
out to the west and then at the light died down. Look, boys, hey,
what was that? He looked up? Now I saw that
and it lit up again, and then next week we
heard a lile boom. It was like a sunset, it
was so bright. So what's that guy describing in that clip, Well,
he is describing a massive explosion that he saw take
(14:08):
place at the plant. But yeah, and and this is
the one in two thousand twelve, or is that this
is and this is the one that was It was huge,
just fifteen million pounds of this stuff called M six
propellant UM. And this is again the Explode Systems Incorporated,
the company that's operating it. UM. It was uh huge.
(14:29):
I mean the way he's talking about it, it it sounds
like a nuclear explosion. When you see the old footage
of those or maybe one of the ones at a
chemical plant in China that I think many of us
have probably seen videos of, UM, it sounds massive it
and it was. It just just rocked Camp Minden. It
shattered windows up to four miles away, and it created
(14:49):
a seven thousand foot mushroom cloud that ended up like
the stuff that's in that cloud ended up contaminating much
of the surrounding area. We were talking a little bit
about this offt air and then I'm no spoilers for anyone,
But this is something that really happened. It reminds me
of the Chernobyl incident when which fantastic series on HBO
right now, when that explosion took place, people could see
it from miles away in the city, and it didn't
(15:10):
create a mushroom cloud, but it created this crazy like
light shining up in the sky and people were just
remarking upon it about how beautiful it was. It's very
upsetting the way it's portrayed in the show. So the
vast majority of people in two thousand and twelve and today,
and if we're being honest, any time after World War
two are going to equate a mushroom cloud with what
(15:34):
a nuclear detonation? So the question immediately becomes what the
hell happened? Encampmented, we'll explore the answers after a word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. So remember
(15:58):
those contractors we mentioned earlier. That's probably one of the
most important points of the first part of our show
is that while this is uh an Uncle Sam production,
well Uncle Sam is you know the studio or whatever.
The people doing the work. Are these private contractors, you know,
a panopoly of Rand's uh A number of any other contractors,
(16:22):
Explo Systems was one of the most prominent. So those
of us are hearing this name or starting to put
the pieces together, right, XPLO Systems not the not the
most brilliant, uh the most brilliant creative naming, but like
explo short for explosion, right or maybe exploration Maybe I'm profiling,
(16:43):
But what is slash was Explo Systems. They were a
private company whose primary business operations of all the demilitarization
of military munitions and then of course, uh selling those
things again like the red explosive materials. Um that you'll
find an operation, well, you'll find it, Okay, let's put
(17:05):
it this way. You find munitions that were used in war,
were meant for war, and then you're gonna resell or
repurpose those for mining. Okay, alright, so maybe mining maybe
also construction h such as the creation of roadways they
cut through mountains, you have to blast rock or through
(17:25):
or tunnel through rock exactly. Reminding like that, you can
even imagine using it for like demolition of something that
you need for a house or for a big facility
something like that. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, have you have
you guys seen actual demolition in real life, you have.
We had a big one here in town recently that
was an al archive building that they took down. Um,
(17:47):
and that's the kind of do it from the bottom down,
I guess. Yeah. I went to I went to see
that and one of our friends of the show producer
here named Ramsey Unt was filming it. It was weird.
We've met the governor who is dressed like a leather
cowboy at the time. It's it's very very strange. Also
very early in the morning because they don't want to
mess up traffic, so he was wearing his demolition outfit.
(18:10):
You know. Yeah, perhaps that was it. Perhaps that was it.
But but I asked that. I mentioned that just because
you know, these are legitimate uses for this, this kind
of substance, right, you know, there's nothing against the law
about demolition building. There are actually quite a few laws
about how to do it correctly. And just a little
background on on the substance and question. This M six propellant,
(18:33):
it's a military grade explosive propellant that's used for triggering
firing off this heavy artillery like those housers and we
were talking about um and it actually comes in bags
and these grains that are different shapes and sizes, and
they're very large. They can be up to an inch long.
And the bags almost picture it is like an explosive
bean bag that's packed into the bottom of the gun,
(18:55):
depending on how far the projectile needs to go. So
there's different they're grade at different for distance, right, right, right,
And there are different formulations of propellants. Right. M six
is only one of these. But the thing about is
that this is one of the most common, you know,
because it's it's easier when you manufacture a scale, it's
(19:16):
easier to manufacture the same thing repeatedly, right, rather than um,
a mixed fruit cup, you should probably launch itself. So
so yes, the U S Army one it xplode two
take all of this unused propellant and to store it
(19:37):
and then resell it. And they're already kind of sitting
pretty right. We're paying you, we're paying you millions of
dollars for this stuff that we're giving you. You just
have to pay to store it. But then you resell it,
and Explo says, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're
gonna sell it to uh to you know, like that
Chicago poem by Carl Sandberg. We're gonna We're gonna sell
(20:00):
it to the construction workers. We're gonna sell it to
the the butcher's, the hog stackers, or whatever of the world.
Anybody needs to blow something up, anyone who needs to
blow something up in a lawful way gets get some
of this M six. Everything must go. So the contract
had all the basic requirements, right, Explode needed to document
(20:23):
the sale of everything. They needed to certify its compliance
with federal law and submit official certificates to the Army,
just by the book, the way you would have to
handle any transaction with any hazardous material. Right spoiler alert.
They did not do that, not once, not never. So
what did they do? Okay, so let's just recap The U. S.
(20:45):
Army actually spent eight points Say they awarded XPLO. And
when I hear explo, what's the what's the second part?
XPLO two systems. I think of that tenaceous D song
explo Civo every time, So I'm just gonna call it
Explosivo from now. Yeah, they gave they awarded a splow
eight point six million dollars in contract funds to demilitarize
one point three five million propelling charges that contained this
(21:08):
M six propelling Okay, just to recap. So they didn't
do that? What did they do? Okay, it turns out
they entered into a very very real life conspiracy, which
we love here on stuff they don't want you to know. Uh,
the management of Explode didn't even make an attempt at
reselling any of these explosives. Instead, they stockpiled them super
(21:31):
weirdly stockpile, and I would say is a very generous term.
Stockpiling makes it sound orderly or labeled. Let's call it hoarded.
That yes, that's a yes, very unsafely right, because the
bags we mentioned that contained the M six are opened,
they're opened to the air, they're laying around in corners,
(21:52):
and they're intentionally hidden, you know, like in episodes of
Hoarders where someone says, all right, this pile of papers, uh,
this pile of entertainment weeklies from the early nine nineties
is fine, but I don't want them to know how
many dead cats I have. So I'm gonna put those
in a corner behind the used diapers, which are perfectly,
perfectly respectable things to hoard. So they so they treat
(22:15):
these things like dead cats, right, they hide them in
these various corners. They hide them away from the places
where they would legally be required to put them because
officially now these stockpiles do not exist. From January to November,
Explode ran a con game on the United States of America.
(22:36):
They submitted false certificates to the U. S. Army. They
were supposed to submit real certificates. Uh. They they under
cover of night. If we want to be dramatic. They
transported hazardous waste to facilities where it was illegal to
store them, and then they stored them, you know, like
(22:56):
just tossing bags around into the corner and some If anything,
it's a surprise that this stuff didn't explode earlier. And
the reason they did it this way is because they
were able to continue milking the government for money by
by saying, Okay, we've sold this to these people, or
(23:17):
but you know, just keep paying these invisible things that
we have set up. Uh. They even said that they
even made up sales. They just completely said, okay, we
sold this to this other company that may or may
not exist. Wait a minute, are you telling me that
a company that has like a name that sounds like
it's straight out of like idiocracy was not only up
(23:38):
and up, and then a company called Explode Court or
whatever systems Systems was going to make stuff that would
go boom? Is that what you're telling me? And hang
on to it? And they were not going to let
that stuff go. It makes you wonder who they were
really going to sell it to, what they were actually
going to do with it. Possibly some sort of strange
foreign deal with military militant groups. Right, I'm just conjecturing here,
(24:03):
we're gonna look into some of that. And it definitely
feels like they they wanted to make more money on it,
or they at least should have, because that's just more
money on top if you're you're already got a contract
to sell it and now you're selling it. Uh. But
that's officially what those false certificates are doing, right, They're
getting paid for nothing. Weren't they supposed to decommission it though?
And my misunderstanding here, like, weren't they supposed to like
(24:24):
render it inert or get rid of it? Like I
don't understand why were they holding onto it? Capitalism, baby,
skip the turkey goes straight for the gravy. Uh. Yeah,
Demilitarizing it would mean that they remove the propellant from
any associated uh paraphernali or equipment that would make it
a weapon of war. So it's like it's like, yeah,
(24:46):
maybe it's illegal to sell cars, but it's legal to
sell gasoline, right, That's what makes a car go. So
their job is to take the gasoline out of the
car and just sell the gas And what they did
instead was they took the cats out and then you
know again, they put it in open bags and threw
(25:07):
it in the corpa on top of and then they
said they sold it. It's I mean, it's and laughing
because it's ridiculous. It's catch twenty two level or idiocracy
level to to your point nal kind of stuff. So
the explo officials, including vice president Operations, a guy named
William Terry Wright, in addition to making up these sales,
(25:29):
they also did not tell the people uh in these
third parties that they that they were uh allegedly buying
this stuff, so these other companies have no idea what
the hell is going on. They also had their signatures
forged or fabricated, and then the people at the top
of the chain, the executives, order lower level employees too
(25:54):
not only move this stuff once, but to move it
multiple times whenever government officials come around to check in
on things. So imagine you get the call and say, okay,
we need to move again, like to your point, man's
millions of pounds of explosives or propellants and highly dangerous
and just continually moving it around in this big facility.
(26:17):
It just seems like a recipe for disaster totally, and
the and the uh, the forgery doesn't stop there. This
con game, like a lot of con games, is not
sustainable over the long terms, so it quickly kind of
spirals downward and they have to create more and more
false documents to try to cover up their original lie
(26:38):
or their mistake or their oversight or whatever you want
to call it, depending on how charitable you feel about
the human condition as you hear this today. So one
other example would be that they started making fake paperwork
for landfills in Louisiana and Arkansas to say that the
stuff they did they did actually ship to landfills, was
(27:00):
not hazardous. It was a spoiler alert. So all of
this added up to you said millions of pounds, that's
literally seven thousand, eight hundreds something tons of m six
propellant that is just hidden at Camp Minden, and eventually
they get discovered because of that enormous explosion. And we
(27:26):
played that clip to take a to take us all
back in that in that time and space. You know,
imagine where you live, whatever when you hear the word home,
whatever you think of when you hear the word home,
imagine that one one afternoon, you know, one night, whatever
you hear this, you don't even hear a sound. The
(27:49):
ground beneath you shakes, the windows shatter, you hear ten
thousand car alarms go off at once, right, dogs and
cats or going crazy? Uh in the and then the
sky lights up and you see things flying through the sky,
(28:10):
which is a detail that becomes very important later. Of course,
you think that it's an act of violence, right, It
doesn't feel like an accident. It's a violent act that
feels like an act of violence. Hey, I was very
well done, man. A violent act that feels like an
act of violence. Yes, just so. Uh So the news
(28:34):
goes crazy right there. They're trying to figure out what happened. Uh,
They're they're asking all these questions. Well, we'll bracket that
for a second. So let's just go to what the
authorities initially said. Captain Doug Kane, who was a spokesman
for the State Police, said that the surprise, surprise, the
(28:57):
cause of this massive explosion was all this M six
propellant used as as you had noted nol in Howitzer's
and other artillery. The pellets are mainly this compressed substance
called nitro cellulose. It's also sometimes called gun cotton. Authorities
initially said there was a total of four hundred and
(29:19):
fifty tons after an investigator looking into that October fifteenth
explosion saw cardboard boxes and rows and rows of palates
just chilling behind a building. But then they found more
stacked in sheds and warehouses and they started trying to
move They started trying to move it, uh, and it wasn't.
The problem they had was that for a minute, this
(29:42):
hoarding or hiding away of this stuff actually worked Legally.
They were supposed to put this in a thing called
a storage magazine, and they had instead hidden it away
because they wanted it to look like they were selling
this stuff. Stuff was also known as flash paper. You
might have heard it referred to as such. So they
had they had tried to move it back and forth.
(30:04):
The authorities are trying to move the stuff that hadn't exploded,
and that is the official narrative so far. That's the
official That's what you will hear on the news. That's
what you will hear when you read about the the
later court cases and stuff that come about because of this. However,
there is more to the story. Some people you see,
(30:28):
allege that a cover up exists. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor and
we're back. So, as we said, what we've explored thus
far is the official story. That's the thing that comes
(30:48):
across the news waves to you, the the pr documentation.
Let's you know, that's what's going on, and uh, that's
what goes down in the history books. But guess what,
there are other ex nations out there, some a little
more odd than others, but almost all of them reek
of some kind of cover up that was a foot here.
(31:09):
And like we said before, given that massive mushroom cloud,
it's completely understandable that some people would fear and nuclear detonation, right,
or some kind of attack at least, or you know,
something went wrong other than an accident, right, And the
the idea of nuclear powered terrorism is at the forefront
(31:29):
of a lot of people's minds due to active negotiations
with the DPRK in the attempt to verify just arm nukes,
the concerns of quote unquote rogue nukes or suitcase nukes,
the dirty bombs, dirty bombs, the dirty bombs that to
be confused with our local dirty birds, also sometimes bomb
(31:55):
sports jokes. So it's interesting because the Shreveports Times shortly
after this reported a number of what you could call
conspiracy theories or alternative theories, or at the very least
contract eyewitness reports that contradict the official narrative. But that
article and subsequent related articles appeared to have been scrubbed
(32:19):
from the Internet. It could not find them, even using
one of our favorite tools, the way back machine. Man,
I love that thing. Uh. One article that did survive
is pretty fascinating. Uh. If not, well, let's present it
first for everyone's consideration without commentary, and then maybe we
(32:40):
can go back and and and pick it apart a little.
This comes to us from Joe Quinn, who was writing
at op ed news dot com. So in op ed
news dot Com, Joe Quinn reports that folks across Texas Louisiana.
Mimmissippi saw bright flashes in the sky, and he described
them having seen fireball trails as well. And then Shreveport,
(33:00):
the Shreveport area of northwest Louisiana, a lot of folks
heard um earth shaking booms that caused houses to rattle
in their foundations and windows were broken all throughout Minden. Um.
And so here's a quote from Amy Mealy, who was
one of the residents who lived just a couple of
miles from Camp Menden. Yeah, she genuinely thought that she
(33:21):
was being bombed. That's what That's what she said. I
honestly thought we were being bombed. And she said it
was one of the scariest things that she's ever been through. Um.
And you know, she was like, she describes how she's
checking some emails. Right, she's about to go to bed.
You look at your phone or whatever you can do
your check your email, make sure everything's okay. And she
said she had an odd feeling in the pit of
(33:42):
her stomach. She said it was quote like a rolling
thunder in the distance. And and then she said it
was getting closer and closer, and she said she felt
everything moving with me. I could literally feel it moving
towards me. That's a that's pretty crazy, right and and
that's right before are the actual explosion hit. Ah See,
(34:03):
the chronology becomes interesting here yet because dozens of people
that's still from op ed news. Dozens of people Quinn
Rights called the Webster Parish Sheriff's office, as well as
the local news station k s l A News twelve,
and they reported seeing flashes of light in the sky
and hearing multiple loud booms that shook houses. The sheriff's
(34:24):
office initially stated that there was a quote possibility that
a meteor hit the ground in the area. The following morning, however,
they recanted, and the parish sheriff at the time, Gary Sexton,
said that has Matt Experts told him what people had
seen and heard was an underground bunker containing explosives that
(34:45):
blew up that late night on October fift Not only
was there nothing to see here, but the explosion quote
worked exactly as it was designed to do, and the
use of the phrase designed was somewhat unfortunate for the
sheriff department at that time because it left the door
open for conjecture. Quinn and other people who doubt the
(35:06):
official narratives still have questions. Quinn puts it this way beautifully.
He says, what are the odds that add around the
same time as people across three states Mississippi, Texas, and
Louisiana and hundreds of miles apart, we're seeing what was
clearly a meteorite comment fragment burning up in the lower
earth atmosphere, a munition stump would explode at the same time.
(35:30):
More to the point, if a munition stump did explode,
what are the odds that a meteorite or comment fragment
that many eyewitnesses believe hit the ground in the area
would be in no way connected to the explosion. So enticing, tantalizing, tempting, right,
But we also have to we also have to think
(35:50):
about how close the timeline can become. Here, it could
seem like a meteor right, depend on somewhere someone standing
and what they're seeing at the time. We've talked about
this before with moufon and different UFO observations. Right. Light, Yeah,
light in the atmosphere can be tricky. Yeah, the whole
(36:11):
thing is one big shamalan and the the problem is
that someone could be far enough away that they see
a light, but they don't hear a sound or necessarily
feel a tremor. Right, so they could see debris from
an explosion launched so high that they feel they're watching
(36:33):
a meteor crash. So it could just be the explosion.
But but that hasn't prevented people from saying, no, there
is a cover up a meteor hit. And then they
that's the thing for me. They blew up a military
base to cover it up. It's kind of like the
(36:53):
Titanic conspiracy. And they're like, the best way to kill
the people who don't like the Federal Reserve is to
get them on this mat of boat. So it seems
that if we're exercising Akam's razor here, the idea between
the two conspiracies, the idea that there's a cover up
of a cover up. Right. Uh, it seems that maybe
(37:15):
the mundane answer is the more accurate one, but it
doesn't make it any less disgusting in terms of corruption. Uh. Luckily,
and there are two pieces of good news here. First, thankfully,
no one that we know of was actually injured in
this in this debacle, And second, in a in a
(37:39):
rare example of corporate justice, the higher ups that explode
did end up going to court. So it wasn't just
you know the way it happens with banks. It wasn't
just that the bank was fined some portion of their
profits and was able to write it off as a
cost of doing business. Uh. The individuals involved actually had
(37:59):
lee consequences. Yes. The the co owner a man named
David Alan Smith who was sixty three years old at
the time. Uh. He was sentenced to fifty five months
in prison because of all this. Yeah and uh and
also three years of supervised I guess what what is
that super supervisor essentially? Um and uh after he was released,
(38:23):
and he was also find thirty four million dollars what
almost like almost, well, this guy is super rich man.
Well it was almost thirty five million. Again he's he's
the co owner of this company, right, and he was
taking part in that conspiracy we were talking about building
the government. There's a lot of rings of chernobyl in
(38:45):
this story. You know, not to spoil anything, but it's
like it's it's corruption, it's cover up, it's failure to
do the right thing to protect the people that live
in the vicinity of your you know, facility with very
dangerous things products at the center products at the center. Well,
and here's the thing, David Allen Smith, He's not the
only guy that went to prison. Right. There was William Terry, Right,
(39:07):
we mentioned him earlier. He was sentenced to sixty months
in prison, three years of supervised release. Uh. And he
because he wasn't an owner, I guess he was the
VP of operations, right. He had to pay just under
a hundred and fifty thousand in restitution for participating in
the criminal conspiracy. And there were three other big names
(39:27):
that also had to take a dive. Yeah. There was
a director of support technology, a man you know, Charles
Ferris Callahan. He was sixty nine UM from Shreveport. He
got twenty four months in the in the clink, one
year of supervised probation UM, and had to pay two
hundred and seven thousand, five nine nine bucks in restitution
(39:48):
for falsely representing facts in various documents. Then, of course
you get over to uh, Kenneth Wayne Lambkin. He was
the this is his title M six mill like as
in demolition program manager, all about the little snappy you
know shortenings. Well, yeah, and he got himself forty five
(40:09):
months in prison and three years of that old fun
thing supervised release or probation, and he was fined. And
you know again similarly um to William Terry Wright a
hundred forty nine thousand dollars in restitution and his was
for specifically making false statements. And last, but not least,
there was traffic and inventory control manager Lionel Wayne Coons
(40:31):
with a K who had to go with forty one
months in prison three years of supervised release, and he
got off relatively easily in terms of restitution. He only
had to pay ninety two thousand nine Only I don't
have that sitting around and how about you guys, But well,
it's kind of it's it's kind of like anchoring on menus,
you know, the psychological thing where you show people a
(40:53):
larger price first and then you get them to forget
how high the lowest price thing is. We could we
should go into psychology of menus one day. Uh So
these people did actually go, they did go to court,
they did get found guilty. It was a real conspiracy.
The question for people who are out there a little
(41:15):
more in the fringe of the reporting is whether or
not there was a that was, whether or not this
conspiracy is a cover up for something else at play.
We did not find a ton of evidence for that.
It seemed more like the fog of war and the
panic of trying to report things as they're happening. But hey,
(41:35):
if you are from the area and you know something
else that was a miss at the time, we would
love to hear from you. And also, if you're not
from the area, can you recall any other strange cases
like this in your neck of the Global Woods? What
popped up in the news only to disappear a few
days later, like one day true story, long time listeners,
(41:55):
remember this one day here in our fair semi metropolis
US of Atlanta, piece of the highway just collapsed. Uh,
Interstate eight five and four. For several months afterwards. Uh.
The story that the local government was pushing was that
a homeless person who struggled with substance abuse problems had
(42:19):
set a fire in a shopping cart and that that
resulted in the bridge collapsing. Yeah, because stone totally melts,
you know, with the garbage can fires. Right, Well, I mean,
you know, they're supposedly some other propellant down there are
things stockpiling Yeah, well under the bridge. Yeah, he recently
(42:43):
started an LLC. He was very Explode Party Incorporated. Ye, well,
they had to figure out some way to use all
those demilitarized ordinance you know, let's use it for a
nice fireworks display on the downtown Atlanta Skyline. It is alias,
of course, was Bridge Blowington. Yeah, so I I mean
(43:05):
that it's weird because that I A D five collapse
is a pretty good example of how quickly these things
can pop in and out of the news. So we
would be curious to hear your stories or your versions
of this, because the truth of the matter is now
that our biological attention spans have been surpassed by our
(43:27):
technological ability to disseminate stories. So it is difficult. There's
that old saying that you know, you can't keep your
eye you can't watch every falling sparrow or whatever. Uh.
For humans, that's always been difficult, and now it is impossible.
So it's quite it's it's it's not even possible. It
is plausible that some crazy thing happened in like Scranton, Pennsylvania,
(43:52):
and only the people in part of Scranton, Pennsylvania know
what went down. We want to hear those stories. We
want to share them with your fellow stlers. Yes, please
find us all over the place, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I
mean you can do all those things. Call our number
one eight three three s t W y t K.
Give us the scoops because we want to. We want
(44:14):
to spread those two scoops two and a half if possible,
but keep it to three minutes. How many scoops are
in Raisin brands? Just raisins that's on accounting the brand.
What size scoop though, that's the question. You know, they're
fairly vague about it. It looks, you know, they don't
give you the volume of the scoops, show the scoop,
(44:37):
and they kind of they kind of imply that all
other cereals are short scooping you I agree, I agree,
And then it says actual size underneath the scoop. It
doesn't actually And if you feel so compelled, uh, you
want to explore any of our private lives, um, you
can check me out on Instagram where I am. I've
changed it up, I am now at how now Noel Brown? Wow, Yeah,
(45:00):
it's time for a change. I like it. And Brionic
Insider that was that was a relic from my past.
Kind of move on, let's see you can see me. Uh. Currently,
I managed to get in and out of Belgium without
too much weird customs stuff. You can see some of
the stories from that over it at ben Bolan. Uh
funny story. I ran in the same customs agent going
(45:22):
out as they did going in, and I think I
made a friend, maybe a fan of the show. I
don't know. Yeah, if you, if you happen to be listening.
I mean conversely, you can check Matt out at at
t s A. Well. Yeah, you can also find me
at acts at XPLO summer um. It's you know, a
mission about education Matt. Matt has many aliases on the internet.
(45:46):
You can find me on at slightly darker sunglasses than yours.
These are all your kind of like heype beast kind
of accounts. Yes, uh, you know what if you don't
want to do any of that, I don't want to
go on Instagram. Who we likes Instagram? Anyway, here's feeding
the machine, feeding the beast. You can do the old
fashioned way. You can get in touch with us directly. Well, actually,
(46:06):
do we mention that Facebook group? Here's where it gets crazy.
I don't know if we did or not. If we didn't.
You can go to that, but if you want to
do that either, you can also just send us a
good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You to
(46:37):
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