July 29, 2020 • 55 mins
More than 500 feet long and carrying missiles the size of small planes, the giant, nuclear-powered Kursk submarine was an apex predator of the high seas. At least, that is, until it was destroyed in one of the most catastrophic peacetime submarine accidents in history. The entire crew was lost and, decades later, some still believe this 'accident' was no accident at all.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One quick note before we dive in today. We had
a few gremlins in the proverbial machine during this recording.
As a result, you may notice a little bit of
strangeness with the microphones in this episode, especially my own. However,
we managed to keep those audio shenanigans to a minimum.
We hope you enjoy the show. From UFOs to psychic
(00:24):
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,
(00:46):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is all they called me Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decades.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We're
diving deep today in what will come to be the
(01:08):
first terrible pun of this episode into a story that
some people may remember right as one of those many
ephemeral headlines that circulated in two thousand and two thousand
and one. But this was brought to our attention by
(01:29):
by one of our fellow listeners, a fellow conspiracy realists
who for the sake of comic book nursery, we will
refer to as Ney Moor. Hey, guys, So I just
got out of the Navy working on submarines, and as such,
I've got a couple of submarine conspiracies that you may
(01:49):
or may not know about. So the first one is
the Curse, which that made international news and two thousands,
I think it was two thousands, the Russian submarine that
was spying on United States and and and NATO submarines
and warships doing doing a bunch of a bunch of
(02:10):
exercises and it blew up. The official stories that a
torpedo blew up. But I know people who have been
who are on the boat one of the submarines, and
they were listening to the Curse, and I know one
of them has told me it definitely got shot by
another boat. One said it definitely did not, and and
(02:33):
some of the others have have refused to talk about it.
So so who knows what's going on there? That one's
definitely worth looking into. Nay more, this is a fantastic question,
and you've actually you've given us a lot to chew
on here, such that we talked off air, and this
(02:53):
may be the first of multiple submarine related conspiracies, because
let's talk about submarines. The weirdest thing about a submarine
is that they are inherently conspiratorial. There are these mysterious,
at times nuclear powered craft that are as we record
(03:14):
sneaking through the ocean depths across the planet. You know,
a submarine is explicitly designed to deceive, to include its presence,
The location, and the capabilities of a submarine are often
the stuff its owners don't want you to know. And
so it's no surprise that submarines are themselves the subject
(03:36):
of numerous conspiracies. So today we're diving into the mystery
of one submarine in particular. As you requested, nay more,
what happened to the curse? Here are the facts. So
work on the K one curse began in ninet um
(03:57):
and the sub officially launched in and it was massive.
It was a massive deal, but it was also physically massive.
At five eight feet nineteen thousand, four hundred tons um,
it was capable of launching missiles the size of a
small aircraft that would absolutely decimate any targets that were
(04:20):
unfortunate enough to be in its path, and that could
be up to four hundred miles away. NATO actually called
it an Oscar to class, which is a nuclear powered
cruise missile submarine owned and operated by the Russian Navy,
and until two thousand seven conversion of the U. S.
Navy's Ohio class subs from ballistic missiles to these types
(04:42):
of more long range cruise missiles um the Oscar two
class submarines were the largest of their type in the world.
In this particular Oscar two class submarine, the Curse was
a big deal. It and others in this class were
explicitly designed to defeat the biggest threats that we're seeing
in the U. S. Navy's command, the US Aircraft Carrier Group,
(05:07):
So the machines that are out there floating that function
as a full military command base and airport. Yeah, it's
important to remember that until about two thousand and seven,
the Oscar two class was the largest type a submarine
of its type in the entire world. The only reason
that changed is because the Ohio Some Ohio class subs
(05:31):
that originally launched ballistic missiles were converted to also launched
cruise missiles. The Curse had the power in theory to
sink an aircraft carrier with a single torpedo that was
specifically something called a Type sixty five. These torpedoes carried
a nine hundred and nine pound warhead. This is this
(05:53):
is serious stuff. And you know, to be very clear
when we say aircraft carrier in this sense, we mean
exactly what Matt is talking about here, the the ship
that is the the carrier where you see the jets
launching and stuff. Aircraft carriers don't ride solo. They rolled deep.
(06:14):
Uh that you'll we have to remember that an aircraft
carrier is one part of what is it called an
aircraft carrier battle group, and that includes other ships. It
changes depending on the mission, but you know it includes
things like guided missile cruisers, destroyers, uh, frigates like this.
(06:34):
This is not the only thing on the album. An
aircraft carrier battle group is kind of like a Posse track.
But the aircraft carrier is the you know is the Tupac.
And really quickly, what is a frigate? Yeah? Yeah, frigate
is It is an old term. I love so many
maritime terms. There's also like frigotea. Uh, A frigate is
(06:55):
meant to protect other warships and some and I think
they specialized. Again, I'm not a member of the navy,
but I think they specialized in anti submarine warfare pretty often.
Every time I hear I just want to say, frigging frigate.
You know, it's just got it's got the ring to it,
but please let us right the ship and move forward.
(07:16):
In the episode, there we go, There we Go. The
So aside from being powerful in offensive terms, the Curse
was also very uh. It was a source of pride
for the Russian military because it's structure was purportedly incredibly
(07:39):
robust and sturdy in a way that would worry the
members of NATO. Yes, the whole design of this craft
made it very very, at least on paper, difficult to sink,
to breach the whole, to to cause major damage to
(08:00):
this thing. It had a double whole design, So just
think about this way. On the outer the exoscale and
essentially the outer hole was stainless steel that had all
kinds of different metals in their nickel, chromium, and um.
It had extremely good resistance to things like corrosion and
natural processes that would weaken the whole system. And something's
(08:23):
really interesting. These metals actually have a bit of a
weak magneticism to them. And something really interesting about these
metals nickel and chromium and you know, combined there with steel,
both of these metals were very difficult to detect with
this thing that the United States military was using a
magnetic anominally detector. Uh. And because those metals have those
(08:44):
weak signals as it's traveling through the see through the ocean, Uh,
it's not as easily detected because of that weak signature
of those metals contained. And you know, then you get
into the inner hole and you're looking at two inch
thick steel. It's it's really cool because the the structure
of that outer and inner hole essentially made this thing
(09:08):
so strong that you could just plow through ice out
in the Arctic somewhere if you needed to, just to
break through. And the way this structure, I mean already
we're kind of describing here is just how strong this
thing is. Right. It was compared a lot to the Titanic,
at least in some of the writing that that I
saw about the ship or the boat, excuse me, the submarine,
(09:31):
because it was built with these compartments, separated, separated compartments
that if one were to be breached and a flood
was to occur in one of those you could turn.
You could shut that thing down, lock it off, and
then be safe in another compartment. Even if the submarine
were to sink all the way down to the ocean floor,
the crew would theoretically be able to survive in one
(09:54):
of those other compartments if they did, you know, seal
themselves in essentially and had enough oxygen. But that comparison
to the Titanic about being unsinkable and that structure is
very interesting. Yeah. I don't know if it's our own
kind of personal selection bias or something, but it seems
like historically, whenever we run into, uh, these so called
(10:18):
indestructible or impregnable structures, something goes terribly awry. It's like
putting a target on your inventions back. This boat was
able to do something amazing and possibly something that would
terrify some of our land lovers in the audience. The
Curse was able to remain submerge for up to a
(10:40):
hundred and twenty days. That means if you were on
the crew of the Curse, it was theoretically possible that
you would sink under the surface of the briny blue
and you would not see the sun or see the
sky until almost half a year had passed. I just
have to say I have no military experience, but the
(11:02):
concept of doing that for a hundred and twenty days straight, um, psychologically,
I would not want to be in there trapped with
what a hundred maybe hundred plus human beings inside that thing. No,
thank you, I can't even imagine just the logistics of that.
And just like the sanitary conditions, you know what I mean.
(11:22):
I'm sure you know there's there's things to help keep
things from becoming from deteriorating into a state of you know,
um disgustingness. I guess for lack of a better word,
but it seems like it'd be pretty stinky down there
with all those men's you know, bodies. Yeah, that's what's that.
That's one of the first things I thought of too.
(11:42):
Because we have we have amazing technology for you know, um,
recycling air. We have an amazing water reclamation technology as
a species, but for some reason, our entire species just
hasn't figured out a way to get around the funk,
you know, just that locker stank with an a that
occurs whenever you have a bunch of a bunch of
(12:06):
people in a small, claustrophobic situation, and you know, we're
not We want to be completely fair. Like, the Curse
was large enough and to a degree opulent enough that
senior UH senior officers did have their own state rooms.
It's not like everybody was three people to a bunk
(12:27):
or something. But still, life on a submarine is is very,
very challenging. And the Curse itself actually only completed a
single mission during its time, which sounds unusual for such
a um, such a juggernaut of the waves. During five
years of service, it completed one six month deployment to
(12:50):
the Mediterranean seed. This was in and they were going
to monitor US naval response to the coast of a
crisis that was occurring. Now, you might ask yourself, why
spend so much time, blood and treasure on the creation
of a craft like this and not really take it out,
(13:13):
you know, not really give it a spin around the
global block. It turns out there were I don't know
if it's fair to say Russia was broke, but they
had some serious money issues going on, right, Yeah, it's crazy. Um,
So they spent all this money, you know, top dollar
to make this impregnable, UH, you know, b a myth
(13:34):
of a of a seafaring war machine. Um. And they
didn't factor in a little detail, you know, the the
go go juice, the stuff that makes it go, literally,
the fuel. They didn't have a hand built it into
the budget. Um. There was an absolute funding crisis that
was so serious that many members of the Northern Fleet
(13:55):
had gone unpaid for quite a while in the mid nineties.
Imagine in that. Okay, so now let's paint the situation,
uh with a little bit of a sharper brush to
your point, Noel, You're trapped on a submarine. You might
be underwater for four months. Everything stinks of funk and sweat. Uh.
(14:18):
And the other hundreds something people with you are non
consensual volunteers, right. They signed up for the Navy with
the expectation that they would be paid for it. And
all of a sudden you're not getting the checks. And
that doesn't mean you can get off the boat. You're
still stuck. It's terrible, um. And you know, I don't
(14:40):
want to be glib about it, because the story of
the curse takes takes a very violent turn almost twenty
years ago today. Yes, so on August ten, in the
year two thousand, well, something strange happened. There was an
unexpected disaster, at least according to the official story, right,
(15:04):
there's an unofficial disaster that occurs during an exercise um
out at sea. It was called Summer X, And the
way the story goes, there was a tremendous explosion inside
of the submarine itself that ended up just tearing the
(15:24):
thing into several pieces. Specifically, the front end, the nose
of it was completely ripped off of the submarine itself,
and there were other, uh pretty large parts of this
submarine that were completely separated and blown apart and shoved
into one another. And again, this is a submarine. You
have to remember, it is operating underneath the surface of
(15:47):
the water. So unless you are specifically tracking this thing
with some kind of sophisticated high powered radar or some
other technology, you don't know where it is. If you're
on the surface, let's say, even if you're in a
frigate or another ship or something that's monitoring the situation,
you don't know exactly where they are. But there were
(16:08):
crews on surrounding ships or nearby ships, and the only
way that they knew something had gone wrong was that
they felt the impact or essentially the boom the implosion
that occurred below, and they that you could feel it
essentially being on another craft. This disaster occurred in an
(16:29):
area known as the Barrens Scene. The Barren Sea is
a part of the Arctic Ocean. It's off the northern
coast of Norway and Russia. Uh and this this geography
is important because that second, much larger explosion created an
impact that could be felt as far away as Alaska.
(16:52):
Later research by seismologists would conclude that this was the
force was equivalent to that of an earthquake, measuring four
point two on the Richter scale, which means that which
of course would lead you to to rightly assume that
new missions were part of the explosion, you know what
(17:14):
I mean, not just a fire or something. Yes, And
it follows that there were no survivors. All one and
eighteen members of the crew of the Kurs perished in
the disaster. Um And you know, this was something that
Vladimir Putin, who was recently elected at the time. It's
hard to imagine a time when Vladimir Putin wasn't the
(17:37):
head of this part of the world, but there there
certainly was, and he had recently been elected and staked
a lot of his reputation on pushing for this project.
So this was a big blow uh to to him personally. UM.
And it wasn't a good look either that he happened
to be on vacation at the time. UM. And this
did not play well with relatives of the crew members.
(17:59):
I watched the document, sure you about this, and there
there were a lot of I guess hearings where relatives
of the crew members were just shrieking in in Russian
and just at the top of their lungs, cursing Putin
and this regime, UM, and saying, how could you let
these men live in a tiny box for you know,
however long? We we know it was. It was quite
(18:20):
a long time with no pay. We know that happened too.
And then just you know, let them dialect dogs basically,
you know, so a lot of emotion. UM. They were
absolutely aghast and enraged at the way this disaster was handled.
They argued that the official statements were absolute uh disinformation,
absolute bs Um. Was there a cover up? We'll talk
(18:43):
about that after a quick word from our sponsor. Let's
walk through the immediate aftermath of this disaster, and you know,
it's tempting just say that. Of course, anyone will react
(19:05):
with intense grief and emotion when they lose a loved one,
but it's it's crucial for us to emphasize that the
claims of the relatives of these crew members were not
just made up out of whole cloth. They didn't just
wake up for no reason and and decide to accuse
the government of deceiving them. Later research found that there
(19:29):
were intense problems with the investigation. The Russian Navy, according
to official sources, initially did not realize an accident had occurred.
More than six hours passed before an initial search even began.
And to your point about those compartments, Matt, does that mean,
(19:49):
like you can look at layouts of the of the
these nine compartments and the cursed. Does that mean that
some of the eighteen people aboard were able to escape
whatever that initial blast was and moved to a safer compartment.
Would six hours have saved them? You know, eleven hours
later the Navy declared an emergency. Finally, later research showed
(20:12):
that all crew members had died by that point. Normally,
there's a you know, cash of safety gear um on
these types of subs rescue buoy's um which automatically deployed
like an escape pod in a spaceship or something, but
that did not occur. The booty of the Curse had
been disabled. It took the Navy sixteen hours to find
(20:35):
the wreckage and and to to start to kind of
like figure out what had happened. Um. Rumors were circulating
the sub may have collided with the mine, which we
know exists. We know there's like you know, still potentially
isn't there one in Savannah Bend? Then we talked about
that in Savannah, Georgia. There's a mine somewhere out there
in the in the harbor. It's a nuclear nuclear weapon.
(20:55):
Oh even worse, but still we have heard tell of
still active minds out there, you know, from from War
h and this was a again a rumor, but that
it had been an undeployed mine UM that it collided
with inadvertently. Yeah, from way back in World War two.
They're all, you know, they're all kinds of rumors that
were circulating around the time. It's it makes total sense, right,
(21:20):
how on earth could this have happened? We were doing
some kind of official exercise. Nothing could have should have
gone wrong. Maybe there was a friendly fire situation, an
accidental you know, deployment of a torpedo that ended up
hitting a friendly target in this way right if you're
if you're imagining yourself as as the Russian military or
(21:44):
some of the the commanders there. And the thing is,
there's all kinds of other stuff that people have said
over the years about what may have happened. But now
almost twenty years, almost twenty years to the day later,
the question still remains what actually happened inside that submarine
and to that submarine on that day August. Here's where
(22:08):
it gets crazy. The official explanation, even at first was
was suspicious. There were problems that cropped up with it immediately.
The primary issue was the high amount of secrecy involved.
The Russian government refused all international offers of assistance, which
(22:31):
can you know, if you're suspicious, it can function as
tacit confirmation that they had perhaps some secret technology on
there or something that they were not uh comfortable with
other nations discovering. These things went back and forth. So
we're going to jump around in time just a little
(22:52):
bit right now. The official explanation is that the authorities
say the crew of the current was preparing to load
a dummy torpedo, a practice torpedo, right, because these are
naval exercises. That doesn't mean it's it's actual war, so
they don't want to shoot, you know, genuine torpedoes. And
(23:14):
this torpedo that they were loading, which was a sixty
seventy six kid torpedo, had two problems. First, it contained
a liquid called high test peroxide. This is not the
kind of stuff that you put in your hair when
you're a teenager or something. Uh. Second problem, they claimed
(23:35):
there was a manufacturing defect and that there was a
faulty weld in the casing of the sub of the torpedo.
And so when the when they were loading this on,
this high test peroxide or h t P leaked from
this faulty weld and it caused the torpedoes fuel to explode.
(23:57):
That fuel is kerosene, right, and kerosene is a friend
of explosions. And remember, by the way, this is a
sixty five type weapon. That's the aircraft carrier killer that
we were talking about. A very large weapon. Are a
very large a piece of ammunition? Uh, why don't you
(24:17):
call it? Around if you will, um so. So when
the explosion occurred, mixed with the things we're talking about there,
the kerosene and the high the HTP, it blew off
the inner and outer doors to the torpedo, so the
things that are really helping in a lot of ways
(24:38):
to keep the water out, which is you know, generally
a good thing when you're inside a metal container inside
the ocean. Um then it started a fire. It destroyed
the bulkhead, the separator essentially between the first and second
compartments like the ones we were talking about there where
uh the control room, by the way, was in one
(25:00):
of those. So when that bulkhead was destroyed between the
first and second compartments and that fires going, you actually
had probably at least in all likelihood most if not
all of the crew within the control room, the people
running the boat, running the sub, they probably all perished
or at least were badly injured and pairs soon after
(25:22):
that really really messed up. And then we have that
second explosion that was noticed by a lot of the
crew that was on the surface, and that really is
an issue when you don't have access to controls of
a ship that you were on or a boat yeah, yeah,
no kidding. And and this we know that that initial
(25:44):
blast occurs, right the the theory is, or the official
explanation is the way that you just outlined it bad.
The idea is that two minutes and fifteen seconds ballpark
after that initial blast, the submarine the cursed had reached
the floor of this e and this, the intensity of
this initial fire, eventually triggered the detonation of multiple torpedo
(26:10):
warheads on board. It is impossible in the English language
to accurately describe how terrible that is because remember earlier
in the episode, just for an example, we pointed out
that these warheads could weigh nine pounds. This is calamitous.
That second explosion was the equivalent of over two tons
(26:33):
of T and T. But as we said, there were
people who had a lot of problems with this explanation. No,
no doubt, the torpedo manufacturer themselves completely contested this version
of events. UM. In addition to that, the official story
seemed to contradict Russia's own claims about the hull of
(26:53):
the craft. UH. It seemed completely inconceivable that that double
hull design with those nine water tight compartments UM, which
are obviously meant to fill up in the event of
of a breach to keep it from completely being compromised.
That it would have taken just the absolute most violent
explosion to pierce uh those very very um uh fortified
(27:19):
water tight compartments. Um. So let's go into some of
the possibilities. We start off with maybe the most plausible,
like using kind of process of elimination and just a
common sense. At the time, senior officers in the Russian
Navy claimed that the curse had collided with a British
or American sub that was running spying maneuvers out in
(27:40):
the Barents Sea. Yeah, the so this is interesting, nay
more because what we see here is that both quote
unquote sides of the military's involved are accusing the other
ones of spy. So our us position is the curse.
It was said they were doing exercises, but the real
(28:02):
goal was, or at least one of the goals, was
to spy on the US right and detect our maritime presence.
That makes total sense. I'm not saying that's untrue. It
probably is because military exercises or war games or whatever
you want to call them, are often they often have
multiple inlterior motives. Right, Let's show an antagonistic force that
(28:26):
we can um like China a few years back. Let's
show the US that we can also shoot satellites out
of the sky. Let's let's call that. Let's let's call
that a test for the environment or whatever. They said
that was hilarious. Maybe I'm being a jerk. I don't know.
I don't think so. Just speaking of in part of
another bit of submarine research that we were doing together,
(28:50):
we we heard and I'm going to quote this, it's
from PBSS NOVA. They discussed how way back when, in
the nineteen sixties and seventies, the United States militaries, specifically
the Navy, working with several others, they miked the entire ocean,
(29:11):
or almost the entire ocean. And this is this is
something that we are probably gonna do an entire episode
on if we haven't done it already, which maybe we have.
I don't think we have. But there were microphones everywhere.
As an audio nerd, the logistics of that alone is
blowing my mind. I mean, making up a drum kit
(29:32):
is a pain in the butt, you know. Can you
imagine miking the entire ocean? Any audio files or studio
rats out there know what we're talking about. Well, it's
it's it's I guess less sophisticated than you may imagine. Uh,
it's more about visual readouts. But it just knowing that
(29:52):
the U. S. Military was listening to everything to identify
exactly where Russia was operating or the in the Soviet
Union of just it's everybody's doing it, that's all. And
again no no shade here at all, because we have
to remember, you know, uh, everybody is trying to do this.
(30:13):
The US had satellites taking photographs before they could figure
out a like a viable way to send those photographs
back to Earth. They literally where Paul beat me here,
They were literally dropping filmage from the sky and then
sending some poor schmuck out to try to catch it.
So like, yeah, everybody is everybody is spying on each
(30:36):
other in some way. And the reason we're bringing up
this dichotomy is because the Russian claims are not that
they were spying on us or British craft. The Russian
claims so that they were participating in these naval exercises
and they were being shadowed by those those dastardly uh
ne'er New wells over NATO. So they're they're saying that
(30:59):
the US was spying on us. It seems like everybody
was spying on each other, if you want to be
completely fair, everybody was spying on each other because that's
the right thing to do. But then if that's the case,
why wasn't there a quicker response to the disaster on
the curse if it were indeed an accident. Sorry, no
(31:20):
one could see this on the zoom, but I just
got so pleased with myself and like leaned back from
the mic and looked at you guys. We were also
all nodding pretty heavily. But but I love the one
upsmanship or brinksmanship. Maybe now we we we went into
that one the other day, but I think this is
more one ships. Like you can spy on me, bro,
let me spy on you. Oh, you can just spy
(31:40):
on me. I'm gonna double hard spy on you, bro.
You know that's the way, spy on the whole world.
I'm gonna mike the ocean. So the the thing about
this is that everything we just said is true. No, no,
none of this is. None of this is conspiracy theory.
You're gonna make the ocean. Bro, I'm gonna Mike space.
(32:03):
Don't know what else can we Mike, Yes, Oh, then
we made smartphones. Now we have mix everywhere, right right right.
I always think of that thing in Batman where they
turn every smartphone in the world into a listening device
that is not beyond the realm of possibility. Uh these days. Uh,
it's it's pretty pretty terrifying, but total total aside. I
think it's just a fun experiment and I would love
(32:25):
to hear you guys take on it. And I'd love
to hear from our fellow conspiracy realist about this. Um.
So it's no secret, you know, like the I'm not
gonna put any of us on the spot specifically, but
I know between the three of us, we have a
lot of like proxies and privacy things on our phones
and on our devices. I wanted to do an experiment
(32:47):
where I removed those, uh you know what are ostensibly
protections to see how the ad how the ad um
magic algorithms work. And I've been I've been trying to
build an ad profile as like a deranged billionaire. So
I'll be carrying my phone around, maybe open Facebook and
(33:09):
an OS or something and just be like mega yacht
price price, mega yacht diamonds wholesale, yes, Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Yes.
You know, so if anybody wants to do an experiment
with that, enjoying us would love to hear your results.
So far, I have not been getting targeted ads for
(33:29):
a mega yacht, So maybe I'm just not doing it right.
Maybe you know what, the system probably already knows that
I can't actually by I. I think mega yachts to
the kind of things that don't really need to be
advertised for. They just kind of make them to order.
You know, that's true, there's not there's there's probably not
some some guide to department in I kea going How
(33:53):
am I going to move all these mega yotts? People
just keep wasting money on couches. But but any way, yes,
the spying stuff is real. Noll to your point, Um,
this does seem like a plausible explanation, does it not?
For For someone to say, for for members of the
Russian Navy to say the curse cats collided with someone
(34:16):
that was spying on them, it has a propagandistic effect too,
because the implication here is that the other side is
somehow incompetent or or culpable, you know what I mean. Like,
it's like, look, it was their fault. They shouldn't have
been there in the first place, and they killed all
our beloved comrades. It's a good way to spend it,
to maybe redirect some of that anger we're talking about
(34:38):
about women, you know, wives who have lost their husbands, etcetera.
You know, mothers who've lost their sons. Uh, let's let's
point this, you know, shotgun blast of of grief and
anxiety toward the enemy or at least another and secrecy aside. Well,
actually it's it's all kind of secrecy. From this point on.
(34:59):
There are a lot of even more conspiratorial thoughts going
into what actually occurred here to the curse, and we're
going to talk about those after a quick word from
our sponsor. Anybody down to talk secret torpedoes always, alway,
(35:21):
that's one of my main things, you know what I mean.
It's like number number one on my LinkedIn is talk
to me about secret torpedoes. I'm kidding. I I haven't
been on LinkedIn forever. I don't I don't know what
it says. It's true though, there are secrets so more
conspiratorial ideas. One of the one of the ones you
will see frequently is that the Russian government was being
(35:45):
very secretive about the wreckage of the Curse because they
were carrying, like we had kind of um speculated earlier,
they were carrying top secret technology, specifically a classify ultra
high speed torpedo known as the squall or in Russian
(36:06):
s h k v a L. NATO at the time
was very concerned about this, and so for some time
you would see speculation that maybe they were taking this
off the drawing board and into action too soon, and
something had gone wrong with this new technology. I mean,
(36:27):
you always kind of logically makes sense, right, new technology
is super treacherous. How many people died in a space program? Right?
How many people have died in experiments with new munitions,
with new aircraft? You know what I mean. It's it's unfortunately,
it's a cost of doing the business that is war.
But here's the problem. Um, there's a lot of speculation
(36:49):
by you know, military experts and historians that these, uh,
this technology never really existed. Um. So that's puts a
little bit of harention to this theory. Um, but how
would they know it's hyper classified. It's hyper classified mega torpedoes. Um,
that's true. I don't know, that's I know, I know
(37:11):
you're joking their Matt, but it's it's a good point
you make. I mean, there really is no way of
knowing if that level of secrecy that we know the
Russians are capable of, UM was was was a thing.
So let's talk. Let's let's let's pivot away a little
bit to the American side of things. You'll see some
of these claims that the U. S. Submarine uh the well,
(37:32):
a pair of submarines, actually the U. S S Memphis
and the Toledo uh sank the Curse with their torpedoes,
or you know, with the official line of the Russian
government is that they collided with them while they were
out on those spying expeditions or whatever you call it
kind of exercises. And this theory goes like this, the
Toledo accidentally collided with the Curse, and so the Memphis
(37:54):
then opened fire when fearing retaliation, and the resulting fireing
night of the torpedoes. So kind of like at a
at a party somewhere where things get out of hand,
somebody bumps into someone and someone's like, hey, why did
you bump into me? And then someone else preemptively tries
(38:14):
to end a fight by starting one. It's it sounds strange,
but it also I don't know about you, well, but
it feels like it has the ring of plausibility to me,
because accidents do happen and people are already at such
an enormously tense point here. Isn't that a weird escalation though, Ben,
(38:35):
I guess, I guess that's to your point. The tension
is a big part of it because they shouldn't have
been there in the first place, right, So it was
almost like they were discovered and then it's right or
or these are these international waters? No, right, this is
definitely they're They're not supposed to be there. So if
the curse discovers this American spying craft, it would be
(38:57):
it would be on the table for them to open
are anyway, I'm just want to make sure I'm understanding.
You know. That's a really good question. From the way
the UH, from the way the situations occurring, I imagine
and listeners please correct us here, but I imagine this
is either UH an international lane of traffic or or
(39:21):
an international waters area, or maybe there are conflicting claims
about the severenity over the sea here because you know,
as we know, Uh, do you think land borders are messy?
Ocean borders are hilarious. They're they're they're a pile of
dangerous spaghetti that people get killed over. Ye. Man, you
(39:42):
can't build an ocean wall, right man, not yet. I
guess you could maybe, but it'd be pretty expensive and
pretty messy. We you know, we were really focused on
the microphones for a while. We haven't upgraded to the
wall yet, but we'll get there. So so it feels
really stick, but it also feels maybe a little bit
(40:03):
too convenient. The problem is that, of course, these these
lines of speculation thrive because of the secrecy immediately following
the disaster and the years following that. But let's get
really conspiratorial here. We can start connecting odd dots. According
(40:24):
to the stories, one of the U S submarines in
the area had its emergency buoy deployed. Like we said earlier,
an emergency buoy is an automatic thing that happens as
a means of assisting search and rescue efforts. It only
deploys generally in an emergency the Russian Curse buoy, as
(40:50):
I think you had said earlier, Matt was disabled and
the US buoy that deployed was apparently recovered by Russian forces.
Of the subs. The Memphis went to Port to get
repairs in Norway, so there was some kind of damage
to it. The implication is UH. And you'll see people
(41:10):
claiming that there is photographic evidence in the USS Memphis
and that these photos show the hatch covering this emergency
buoy is missing. So you start to see kind of
the threads connecting here. But that's that's only part of
the story. There's other speculation about the USS Toledo. Yeah,
(41:31):
so supposedly after this event went down, the the Toledo
itself needs to get some repairs, so it heads on
over UH to a facility within the US, and once
it gets in there, absolutely no one is allowed to
see it. The personnel that generally would be doing those
repairs and expecting and making sure if he's okay, taking
(41:54):
reports on that, they just don't get to look at it.
And then check this out, there's supposedly video evidence from
the Curse that shows several large gashes on the whole
or you know, a lot of damage on the whole
that's fairly long, and it seems to show that the
metal is bent inward as though there was an explosive
(42:16):
force on the outside pushing that metal in. Now, what
we do need to take an account here is the
concept of implosion. When you've got a pressurized container, right
that then when there's a ton of in this case
ocean water pressure on the outside and the exterior of
(42:37):
that let's say just a can, a big aluminum can,
if there's an if there's sufficient pressure on the outside,
then an implosion can occur where there would be essentially
a crushing of that container, and the explosion would cause
it to look a very certain way, and a lot
(42:58):
of times if that pressure is large enough, you would
just see fragments of metal as like that's what is
left over. That is not what happened with the Curse
for sure, at least a full implosion, because it wasn't
at full depth there when it occurred where or you know,
fifteen thousand I think feet would be around the time
(43:19):
when you get like full crushing depth, right, and the
Curse was at three hundred and fifty four ft under
the surface, or a hundred eight meters, right, which is
nothing compared to you know, crushing death or or deeper depths.
So we're you know, implosion. I don't know. All I'm
saying is it still feels a little fishy, but it
(43:43):
doesn't necessarily prove anything. Oh fishy. Yes, yeah, yeah, I
mean it's true. But there's there's another there's an even
weirder series of rumors about stuff that happened on land
after this. Yes, and this is steven fishier almost to me. Um,
(44:05):
it's this. The story goes that almost immediately after this incident,
a quite sizeable loan or debt to the United States
on Russia's behalf um was forgiven and Russia was allowed
to take out an additional loan. That doesn't happen. You know,
(44:25):
we don't well to what end, what's the reasoning? They're
very unusual. Also, in the days after the incident, it
turns out that George Tennant went to Moscow. If you
know that name doesn't ring a bell. He was the
first acting CIA director in history to go to the
Russian capital, which is a big deal. Um, And that
(44:46):
last part is definitely true, but it's also important to
this there's no causation here. Uh, these events are not
necessarily connected, but it sure doesn't make you think, doesn't it? Fellas, Yeah,
this is this is kind of the juicy stuff, right,
because George Tennant did travel to Moscow just eight days
(45:09):
later on August. It was officially an invitation from Russian
officials to discuss ways to counter international terrorism, but the
embassy refused to give any further details about this, and
Uncle Sam Stonewall at the media pretty hard core. So
(45:30):
now we as we said, this happened almost twenty years
ago to the day, we have the benefit of retrospect,
We have a lot of other intervening research, and some
of this later research has has has drawn conclusions, are
gathered evidence that's just disappointing enough to maybe sound like
(45:54):
the truth. So what if the curse wasn't using the
secret high tech what'd you call it, Matt, hyper classified?
It's been a favorite phrase. Yeah, these hyperclassified squal torpedoes.
But what if instead, as a very cash strapped navy,
they were relied on cheap, old fashioned technology. Because you know,
(46:16):
that's another line item that you don't have to add
to the budget. There's a former Royal Naval Engineering College
lecturer named Maurice Straddling, and he's also a torpedo designer,
which sounds like a really interesting hobby. It's probably a job,
but it's cool idea, it's a hobby. So he started
comparing and contrasting stuff. He looked at the data from
(46:38):
the Kursk disaster and it reminded him of this pretty
obscure story about a similar explosion aboard a British sub
in nineteen fifty five. I had never heard of this.
I think most people in the US, aside from professional
explosion investigators like Rachel Lance, have probably not heard of this.
(47:03):
That's so amazing that you mentioned that Ben, I would
That's what I was scratching. I was trying like I
had a thought, and then it went away and it
was Rachel Lance man for people that maybe don't listen
to the other show that Ben and I do, ridiculous history.
We interviewed Rachel Lance about the sinking of the SS
of the Huntley. Excuse me, it's not the s S
which was like a World War One no, I'm sorry,
(47:23):
a Civil War submarine that was made out of like
it's like a flint stone sub where you have to
crank it with your feet. And she is the foremost
expert on underwater explosions, which we joked was a very
very specific uh uh specialization, and she agreed. Um, but yeah,
I would love to hear her take on this. Well,
just just to jump back to that, Yeah, that's amazing.
(47:45):
I'm sorry that I missed that, guys. But the the
other disaster that we're talking about here, where there was
an explosion due to some kind of um malfunctioning torpedo.
Let's jump to a boat called the Site on the
s I d O N. There was some kind of
(48:06):
experimental torpedo on board and there was an explosion. Here's
the deal, though, this torpedo contained the substance that's thought
to have been within the curse, that ht P or
high test peroxide, and the thought was the crew of
the site on we're loading this torpedo and that's when
(48:28):
the explosion occurred. When this blast happened, thirteen men died.
So this is fascinating and this is something we know
again in retrospect, the some of the official findings of
this tragedy with the British sub didn't match the actual
(48:49):
findings carried out by that secret board of inquiry into
the disaster. Once this report was later became public, they
found at a stainless steel pipe carrying this high test
peroxide to the engine of the sub had burst and
(49:11):
something the public didn't know at the time. Uh, the
original investigation found incompetence on the part of the submarine crew.
Again of this of this UK boat the side on
they found that the torpedo had accidentally been started or ignited,
(49:32):
you know, before it was fired out of the sub,
which is kind of like a really uh, really terrible comparison.
Imagine torpedoes at this time in the fifties a little
bit similar to firecrackers, like you gotta get ignitum and
shoot them, but you're in a sub remember, you can't
(49:54):
run away, So the timing is very very important. So
the idea here is that there have been maybe a
little bit of a a cover up or at the
least publish you know, public reputation management on the part
of the UK government. And importantly to Straddling's point, the
torpedoes on the Curse also had HTP, leading Straddling to
(50:20):
believe that this proves a similar disaster led to the
destruction of this Russian submarine. So he is finding in
favor of uh an accident, you know, not not a
planned act of belligerents and the explosion of this practice
torpedo and the Curse, he says, set off this chain
(50:41):
reaction with the live warheads and this caused the explosion
that later sent the Curse to its watery grave. And
this is the exact story that if you go to
the Moscow Times, the independent news out of Russia, this
is the exact story that they have that was published
(51:02):
in August of twenty of what the true fate of
the curse was Independent Come on, maybe it is okay, well, uh,
what what do you think happened to the curse? Maybe
a free chemical accident, this enemy forces attack scenario. I
(51:25):
don't know what do you guys think? I do think
the plausible thing is perhaps that oops followed by boom boom. Uh.
That's that's that's me. But I don't know. Well, there's
there's a great point brought up by some former CIA
analysts and people familiar with the intelligence community. One guy
(51:45):
in particular stood out to me, a guy named Jeffrey Edmonds,
and he says, you know, something that's kind of tragic
he says, there's simply a tendency for accidents to happen
in Russia. And again we're not being anti Russian here.
This is what this guy say. Uh. He's saying that
Russia appears to have this process whereby they often combine
(52:08):
a willingness to take risk with outdated infrastructure that just
can't support that risk taking culture, and that this creates
an environment where accidents are more likely. This is a
longstanding observation slash accusation of the Russian military, which is,
you know, to put a fine point on it, and
(52:29):
to be brutally descriptive, they are the military of Russia
has been repeatedly accused of throwing bodies at a problem
until they consider that problem solved, you know what I mean.
That's why, That's why one of the most popular and
even plausible theory conspiracy theories in the world of space
exploration isn't whether people went to the Moon. It's how
(52:52):
many cosmonauts might have died before Yuri Gagarin got into
space and came back. Not to mention how many and
how guilty is any other country and including and especially
the United States, of course, even with the inflated budgets,
(53:14):
and you know the the amount of importance that's placed
on it culturally and publicly, no no question about it.
So let us know what you think happened there on
August tenth, two thousand, which it's crazy to realize that's
almost two decades gone now, But we want to hear
from you. You can find us on Facebook, you can
(53:35):
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter.
We always love to recommend for the Facebook friendly folks
in the audience our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Yeah,
for all you fbfs out there, you can be our
f b b ffs um but joining here's where it
gets crazy. All you have to do his name one
or three or you know, for all four of us,
(53:58):
or just you know, say something that lets us know
that you're a real human being with actual interest in
the topics that are discussed there, which ranged from specific
things around our new episode drops to just really free
willing conversation about anything and everything conspiracy realism related. If
you don't want to do that, or you want to
do that and you want to do more, you can
give us a call. Our number is one eight three
(54:21):
three st t TK Living Towards the finish line. But
I think it helped when you moved your hand age
like you're the conductor, Matt, You are the conductor. Uh yeah,
give us a call, leave us a message. We will
(54:42):
hear it. You might get on the air. As you
know by now, we're making a lot more episodes that
may include your voice. So send those things in tell
us what you think. Uh. A lot of times, the
more concise the better. But it doesn't have to be.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
but you still want to write to us, consider it
(55:05):
your plan of action to send us an email to
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(55:31):
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
One quick note before we dive in today. We had
a few gremlins in the proverbial machine during this recording.
As a result, you may notice a little bit of
strangeness with the microphones in this episode, especially my own. However,
we managed to keep those audio shenanigans to a minimum.
We hope you enjoy the show. From UFOs to psychic
(00:24):
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,
(00:46):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is all they called me Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decades.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We're
diving deep today in what will come to be the
(01:08):
first terrible pun of this episode into a story that
some people may remember right as one of those many
ephemeral headlines that circulated in two thousand and two thousand
and one. But this was brought to our attention by
(01:29):
by one of our fellow listeners, a fellow conspiracy realists
who for the sake of comic book nursery, we will
refer to as Ney Moor. Hey, guys, So I just
got out of the Navy working on submarines, and as such,
I've got a couple of submarine conspiracies that you may
(01:49):
or may not know about. So the first one is
the Curse, which that made international news and two thousands,
I think it was two thousands, the Russian submarine that
was spying on United States and and and NATO submarines
and warships doing doing a bunch of a bunch of
(02:10):
exercises and it blew up. The official stories that a
torpedo blew up. But I know people who have been
who are on the boat one of the submarines, and
they were listening to the Curse, and I know one
of them has told me it definitely got shot by
another boat. One said it definitely did not, and and
(02:33):
some of the others have have refused to talk about it.
So so who knows what's going on there? That one's
definitely worth looking into. Nay more, this is a fantastic question,
and you've actually you've given us a lot to chew
on here, such that we talked off air, and this
(02:53):
may be the first of multiple submarine related conspiracies, because
let's talk about submarines. The weirdest thing about a submarine
is that they are inherently conspiratorial. There are these mysterious,
at times nuclear powered craft that are as we record
(03:14):
sneaking through the ocean depths across the planet. You know,
a submarine is explicitly designed to deceive, to include its presence,
The location, and the capabilities of a submarine are often
the stuff its owners don't want you to know. And
so it's no surprise that submarines are themselves the subject
(03:36):
of numerous conspiracies. So today we're diving into the mystery
of one submarine in particular. As you requested, nay more,
what happened to the curse? Here are the facts. So
work on the K one curse began in ninet um
(03:57):
and the sub officially launched in and it was massive.
It was a massive deal, but it was also physically massive.
At five eight feet nineteen thousand, four hundred tons um,
it was capable of launching missiles the size of a
small aircraft that would absolutely decimate any targets that were
(04:20):
unfortunate enough to be in its path, and that could
be up to four hundred miles away. NATO actually called
it an Oscar to class, which is a nuclear powered
cruise missile submarine owned and operated by the Russian Navy,
and until two thousand seven conversion of the U. S.
Navy's Ohio class subs from ballistic missiles to these types
(04:42):
of more long range cruise missiles um the Oscar two
class submarines were the largest of their type in the world.
In this particular Oscar two class submarine, the Curse was
a big deal. It and others in this class were
explicitly designed to defeat the biggest threats that we're seeing
in the U. S. Navy's command, the US Aircraft Carrier Group,
(05:07):
So the machines that are out there floating that function
as a full military command base and airport. Yeah, it's
important to remember that until about two thousand and seven,
the Oscar two class was the largest type a submarine
of its type in the entire world. The only reason
that changed is because the Ohio Some Ohio class subs
(05:31):
that originally launched ballistic missiles were converted to also launched
cruise missiles. The Curse had the power in theory to
sink an aircraft carrier with a single torpedo that was
specifically something called a Type sixty five. These torpedoes carried
a nine hundred and nine pound warhead. This is this
(05:53):
is serious stuff. And you know, to be very clear
when we say aircraft carrier in this sense, we mean
exactly what Matt is talking about here, the the ship
that is the the carrier where you see the jets
launching and stuff. Aircraft carriers don't ride solo. They rolled deep.
(06:14):
Uh that you'll we have to remember that an aircraft
carrier is one part of what is it called an
aircraft carrier battle group, and that includes other ships. It
changes depending on the mission, but you know it includes
things like guided missile cruisers, destroyers, uh, frigates like this.
(06:34):
This is not the only thing on the album. An
aircraft carrier battle group is kind of like a Posse track.
But the aircraft carrier is the you know is the Tupac.
And really quickly, what is a frigate? Yeah? Yeah, frigate
is It is an old term. I love so many
maritime terms. There's also like frigotea. Uh, A frigate is
(06:55):
meant to protect other warships and some and I think
they specialized. Again, I'm not a member of the navy,
but I think they specialized in anti submarine warfare pretty often.
Every time I hear I just want to say, frigging frigate.
You know, it's just got it's got the ring to it,
but please let us right the ship and move forward.
(07:16):
In the episode, there we go, There we Go. The
So aside from being powerful in offensive terms, the Curse
was also very uh. It was a source of pride
for the Russian military because it's structure was purportedly incredibly
(07:39):
robust and sturdy in a way that would worry the
members of NATO. Yes, the whole design of this craft
made it very very, at least on paper, difficult to sink,
to breach the whole, to to cause major damage to
(08:00):
this thing. It had a double whole design, So just
think about this way. On the outer the exoscale and
essentially the outer hole was stainless steel that had all
kinds of different metals in their nickel, chromium, and um.
It had extremely good resistance to things like corrosion and
natural processes that would weaken the whole system. And something's
(08:23):
really interesting. These metals actually have a bit of a
weak magneticism to them. And something really interesting about these
metals nickel and chromium and you know, combined there with steel,
both of these metals were very difficult to detect with
this thing that the United States military was using a
magnetic anominally detector. Uh. And because those metals have those
(08:44):
weak signals as it's traveling through the see through the ocean, Uh,
it's not as easily detected because of that weak signature
of those metals contained. And you know, then you get
into the inner hole and you're looking at two inch
thick steel. It's it's really cool because the the structure
of that outer and inner hole essentially made this thing
(09:08):
so strong that you could just plow through ice out
in the Arctic somewhere if you needed to, just to
break through. And the way this structure, I mean already
we're kind of describing here is just how strong this
thing is. Right. It was compared a lot to the Titanic,
at least in some of the writing that that I
saw about the ship or the boat, excuse me, the submarine,
(09:31):
because it was built with these compartments, separated, separated compartments
that if one were to be breached and a flood
was to occur in one of those you could turn.
You could shut that thing down, lock it off, and
then be safe in another compartment. Even if the submarine
were to sink all the way down to the ocean floor,
the crew would theoretically be able to survive in one
(09:54):
of those other compartments if they did, you know, seal
themselves in essentially and had enough oxygen. But that comparison
to the Titanic about being unsinkable and that structure is
very interesting. Yeah. I don't know if it's our own
kind of personal selection bias or something, but it seems
like historically, whenever we run into, uh, these so called
(10:18):
indestructible or impregnable structures, something goes terribly awry. It's like
putting a target on your inventions back. This boat was
able to do something amazing and possibly something that would
terrify some of our land lovers in the audience. The
Curse was able to remain submerge for up to a
(10:40):
hundred and twenty days. That means if you were on
the crew of the Curse, it was theoretically possible that
you would sink under the surface of the briny blue
and you would not see the sun or see the
sky until almost half a year had passed. I just
have to say I have no military experience, but the
(11:02):
concept of doing that for a hundred and twenty days straight, um, psychologically,
I would not want to be in there trapped with
what a hundred maybe hundred plus human beings inside that thing. No,
thank you, I can't even imagine just the logistics of that.
And just like the sanitary conditions, you know what I mean.
(11:22):
I'm sure you know there's there's things to help keep
things from becoming from deteriorating into a state of you know,
um disgustingness. I guess for lack of a better word,
but it seems like it'd be pretty stinky down there
with all those men's you know, bodies. Yeah, that's what's that.
That's one of the first things I thought of too.
(11:42):
Because we have we have amazing technology for you know, um,
recycling air. We have an amazing water reclamation technology as
a species, but for some reason, our entire species just
hasn't figured out a way to get around the funk,
you know, just that locker stank with an a that
occurs whenever you have a bunch of a bunch of
(12:06):
people in a small, claustrophobic situation, and you know, we're
not We want to be completely fair. Like, the Curse
was large enough and to a degree opulent enough that
senior UH senior officers did have their own state rooms.
It's not like everybody was three people to a bunk
(12:27):
or something. But still, life on a submarine is is very,
very challenging. And the Curse itself actually only completed a
single mission during its time, which sounds unusual for such
a um, such a juggernaut of the waves. During five
years of service, it completed one six month deployment to
(12:50):
the Mediterranean seed. This was in and they were going
to monitor US naval response to the coast of a
crisis that was occurring. Now, you might ask yourself, why
spend so much time, blood and treasure on the creation
of a craft like this and not really take it out,
(13:13):
you know, not really give it a spin around the
global block. It turns out there were I don't know
if it's fair to say Russia was broke, but they
had some serious money issues going on, right, Yeah, it's crazy. Um,
So they spent all this money, you know, top dollar
to make this impregnable, UH, you know, b a myth
(13:34):
of a of a seafaring war machine. Um. And they
didn't factor in a little detail, you know, the the
go go juice, the stuff that makes it go, literally,
the fuel. They didn't have a hand built it into
the budget. Um. There was an absolute funding crisis that
was so serious that many members of the Northern Fleet
(13:55):
had gone unpaid for quite a while in the mid nineties.
Imagine in that. Okay, so now let's paint the situation,
uh with a little bit of a sharper brush to
your point, Noel, You're trapped on a submarine. You might
be underwater for four months. Everything stinks of funk and sweat. Uh.
(14:18):
And the other hundreds something people with you are non
consensual volunteers, right. They signed up for the Navy with
the expectation that they would be paid for it. And
all of a sudden you're not getting the checks. And
that doesn't mean you can get off the boat. You're
still stuck. It's terrible, um. And you know, I don't
(14:40):
want to be glib about it, because the story of
the curse takes takes a very violent turn almost twenty
years ago today. Yes, so on August ten, in the
year two thousand, well, something strange happened. There was an
unexpected disaster, at least according to the official story, right,
(15:04):
there's an unofficial disaster that occurs during an exercise um
out at sea. It was called Summer X, And the
way the story goes, there was a tremendous explosion inside
of the submarine itself that ended up just tearing the
(15:24):
thing into several pieces. Specifically, the front end, the nose
of it was completely ripped off of the submarine itself,
and there were other, uh pretty large parts of this
submarine that were completely separated and blown apart and shoved
into one another. And again, this is a submarine. You
have to remember, it is operating underneath the surface of
(15:47):
the water. So unless you are specifically tracking this thing
with some kind of sophisticated high powered radar or some
other technology, you don't know where it is. If you're
on the surface, let's say, even if you're in a
frigate or another ship or something that's monitoring the situation,
you don't know exactly where they are. But there were
(16:08):
crews on surrounding ships or nearby ships, and the only
way that they knew something had gone wrong was that
they felt the impact or essentially the boom the implosion
that occurred below, and they that you could feel it
essentially being on another craft. This disaster occurred in an
(16:29):
area known as the Barrens Scene. The Barren Sea is
a part of the Arctic Ocean. It's off the northern
coast of Norway and Russia. Uh and this this geography
is important because that second, much larger explosion created an
impact that could be felt as far away as Alaska.
(16:52):
Later research by seismologists would conclude that this was the
force was equivalent to that of an earthquake, measuring four
point two on the Richter scale, which means that which
of course would lead you to to rightly assume that
new missions were part of the explosion, you know what
(17:14):
I mean, not just a fire or something. Yes, And
it follows that there were no survivors. All one and
eighteen members of the crew of the Kurs perished in
the disaster. Um And you know, this was something that
Vladimir Putin, who was recently elected at the time. It's
hard to imagine a time when Vladimir Putin wasn't the
(17:37):
head of this part of the world, but there there
certainly was, and he had recently been elected and staked
a lot of his reputation on pushing for this project.
So this was a big blow uh to to him personally. UM.
And it wasn't a good look either that he happened
to be on vacation at the time. UM. And this
did not play well with relatives of the crew members.
(17:59):
I watched the document, sure you about this, and there
there were a lot of I guess hearings where relatives
of the crew members were just shrieking in in Russian
and just at the top of their lungs, cursing Putin
and this regime, UM, and saying, how could you let
these men live in a tiny box for you know,
however long? We we know it was. It was quite
(18:20):
a long time with no pay. We know that happened too.
And then just you know, let them dialect dogs basically,
you know, so a lot of emotion. UM. They were
absolutely aghast and enraged at the way this disaster was handled.
They argued that the official statements were absolute uh disinformation,
absolute bs Um. Was there a cover up? We'll talk
(18:43):
about that after a quick word from our sponsor. Let's
walk through the immediate aftermath of this disaster, and you know,
it's tempting just say that. Of course, anyone will react
(19:05):
with intense grief and emotion when they lose a loved one,
but it's it's crucial for us to emphasize that the
claims of the relatives of these crew members were not
just made up out of whole cloth. They didn't just
wake up for no reason and and decide to accuse
the government of deceiving them. Later research found that there
(19:29):
were intense problems with the investigation. The Russian Navy, according
to official sources, initially did not realize an accident had occurred.
More than six hours passed before an initial search even began.
And to your point about those compartments, Matt, does that mean,
(19:49):
like you can look at layouts of the of the
these nine compartments and the cursed. Does that mean that
some of the eighteen people aboard were able to escape
whatever that initial blast was and moved to a safer compartment.
Would six hours have saved them? You know, eleven hours
later the Navy declared an emergency. Finally, later research showed
(20:12):
that all crew members had died by that point. Normally,
there's a you know, cash of safety gear um on
these types of subs rescue buoy's um which automatically deployed
like an escape pod in a spaceship or something, but
that did not occur. The booty of the Curse had
been disabled. It took the Navy sixteen hours to find
(20:35):
the wreckage and and to to start to kind of
like figure out what had happened. Um. Rumors were circulating
the sub may have collided with the mine, which we
know exists. We know there's like you know, still potentially
isn't there one in Savannah Bend? Then we talked about
that in Savannah, Georgia. There's a mine somewhere out there
in the in the harbor. It's a nuclear nuclear weapon.
(20:55):
Oh even worse, but still we have heard tell of
still active minds out there, you know, from from War
h and this was a again a rumor, but that
it had been an undeployed mine UM that it collided
with inadvertently. Yeah, from way back in World War two.
They're all, you know, they're all kinds of rumors that
were circulating around the time. It's it makes total sense, right,
(21:20):
how on earth could this have happened? We were doing
some kind of official exercise. Nothing could have should have
gone wrong. Maybe there was a friendly fire situation, an
accidental you know, deployment of a torpedo that ended up
hitting a friendly target in this way right if you're
if you're imagining yourself as as the Russian military or
(21:44):
some of the the commanders there. And the thing is,
there's all kinds of other stuff that people have said
over the years about what may have happened. But now
almost twenty years, almost twenty years to the day later,
the question still remains what actually happened inside that submarine
and to that submarine on that day August. Here's where
(22:08):
it gets crazy. The official explanation, even at first was
was suspicious. There were problems that cropped up with it immediately.
The primary issue was the high amount of secrecy involved.
The Russian government refused all international offers of assistance, which
(22:31):
can you know, if you're suspicious, it can function as
tacit confirmation that they had perhaps some secret technology on
there or something that they were not uh comfortable with
other nations discovering. These things went back and forth. So
we're going to jump around in time just a little
(22:52):
bit right now. The official explanation is that the authorities
say the crew of the current was preparing to load
a dummy torpedo, a practice torpedo, right, because these are
naval exercises. That doesn't mean it's it's actual war, so
they don't want to shoot, you know, genuine torpedoes. And
(23:14):
this torpedo that they were loading, which was a sixty
seventy six kid torpedo, had two problems. First, it contained
a liquid called high test peroxide. This is not the
kind of stuff that you put in your hair when
you're a teenager or something. Uh. Second problem, they claimed
(23:35):
there was a manufacturing defect and that there was a
faulty weld in the casing of the sub of the torpedo.
And so when the when they were loading this on,
this high test peroxide or h t P leaked from
this faulty weld and it caused the torpedoes fuel to explode.
(23:57):
That fuel is kerosene, right, and kerosene is a friend
of explosions. And remember, by the way, this is a
sixty five type weapon. That's the aircraft carrier killer that
we were talking about. A very large weapon. Are a
very large a piece of ammunition? Uh, why don't you
(24:17):
call it? Around if you will, um so. So when
the explosion occurred, mixed with the things we're talking about there,
the kerosene and the high the HTP, it blew off
the inner and outer doors to the torpedo, so the
things that are really helping in a lot of ways
(24:38):
to keep the water out, which is you know, generally
a good thing when you're inside a metal container inside
the ocean. Um then it started a fire. It destroyed
the bulkhead, the separator essentially between the first and second
compartments like the ones we were talking about there where
uh the control room, by the way, was in one
(25:00):
of those. So when that bulkhead was destroyed between the
first and second compartments and that fires going, you actually
had probably at least in all likelihood most if not
all of the crew within the control room, the people
running the boat, running the sub, they probably all perished
or at least were badly injured and pairs soon after
(25:22):
that really really messed up. And then we have that
second explosion that was noticed by a lot of the
crew that was on the surface, and that really is
an issue when you don't have access to controls of
a ship that you were on or a boat yeah, yeah,
no kidding. And and this we know that that initial
(25:44):
blast occurs, right the the theory is, or the official
explanation is the way that you just outlined it bad.
The idea is that two minutes and fifteen seconds ballpark
after that initial blast, the submarine the cursed had reached
the floor of this e and this, the intensity of
this initial fire, eventually triggered the detonation of multiple torpedo
(26:10):
warheads on board. It is impossible in the English language
to accurately describe how terrible that is because remember earlier
in the episode, just for an example, we pointed out
that these warheads could weigh nine pounds. This is calamitous.
That second explosion was the equivalent of over two tons
(26:33):
of T and T. But as we said, there were
people who had a lot of problems with this explanation. No,
no doubt, the torpedo manufacturer themselves completely contested this version
of events. UM. In addition to that, the official story
seemed to contradict Russia's own claims about the hull of
(26:53):
the craft. UH. It seemed completely inconceivable that that double
hull design with those nine water tight compartments UM, which
are obviously meant to fill up in the event of
of a breach to keep it from completely being compromised.
That it would have taken just the absolute most violent
explosion to pierce uh those very very um uh fortified
(27:19):
water tight compartments. Um. So let's go into some of
the possibilities. We start off with maybe the most plausible,
like using kind of process of elimination and just a
common sense. At the time, senior officers in the Russian
Navy claimed that the curse had collided with a British
or American sub that was running spying maneuvers out in
(27:40):
the Barents Sea. Yeah, the so this is interesting, nay
more because what we see here is that both quote
unquote sides of the military's involved are accusing the other
ones of spy. So our us position is the curse.
It was said they were doing exercises, but the real
(28:02):
goal was, or at least one of the goals, was
to spy on the US right and detect our maritime presence.
That makes total sense. I'm not saying that's untrue. It
probably is because military exercises or war games or whatever
you want to call them, are often they often have
multiple inlterior motives. Right, Let's show an antagonistic force that
(28:26):
we can um like China a few years back. Let's
show the US that we can also shoot satellites out
of the sky. Let's let's call that. Let's let's call
that a test for the environment or whatever. They said
that was hilarious. Maybe I'm being a jerk. I don't know.
I don't think so. Just speaking of in part of
another bit of submarine research that we were doing together,
(28:50):
we we heard and I'm going to quote this, it's
from PBSS NOVA. They discussed how way back when, in
the nineteen sixties and seventies, the United States militaries, specifically
the Navy, working with several others, they miked the entire ocean,
(29:11):
or almost the entire ocean. And this is this is
something that we are probably gonna do an entire episode
on if we haven't done it already, which maybe we have.
I don't think we have. But there were microphones everywhere.
As an audio nerd, the logistics of that alone is
blowing my mind. I mean, making up a drum kit
(29:32):
is a pain in the butt, you know. Can you
imagine miking the entire ocean? Any audio files or studio
rats out there know what we're talking about. Well, it's
it's it's I guess less sophisticated than you may imagine. Uh,
it's more about visual readouts. But it just knowing that
(29:52):
the U. S. Military was listening to everything to identify
exactly where Russia was operating or the in the Soviet
Union of just it's everybody's doing it, that's all. And
again no no shade here at all, because we have
to remember, you know, uh, everybody is trying to do this.
(30:13):
The US had satellites taking photographs before they could figure
out a like a viable way to send those photographs
back to Earth. They literally where Paul beat me here,
They were literally dropping filmage from the sky and then
sending some poor schmuck out to try to catch it.
So like, yeah, everybody is everybody is spying on each
(30:36):
other in some way. And the reason we're bringing up
this dichotomy is because the Russian claims are not that
they were spying on us or British craft. The Russian
claims so that they were participating in these naval exercises
and they were being shadowed by those those dastardly uh
ne'er New wells over NATO. So they're they're saying that
(30:59):
the US was spying on us. It seems like everybody
was spying on each other, if you want to be
completely fair, everybody was spying on each other because that's
the right thing to do. But then if that's the case,
why wasn't there a quicker response to the disaster on
the curse if it were indeed an accident. Sorry, no
(31:20):
one could see this on the zoom, but I just
got so pleased with myself and like leaned back from
the mic and looked at you guys. We were also
all nodding pretty heavily. But but I love the one
upsmanship or brinksmanship. Maybe now we we we went into
that one the other day, but I think this is
more one ships. Like you can spy on me, bro,
let me spy on you. Oh, you can just spy
(31:40):
on me. I'm gonna double hard spy on you, bro.
You know that's the way, spy on the whole world.
I'm gonna mike the ocean. So the the thing about
this is that everything we just said is true. No, no,
none of this is. None of this is conspiracy theory.
You're gonna make the ocean. Bro, I'm gonna Mike space.
(32:03):
Don't know what else can we Mike, Yes, Oh, then
we made smartphones. Now we have mix everywhere, right right right.
I always think of that thing in Batman where they
turn every smartphone in the world into a listening device
that is not beyond the realm of possibility. Uh these days. Uh,
it's it's pretty pretty terrifying, but total total aside. I
think it's just a fun experiment and I would love
(32:25):
to hear you guys take on it. And I'd love
to hear from our fellow conspiracy realist about this. Um.
So it's no secret, you know, like the I'm not
gonna put any of us on the spot specifically, but
I know between the three of us, we have a
lot of like proxies and privacy things on our phones
and on our devices. I wanted to do an experiment
(32:47):
where I removed those, uh you know what are ostensibly
protections to see how the ad how the ad um
magic algorithms work. And I've been I've been trying to
build an ad profile as like a deranged billionaire. So
I'll be carrying my phone around, maybe open Facebook and
(33:09):
an OS or something and just be like mega yacht
price price, mega yacht diamonds wholesale, yes, Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Yes.
You know, so if anybody wants to do an experiment
with that, enjoying us would love to hear your results.
So far, I have not been getting targeted ads for
(33:29):
a mega yacht, So maybe I'm just not doing it right.
Maybe you know what, the system probably already knows that
I can't actually by I. I think mega yachts to
the kind of things that don't really need to be
advertised for. They just kind of make them to order.
You know, that's true, there's not there's there's probably not
some some guide to department in I kea going How
(33:53):
am I going to move all these mega yotts? People
just keep wasting money on couches. But but any way, yes,
the spying stuff is real. Noll to your point, Um,
this does seem like a plausible explanation, does it not?
For For someone to say, for for members of the
Russian Navy to say the curse cats collided with someone
(34:16):
that was spying on them, it has a propagandistic effect too,
because the implication here is that the other side is
somehow incompetent or or culpable, you know what I mean. Like,
it's like, look, it was their fault. They shouldn't have
been there in the first place, and they killed all
our beloved comrades. It's a good way to spend it,
to maybe redirect some of that anger we're talking about
(34:38):
about women, you know, wives who have lost their husbands, etcetera.
You know, mothers who've lost their sons. Uh, let's let's
point this, you know, shotgun blast of of grief and
anxiety toward the enemy or at least another and secrecy aside. Well,
actually it's it's all kind of secrecy. From this point on.
(34:59):
There are a lot of even more conspiratorial thoughts going
into what actually occurred here to the curse, and we're
going to talk about those after a quick word from
our sponsor. Anybody down to talk secret torpedoes always, alway,
(35:21):
that's one of my main things, you know what I mean.
It's like number number one on my LinkedIn is talk
to me about secret torpedoes. I'm kidding. I I haven't
been on LinkedIn forever. I don't I don't know what
it says. It's true though, there are secrets so more
conspiratorial ideas. One of the one of the ones you
will see frequently is that the Russian government was being
(35:45):
very secretive about the wreckage of the Curse because they
were carrying, like we had kind of um speculated earlier,
they were carrying top secret technology, specifically a classify ultra
high speed torpedo known as the squall or in Russian
(36:06):
s h k v a L. NATO at the time
was very concerned about this, and so for some time
you would see speculation that maybe they were taking this
off the drawing board and into action too soon, and
something had gone wrong with this new technology. I mean,
(36:27):
you always kind of logically makes sense, right, new technology
is super treacherous. How many people died in a space program? Right?
How many people have died in experiments with new munitions,
with new aircraft? You know what I mean. It's it's unfortunately,
it's a cost of doing the business that is war.
But here's the problem. Um, there's a lot of speculation
(36:49):
by you know, military experts and historians that these, uh,
this technology never really existed. Um. So that's puts a
little bit of harention to this theory. Um, but how
would they know it's hyper classified. It's hyper classified mega torpedoes. Um,
that's true. I don't know, that's I know, I know
(37:11):
you're joking their Matt, but it's it's a good point
you make. I mean, there really is no way of
knowing if that level of secrecy that we know the
Russians are capable of, UM was was was a thing.
So let's talk. Let's let's let's pivot away a little
bit to the American side of things. You'll see some
of these claims that the U. S. Submarine uh the well,
(37:32):
a pair of submarines, actually the U. S S Memphis
and the Toledo uh sank the Curse with their torpedoes,
or you know, with the official line of the Russian
government is that they collided with them while they were
out on those spying expeditions or whatever you call it
kind of exercises. And this theory goes like this, the
Toledo accidentally collided with the Curse, and so the Memphis
(37:54):
then opened fire when fearing retaliation, and the resulting fireing
night of the torpedoes. So kind of like at a
at a party somewhere where things get out of hand,
somebody bumps into someone and someone's like, hey, why did
you bump into me? And then someone else preemptively tries
(38:14):
to end a fight by starting one. It's it sounds strange,
but it also I don't know about you, well, but
it feels like it has the ring of plausibility to me,
because accidents do happen and people are already at such
an enormously tense point here. Isn't that a weird escalation though, Ben,
(38:35):
I guess, I guess that's to your point. The tension
is a big part of it because they shouldn't have
been there in the first place, right, So it was
almost like they were discovered and then it's right or
or these are these international waters? No, right, this is
definitely they're They're not supposed to be there. So if
the curse discovers this American spying craft, it would be
(38:57):
it would be on the table for them to open
are anyway, I'm just want to make sure I'm understanding.
You know. That's a really good question. From the way
the UH, from the way the situations occurring, I imagine
and listeners please correct us here, but I imagine this
is either UH an international lane of traffic or or
(39:21):
an international waters area, or maybe there are conflicting claims
about the severenity over the sea here because you know,
as we know, Uh, do you think land borders are messy?
Ocean borders are hilarious. They're they're they're a pile of
dangerous spaghetti that people get killed over. Ye. Man, you
(39:42):
can't build an ocean wall, right man, not yet. I
guess you could maybe, but it'd be pretty expensive and
pretty messy. We you know, we were really focused on
the microphones for a while. We haven't upgraded to the
wall yet, but we'll get there. So so it feels
really stick, but it also feels maybe a little bit
(40:03):
too convenient. The problem is that, of course, these these
lines of speculation thrive because of the secrecy immediately following
the disaster and the years following that. But let's get
really conspiratorial here. We can start connecting odd dots. According
(40:24):
to the stories, one of the U S submarines in
the area had its emergency buoy deployed. Like we said earlier,
an emergency buoy is an automatic thing that happens as
a means of assisting search and rescue efforts. It only
deploys generally in an emergency the Russian Curse buoy, as
(40:50):
I think you had said earlier, Matt was disabled and
the US buoy that deployed was apparently recovered by Russian forces.
Of the subs. The Memphis went to Port to get
repairs in Norway, so there was some kind of damage
to it. The implication is UH. And you'll see people
(41:10):
claiming that there is photographic evidence in the USS Memphis
and that these photos show the hatch covering this emergency
buoy is missing. So you start to see kind of
the threads connecting here. But that's that's only part of
the story. There's other speculation about the USS Toledo. Yeah,
(41:31):
so supposedly after this event went down, the the Toledo
itself needs to get some repairs, so it heads on
over UH to a facility within the US, and once
it gets in there, absolutely no one is allowed to
see it. The personnel that generally would be doing those
repairs and expecting and making sure if he's okay, taking
(41:54):
reports on that, they just don't get to look at it.
And then check this out, there's supposedly video evidence from
the Curse that shows several large gashes on the whole
or you know, a lot of damage on the whole
that's fairly long, and it seems to show that the
metal is bent inward as though there was an explosive
(42:16):
force on the outside pushing that metal in. Now, what
we do need to take an account here is the
concept of implosion. When you've got a pressurized container, right
that then when there's a ton of in this case
ocean water pressure on the outside and the exterior of
(42:37):
that let's say just a can, a big aluminum can,
if there's an if there's sufficient pressure on the outside,
then an implosion can occur where there would be essentially
a crushing of that container, and the explosion would cause
it to look a very certain way, and a lot
(42:58):
of times if that pressure is large enough, you would
just see fragments of metal as like that's what is
left over. That is not what happened with the Curse
for sure, at least a full implosion, because it wasn't
at full depth there when it occurred where or you know,
fifteen thousand I think feet would be around the time
(43:19):
when you get like full crushing depth, right, and the
Curse was at three hundred and fifty four ft under
the surface, or a hundred eight meters, right, which is
nothing compared to you know, crushing death or or deeper depths.
So we're you know, implosion. I don't know. All I'm
saying is it still feels a little fishy, but it
(43:43):
doesn't necessarily prove anything. Oh fishy. Yes, yeah, yeah, I
mean it's true. But there's there's another there's an even
weirder series of rumors about stuff that happened on land
after this. Yes, and this is steven fishier almost to me. Um,
(44:05):
it's this. The story goes that almost immediately after this incident,
a quite sizeable loan or debt to the United States
on Russia's behalf um was forgiven and Russia was allowed
to take out an additional loan. That doesn't happen. You know,
(44:25):
we don't well to what end, what's the reasoning? They're
very unusual. Also, in the days after the incident, it
turns out that George Tennant went to Moscow. If you
know that name doesn't ring a bell. He was the
first acting CIA director in history to go to the
Russian capital, which is a big deal. Um, And that
(44:46):
last part is definitely true, but it's also important to
this there's no causation here. Uh, these events are not
necessarily connected, but it sure doesn't make you think, doesn't it? Fellas, Yeah,
this is this is kind of the juicy stuff, right,
because George Tennant did travel to Moscow just eight days
(45:09):
later on August. It was officially an invitation from Russian
officials to discuss ways to counter international terrorism, but the
embassy refused to give any further details about this, and
Uncle Sam Stonewall at the media pretty hard core. So
(45:30):
now we as we said, this happened almost twenty years
ago to the day, we have the benefit of retrospect,
We have a lot of other intervening research, and some
of this later research has has has drawn conclusions, are
gathered evidence that's just disappointing enough to maybe sound like
(45:54):
the truth. So what if the curse wasn't using the
secret high tech what'd you call it, Matt, hyper classified?
It's been a favorite phrase. Yeah, these hyperclassified squal torpedoes.
But what if instead, as a very cash strapped navy,
they were relied on cheap, old fashioned technology. Because you know,
(46:16):
that's another line item that you don't have to add
to the budget. There's a former Royal Naval Engineering College
lecturer named Maurice Straddling, and he's also a torpedo designer,
which sounds like a really interesting hobby. It's probably a job,
but it's cool idea, it's a hobby. So he started
comparing and contrasting stuff. He looked at the data from
(46:38):
the Kursk disaster and it reminded him of this pretty
obscure story about a similar explosion aboard a British sub
in nineteen fifty five. I had never heard of this.
I think most people in the US, aside from professional
explosion investigators like Rachel Lance, have probably not heard of this.
(47:03):
That's so amazing that you mentioned that Ben, I would
That's what I was scratching. I was trying like I
had a thought, and then it went away and it
was Rachel Lance man for people that maybe don't listen
to the other show that Ben and I do, ridiculous history.
We interviewed Rachel Lance about the sinking of the SS
of the Huntley. Excuse me, it's not the s S
which was like a World War One no, I'm sorry,
(47:23):
a Civil War submarine that was made out of like
it's like a flint stone sub where you have to
crank it with your feet. And she is the foremost
expert on underwater explosions, which we joked was a very
very specific uh uh specialization, and she agreed. Um, but yeah,
I would love to hear her take on this. Well,
just just to jump back to that, Yeah, that's amazing.
(47:45):
I'm sorry that I missed that, guys. But the the
other disaster that we're talking about here, where there was
an explosion due to some kind of um malfunctioning torpedo.
Let's jump to a boat called the Site on the
s I d O N. There was some kind of
(48:06):
experimental torpedo on board and there was an explosion. Here's
the deal, though, this torpedo contained the substance that's thought
to have been within the curse, that ht P or
high test peroxide, and the thought was the crew of
the site on we're loading this torpedo and that's when
(48:28):
the explosion occurred. When this blast happened, thirteen men died.
So this is fascinating and this is something we know
again in retrospect, the some of the official findings of
this tragedy with the British sub didn't match the actual
(48:49):
findings carried out by that secret board of inquiry into
the disaster. Once this report was later became public, they
found at a stainless steel pipe carrying this high test
peroxide to the engine of the sub had burst and
(49:11):
something the public didn't know at the time. Uh, the
original investigation found incompetence on the part of the submarine crew.
Again of this of this UK boat the side on
they found that the torpedo had accidentally been started or ignited,
(49:32):
you know, before it was fired out of the sub,
which is kind of like a really uh, really terrible comparison.
Imagine torpedoes at this time in the fifties a little
bit similar to firecrackers, like you gotta get ignitum and
shoot them, but you're in a sub remember, you can't
(49:54):
run away, So the timing is very very important. So
the idea here is that there have been maybe a
little bit of a a cover up or at the
least publish you know, public reputation management on the part
of the UK government. And importantly to Straddling's point, the
torpedoes on the Curse also had HTP, leading Straddling to
(50:20):
believe that this proves a similar disaster led to the
destruction of this Russian submarine. So he is finding in
favor of uh an accident, you know, not not a
planned act of belligerents and the explosion of this practice
torpedo and the Curse, he says, set off this chain
(50:41):
reaction with the live warheads and this caused the explosion
that later sent the Curse to its watery grave. And
this is the exact story that if you go to
the Moscow Times, the independent news out of Russia, this
is the exact story that they have that was published
(51:02):
in August of twenty of what the true fate of
the curse was Independent Come on, maybe it is okay, well, uh,
what what do you think happened to the curse? Maybe
a free chemical accident, this enemy forces attack scenario. I
(51:25):
don't know what do you guys think? I do think
the plausible thing is perhaps that oops followed by boom boom. Uh.
That's that's that's me. But I don't know. Well, there's
there's a great point brought up by some former CIA
analysts and people familiar with the intelligence community. One guy
(51:45):
in particular stood out to me, a guy named Jeffrey Edmonds,
and he says, you know, something that's kind of tragic
he says, there's simply a tendency for accidents to happen
in Russia. And again we're not being anti Russian here.
This is what this guy say. Uh. He's saying that
Russia appears to have this process whereby they often combine
(52:08):
a willingness to take risk with outdated infrastructure that just
can't support that risk taking culture, and that this creates
an environment where accidents are more likely. This is a
longstanding observation slash accusation of the Russian military, which is,
you know, to put a fine point on it, and
(52:29):
to be brutally descriptive, they are the military of Russia
has been repeatedly accused of throwing bodies at a problem
until they consider that problem solved, you know what I mean.
That's why, That's why one of the most popular and
even plausible theory conspiracy theories in the world of space
exploration isn't whether people went to the Moon. It's how
(52:52):
many cosmonauts might have died before Yuri Gagarin got into
space and came back. Not to mention how many and
how guilty is any other country and including and especially
the United States, of course, even with the inflated budgets,
(53:14):
and you know the the amount of importance that's placed
on it culturally and publicly, no no question about it.
So let us know what you think happened there on
August tenth, two thousand, which it's crazy to realize that's
almost two decades gone now, But we want to hear
from you. You can find us on Facebook, you can
(53:35):
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter.
We always love to recommend for the Facebook friendly folks
in the audience our community page. Here's where it gets crazy. Yeah,
for all you fbfs out there, you can be our
f b b ffs um but joining here's where it
gets crazy. All you have to do his name one
or three or you know, for all four of us,
(53:58):
or just you know, say something that lets us know
that you're a real human being with actual interest in
the topics that are discussed there, which ranged from specific
things around our new episode drops to just really free
willing conversation about anything and everything conspiracy realism related. If
you don't want to do that, or you want to
do that and you want to do more, you can
give us a call. Our number is one eight three
(54:21):
three st t TK Living Towards the finish line. But
I think it helped when you moved your hand age
like you're the conductor, Matt, You are the conductor. Uh yeah,
give us a call, leave us a message. We will
(54:42):
hear it. You might get on the air. As you
know by now, we're making a lot more episodes that
may include your voice. So send those things in tell
us what you think. Uh. A lot of times, the
more concise the better. But it doesn't have to be.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
but you still want to write to us, consider it
(55:05):
your plan of action to send us an email to
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(55:31):
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.