October 1, 2020 • 47 mins
The advent of nuclear weapons and the Cold War kicked off a craze in the US for building rec rooms with foot-thick reinforced walls and outfitted with survival rations and board games. Would they work? Probably not.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Bluie Clark. There's Charles W. Bam Bam Bryant
and Jerry Radioactive Rolling. Oh boy, and this is stuff
(00:24):
you should know. You still got it after all these years,
you still got it. Yep. Hey, I think before we
get going, we should talk very briefly about our audiobook.
Oh yeah, because this week, in real time, we are
each recording our respective parts for the audio book. And
(00:45):
first of all, we just want to tell everyone there's
going to be an audiobook version. Yeah, spoiler of Stuff
you should know, colon and mostly incomplete guide two very
interesting things man still an income compendium of mostly interesting things.
Uh yeah, so we're we're trying to push that out
(01:05):
as uh, you know, get both, is what I say.
But if you're into audio books, we're doing one. But
also I just want to make sure people know what
they're getting. And I put this on the Stuff you
Should Know Army page. They're not getting twenty seven new
podcast episodes, no, and they should know that because our
podcast is unscripted conversation. An audiobook is us reading an
(01:29):
audiobook and rather than just weirdly trading lines reading from
a script, which would I think that would dash a
lot of people's image of of what we do. We
are each reading chapters and I think they're gonna mix
in some stuff here and there. But um, yeah, I
mean it's gonna be great and fun. But it's not
(01:50):
podcast episodes. We don't get to just fart around and
make jokes like we gotta read our books we have.
Oh man, we will be kept in line. If we
try to fart around and make jokes, it would not
be good. There's this whole time as money etho, yelling,
sometimes crying. It's a real stressful situation. Everybody, How did
you had that go for yesterday? Did you enjoy yourself?
I just told you there's a lot of yelling and crying.
(02:12):
It was very stressful. Yeah, it was fun. It was.
It reminded me a lot of recording um The End
of the World, because you know, I wrote those and
then I read them, So it was very similar to that,
except um a lot less heavy. Yeah. I was slightly
nervous at first for some reason after talking for twelve years,
probably just because you weren't there, But then it was like, uh,
(02:32):
you know it was it was fine. Did Fleet the
director calm you make you feel better? Yeah? I mean,
you know, I got I got in my group. I
felt pretty pretty comfy by the end of it. Yeah, So,
I mean it has it is fun. It's definitely a
lot of extra work this week, but it's kind of cool.
You know, at the end, we're gonna have a bona
fide audio book. That's right in, a bonafide book that
you can pre order now. And uh, we're also working
(02:54):
on getting that pre order gift available to the UK
and Australia and other parts of the world because we
have different publishers there. It's not like we were trying
to exclude everyone, no, no, but we are moving heaven
Earth to get it done. And yeah, if you're in
the US and Canada and your pre order, if you
haven't gotten your poster yet, worry not. You're going to
get your pre order gift eventually. That's right. Wow. So
(03:18):
um for the fifteen seventeen people who stuck around prepared
to learn about fallout shelters, because that's ultimately what we're
here to talk about today, that's right. Actually, before that,
I have to say one more thing, O, God, I
posted that squirrel attack video on my Instagram, you know
that we talked about on the episode because people kept
(03:39):
asking and so I put it up. I'm at Chuck
the podcaster. If you want to see a squirrel go
berserk and literally fly through the air and hit me
in the leg, then you can. You can see that.
And it's been like fifteen thousand times. Now, one of
these days, I hope you'll infest up to what you
did to provoke that squirrel. I mean, the whole thing
(03:59):
is there. You see me exit my house, so yeah,
but I mean we didn't know like what happened half
hour before. You know, that had been ongoing for the
last week. That's so now I think we're going to
talk about fallout shelters because Chuck Um, your house has
a basement, but it's exposed on one side to the outdoors.
(04:22):
It's not an in ground basement as far as I know,
and hopefully I'm not divulging too much information about your house,
so so weird fans will be able to find it
and show up. Well, actually, you know, one side of
it is exposed to the world, but the other side
is you know, ten feet of earth and red clay,
like it could have been a great fallout shelter had
(04:43):
it not been for that one side. Sure, but there
are things you could do or could have done. I
think we should use past tents here, because the need
for a fallout shelter, as far as the nuclear war
goes vanishingly remote these days. I like to think, I
don't think should getting any fear mongering. Um, but there
(05:03):
are a few things you could have done or could
do to build the follow up shelter with that. That
that good side, I guess, and we're going to talk
about that today. But mainly what we're talking about the
followup shelters is almost kind of like this examination of
the world psyche during the Cold War, to where as
(05:24):
the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union in the United
States started to build up in step with one another,
and we were suddenly in a nuclear arms race where
just ten years before there were no such thing as
nuclear weapons, people started to realize like, oh man, if
one of these goes off near me, I'm in big trouble.
And they started looking around to the government to say, hey, um,
(05:48):
what should I do? And at first the government was
like you know, figure it out yourself. And then eventually
the government kind of got a little more involved, and
before you know it, we had a national fallout shelter program.
As feeble and terrible as it was, at least we
had one. Yeah. What's really funny is when you read
(06:08):
up on this stuff and you learn that President Kennedy,
uh John F. Kennedy, that is, asked Congress for a
hundred million dollars to build public fallout shelters. That is
such an adorable number. Now that would build like tin
fallout shelters these days, maybe like that's maybe that's like
the amount of money that would take to get like
a motorcade to the cap right from the White House basically,
(06:32):
you know. Yeah, but it was a real threat back then. Um,
and I can't remember what episode it may have been,
Uh nuclear radiation. Uh we did one on the disaster
in Japan. Yeah, we've done a couple on this. But
I know that I told the story of my father
like having us sort of do of a fallout shelter
(06:55):
when I was ten or twelve years old after the
movie the day after aired on television, And yeah, I
remember that. Yeah, I mean, you know, it was my
brother and I taking out digging out buckets of dirt
and carrying them out in the woods and dumping them
for probably three or four weekends and then we stopped.
So you guys were coverage if something happened, Yeah, I
mean we could have. Yeah, it was pretty gross. So
(07:17):
was it akin to this, um this this shelter that
we were going to go over at the end? Was
it like that? Well, I mean it eventually could have been,
which is to say, a you know, kind of a
concrete room underground surrounded by earth. Oh yeah, no, I'm
saying like the kind where it's like you dig a
trench and put some woodpoles. This is part of um
(07:41):
my basement. Like my dad had a workshop and on
the interior wall of the workshop he knocked down the
cinder block wall and we just started digging, which I'm
safe to the foundation of the house, right, He's like, yeah,
it's probably not low bearing. Yeah, exactly. But yeah. There
was definitely a point in time, especially during the height
of the Cold War, where it was like this is
this is We're really in danger here. The world was
(08:04):
just kind of walking around just twitching and shaking at
the idea of this and part of the problem was
not just the idea that um a bomb was going
to go off and just blow cities apart, because apparently
there was this UM one of the nuclear deterrent theories,
the game theories that that people kind of operated under.
(08:26):
UM said, no, you know what, if we ever engage
in nuclear war, UM, we're just going to be attacking
military installations side to side, and so we don't really
have to worry about that for people in New York
or d C. Or you know, Atlanta, wherever, any of
the major metropolitan cities. We have to worry about those
cities getting leveled. But there's gonna be a huge problem
(08:47):
for the people living there because there's such a thing
as radioactive fallout. It's not just the bomb that gets you,
it's the fallout afterward. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking
about a nuclear bomb, a nuclear warhead, uh to pends
on what kind um. You know, back then it was,
it was different than it is now. But let's say
a one megaton h bomb back in the day would
(09:10):
completely wipe out everything within about two miles from where
I hit. Yeah, and I know I said, we weren't
in a fearmonger Chuck but I found out that there
is a bomb in the U s Arsenal called the
B A D three which is one point to megatunts
and it can be carried around very easily by the
B two bomber. So those exists. Uh so two miles
everything is gone. Um and this is from the blast
(09:33):
and a person if you're like five miles away from
that bomb site, you're gonna get hit with third degree
burns just from that blast. Yeah, you're gonna be hate
in life. Um. So the blast is going to be
bad enough. And and again yet just for from for
people miles away could be burned to death, um, incinerated, vaporized,
just all sorts of terrible stuff. But if you're living
(09:55):
outside of that blast zone, you've got problems in the
radioactivity that's going to to be generated by it. Because
when those bombs explode, they release a lot of radioactive
particles of different varieties, and those things go up in
the air and they get kind of carried around and
stirred up in the atmosphere, but a lot of them
are heavy enough that they come back down and basically
(10:17):
around the area in a larger area around the bomb's epicenter. Yeah,
and we should probably just go over some of these
different types of radiation. Some of it you might recognize
from various incredible Hulk comic books. But you've got your
alpha particles, your beta particles, you've got gamma raise, you've
got neutrons. The gamma rais is what got Hulk, right,
(10:41):
I think so? Right, Yeah, I'm pretty sure because gamma
rays are green and Hulk was green. That's right. I
think that's it. And the other sweet sweet purple pants
that somehow still fit. So the alpha and beta particles,
they are not great, but they are easily stopped. It's
probably the best way to say it. Yeah, So here's
(11:01):
the thing, Like every everything I tried to read about
this is like they would go to great links to
be like, well, this one isn't isn't like that much
of a problem. This one's way worse, And then finally
they throw up their hands and be like, actually, all
of this is just gonna be one big giant cluster
because depending on the different type of radioactive particle um,
there's different situations where they're way worse than the other one.
(11:24):
Like a gamma ray is really bad because it can
go clear through several inches of lead right into you
on the other side of the lead through your body,
and then everything it comes in contact with, say all
of your cells and tissues and bones and all that stuff.
It really screws them up genetically, and you can develop
cancer and radiation sickness and all that. That's pretty bad.
(11:44):
But then you've got alpha particles where they can be
stopped by a piece of paper. They can't even make
it through your skin, but they could get all over
like crops in the water, and we drink them and
eat them, and then they cause all sorts of sorts
of problems inside of too. So there's really no good
radioactive particle as far as a fallout from a nuclear
(12:05):
bomb is concerned. Yeah, not at all. Because so don't
you know if you read up on this stuff and
it said, oh, a piece of paper, a little bit
of plastic, you can stop beta particles and alpha particles.
Just think about the area breathing, the water you're drinking,
the the maze you're growing. Sure, if you want to
get traditional, it's all very dangerous. Yeah, don't just be like, oh,
(12:27):
let's make a paper suit out of newspapers and maybe
a little paper tried corner and hat out of newspapers.
I'll be fine. But like you said, when this bomb hits,
that mushroom cloud goes up. Everything's all mixed together and
as the wind blows these little uh. I think John
Fuller old pal wrote this one a long time ago,
right for how stuff works. But he said there are
(12:49):
lots of little there. They act like little tiny missiles
basically that are just going off all over the place. Yeah.
That was the neutrons, right, I yeah, I think the
neutrons specific he called the missiles, but they kind of
all are. Yeah, they are there. They're super high energy
and gamma rays um. Like I said, they can pass
right through you. Neutrons are a problem in the relative
(13:12):
immediate blast area because they're very heavy, so they don't
go nearly as far as they like gamma rays or
X rays or alpha particles or beta particles. But they
all do damage in their own unique, special snowflake way. Yeah.
And it's also I mean, this stuff is being carried
around by um the wind, but the actual particles that
you're seeing is is actually Earth that is now enriched
(13:36):
with this stuff that is poofed up from that crater
where Earth Earth used to be. I guess right, and
so knowing all this like this was this is like
why people started to be like, oh, okay, maybe we
should start building fallout shelters to to live in or
inhabit for you know, the immediate period after this this
nuclear attack, UM, to give us a chance to survive
(14:00):
and hopefully, you know, make it a few weeks, and
then things will have died down, everybody has forgotten about
the whole nuclear holocaust, and we can come back out
and restart civilization. That was the really, honestly, if you
get down to it, um, the thinking behind fallout shelters
in the United States and the sixties and late fifties.
All right, should we take a break there and then
(14:21):
talk about these things? I think so some more. Yeah,
all right, we'll be right back everyone, So chuck, I think, um,
(14:49):
since we've got one act under our belt, we need
to start the second act by telling everybody they can
preorder our book. Hey, I took some vitamins. You know,
I've been taking vitamins as much as I can, and
I've got this multi vitamin you know, like the worst
of vitamin can taste. I've got that horrible vitamin taste
(15:09):
just stuck in the back of my throat because it
got stuck there for half of a millisecond before it
washed down, and it's just left this terrible taste of
vitamin coding back there. It's driving me batty. How how
is your health with the vitamins? Can you tell a difference? No? None?
How's your pa? How's your urine? It's bright yellow? Which
(15:31):
makes me just feel like such a chump, especially after
our our vitamin supplement episode. Right, didn't we say like
we pee most of it out? Yeah, there's good ones
for sure, and I like the thing I'm taking go ones,
but I just know that there's no telling right now.
You're like, I'm using injectables now, pretty much snortable vitamins.
So fallout shelters. Uh, it's funny here and and I'm
(15:53):
glad John put it this way because it really makes
a lot of sense. If you think about an SPF
for sunscreen, it's a aim exact way with a fallout shelter.
You have a PF, a protection factor, and that is
just very simply a representative of UM being nfl out
shelter or just being out in the open. And FEMA
put out a pamphlet called standards for fallout shelters, and
(16:18):
they said you need a PF of forty at least, yeah,
if you want to, you know, and that that puts
you down to about two point five of the radiation.
Which I heard that number and I thought that was
too much. Yeah, no, I think, um, what you're really
shooting for is something like three hundred that kind of thing.
Um that and they're saying like a minimum of forty
(16:40):
or else, just you might as well just go lay
out in the in the radioactivity for all the protection
you're gonna get. Another way to look at that PF
numbers that it's the denominator and the fraction of the
radioactive exposure that you get compared to being outside of
the shelter. So a PF of forty would mean that
you get on. I'm more of a action guy than
(17:01):
a decimal dude. Oh yeah, how about two? You you
like decimals are fractions more? I don't like either one.
But I think for our next live show in two
you should wear a shirt that says fraction guy, and
I'll have one that says decimal dude, and that'll just
be our new tour outfit. Fair enough, and you can
have yours printed on a button down shirt. Of course. Okay,
(17:22):
that's yeah, because nothing looks better than good silk screening
on a button down Oxford. Maybe by the time we
go on tour again, this horrible vitamin taste will be
out of my mouth. Maybe. So so with fallout shelters,
there's a couple of kinds. Um if you're going back
to the nineteen sixties that people were talking about, and
(17:43):
that is the public one and then the private one
that you just build at your house like we kind
of didn't do. Um, I went down a bit of
a rabbit hole. It's and this is be right up
your alley. You probably did. This rabbit hole is pretty safe.
I bet yeah, depends on how deep I guess. But
if you start googling sixties fallout shelters, oh and I did.
(18:06):
Oh boy, it's just a treasure trove of articles and pictures. Um.
I saw one that these people in Woodland Hills, a
suburb of l A bought or part of Greater Los Angeles,
bought a house not too long ago, a few years ago,
and they found a did you see this one? No?
I saw some of Milwaukee this. Oh well, I saw
(18:27):
the Milwaukee Article two. That was great. But they found
a fifteen foot down under the earth fallout shelter that
was fully stopped, like it was like a time capsule
from and Brendan Fraser and Christopher Walkin. We're living in it.
I can't remember who the mom was. Do you remember
I didn't see that? You didn't know? It was cute movie? Yeah?
(18:51):
Is that in cine? No? Man, no, no, no, this
was blast from the past. Man was great too because
the weasels in it? Oh was he? Yeah, Pauly Shure, Yeah,
I knew it. That is, I just didn't Polly Shore,
Seawan Austin and Brendan, Sean Auston whatever. That guys rich enough,
(19:12):
he doesn't care what I say. So I was looking
at all these nineteen sixty one period products and just
like getting tingly feelings in my body because they were
perfectly preserved for the most part, like faded and stuff.
But there was a can like a coffee can, but
it said multipurpose food Meals for Millions, and so I
was like, I gotta find out what this is. And
(19:33):
it turns out that Meals for Millions was a nonprofit
from way back then. That is now UM International. Now
now it's it's it's it's transformed into another name. These days,
I think Freedom from Hunger is the new name. But
these two guys, Clifford Clinton and Dr Henry Borsuk, took
on this task of Borsok was a biochemist at cal Tech,
(19:57):
and they took on this project of trying to find
the best food to feed, like the cheapest, absolute, most
bare bones thing you could put in a package to
feed the hungry. And that's what they came up with,
was this stuff in a can and it is uh
sixty defadded soy grits plus dehydrated potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, leaks, parsley,
(20:24):
and spices, fortified with vitamins and minerals and it comes
in a can and you boil it up and eat it.
And it was something like two cents per serving. And
it was a really ingenious idea. But this became I think,
kind of a popular thing for fallout shelters because you
could just stop cans and cans of this, like the
most bare bones, caloric sort of healthy thing you could
(20:45):
get meals for millions. That's pretty great. I did not
expect it to actually be as healthy as what you
just listed listed off. Yeah, I would love to taste
some of it. Multi purpose of wood hills, I know,
just call it food, what do you multi purpose food?
Is that like a palmaide as well? Maybe One of
a food that I ran across um that was pretty popular,
(21:09):
especially among government funded fallout shelters, was this kind of
like wheat cracker that was made from vulgar wheat, and
apparently they were inspired by some crackers that were found
in Egyptian tombs that were still edible after a couple
of thousand years. So they're like, oh, that would be
perfect for fallout shelters, so they kind of recreated those taste. Yeah,
(21:33):
multi purpose. Apparently you could shave with them too, you
might good. The Milwaukee article was pretty cool though, Um.
I think that it said that, um, at the time,
they were like three thousand plus personal shelters in the
city of Milwaukee alone. Yeah. The thing is is, like,
that's that's probably a pretty good number. The thing is,
there's no official numbers for the fallout shelters that were
(21:57):
built around the Cold War because there were a lot
of public or private ones. But there's also public ones too,
So let's keep talking about the private ones first, because
if we're gonna follow the historical timeline, which I'm in
favor of, UM around I think the late nineteen fifties,
I think it was nineteen fifty seven in the Eisenhower administration,
(22:19):
there was a report that's now called the Gaither Report,
and it basically said, um, here's everything we figured out
about a nuclear war. Um, the cities are toasts. People
are going to die on mass we have no place
to put them, for them to shelter in. And everybody's
in a lot of trouble if there is a nuclear war.
(22:39):
So really the best thing we need to focus on
is to prevent a nuclear war from happening. Well, that
leaked out and people said, well, what are we gonna do?
And this is when the government was like, I don't know,
once you build some some shelters and leave us alone.
And so people started doing that and it became like
a huge craze, and so UM shelters in places like
(23:00):
that home in Woodland Hills or that one in Milwaukee,
UM that are still around today. In some cases that
became like a big deal, like um uh, like adding
like a really nice swimming pool, or adding like a
rec room or something like that. People turned to fallout
shelters and they started building them like crazy. Yeah, And
(23:22):
and from that Milwaukee I think it was in Milwaukee
was the name of the website. But from what they
said was they were being marketed, um as sort of
multi purpose wreck rooms that in case the s goes down,
it's conveniently um you know, lined with concrete and you
could just sort of easily convert it. And I guess
(23:42):
you would have some stuff stash there in either a
closet or in in bins or something. And when you're
not using you know, when there's no nuclear disaster, you're
just using it as sort of a playroom or something. Yeah,
there was some decorators show in Chicago in the late
fifties I think, and they build this thing is the
Living or the Family Room of Tomorrow, where it was
(24:03):
exactly what you described. It was like a normal functioning
family room, but it just happened to be in a
basement in like foot thick concrete encased under the dirt. Yeah.
I remember seeing when I was a kid, my brother
and I did lots of sort of I mean, I
guess it was an urban exploring but trespassing suburban exploring,
(24:25):
and I remember a couple of distinct times that we
saw event pipes just coming out of the earth in
the forest and we never saw any entry way or
anything like that. But that had to be some sort
of fallout shelter. I think, yeah, probably. I mean we
were near homes, but not like in the yard. We'd
(24:45):
come across a couple of them in our various expeditions,
like you know, just a clearly event pipe just coming
out of the woodland forest. So yeah, I'm sure that's
exactly what it was. I hope. Yeah. Well we didn't
dig around if not. Have you ever seen that Hugh
Jackman movie where like his wife is kidnap prisoners. Yeah? Man,
(25:06):
that was really good. I'm really good. Yeah, great movie. So, Um,
that's what's his face is doing the New Dune movie,
didn't Evellaneus? Oh? Well, there you go. That's why it
was so good. Yeah, he's he's a master. Um. I'm sorry, Chuck,
I just can't not correct you. His name is Dennis
Dennis Villanov. I'm sorry. So, um I was kidding. Anyway, Um,
(25:35):
there was the private fallout shelter trend that just blew
up and became a thing, and then UM in nineteen
sixty one, President Kennedy sent a letter out. I'm surely
it went out to more than just this, but there
if you were a Life magazine subscriber, which was pretty
substantial back in UM, in the September fifteenth edition, you
(25:57):
got a letter from President Kennedy basically saying like, hey,
you know this whole possibility of nuclear war thing, Well,
we've decided we're going to do something about it. We
the government, and we're going to start what's called the
National Fallout Shelter Survey. And this with the survey, basically,
what we're going to do is send out government officials
(26:19):
and they're going to look at buildings all around the
country and identify sites that have the potential of serving
as a fallout shelter. And everyone says, well, that's great.
So like a fallout shelter, so if like a nuclear
bomb goes off over our city, we're gonna be saving.
He's like, no, don't be ridiculous. That would cost a
lot of money. Now this is going to protect you
if um, if from radioactive fallout, you'll have to survive
(26:43):
the blast, but this will this will hopefully protect you
from the fallout afterward. Yeah, and you know, we kind
of laugh about that, but I mean, there's no way
they could have built enough like adequate shelters to protect
all Americans from the blast. No, I mean there was
a lot of Americans apparently did look at it at first,
and they could have pretended to two hundred billion in
(27:05):
in n another cute number. Actually they were like, oh no,
that's we can't do that. We don't have that kind
of money. So it was, like you said, I think
a hundred and hundred and ninety million is what they
ended up spending on it, which to me seems like
a lot of money to send out some people to
look at buildings and decide what was a fall at
shelter and what wasn't. Yeah. You know what's really funny
(27:26):
is when you look at what people did around the world,
what countries did around the world, and how it's so
jibes with how those countries are still today. Um, so
the US did what we did. The Soviets said that
they built a big, extensive system and they had an
advanced cooling system and all these filters protecting against everything,
(27:49):
and provisions food and water forever and uh, you know,
this is this is the press release they put out. Basically,
who knows what really happened? Yeah, because I found that
on like Russia so Great dot com or whatever, and
I mean it was it was like an urban exploration
of like an abandoned shelter. But you know, was this
just like the biggest one? How many were like that?
(28:11):
Supposedly the Soviets boasted of a system that could protect
most most of their um citizens from the blast. All right,
so that makes sense. Um, Sweden built sixty thousand, which
covered about the population. Ts for the other thirty percent,
Switzerland built enough shelters for everybody, Okay, God bless him. Uh.
(28:32):
The UK said, you know what, We're gonna build enough
for our military, our government in the royal family. Yeah,
chin up everyone else. And then Australia said, we'll take
a pass. We're not gonna build any because no one's
gonna mess with us down here. Yeah, they're like everybody's
read on the beach. Everyone knows we're fine if the
rest of the world's gone up in flame. I think
(28:53):
they're probably right. I mean they were, they were, and
especially back then. Enough off the map, uh or off
the path of of the threat that they didn't even
need to sweat it. Yeah, they're like, hey, what's all
the all the ruck is up there? So um. But
the so the US said, Okay, we've got to do something.
(29:13):
Let's at least build these fallout shelters that are going
to protect people from radio activity. Um. And so they
started building these um why I shouldn't say building. They
started going on to private property or public buildings and saying, hey,
you've got a really nice basement here, Um, can you
take down the human skins and clean it up a
little bit. We're gonna put some bulgar wheat biscuits in here,
(29:35):
we're gonna put in some multi purpose food, don't ask,
and uh, we're gonna turn this place into a fallout shelter.
And on their way out, they would slap a sign,
very iconic sign, which is black circle with three inverted
triangles all pointing towards the center. Um that designated a
fallout shelter. And they did this in yellow in the
(29:55):
event um of a like a blackout during a nuclear
war something, so that you could easily see it. Yeah.
Pretty cool. The company three M made these for about
a penny each, and they made about four hundred thousand
of these signs, and they would stock these things with um,
you know, like medical first aid kits, some water drums,
(30:16):
those crackers that you talked about that if you add water,
could probably double up as like cement patch. Yeah, I guess,
but I think people would wrestle you to the ground
if you tried to use the water for anything but
drinking after, you know, in the event of this sure,
I mean, that's one thing we didn't mention. If you
go to build your own fallout shelter, um, you know
(30:37):
you should have some food, but water obviously it's far
more important. We've talked about that a lot, about how
long the human body can go without food and water.
You gotta have a lot of water. Um. I think
I would stock it up with some of that Mike's
mighty good Ramen here of course, which by the way, uh,
we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that they
(30:57):
actually sent us a coupon code for stuff you should
know this sners. Oh yeah, this this is not an ad.
But they, uh we we talked about that Ramen so much.
They said, you know what, tell everyone stuff you should
know twenty we'll get them off ramen. If they want
to order something very nice to you write, write the
number twenty or right out t W E N t
WA the number twenty after stuff you should know. So
(31:19):
two zero yeah, and you can stock up your own
fallout shelter. You can eat that stuff for lunch. Didn't
take up a lot of room, good calories, it's multi
purpose food. You gotta eat some water for it, though,
right but I mean hey, or you can collectively spit
in it, I guess, and heat that up. That's grody.
You're gonna get that water anyway, though, you know, because
you're gonna drink the juice. That's true. Uh So back
(31:42):
to the public shelters, they have these pretty well stocked.
They said, there was an actual booklet in there that said,
if you want a toilet, cut a seat out of
a chair and put a bucket under it, and there's
your toilet. And so when that pamphlet came out, in
particular the American citizen, we said, like, for real, this
is our tax dollars are doing. This is what we're
getting from our government. Cut a cut a hole in
(32:04):
the seat of a chair, and put a bucket under there.
That's your advice for the nuclear war, that you're half
responsible for having us live under the threat of right,
they said, we're not socialists. Take care of yourself. Yeah.
So the thing is is like people would people would write,
people would um read newspapers, or people would um like
(32:26):
watch the news or whatever, and they would be getting
one channel of information that was saying like, yeah, here's
what this. You know what one megaton bomb could possibly
do to your if this blew up over New York City.
This is what would happen. And people would say, well,
what's the point of having these fallout shelters because if
a bomb goes off over New York City, all of
(32:47):
those fallout shelters are going to be totally obliterated. There's
no point for them. Um and the government and doing
something like trying to at least lift some finger people
feel less anxious actually had the opposite effect because it
drew a lot of attention and focus to the need
(33:07):
for fallout shelters, while at the same time reinforcing the
idea that these fallout shelters weren't gonna be worth anything
for anybody unless maybe you lived in Topeka or somewhere
where there there wasn't what's known as a key target
that you might actually survive in a fallout shelter that
was well stocked and had few enough people, it could work.
(33:29):
But for most Americans, especially ones in major cities, you're
going to be in bad shape. And the Fallout Shelter
program really kind of pointed that out. All right, should
we take a break? I think so, all right, we'll
take our last break and we'll be back right after this.
(34:05):
So before we broke, you said something about unless you
live in Topeka, Uh, does in Kansas have silos or
no military as I was saying, and I was like, yeah,
I'm glad you said something. At least he'll save us
the emails. Okay, because that you know, we we did mention,
but you know, we talked about game theory earlier about
how the reasoning was, No, you don't need to worry
(34:27):
if you're in a big city because they aren't a
military bases there. But you know that it sort of
goes the way of UM that war goes once anything
goes wrong. So if one UM bomb from the opposition
from the enemy goes to somewhere it isn't supposed to go,
then all bets are off basically, and then it's just
(34:47):
bomb away. Also, I want to give a shout out
to Robert Clara from history dot com who wrote nuclear
fallout shelters were Never going to work, who wrote a
pretty great article about how this whole pro rams kind
of doomed from the start because it all ill conceived,
you know. But not only was it ill conceived, they
were also like poorly stocked. Some of these things that
(35:09):
were designated followed shelters never got their supplies. Um, water
drums were leaking, and then um, others worked really well,
so well in fact, that there's one they found at
the Oyster Adams Bilingual School in d C, which is
a school still functioning today part of d C Public Schools,
but there is a fallout shelter that's like a um,
(35:32):
a time capsule basically that has all of the original
provisions and it just frozen in times still. It's really
in California, Yeah, basically, um, except this was one of
the designated public fallout shelters, but below a school. Yeah.
I think didn't they try to build them to how's
at least fifty people, and I think they had they
(35:54):
recommended for the personal ones that they be at least
six and a half feet tall. Yeah, and that was
one of the things that sort of, um would have
been the toughest I think about fallout shelters, just so
many of them were very had very low ceilings. Obviously
there's no windows. I mean, it's bunker life is tough going.
(36:14):
And they recommended two weeks, and which is nuts to me, Like,
there's no way I'm poking my head out after two
weeks just to see if it's how how things are
going up there? Right? And I mean like there was
some logic and reasoning to that two weeks and that
there's that you would have exceeded the half life of
a lot of the radio new clides that are not
enough for created, but yeah, there's plenty that would still
(36:37):
be around. Yes, it was. It was never never going
to work, like Robert Clara put it, no, And I
think that was sort of the idea of what you're
talking about, with the public being so disheartened and feeling
helpless about our civil defense. Was um like, this is
the general public and they didn't think it seemed like
(36:57):
a good plan. But it makes me wonder, though that
a good thing, Like it sucks to have that kind
of mental anxiety that we all collectively had during the
Cold War, especially at the height of this stuff, like
in the sixties. But I think it might have actually
been good because then the public was aware of just
how dangerous things were and would prevent a kind of
(37:19):
cavalier attitude toward nuclear war because they knew what was
at stake, and what was at stake were their very lives. Maybe,
I mean, and maybe that's a bottom up sort of
like a groundswell of public thought eats its way up
into the into government, and you know, I mean, and
I guess we'll never know how close we ever got.
(37:39):
I mean, I don't think we've ever done one on
the nuclear the Cuban missile crisis, have we not? I
don't think specifically, but you know, we've been on the
brink in a in a way that history has recognized.
But I'm curious how close it's been in times that
we never even knew about. You know, there's one guy
who celebrated every year. I can't remember or what the
(38:00):
day is, but it's basically like Save the World Day,
where this one um Soviet I guess, a missile commander
basically had a few minutes was being told by his
computers and all of his underlings that the US had
launched a massive strike and that you know, it was
up to him to to call and order this counter
(38:22):
strike or call the people who would order the counter strike,
and he sweated it out. He said that there he
just didn't believe that the Americans would have launched an unprovoked,
all out nuclear strike like he was being shown. And
he stayed his hand and literally saved the world from
a nuclear war like single handedly. And the scary thing is, Chuck,
(38:44):
is that has happened more than once. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.
It's funny that, like we're basically the last generation that
grew up with any knowledge of the threat of nuclear
war like this, like we sort of experienced the tail
into the Cold War. Perfect generation. Yeah, but it's it's
hard to um and um. The Friendly Fire podcast, which
(39:05):
is one of my favorites, the war movie podcasts that uh,
our buddies Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica and John Roderick
do they're younger. Roderick's you know, a few years older
than me, old, so way older than you. But um,
John kind of drives this point home a lot about
like it's really hard to put into words what that
(39:25):
does to a a set of generations when we're all
sort of living under this, you know, very real threat
that we could all die the worst possible death. And
you know, not like oh, you kids have got it
made or anything like that, but it's it's a different
sort of mindset, you know. Yeah, I mean it definitely is.
(39:46):
It definitely affects you from from every stage of your life.
You know. I mean it went away by the time
we were in college, but you know, I remember my
early years. Obviously we were digging a fallout shelter. It was.
It was a big threat, and movie and TV reinforce
that every day. So, um, if you wanted to build
a fallout shelter, we have to say there was um
(40:08):
a time in addition to designating fallowoup shelters. By the way,
if you find one of those old fallout shelter signs,
hang onto it, you can pretty much take it. And
unless there's a close watching groundskeeper willie type who takes
care of that building, nobody's probably gonna notice it's gone.
(40:28):
And the U. S. Government has no idea how many
are out there because they never kept track of the
fallout shelters. There was no registry or anything. Yeah, I
mean they shut started shutting these down in the early seventies,
officially started giving away the food. UM sent some of
it to organizations in Africa, in Bangladesh. And then those
signs started, I think in the mid seventies, started pulling
(40:50):
those signs out. And I think finally just three years
ago in two thousand seventeen, they they said that they
said that they got the last of the signs out
of New York City, which and I don't think we mentioned.
It's hysterical that they built these fallout shelters in Manhattan
and Brooklyn, as if that would you know, that would
lead to good right, So, um, so if you if
(41:13):
you if you did want to make a fallout shelter,
there's um. There was this a pamphlet put out by
Oakridge National Laboratory where they basically hired yeah, they had
a sideline and studying nuclear disaster survival, um what like
you couldn't tell with their beards, you know, but um,
the this pamphlet basically was the result of Oakridge hiring
(41:36):
a bunch of families, regular old American families and saying, um,
a nuclear war is happening right now, go build a
fallout shelter. Here's your instructions, and then seeing how easy
it could be done, and then adjusting the instructions and
so on and so forth until they finally got to
this pamphlet, and the pamphlet basically came up with this
really good fallout shelter where you just basically dug a
(41:59):
trend in the ground that was several feet deep, covered
it with wood poles, covered the wood poles with something
like cloth, the old bed sheets something like that, put
dirt on it, put shower curtains something waterproof, and then
put more dirt on that. And they actually figured out
that this particular fallout shelter had like a protection factor
(42:21):
of like three hundred. Yeah that and it would also
survive a blast that most houses would not survive because
you're you're just basically hunkered down in the earth, and
it would it would work for you if you wanted to.
And they said that, um, it can be done. They
used the example that to non athletic college age girls
did it in thirty six hours. That was that was
(42:43):
how they were selling it. We had a couple of
girl couch potatoes, right, look, at them. Wow. Yeah. When
I was reading about that, I was I figured you'd
get maybe a twenty out of that. What do you
mean for PF No One? Yeah, so there you go.
(43:04):
Thank you, Akridge boys, getty up Papa. And since Chuck
said that, everybody, it's time for a listener mail. All right,
I'm gonna call this, uh a series of apologies to Australia.
Oh boy. So before the we get into the email, UM,
(43:24):
I do think we should address this that we've had
some ads running in Australia only that have been no good. Uh.
And these aren't ads that we knew about. These aren't
ads that we read. Um, we have a separate company
in Australia that's doing that for us, and everything is
under review right now because um, we don't want these
(43:46):
ads out there. So yeah, it's a it's a new
relationship when we're kind of figuring each other out, that's right.
But we do want to say that none of these
ads were our decision. Um. If you're out there and
your interest is peaked and you're like, oh my gosh,
what are they talking about, I'll never know they were.
You know, there were ads for like mining companies and stuff.
Like that, among other things, not super s y s
(44:06):
K type stuff. That's right, and and we wanted to
address it head on, uh, but also we wanted to
address our own uh foibles in the billabongs terminology that
we were talking about in the Wetlands episode just shameful, man,
it is. And this is something we should know, even
though we are not Australians, but we use the term
aborigines very sort of willy nilly uh. And that is
(44:30):
this um is an email from Tanita she said, Uh
in the episode and Wetlands, he used a number of
terms talking about billabongs that were not correct terminology. The
term aborigines is considered outdated and defensive as it groups
all indigenous groups into one term and as connotations of
colonial Australia. Some of the current terms and correct terms
(44:53):
for traditional owners of Australia uh include Aboriginal people, Indigenous
First Nations people. And this is something that you know,
we just should have known. So yeah, Plus, I mean
it applies to more than just um, the native people
of Australia too, you know. So of course, yeah, and
we got a bunch of emails from people that said,
(45:13):
if you really want to do right by these people.
You need to research the exact people that you're talking about,
like the Palawa people from Tasmania where she's from, or
the Annawan people from the area around Armadale where she
lives now, and we didn't do that. And she said
there were two hundred and fifty different languages in Australia
(45:33):
before invasion, only a hundred and twenty year now spoken.
Billabong in fact, comes from the uh We're a jury
language from central New South Wales and is now a
common Australian English term. And that is from Tinita and
many others. Thank you so much for taking it easy
on us, Tanita. That was very nice, super Australian of
(45:54):
you as well, just laid back in nice and not
at all like chest pokey, So we appreciate that. That's right.
And you know, if you're in the United States and
you're I'm not quite sure what even this means would
basically be like just saying Africa as a lump all
term for like any tribe in Africa and the culture
(46:14):
and the language that is very specific to that region
and we were not hip to that. So thanks again.
Who was that, Tanita? Yeah, okay, thanks again, Tanita. Thanks
again Australia for taking such good care of us over there.
We appreciate you, guys, and thanks to everybody who listens
to Stuff you Should Know. And if you want to
get in touch with us for any reason, no matter
(46:36):
where you live in the world, no matter what language
you speak, you can send us an email to Stuff
Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
more podcasts for my heart Radio? Is it the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. One
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of five
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Bluie Clark. There's Charles W. Bam Bam Bryant
and Jerry Radioactive Rolling. Oh boy, and this is stuff
(00:24):
you should know. You still got it after all these years,
you still got it. Yep. Hey, I think before we
get going, we should talk very briefly about our audiobook.
Oh yeah, because this week, in real time, we are
each recording our respective parts for the audio book. And
(00:45):
first of all, we just want to tell everyone there's
going to be an audiobook version. Yeah, spoiler of Stuff
you should know, colon and mostly incomplete guide two very
interesting things man still an income compendium of mostly interesting things.
Uh yeah, so we're we're trying to push that out
(01:05):
as uh, you know, get both, is what I say.
But if you're into audio books, we're doing one. But
also I just want to make sure people know what
they're getting. And I put this on the Stuff you
Should Know Army page. They're not getting twenty seven new
podcast episodes, no, and they should know that because our
podcast is unscripted conversation. An audiobook is us reading an
(01:29):
audiobook and rather than just weirdly trading lines reading from
a script, which would I think that would dash a
lot of people's image of of what we do. We
are each reading chapters and I think they're gonna mix
in some stuff here and there. But um, yeah, I
mean it's gonna be great and fun. But it's not
(01:50):
podcast episodes. We don't get to just fart around and
make jokes like we gotta read our books we have.
Oh man, we will be kept in line. If we
try to fart around and make jokes, it would not
be good. There's this whole time as money etho, yelling,
sometimes crying. It's a real stressful situation. Everybody, How did
you had that go for yesterday? Did you enjoy yourself?
I just told you there's a lot of yelling and crying.
(02:12):
It was very stressful. Yeah, it was fun. It was.
It reminded me a lot of recording um The End
of the World, because you know, I wrote those and
then I read them, So it was very similar to that,
except um a lot less heavy. Yeah. I was slightly
nervous at first for some reason after talking for twelve years,
probably just because you weren't there, But then it was like, uh,
(02:32):
you know it was it was fine. Did Fleet the
director calm you make you feel better? Yeah? I mean,
you know, I got I got in my group. I
felt pretty pretty comfy by the end of it. Yeah, So,
I mean it has it is fun. It's definitely a
lot of extra work this week, but it's kind of cool.
You know, at the end, we're gonna have a bona
fide audio book. That's right in, a bonafide book that
you can pre order now. And uh, we're also working
(02:54):
on getting that pre order gift available to the UK
and Australia and other parts of the world because we
have different publishers there. It's not like we were trying
to exclude everyone, no, no, but we are moving heaven
Earth to get it done. And yeah, if you're in
the US and Canada and your pre order, if you
haven't gotten your poster yet, worry not. You're going to
get your pre order gift eventually. That's right. Wow. So
(03:18):
um for the fifteen seventeen people who stuck around prepared
to learn about fallout shelters, because that's ultimately what we're
here to talk about today, that's right. Actually, before that,
I have to say one more thing, O, God, I
posted that squirrel attack video on my Instagram, you know
that we talked about on the episode because people kept
(03:39):
asking and so I put it up. I'm at Chuck
the podcaster. If you want to see a squirrel go
berserk and literally fly through the air and hit me
in the leg, then you can. You can see that.
And it's been like fifteen thousand times. Now, one of
these days, I hope you'll infest up to what you
did to provoke that squirrel. I mean, the whole thing
(03:59):
is there. You see me exit my house, so yeah,
but I mean we didn't know like what happened half
hour before. You know, that had been ongoing for the
last week. That's so now I think we're going to
talk about fallout shelters because Chuck Um, your house has
a basement, but it's exposed on one side to the outdoors.
(04:22):
It's not an in ground basement as far as I know,
and hopefully I'm not divulging too much information about your house,
so so weird fans will be able to find it
and show up. Well, actually, you know, one side of
it is exposed to the world, but the other side
is you know, ten feet of earth and red clay,
like it could have been a great fallout shelter had
(04:43):
it not been for that one side. Sure, but there
are things you could do or could have done. I
think we should use past tents here, because the need
for a fallout shelter, as far as the nuclear war
goes vanishingly remote these days. I like to think, I
don't think should getting any fear mongering. Um, but there
(05:03):
are a few things you could have done or could
do to build the follow up shelter with that. That
that good side, I guess, and we're going to talk
about that today. But mainly what we're talking about the
followup shelters is almost kind of like this examination of
the world psyche during the Cold War, to where as
(05:24):
the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union in the United
States started to build up in step with one another,
and we were suddenly in a nuclear arms race where
just ten years before there were no such thing as
nuclear weapons, people started to realize like, oh man, if
one of these goes off near me, I'm in big trouble.
And they started looking around to the government to say, hey, um,
(05:48):
what should I do? And at first the government was
like you know, figure it out yourself. And then eventually
the government kind of got a little more involved, and
before you know it, we had a national fallout shelter program.
As feeble and terrible as it was, at least we
had one. Yeah. What's really funny is when you read
(06:08):
up on this stuff and you learn that President Kennedy,
uh John F. Kennedy, that is, asked Congress for a
hundred million dollars to build public fallout shelters. That is
such an adorable number. Now that would build like tin
fallout shelters these days, maybe like that's maybe that's like
the amount of money that would take to get like
a motorcade to the cap right from the White House basically,
(06:32):
you know. Yeah, but it was a real threat back then. Um,
and I can't remember what episode it may have been,
Uh nuclear radiation. Uh we did one on the disaster
in Japan. Yeah, we've done a couple on this. But
I know that I told the story of my father
like having us sort of do of a fallout shelter
(06:55):
when I was ten or twelve years old after the
movie the day after aired on television, And yeah, I
remember that. Yeah, I mean, you know, it was my
brother and I taking out digging out buckets of dirt
and carrying them out in the woods and dumping them
for probably three or four weekends and then we stopped.
So you guys were coverage if something happened, Yeah, I
mean we could have. Yeah, it was pretty gross. So
(07:17):
was it akin to this, um this this shelter that
we were going to go over at the end? Was
it like that? Well, I mean it eventually could have been,
which is to say, a you know, kind of a
concrete room underground surrounded by earth. Oh yeah, no, I'm
saying like the kind where it's like you dig a
trench and put some woodpoles. This is part of um
(07:41):
my basement. Like my dad had a workshop and on
the interior wall of the workshop he knocked down the
cinder block wall and we just started digging, which I'm
safe to the foundation of the house, right, He's like, yeah,
it's probably not low bearing. Yeah, exactly. But yeah. There
was definitely a point in time, especially during the height
of the Cold War, where it was like this is
this is We're really in danger here. The world was
(08:04):
just kind of walking around just twitching and shaking at
the idea of this and part of the problem was
not just the idea that um a bomb was going
to go off and just blow cities apart, because apparently
there was this UM one of the nuclear deterrent theories,
the game theories that that people kind of operated under.
(08:26):
UM said, no, you know what, if we ever engage
in nuclear war, UM, we're just going to be attacking
military installations side to side, and so we don't really
have to worry about that for people in New York
or d C. Or you know, Atlanta, wherever, any of
the major metropolitan cities. We have to worry about those
cities getting leveled. But there's gonna be a huge problem
(08:47):
for the people living there because there's such a thing
as radioactive fallout. It's not just the bomb that gets you,
it's the fallout afterward. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking
about a nuclear bomb, a nuclear warhead, uh to pends
on what kind um. You know, back then it was,
it was different than it is now. But let's say
a one megaton h bomb back in the day would
(09:10):
completely wipe out everything within about two miles from where
I hit. Yeah, and I know I said, we weren't
in a fearmonger Chuck but I found out that there
is a bomb in the U s Arsenal called the
B A D three which is one point to megatunts
and it can be carried around very easily by the
B two bomber. So those exists. Uh so two miles
everything is gone. Um and this is from the blast
(09:33):
and a person if you're like five miles away from
that bomb site, you're gonna get hit with third degree
burns just from that blast. Yeah, you're gonna be hate
in life. Um. So the blast is going to be
bad enough. And and again yet just for from for
people miles away could be burned to death, um, incinerated, vaporized,
just all sorts of terrible stuff. But if you're living
(09:55):
outside of that blast zone, you've got problems in the
radioactivity that's going to to be generated by it. Because
when those bombs explode, they release a lot of radioactive
particles of different varieties, and those things go up in
the air and they get kind of carried around and
stirred up in the atmosphere, but a lot of them
are heavy enough that they come back down and basically
(10:17):
around the area in a larger area around the bomb's epicenter. Yeah,
and we should probably just go over some of these
different types of radiation. Some of it you might recognize
from various incredible Hulk comic books. But you've got your
alpha particles, your beta particles, you've got gamma raise, you've
got neutrons. The gamma rais is what got Hulk, right,
(10:41):
I think so? Right, Yeah, I'm pretty sure because gamma
rays are green and Hulk was green. That's right. I
think that's it. And the other sweet sweet purple pants
that somehow still fit. So the alpha and beta particles,
they are not great, but they are easily stopped. It's
probably the best way to say it. Yeah, So here's
(11:01):
the thing, Like every everything I tried to read about
this is like they would go to great links to
be like, well, this one isn't isn't like that much
of a problem. This one's way worse, And then finally
they throw up their hands and be like, actually, all
of this is just gonna be one big giant cluster
because depending on the different type of radioactive particle um,
there's different situations where they're way worse than the other one.
(11:24):
Like a gamma ray is really bad because it can
go clear through several inches of lead right into you
on the other side of the lead through your body,
and then everything it comes in contact with, say all
of your cells and tissues and bones and all that stuff.
It really screws them up genetically, and you can develop
cancer and radiation sickness and all that. That's pretty bad.
(11:44):
But then you've got alpha particles where they can be
stopped by a piece of paper. They can't even make
it through your skin, but they could get all over
like crops in the water, and we drink them and
eat them, and then they cause all sorts of sorts
of problems inside of too. So there's really no good
radioactive particle as far as a fallout from a nuclear
(12:05):
bomb is concerned. Yeah, not at all. Because so don't
you know if you read up on this stuff and
it said, oh, a piece of paper, a little bit
of plastic, you can stop beta particles and alpha particles.
Just think about the area breathing, the water you're drinking,
the the maze you're growing. Sure, if you want to
get traditional, it's all very dangerous. Yeah, don't just be like, oh,
(12:27):
let's make a paper suit out of newspapers and maybe
a little paper tried corner and hat out of newspapers.
I'll be fine. But like you said, when this bomb hits,
that mushroom cloud goes up. Everything's all mixed together and
as the wind blows these little uh. I think John
Fuller old pal wrote this one a long time ago,
right for how stuff works. But he said there are
(12:49):
lots of little there. They act like little tiny missiles
basically that are just going off all over the place. Yeah.
That was the neutrons, right, I yeah, I think the
neutrons specific he called the missiles, but they kind of
all are. Yeah, they are there. They're super high energy
and gamma rays um. Like I said, they can pass
right through you. Neutrons are a problem in the relative
(13:12):
immediate blast area because they're very heavy, so they don't
go nearly as far as they like gamma rays or
X rays or alpha particles or beta particles. But they
all do damage in their own unique, special snowflake way. Yeah.
And it's also I mean, this stuff is being carried
around by um the wind, but the actual particles that
you're seeing is is actually Earth that is now enriched
(13:36):
with this stuff that is poofed up from that crater
where Earth Earth used to be. I guess right, and
so knowing all this like this was this is like
why people started to be like, oh, okay, maybe we
should start building fallout shelters to to live in or
inhabit for you know, the immediate period after this this
nuclear attack, UM, to give us a chance to survive
(14:00):
and hopefully, you know, make it a few weeks, and
then things will have died down, everybody has forgotten about
the whole nuclear holocaust, and we can come back out
and restart civilization. That was the really, honestly, if you
get down to it, um, the thinking behind fallout shelters
in the United States and the sixties and late fifties.
All right, should we take a break there and then
(14:21):
talk about these things? I think so some more. Yeah,
all right, we'll be right back everyone, So chuck, I think, um,
(14:49):
since we've got one act under our belt, we need
to start the second act by telling everybody they can
preorder our book. Hey, I took some vitamins. You know,
I've been taking vitamins as much as I can, and
I've got this multi vitamin you know, like the worst
of vitamin can taste. I've got that horrible vitamin taste
(15:09):
just stuck in the back of my throat because it
got stuck there for half of a millisecond before it
washed down, and it's just left this terrible taste of
vitamin coding back there. It's driving me batty. How how
is your health with the vitamins? Can you tell a difference? No? None?
How's your pa? How's your urine? It's bright yellow? Which
(15:31):
makes me just feel like such a chump, especially after
our our vitamin supplement episode. Right, didn't we say like
we pee most of it out? Yeah, there's good ones
for sure, and I like the thing I'm taking go ones,
but I just know that there's no telling right now.
You're like, I'm using injectables now, pretty much snortable vitamins.
So fallout shelters. Uh, it's funny here and and I'm
(15:53):
glad John put it this way because it really makes
a lot of sense. If you think about an SPF
for sunscreen, it's a aim exact way with a fallout shelter.
You have a PF, a protection factor, and that is
just very simply a representative of UM being nfl out
shelter or just being out in the open. And FEMA
put out a pamphlet called standards for fallout shelters, and
(16:18):
they said you need a PF of forty at least, yeah,
if you want to, you know, and that that puts
you down to about two point five of the radiation.
Which I heard that number and I thought that was
too much. Yeah, no, I think, um, what you're really
shooting for is something like three hundred that kind of thing.
Um that and they're saying like a minimum of forty
(16:40):
or else, just you might as well just go lay
out in the in the radioactivity for all the protection
you're gonna get. Another way to look at that PF
numbers that it's the denominator and the fraction of the
radioactive exposure that you get compared to being outside of
the shelter. So a PF of forty would mean that
you get on. I'm more of a action guy than
(17:01):
a decimal dude. Oh yeah, how about two? You you
like decimals are fractions more? I don't like either one.
But I think for our next live show in two
you should wear a shirt that says fraction guy, and
I'll have one that says decimal dude, and that'll just
be our new tour outfit. Fair enough, and you can
have yours printed on a button down shirt. Of course. Okay,
(17:22):
that's yeah, because nothing looks better than good silk screening
on a button down Oxford. Maybe by the time we
go on tour again, this horrible vitamin taste will be
out of my mouth. Maybe. So so with fallout shelters,
there's a couple of kinds. Um if you're going back
to the nineteen sixties that people were talking about, and
(17:43):
that is the public one and then the private one
that you just build at your house like we kind
of didn't do. Um, I went down a bit of
a rabbit hole. It's and this is be right up
your alley. You probably did. This rabbit hole is pretty safe.
I bet yeah, depends on how deep I guess. But
if you start googling sixties fallout shelters, oh and I did.
(18:06):
Oh boy, it's just a treasure trove of articles and pictures. Um.
I saw one that these people in Woodland Hills, a
suburb of l A bought or part of Greater Los Angeles,
bought a house not too long ago, a few years ago,
and they found a did you see this one? No?
I saw some of Milwaukee this. Oh well, I saw
(18:27):
the Milwaukee Article two. That was great. But they found
a fifteen foot down under the earth fallout shelter that
was fully stopped, like it was like a time capsule
from and Brendan Fraser and Christopher Walkin. We're living in it.
I can't remember who the mom was. Do you remember
I didn't see that? You didn't know? It was cute movie? Yeah?
(18:51):
Is that in cine? No? Man, no, no, no, this
was blast from the past. Man was great too because
the weasels in it? Oh was he? Yeah, Pauly Shure, Yeah,
I knew it. That is, I just didn't Polly Shore,
Seawan Austin and Brendan, Sean Auston whatever. That guys rich enough,
(19:12):
he doesn't care what I say. So I was looking
at all these nineteen sixty one period products and just
like getting tingly feelings in my body because they were
perfectly preserved for the most part, like faded and stuff.
But there was a can like a coffee can, but
it said multipurpose food Meals for Millions, and so I
was like, I gotta find out what this is. And
(19:33):
it turns out that Meals for Millions was a nonprofit
from way back then. That is now UM International. Now
now it's it's it's it's transformed into another name. These days,
I think Freedom from Hunger is the new name. But
these two guys, Clifford Clinton and Dr Henry Borsuk, took
on this task of Borsok was a biochemist at cal Tech,
(19:57):
and they took on this project of trying to find
the best food to feed, like the cheapest, absolute, most
bare bones thing you could put in a package to
feed the hungry. And that's what they came up with,
was this stuff in a can and it is uh
sixty defadded soy grits plus dehydrated potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, leaks, parsley,
(20:24):
and spices, fortified with vitamins and minerals and it comes
in a can and you boil it up and eat it.
And it was something like two cents per serving. And
it was a really ingenious idea. But this became I think,
kind of a popular thing for fallout shelters because you
could just stop cans and cans of this, like the
most bare bones, caloric sort of healthy thing you could
(20:45):
get meals for millions. That's pretty great. I did not
expect it to actually be as healthy as what you
just listed listed off. Yeah, I would love to taste
some of it. Multi purpose of wood hills, I know,
just call it food, what do you multi purpose food?
Is that like a palmaide as well? Maybe One of
a food that I ran across um that was pretty popular,
(21:09):
especially among government funded fallout shelters, was this kind of
like wheat cracker that was made from vulgar wheat, and
apparently they were inspired by some crackers that were found
in Egyptian tombs that were still edible after a couple
of thousand years. So they're like, oh, that would be
perfect for fallout shelters, so they kind of recreated those taste. Yeah,
(21:33):
multi purpose. Apparently you could shave with them too, you
might good. The Milwaukee article was pretty cool though, Um.
I think that it said that, um, at the time,
they were like three thousand plus personal shelters in the
city of Milwaukee alone. Yeah. The thing is is, like,
that's that's probably a pretty good number. The thing is,
there's no official numbers for the fallout shelters that were
(21:57):
built around the Cold War because there were a lot
of public or private ones. But there's also public ones too,
So let's keep talking about the private ones first, because
if we're gonna follow the historical timeline, which I'm in
favor of, UM around I think the late nineteen fifties,
I think it was nineteen fifty seven in the Eisenhower administration,
(22:19):
there was a report that's now called the Gaither Report,
and it basically said, um, here's everything we figured out
about a nuclear war. Um, the cities are toasts. People
are going to die on mass we have no place
to put them, for them to shelter in. And everybody's
in a lot of trouble if there is a nuclear war.
(22:39):
So really the best thing we need to focus on
is to prevent a nuclear war from happening. Well, that
leaked out and people said, well, what are we gonna do?
And this is when the government was like, I don't know,
once you build some some shelters and leave us alone.
And so people started doing that and it became like
a huge craze, and so UM shelters in places like
(23:00):
that home in Woodland Hills or that one in Milwaukee,
UM that are still around today. In some cases that
became like a big deal, like um uh, like adding
like a really nice swimming pool, or adding like a
rec room or something like that. People turned to fallout
shelters and they started building them like crazy. Yeah, And
(23:22):
and from that Milwaukee I think it was in Milwaukee
was the name of the website. But from what they
said was they were being marketed, um as sort of
multi purpose wreck rooms that in case the s goes down,
it's conveniently um you know, lined with concrete and you
could just sort of easily convert it. And I guess
(23:42):
you would have some stuff stash there in either a
closet or in in bins or something. And when you're
not using you know, when there's no nuclear disaster, you're
just using it as sort of a playroom or something. Yeah,
there was some decorators show in Chicago in the late
fifties I think, and they build this thing is the
Living or the Family Room of Tomorrow, where it was
(24:03):
exactly what you described. It was like a normal functioning
family room, but it just happened to be in a
basement in like foot thick concrete encased under the dirt. Yeah.
I remember seeing when I was a kid, my brother
and I did lots of sort of I mean, I
guess it was an urban exploring but trespassing suburban exploring,
(24:25):
and I remember a couple of distinct times that we
saw event pipes just coming out of the earth in
the forest and we never saw any entry way or
anything like that. But that had to be some sort
of fallout shelter. I think, yeah, probably. I mean we
were near homes, but not like in the yard. We'd
(24:45):
come across a couple of them in our various expeditions,
like you know, just a clearly event pipe just coming
out of the woodland forest. So yeah, I'm sure that's
exactly what it was. I hope. Yeah. Well we didn't
dig around if not. Have you ever seen that Hugh
Jackman movie where like his wife is kidnap prisoners. Yeah? Man,
(25:06):
that was really good. I'm really good. Yeah, great movie. So, Um,
that's what's his face is doing the New Dune movie,
didn't Evellaneus? Oh? Well, there you go. That's why it
was so good. Yeah, he's he's a master. Um. I'm sorry, Chuck,
I just can't not correct you. His name is Dennis
Dennis Villanov. I'm sorry. So, um I was kidding. Anyway, Um,
(25:35):
there was the private fallout shelter trend that just blew
up and became a thing, and then UM in nineteen
sixty one, President Kennedy sent a letter out. I'm surely
it went out to more than just this, but there
if you were a Life magazine subscriber, which was pretty
substantial back in UM, in the September fifteenth edition, you
(25:57):
got a letter from President Kennedy basically saying like, hey,
you know this whole possibility of nuclear war thing, Well,
we've decided we're going to do something about it. We
the government, and we're going to start what's called the
National Fallout Shelter Survey. And this with the survey, basically,
what we're going to do is send out government officials
(26:19):
and they're going to look at buildings all around the
country and identify sites that have the potential of serving
as a fallout shelter. And everyone says, well, that's great.
So like a fallout shelter, so if like a nuclear
bomb goes off over our city, we're gonna be saving.
He's like, no, don't be ridiculous. That would cost a
lot of money. Now this is going to protect you
if um, if from radioactive fallout, you'll have to survive
(26:43):
the blast, but this will this will hopefully protect you
from the fallout afterward. Yeah, and you know, we kind
of laugh about that, but I mean, there's no way
they could have built enough like adequate shelters to protect
all Americans from the blast. No, I mean there was
a lot of Americans apparently did look at it at first,
and they could have pretended to two hundred billion in
(27:05):
in n another cute number. Actually they were like, oh no,
that's we can't do that. We don't have that kind
of money. So it was, like you said, I think
a hundred and hundred and ninety million is what they
ended up spending on it, which to me seems like
a lot of money to send out some people to
look at buildings and decide what was a fall at
shelter and what wasn't. Yeah. You know what's really funny
(27:26):
is when you look at what people did around the world,
what countries did around the world, and how it's so
jibes with how those countries are still today. Um, so
the US did what we did. The Soviets said that
they built a big, extensive system and they had an
advanced cooling system and all these filters protecting against everything,
(27:49):
and provisions food and water forever and uh, you know,
this is this is the press release they put out. Basically,
who knows what really happened? Yeah, because I found that
on like Russia so Great dot com or whatever, and
I mean it was it was like an urban exploration
of like an abandoned shelter. But you know, was this
just like the biggest one? How many were like that?
(28:11):
Supposedly the Soviets boasted of a system that could protect
most most of their um citizens from the blast. All right,
so that makes sense. Um, Sweden built sixty thousand, which
covered about the population. Ts for the other thirty percent,
Switzerland built enough shelters for everybody, Okay, God bless him. Uh.
(28:32):
The UK said, you know what, We're gonna build enough
for our military, our government in the royal family. Yeah,
chin up everyone else. And then Australia said, we'll take
a pass. We're not gonna build any because no one's
gonna mess with us down here. Yeah, they're like everybody's
read on the beach. Everyone knows we're fine if the
rest of the world's gone up in flame. I think
(28:53):
they're probably right. I mean they were, they were, and
especially back then. Enough off the map, uh or off
the path of of the threat that they didn't even
need to sweat it. Yeah, they're like, hey, what's all
the all the ruck is up there? So um. But
the so the US said, Okay, we've got to do something.
(29:13):
Let's at least build these fallout shelters that are going
to protect people from radio activity. Um. And so they
started building these um why I shouldn't say building. They
started going on to private property or public buildings and saying, hey,
you've got a really nice basement here, Um, can you
take down the human skins and clean it up a
little bit. We're gonna put some bulgar wheat biscuits in here,
(29:35):
we're gonna put in some multi purpose food, don't ask,
and uh, we're gonna turn this place into a fallout shelter.
And on their way out, they would slap a sign,
very iconic sign, which is black circle with three inverted
triangles all pointing towards the center. Um that designated a
fallout shelter. And they did this in yellow in the
(29:55):
event um of a like a blackout during a nuclear
war something, so that you could easily see it. Yeah.
Pretty cool. The company three M made these for about
a penny each, and they made about four hundred thousand
of these signs, and they would stock these things with um,
you know, like medical first aid kits, some water drums,
(30:16):
those crackers that you talked about that if you add water,
could probably double up as like cement patch. Yeah, I guess,
but I think people would wrestle you to the ground
if you tried to use the water for anything but
drinking after, you know, in the event of this sure,
I mean, that's one thing we didn't mention. If you
go to build your own fallout shelter, um, you know
(30:37):
you should have some food, but water obviously it's far
more important. We've talked about that a lot, about how
long the human body can go without food and water.
You gotta have a lot of water. Um. I think
I would stock it up with some of that Mike's
mighty good Ramen here of course, which by the way, uh,
we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that they
(30:57):
actually sent us a coupon code for stuff you should
know this sners. Oh yeah, this this is not an ad.
But they, uh we we talked about that Ramen so much.
They said, you know what, tell everyone stuff you should
know twenty we'll get them off ramen. If they want
to order something very nice to you write, write the
number twenty or right out t W E N t
WA the number twenty after stuff you should know. So
(31:19):
two zero yeah, and you can stock up your own
fallout shelter. You can eat that stuff for lunch. Didn't
take up a lot of room, good calories, it's multi
purpose food. You gotta eat some water for it, though,
right but I mean hey, or you can collectively spit
in it, I guess, and heat that up. That's grody.
You're gonna get that water anyway, though, you know, because
you're gonna drink the juice. That's true. Uh So back
(31:42):
to the public shelters, they have these pretty well stocked.
They said, there was an actual booklet in there that said,
if you want a toilet, cut a seat out of
a chair and put a bucket under it, and there's
your toilet. And so when that pamphlet came out, in
particular the American citizen, we said, like, for real, this
is our tax dollars are doing. This is what we're
getting from our government. Cut a cut a hole in
(32:04):
the seat of a chair, and put a bucket under there.
That's your advice for the nuclear war, that you're half
responsible for having us live under the threat of right,
they said, we're not socialists. Take care of yourself. Yeah.
So the thing is is like people would people would write,
people would um read newspapers, or people would um like
(32:26):
watch the news or whatever, and they would be getting
one channel of information that was saying like, yeah, here's
what this. You know what one megaton bomb could possibly
do to your if this blew up over New York City.
This is what would happen. And people would say, well,
what's the point of having these fallout shelters because if
a bomb goes off over New York City, all of
(32:47):
those fallout shelters are going to be totally obliterated. There's
no point for them. Um and the government and doing
something like trying to at least lift some finger people
feel less anxious actually had the opposite effect because it
drew a lot of attention and focus to the need
(33:07):
for fallout shelters, while at the same time reinforcing the
idea that these fallout shelters weren't gonna be worth anything
for anybody unless maybe you lived in Topeka or somewhere
where there there wasn't what's known as a key target
that you might actually survive in a fallout shelter that
was well stocked and had few enough people, it could work.
(33:29):
But for most Americans, especially ones in major cities, you're
going to be in bad shape. And the Fallout Shelter
program really kind of pointed that out. All right, should
we take a break? I think so, all right, we'll
take our last break and we'll be back right after this.
(34:05):
So before we broke, you said something about unless you
live in Topeka, Uh, does in Kansas have silos or
no military as I was saying, and I was like, yeah,
I'm glad you said something. At least he'll save us
the emails. Okay, because that you know, we we did mention,
but you know, we talked about game theory earlier about
how the reasoning was, No, you don't need to worry
(34:27):
if you're in a big city because they aren't a
military bases there. But you know that it sort of
goes the way of UM that war goes once anything
goes wrong. So if one UM bomb from the opposition
from the enemy goes to somewhere it isn't supposed to go,
then all bets are off basically, and then it's just
(34:47):
bomb away. Also, I want to give a shout out
to Robert Clara from history dot com who wrote nuclear
fallout shelters were Never going to work, who wrote a
pretty great article about how this whole pro rams kind
of doomed from the start because it all ill conceived,
you know. But not only was it ill conceived, they
were also like poorly stocked. Some of these things that
(35:09):
were designated followed shelters never got their supplies. Um, water
drums were leaking, and then um, others worked really well,
so well in fact, that there's one they found at
the Oyster Adams Bilingual School in d C, which is
a school still functioning today part of d C Public Schools,
but there is a fallout shelter that's like a um,
(35:32):
a time capsule basically that has all of the original
provisions and it just frozen in times still. It's really
in California, Yeah, basically, um, except this was one of
the designated public fallout shelters, but below a school. Yeah.
I think didn't they try to build them to how's
at least fifty people, and I think they had they
(35:54):
recommended for the personal ones that they be at least
six and a half feet tall. Yeah, and that was
one of the things that sort of, um would have
been the toughest I think about fallout shelters, just so
many of them were very had very low ceilings. Obviously
there's no windows. I mean, it's bunker life is tough going.
(36:14):
And they recommended two weeks, and which is nuts to me, Like,
there's no way I'm poking my head out after two
weeks just to see if it's how how things are
going up there? Right? And I mean like there was
some logic and reasoning to that two weeks and that
there's that you would have exceeded the half life of
a lot of the radio new clides that are not
enough for created, but yeah, there's plenty that would still
(36:37):
be around. Yes, it was. It was never never going
to work, like Robert Clara put it, no, And I
think that was sort of the idea of what you're
talking about, with the public being so disheartened and feeling
helpless about our civil defense. Was um like, this is
the general public and they didn't think it seemed like
(36:57):
a good plan. But it makes me wonder, though that
a good thing, Like it sucks to have that kind
of mental anxiety that we all collectively had during the
Cold War, especially at the height of this stuff, like
in the sixties. But I think it might have actually
been good because then the public was aware of just
how dangerous things were and would prevent a kind of
(37:19):
cavalier attitude toward nuclear war because they knew what was
at stake, and what was at stake were their very lives. Maybe,
I mean, and maybe that's a bottom up sort of
like a groundswell of public thought eats its way up
into the into government, and you know, I mean, and
I guess we'll never know how close we ever got.
(37:39):
I mean, I don't think we've ever done one on
the nuclear the Cuban missile crisis, have we not? I
don't think specifically, but you know, we've been on the
brink in a in a way that history has recognized.
But I'm curious how close it's been in times that
we never even knew about. You know, there's one guy
who celebrated every year. I can't remember or what the
(38:00):
day is, but it's basically like Save the World Day,
where this one um Soviet I guess, a missile commander
basically had a few minutes was being told by his
computers and all of his underlings that the US had
launched a massive strike and that you know, it was
up to him to to call and order this counter
(38:22):
strike or call the people who would order the counter strike,
and he sweated it out. He said that there he
just didn't believe that the Americans would have launched an unprovoked,
all out nuclear strike like he was being shown. And
he stayed his hand and literally saved the world from
a nuclear war like single handedly. And the scary thing is, Chuck,
(38:44):
is that has happened more than once. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.
It's funny that, like we're basically the last generation that
grew up with any knowledge of the threat of nuclear
war like this, like we sort of experienced the tail
into the Cold War. Perfect generation. Yeah, but it's it's
hard to um and um. The Friendly Fire podcast, which
(39:05):
is one of my favorites, the war movie podcasts that uh,
our buddies Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica and John Roderick
do they're younger. Roderick's you know, a few years older
than me, old, so way older than you. But um,
John kind of drives this point home a lot about
like it's really hard to put into words what that
(39:25):
does to a a set of generations when we're all
sort of living under this, you know, very real threat
that we could all die the worst possible death. And
you know, not like oh, you kids have got it
made or anything like that, but it's it's a different
sort of mindset, you know. Yeah, I mean it definitely is.
(39:46):
It definitely affects you from from every stage of your life.
You know. I mean it went away by the time
we were in college, but you know, I remember my
early years. Obviously we were digging a fallout shelter. It was.
It was a big threat, and movie and TV reinforce
that every day. So, um, if you wanted to build
a fallout shelter, we have to say there was um
(40:08):
a time in addition to designating fallowoup shelters. By the way,
if you find one of those old fallout shelter signs,
hang onto it, you can pretty much take it. And
unless there's a close watching groundskeeper willie type who takes
care of that building, nobody's probably gonna notice it's gone.
(40:28):
And the U. S. Government has no idea how many
are out there because they never kept track of the
fallout shelters. There was no registry or anything. Yeah, I
mean they shut started shutting these down in the early seventies,
officially started giving away the food. UM sent some of
it to organizations in Africa, in Bangladesh. And then those
signs started, I think in the mid seventies, started pulling
(40:50):
those signs out. And I think finally just three years
ago in two thousand seventeen, they they said that they
said that they got the last of the signs out
of New York City, which and I don't think we mentioned.
It's hysterical that they built these fallout shelters in Manhattan
and Brooklyn, as if that would you know, that would
lead to good right, So, um, so if you if
(41:13):
you if you did want to make a fallout shelter,
there's um. There was this a pamphlet put out by
Oakridge National Laboratory where they basically hired yeah, they had
a sideline and studying nuclear disaster survival, um what like
you couldn't tell with their beards, you know, but um,
the this pamphlet basically was the result of Oakridge hiring
(41:36):
a bunch of families, regular old American families and saying, um,
a nuclear war is happening right now, go build a
fallout shelter. Here's your instructions, and then seeing how easy
it could be done, and then adjusting the instructions and
so on and so forth until they finally got to
this pamphlet, and the pamphlet basically came up with this
really good fallout shelter where you just basically dug a
(41:59):
trend in the ground that was several feet deep, covered
it with wood poles, covered the wood poles with something
like cloth, the old bed sheets something like that, put
dirt on it, put shower curtains something waterproof, and then
put more dirt on that. And they actually figured out
that this particular fallout shelter had like a protection factor
(42:21):
of like three hundred. Yeah that and it would also
survive a blast that most houses would not survive because
you're you're just basically hunkered down in the earth, and
it would it would work for you if you wanted to.
And they said that, um, it can be done. They
used the example that to non athletic college age girls
did it in thirty six hours. That was that was
(42:43):
how they were selling it. We had a couple of
girl couch potatoes, right, look, at them. Wow. Yeah. When
I was reading about that, I was I figured you'd
get maybe a twenty out of that. What do you
mean for PF No One? Yeah, so there you go.
(43:04):
Thank you, Akridge boys, getty up Papa. And since Chuck
said that, everybody, it's time for a listener mail. All right,
I'm gonna call this, uh a series of apologies to Australia.
Oh boy. So before the we get into the email, UM,
(43:24):
I do think we should address this that we've had
some ads running in Australia only that have been no good. Uh.
And these aren't ads that we knew about. These aren't
ads that we read. Um, we have a separate company
in Australia that's doing that for us, and everything is
under review right now because um, we don't want these
(43:46):
ads out there. So yeah, it's a it's a new
relationship when we're kind of figuring each other out, that's right.
But we do want to say that none of these
ads were our decision. Um. If you're out there and
your interest is peaked and you're like, oh my gosh,
what are they talking about, I'll never know they were.
You know, there were ads for like mining companies and stuff.
Like that, among other things, not super s y s
(44:06):
K type stuff. That's right, and and we wanted to
address it head on, uh, but also we wanted to
address our own uh foibles in the billabongs terminology that
we were talking about in the Wetlands episode just shameful, man,
it is. And this is something we should know, even
though we are not Australians, but we use the term
aborigines very sort of willy nilly uh. And that is
(44:30):
this um is an email from Tanita she said, Uh
in the episode and Wetlands, he used a number of
terms talking about billabongs that were not correct terminology. The
term aborigines is considered outdated and defensive as it groups
all indigenous groups into one term and as connotations of
colonial Australia. Some of the current terms and correct terms
(44:53):
for traditional owners of Australia uh include Aboriginal people, Indigenous
First Nations people. And this is something that you know,
we just should have known. So yeah, Plus, I mean
it applies to more than just um, the native people
of Australia too, you know. So of course, yeah, and
we got a bunch of emails from people that said,
(45:13):
if you really want to do right by these people.
You need to research the exact people that you're talking about,
like the Palawa people from Tasmania where she's from, or
the Annawan people from the area around Armadale where she
lives now, and we didn't do that. And she said
there were two hundred and fifty different languages in Australia
(45:33):
before invasion, only a hundred and twenty year now spoken.
Billabong in fact, comes from the uh We're a jury
language from central New South Wales and is now a
common Australian English term. And that is from Tinita and
many others. Thank you so much for taking it easy
on us, Tanita. That was very nice, super Australian of
(45:54):
you as well, just laid back in nice and not
at all like chest pokey, So we appreciate that. That's right.
And you know, if you're in the United States and
you're I'm not quite sure what even this means would
basically be like just saying Africa as a lump all
term for like any tribe in Africa and the culture
(46:14):
and the language that is very specific to that region
and we were not hip to that. So thanks again.
Who was that, Tanita? Yeah, okay, thanks again, Tanita. Thanks
again Australia for taking such good care of us over there.
We appreciate you, guys, and thanks to everybody who listens
to Stuff you Should Know. And if you want to
get in touch with us for any reason, no matter
(46:36):
where you live in the world, no matter what language
you speak, you can send us an email to Stuff
Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
more podcasts for my heart Radio? Is it the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. One
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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