JUSTIN: Uh.
Let's do the thing.
ALICE: The thing, the podcast that we do.
JUSTIN: Yes.
Hello and welcome to 'Well There's Your Problem,'
a podcast about engineering disasters where
the worst disaster is actually my Skype, somehow.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Just completely fell apart.
ALICE: You're gonna sound so much better,
now that we're on Discord.
JUSTIN: This is true, yes.
Well, I think we should sound just about the
same.
I hope.
Or it will in the final recording.
Obviously we can hear each other better now.
ALICE: That allows for more better comedy,
more podcasting.
JUSTIN: Yes.
I'm Justin Roczniak, and I'm the person you're
listening to right now.
My pronouns are 'he' and 'him'.
Okay.
I've introduced myself.
[laughter]
ALICE: I am Alice Caldwell-Kelly, my pronouns
are 'she' and 'her' [TASTY beer can snap].
LIAM: Excellent timing.
ALICE: Love the beer can snap there, yes.
LIAM: Excellent, alright.
[laughter]
ALICE: Alright, Liam, go.
LIAM: Uhhh, hi.
I am Liam Anderson, I am @oldmananders0n on
Twitter.
My pronouns are 'he/him', and I am excited
to talk about Texas City, Texas, home of the
Dimmsdale Dimmadome.
[laughter]
ALICE: 'The City By The Texas'.
LIAM: Yes.
Stratford-upon-Texas.
JUSTIN: It's not a tricky one, like Kansas
City.
Cause Kansas City is, of course, in Missouri.
ALICE: As we all know, yes.
A lot of Chiefs fans got very mad at me when
I said that, because they were very insistent
that *some* of Kansas City is in Kansas, and
it's like, no, I learned a long time ago that
Kansas City's in Missouri, I'm not gonna update
that knowledge with any new information, so
you're wrong.
JUSTIN: I think Kansas City, Kansas is basically
a tax haven.
ALICE: Yeah, it's like Sark, or something.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
ALICE: It's the Cayman Islands, on the Missouri.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Alright, so, you can see on the, um,
on the screen right here there's a big explosion.
And there's a bunch of fire and stuff.
LIAM: [affectedly] Oh noooo.
JUSTIN: Like a lot of explosions, that's not
supposed to be there.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah.
When the explosion is supposed to be there,
that's more of a military context, right?
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: And we're not talking about that, we're
talking a civilian, a peacetime thing.
JUSTIN: Yeah, this is actually a scene from
'The Texas-Israeli War: 1999'.
[laughter]
LIAM: Oh, that was a bad one.
ALICE: Just... yeah.
[laughter]
LIAM: "Hoo boy are you guys not gonna like
this discourse hat."
ALICE: George W Bush lighting up his own oil
wells in an act of, like, dramatic irony.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So anyway, let's talk about some context
here.
This is Texas City.
You can see because it's labelled.
ALICE: Yeah, quite helpfully.
Oh, they got that pixelated coastline.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
LIAM: Yeah, navigating a ship there is a biiiitch.
[laughter]
ALICE: I hate when I get pop-in when I'm trying
to, like, dock my ship, and I just switch
from one water texture to another.
LIAM: "Why are we rubberbanding?!"
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, as we mentioned earlier, Texas
City is in Texas.
It's sort of like an inland port, near Galveston,
right.
ALICE: But Mitski told me that Texas was a
landlocked state.
LIAM: No.
JUSTIN: Uhhhh, no, they were wrong about that.
LIAM: Nope, sorry Mitski.
[laughter]
ALICE: You guys don't like Mitski?
She has a song where she sings that, uh, Texas
is a landlocked state, and when people got
mad at her, she had this explanation that
was like, "Oh, it's only for me and the person
that I wrote it for, that it's about.
It's a metaphor.
It's not that I didn't know that Texas has
a coastline."
LIAM: I'm tired of metaphors.
Nope.
ALICE: Which, like, sure.
Sure you didn't.
JUSTIN: I mean, in fairness, if you're like,
way on the interior of Texas, or like in the
parts of Texas that are like West Texas...
LIAM: Oh yeah, way out there.
JUSTIN: Y'know, it's basically landlocked,
cause you gotta drive, y'know, an infinite
amount of time to get to the ocean.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Alright, so today Texas City, y'know,
it's got a bunch of oil refineries and chemical
plants.
It's got a big port, which is down here.
ALICE: It's weird looking at all of those
floating-roof tanks, they look like a blister
pack full of medication when you see them
from up in the air like this.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
We're gonna talk more about floating-roof
tanks in a bit.
LIAM: Spoilers.
JUSTIN: But this is modern Texas City; we're
gonna talk about Texas City just after World
War Two, right, and it's a smaller place,
more densely populated place but with fewer
people overall, right.
Cause it's just after the war, we haven't
gotten into the automobile suburb era.
ALICE: There's no sprawl.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
And the relatively new oil industry is, like,
paying everyone a lot of money, so Texas City
is booming, right?
ALICE: Love a boom town.
The current ones, the current Bakken boom
towns, those are doing very well, no problems
there.
LIAM: Nope.
Nothing bad happens when you give a whole
bunch of people who just graduated high school
a hundred thousand dollars to fuck off to
the middle of nowhere.
ALICE: Yeah, and a job where you make ten
thousand dollars a day, but also have a 20%
risk of losing an arm.
Yeah, it's great.
LIAM: You can get 100k out of one hand, shit.
JUSTIN: This is like our alternative career
if podcasting doesn't work out.
[laughter]
LIAM: He isn't wrong, actually.
ALICE: I hate when we fucking, we strike oil
under the podcast.
[laughter]
ALICE: We're just gonna be like Los Angeles,
we're gonna be like LA County, we just have
a concealed oil derrick just working away
in the background in, like, your back yard.
JUSTIN: "I moved up to Fort MacMurray.
To podcast."
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah.
You gotta fly in with all of your own podcasting
equipment.
[laughter]
LIAM: "Hey guys, I heard there's a booming
podcasting market up here."
JUSTIN: Yeah, you get up there and you spend
like... you're working like twelve hours a
day in the podcast mines, and you realize
the only people making money are the guys
selling the microphones.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, if you wanna make money in a
podcasting boom, sell microphones.
[laughter]
LIAM: Coal Town Road is still blaring out
of the speakers, for some reason.
ALICE: This podcast brought to you from Fort
Mac.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Alright, so for more context, we should
also talk about... liberty ships!
LIAM: Oh boy.
We won the war with these depressing fuckin'
things.
JUSTIN: I know this looks exciting because
it's named John Brown-
ALICE: It's not gonna be that John Brown,
is it?
JUSTIN: It's not that John Brown, no.
ALICE: It's gonna be like the John Brown who
was, I don't know, secretary of commerce under
Franklin Pierce or some shit.
JUSTIN: I think he was a navy guy.
ALICE: [dissatisfied noise] But, like, yeah.
This is how you win wars, right, you win wars
with logistics, and logistics is boring.
LIAM: He was named for *another*, he was a
union leader.
ALICE: Ah, okay.
LIAM: Yeah, he was involved in the, he was
part of the United Mine Workers, and was involved
at the Ludlow Massacre.
ALICE: Huh.
So, I guess, like... based on evidence of
like, two people, 100% of people named John
Brown are cool.
JUSTIN: Yeah, that seems to be the case.
ALICE: I can't think of a bad John Brown.
Can you think of a bad John Brown?
JUSTIN: Mm... no.
I can think of bad people with the last name
Brown, and I can think of bad people with
the first name John.
ALICE: Yeah.
But those two things together, yeah.
Anyway, we gave a tribute to this guy, with,
uh, this kind of hideous liberty ship.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: What is a liberty ship, for the children?
JUSTIN: So, a liberty chip was a mass-produced
merchant ship-
LIAM: Liberty chip, mm.
JUSTIN: Which was produced in World War Two,
right?
And they produced these to an entirely uniform
design, and they're designed for just carrying
stuff, right.
Break-bulk cargo.
And break-bulk cargo is stuff that's like
in crates and barrels, and in sacks or on
pallets or something like that, right?
ALICE: Yeah, you have to use the big longshoreman
hooks to, like, move it.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
ALICE: And this is a project of, like, FDR,
and his flirtation with American quasi-socialism
of, we'll just do a five year plan.
We'll just build one ship, over and over again,
cranking out one a day, and-
LIAM: WIN THE WAR
ALICE: Yeah.
And win the war.
JUSTIN: So, y'know, the idea is we try to
build these liberty ships faster than the
Germans can sink 'em, right?
ALICE: Which you do, yeah.
Like, you get all of these movies and stuff
about how, like, how fraught the peril of
the U-boat captains and shit was... they never
stood a chance.
They could have been incredibly good at it,
doesn't matter, because you sink one of these,
and in the time it takes you to do that, like,
you've built ten more.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
ALICE: Arsenal of democracy shit.
JUSTIN: So these were built to an old-fashioned
design, they used a triple expansion reciprocating
steam engine, because steam turbines were
in short supply, and were reserved for warships,
which meant they were powered by fuel oil,
which will become relevant in a few minutes.
Um, and so they were designed to carry 10,000
tons of cargo.
They were the first ship with welded construction,
as opposed to riveted construction...
ALICE: Cause that was faster.
JUSTIN: Yeah, much faster, much cheaper.
ALICE: I remember from Glasgow shipyards,
riveters, uh, it's a fuckin' pain in the ass
to rivet stuff, and it requires some - not
that welding isn't a skilled job, but it's
tricky in a way that, I think, takes longer,
and is more expensive if you fuck up.
JUSTIN: Yeah, cause the guy has to like, y'know,
heat up the rivet, and then he's gotta toss
it 20 feet to you, right, and you gotta grab
it and stick it in real quick, without burning
yourself.
It's a Looney Tunes sort of situation with
riveting.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, some of the early ships took 230
days to build, but the average over the war
was 42 days to put one of these together.
ALICE: Stem to stern.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
There was one, for a stunt, the SS Robert
E. Peary, was built in 4 days and 12 hours.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: By Kaiser Permanente!
ALICE: Huh.
JUSTIN: Which is now a health insurance company.
LIAM: Yeah.
Those guys.
ALICE: The last good thing that they actually
did, before they went back to, like, having
won the war, taking away people's health insurance
for getting cancer.
JUSTIN: Yes.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, great.
We loved doing this shit during the war.
I know Britain, we built a Halifax bomber,
with the like fancy latticed framework, in
a day, just by working uninterrupted, just
by having shifts come in and out, and literally
handing the thing over to the next guy.
So we loved that, as a PR stunt.
JUSTIN: Yeah, more faster, more better.
Right?
LIAM: That is true.
We put the Empire State Building together
in like a year, man.
ALICE: Thinking about the T-34s rolling off
the factories unpainted, because why take
the time?
JUSTIN: That's fine.
What's rust?
LIAM: That's weight.
It adds weight.
JUSTIN: Yeah, paint does add weight.
LIAM: A T-34's not gonna survive long enough
for it to matter, I promise.
JUSTIN: That's what you want in a tank, is
weight reduction.
[laughter]
ALICE: And you get that cool unfinished paint
job thing that previously only the US Army
Air Forces were doing.
JUSTIN: That's true, yeah.
ALICE: I love that, that like, sleek aluminium
look.
It's very cool.
JUSTIN: Weren't they stainless steel?
ALICE: Well, yes, but I just mean the like,
polished metal look.
JUSTIN: Ah, okay.
So we built 2710 of these guys, 2400 of them
survived the war.
ALICE: That's pretty good, all things considered.
JUSTIN: There were some problems with 'em,
though, like, uh.
LIAM: Tell me about the problems.
JUSTIN: Some of the early ships had hull cracks
in them, right.
ALICE: Oh, that's not ideal.
JUSTIN: And at least three of them just split
in half with no warning.
ALICE: Ah, see, yeah, you don't wanna see
that.
JUSTIN: Yeah, it's not so good.
ALICE: I mean, I guess it's fine if you're
trying to build something that, like, maybe
gets sunk by a U-boat anyway, right?
Like, you just write that off as the cost
of doing business.
But it's kinda harder to do that in peacetime.
JUSTIN: Look, less...
I mean, just over one tenth of one percent
of these ships suddenly split in half for
no reason.
I think that's pretty good.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, yeah, I'll take those odds.
LIAM: Although there were 1500 instances of
'significant brittle fractures,' which I notice
you're not telling the people.
[laughter]
ALICE: It's fine!
It's like when you get an Airfix model or
something, and you don't use enough glue or
whatever, and it just kind of snaps apart
at the little spars.
It's fine.
Y'know.
You just stick it back together.
JUSTIN: Was probably rough handling.
ALICE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Blame the crew, of course.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, you salvage one of these and
you just find that the paint on the hull has,
like, this enormous thumb print on it, and
you're like, "Ahh, that's what's happened."
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So this was replaced by the victory
ship late in the war, and that was built to
a more modern and less sucky design than this.
[laughter]
LIAM: Also gave us the John Brown II.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
But a lot of liberty ships that survived the
war formed the basis for new commercial merchant
fleets, right?
ALICE: Mm, cause you could buy them cheap.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
ALICE: A ton of people got very rich off of,
like, all of this kind of surplus to requirements
socialism products the US government just
cranked out very cheaply.
LIAM: What's good, Aristotle Onassis?
JUSTIN: "Yeah, you want a liberty ship?
You got five bucks?"
[laughter]
ALICE: 'Buyer collects.'
[laughter]
ALICE: I mean, shit, that's still true.
If you want, you can buy a Land Rover, in
the UK, very very cheaply, so long as you're
willing to drive out to the middle of nowhere
because the fucking army will just sell it
to some guy for nothing.
JUSTIN: It's like, uh, government surplus.
ALICE: Yeah, yeah.
LIAM: Oh yeah.
I just check it every few weeks.
JUSTIN: "150 bucks for a 2 and a half ton
truck.
Yeah, sure, whatever."
[laughter]
ALICE: The next Patreon episode is gonna be
that you guys get a HMMWV.
[laughter]
LIAM: Rolling up to the live show in my deuce
and a half.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Get all the podcasters in the back.
"Go, go, go, go!"
[laughter]
LIAM: Smashing into the venue.
ALICE: Yeah.
I really like the, um, the HMMWV ambulance
body, the tall-backed one?
I think that's cool, I think we should get
like a mobile podcasting lab in there.
[laughter]
LIAM: Oh, I like that.
Or the version of the Sherman tank with, like,
the chain designed to clear mines on it.
ALICE: Oh yeah, the flail!
JUSTIN: Yeah!
ALICE: Just tearing up a bunch of roads as
part of an anti-car action.
[laughter]
LIAM: There you go!
See, I'm doing praxis.
JUSTIN: Yes.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Yes, that's all we needed to do praxis
properly, was to finally buy a tank.
[laughter]
ALICE: You get the mine-clearing tank, and
you systematically obliterate the works of
Robert Moses.
JUSTIN: Yes.
Now there'll be no debate about whether to
tear down the PQE.
LIAM: I'll do it for them.
JUSTIN: We'll just do it, yeah.
[laughter]
LIAM: You thought Killdozer was excessive.
ALICE: Yeah.
We finally found the kind of tankies that
we are, and it's mine clearance tanks.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, one of these ships that was sold
off after the war was the SS Grandcamp.
ALICE: French for 'big camp'.
JUSTIN: Yes.
[Frenchly] 'Grand camp'.
LIAM: Hon hon.
ALICE: Looks like shit there, I notice.
JUSTIN: Yeah, it does look like shit.
ALICE: I mean, fucking paint the thing a little
bit, maybe?
JUSTIN: They did paint it *a little bit*,
you can see there's this patch here.
[laughter]
ALICE: That's true.
A guy just came around with like a really
long thing of masking tape.
"Ah, don't want to get any paint on the rust."
[laughter]
LIAM: "Even, gotta make sure that's even."
[laughter]
JUSTIN: "Eh, it'll be fine."
So, the SS Grandcamp, formerly SS Benjamin
R. Curtis, was bought by [horribly] Compagnie
Générale Transatlantique.
LIAM: Ah, you didn't fuck that up too bad.
ALICE: Ah, the Compagnie Opportunistique de
Surplus des Allies.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: This was commonly known in the United
States just as 'the French Line'.
ALICE: Because you don't want a bunch of Texans
trying to pronounce Compagnie Générale Transatlantique
or whatever, right?
JUSTIN: You'd think there'd be at least enough
overlap with Louisianans that they might get
at least part of it.
LIAM: And you would be wrong!
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Or they're all just talking about
their gumbo.
LIAM: [Cajun gibberish] in de bayou [Cajun
gibberish] crawfish.
[laughter]
ALICE: You're gonna get us threatened with,
like, an alligator gig for this.
LIAM: I, I love the Cajuns.
I love that in the United States we have an
entire subgroup of rednecks that only speaks
French.
[laughter]
ALICE: I married a Creole, so like, the fancy
French-speaking people.
JUSTIN: Oooh.
LIAM: Ahhh.
ALICE: It's funny, though, cause there's only,
like, a few thousand of them, and so, like,
every so often he'll be like, "Oh yeah, Beyoncé's
like my second cousin."
Did not get any of that Beyoncé money, though.
LIAM: Yeah, we're gonna have to get this grift-
ALICE: For the show, yeah.
You can tell Beyoncé is French, though, because
of the accent.
LIAM: Get that Beyoncé money.
[laughter]
ALICE: If she was an Anglo, it would just
be Beyonce.
JUSTIN: Yeah, it would just be bay-awnce.
LIAM: Ohhhhh, make it stop.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So this ship was built in 1942 by
California Shipbuilding, in Los Angeles.
And so this is events just prior to April
16, 1947, right.
ALICE: [brightly] Mm.
Love events just prior to something.
JUSTIN: Yes.
So I believe it had taken on a cargo of machinery,
bales of twine, and a few cases of small arms
ammunition.
[laughter]
ALICE: Just for seasoning.
JUSTIN: Exactly.
LIAM: Yeah, you know.
ALICE: You couldn't do anything in the 50s,
or the - this was still the 40s, right?
JUSTIN: This was just in the 40s, yeah.
ALICE: You couldn't do anything in the 40s
without a couple of cases of small arms ammunition.
JUSTIN: Just a little sprinkling.
ALICE: You go to the store, and you get in
your, like, Ford flat six, and there's a bunch
of like loose cartridges rattling around the
floors, and you're just like, "Just move that
out of the way, it's fine."
JUSTIN: It took on all this at the Port of
Houston, right, but it had to go to Texas
City to take on its main cargo, of 2200 tons
of ammonium nitrate, right.
ALICE: [incredibly nervous laughter]
LIAM: OH GOOD.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
ALICE: HMM.
LIAM: OH.
JUSTIN: And that was bound for still-occupied
European countries, for use as fertilizer,
right?
LIAM: So you're saying this was an inside
job.
[laughter]
ALICE: False flag operation!
We're gonna take a bold stance that this never
actually happened.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: This was heading over to Germany to
prevent former Nazis from starving.
[groan]
LIAM: Lame.
JUSTIN: Yeah, right, lame.
Now, loading ammonium nitrate was banned in
Houston.
Why is this?
LIAM: Uh, fuel oil.
Uh, ANFO.
Uh.
ALICE: You're jumping ahead, and also, I'm
gonna say very little for the next slide,
on the basis that a Muslim says the words
'ammonium nitrate' and a SWAT team fucking
comes down my chimney.
JUSTIN: Ah, shit.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: We may not have that much time to
finish the podcast.
LIAM: You don't want to accidentally Oklahoma
City yourself.
ALICE: You just hear the flashbangs come in,
it's fine.
Go on without me.
[laughter]
LIAM: Let us finish the episode at least,
you fucks.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Alice, ask the nice men if they'll
let you save the audio before they take you
to prison.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, sure.
Habeas podcast.
JUSTIN: Ammonium nitrate, chemical formula
NH4NO3, right-
ALICE: LA LA LA LA LA LA LA fingers in ears.
LIAM: Alice, just bleep yourself, you're fine.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: It's artificial fertilizer, right?
You stick an ammonia together with a nitric
acid, and you get ammonium nitrate-
ALICE: "Such as in these readily-available
household chemicals!"
[laughter]
JUSTIN: It's got a whole bunch of nitrogen
in it, which means it's a good fertilizer.
But also, it's got a whole bunch of nitrogen
in it, which means it's a good explosive.
[laughter]
ALICE: Poor Alfred Nobel.
He was the first, since saltpeter, to really
get in on the fact that, it turns out that
you try to make fertilizer and you have inadvertently
created very good explosives.
Just one of those quirks of organic chemistry.
JUSTIN: Yeah, y'know, turns out Brawndo is
not what plants crave.
They crave explosives.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Bury a stick of dynamite in your yard,
folks, it'll grow into a dynamite tree.
[laughter]
LIAM: I remember the good old days, when you
could go to the general store in Sheboygan
and buy half a stick of dynamite.
Back before the nanny state got to us.
[laughter]
ALICE: I don't believe that an armed society
is a polite society, necessarily, but it was
a much *weirder* society when you could just
go to the general store and be like, "A case
of gelignite, please.
And some opium."
[laughter]
LIAM: Hey man, you get a few cases of Sterno
and you can have a good old time.
[laughter]
LIAM: ...you should probably get rid of that
in the edit.
[much more laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, this being the 40s, you could
just, like, drive your Ford with the cartridges
rattling around-
LIAM: Drunk, don't forget you could be drunk.
ALICE: Drunk off your ass-
LIAM: Cause DUI wasn't illegal then.
JUSTIN: A truck with two comically large crates
that both say 'TNT' on the side in stencil.
No-one'd bat an eye.
[laughter]
ALICE: You have a grease gun, and a pack of
morphine syrettes on the passenger seat just
loose, if you crash into anything you get
impaled on your own steering column.
It was a weirder time.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, the thing about ammonium nitrate,
on its own, it's very stable.
LIAM: Yeah.
Sweet.
ALICE: Yeah, that's what you want.
JUSTIN: It'll burn, but you need additional
components to make it explode violently-
ALICE: LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA
JUSTIN: -which makes it the basis for a popular
industrial explosive, right, that's 'ANFO'.
ALICE: Industrial, recreational, political...
[laughter]
JUSTIN: It has many purposes.
So, ANFO is literally short for 'ammonium
nitrate and fuel oil',
LIAM: Oh, does what it says on the tin, I
suppose.
JUSTIN: You remember back a few minutes ago,
we talked about how liberty ships were fueled.
And you may be able to see a problem developing
here.
ALICE: Really, like, low grade bunker fuel
oil, right, lot of impurities in it?
JUSTIN: Oh yeah, the worst stuff from the
bottom of the distillation column.
It's just been sitting there for weeks.
LIAM: You can just say Old Crow.
ALICE: Which is why all of the engines are,
like, constantly knocking and banging and
grinding and shit, right?
Throwing off sparks?
JUSTIN: Well, no, because they just burn the
oil to generate steam, as opposed to trying
to run it through an actual engine.
That'd be dumb.
Don't do that.
[laughter]
ALICE: I'm gonna try and do that.
I'm gonna get like a marine engine and run
it off of fuel oil.
JUSTIN: It's not gonna work!
The funny thing about fuel oil is the one
thing you really can't use it for is fuel.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: At least not in an internal combustion
engine.
ALICE: Ammonium nitrate fuelish oil.
JUSTIN: Yes.
So!
Alright, let's talk about some of the events
the day of, right?
ALICE: Mm.
I see a caption here that says 'Looking east,
along north side of Warehouse O, showing the
SS Grandcamp a few minutes before the explosion'.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Oh, that's not foreboding, thank God.
ALICE: Yeah, I have a question.
Which is, in order for us to have this photograph
on our podcast, this guy - I'm presuming it's
a guy - took this photo and then *ran* out
of town.
LIAM: He was like, "Ah, it's smokin', fuck
no.
Bye."
JUSTIN: This was taken by, I believe the captain
of another ship that was nearby, which we'll
talk about in a second.
ALICE: Huh.
LIAM: Not gonna be nearby for long.
JUSTIN: And after he took this photo, he's
like, "I better go back to my boat and make
sure everything's okay."
And then, y'know, the other boat, this boat,
dun blowed up.
ALICE: Ah, okay.
JUSTIN: So, the SS Grandcamp had been docked
at Texas City, right, and it was being loaded
with big paper bags of ammonium nitrate, right,
by like a bunch of longshoremen.
ALICE: Cause plastic hadn't been invented
yet.
You just have paper.
It's fine.
Like a big grocery sack.
JUSTIN: Plastic had been invented yet, but
we hadn't started using it for-
LIAM: Bakelite!
JUSTIN: -shipping ammonium nitrate.
ALICE: Just like a big perfect beautiful bakelite
cask full of ammonium nitrate, yeah.
LIAM: Aw, that'd be beautiful.
[laughter]
ALICE: Oh, one thing I did find out about
this, was that when they were loading this,
the longshoremen - just because it was Texas,
right, and it was the summer or whatever - when
they were loading them, uh, the paper bags
were hot to the touch.
Which is not a good sign.
JUSTIN: I was about to say, if it's hot for,
y'know, Texas hot, that's pretty hot.
LIAM: That is true.
Love to melt while I'm trying to load my melting
fuel.
JUSTIN: So, yeah, the loading takes a while,
it's very labor-intensive, it's a multi-day
affair, right?
It's not like today where you load a bunch
of containers on the ship.
Here it's like, guys had to grab each individual
bag, weighs like 50lbs, and throw them on
the ship.
ALICE: Each individual longshoreman, and they're
all - because it's in the 40s - they're all
in the mob-affiliated union, they have to
spend seven hours a day flicking a switchblade
open and closed.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: You have a mandatory switchblade break.
JUSTIN: Pro-smoking.
Mandatory smoking.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Mandatory smoking and switchblade
break.
LIAM: That's pretty impressive coordination,
though.
That won us the war.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Around 8 in the morning, right, after
they opened the cargo hold to start doing
more loading, smoke was seen inside the cargo
hold where the ammonium nitrate was being
loaded.
ALICE: "Damn you, take your smoking and switchblade
break *outside* the hold!"
JUSTIN: Yeah, and that's the thing, no-one
actually knows how the fire got started, but
people speculate it was someone, y'know, discarded
a cigarette.
ALICE: Yeah, it always is.
When we get to King's Cross... we'll get there.
LIAM: Oh no.
JUSTIN: Probably a cigarette and a broken
switchblade.
[laughter]
ALICE: Just a stack of, like, innocently horny
old magazines, and like, a smoldering pipe.
LIAM: I will be right back.
ALICE: It's fine.
Just, like, a corncob pipe and a stack of
old Playboys, or something.
JUSTIN: Wait, so, were they whackin' off in
the ammonium nitrate hold?
ALICE: I would assume.
This being the time when - this was before
sexual harassment was invented so dudes, I
have to imagine, were just jerking off everywhere.
JUSTIN: Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
You could just do it with impunity.
ALICE: This was invented in, like, 1970, where
a guy with a big collar wheeled in a VHS and
a TV, and showed you a little film about how
That's Sexual Harassment.
To just be jerking off in some ammonium nitrate
- before that, nobody knew any better.
JUSTIN: It was fine, yeah, I was about to
say, who came up with this idea?
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Where did the VHS tape come from?
From some academic feminists, telling us we
can't jerk off in the ammonium nitrate.
[laughter]
ALICE: "Uuuuuu, it's a safety issue."
JUSTIN: "Oh, the moisture'll damage the cargo,
oh."
[laughter]
JUSTIN: You can't do it, not for reasons of,
like, sexual harassment, you actually can't
do it for practical reasons.
ALICE: Or maybe that was the problem, they
didn't have *enough* guys jerking off down
there.
And that's what allowed that heat to build
up.
JUSTIN: Are you suggesting they should extinguish
the flame via bukkake?
ALICE: Yes, yeah, that's exactly what I'm
saying.
[laughter]
ALICE: We need some kind of, like, cum bucket
brigade arrangement.
...ah, we have a good and normal podcast here.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: I was about to say.
Like all of our diversions where one of our
number has to leave, we've caused a disaster.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: We're worthless without all three
of us here.
ALICE: Yes, yeah.
We are like the fucking Planeteers.
JUSTIN: "Listen to our podcast about ANFO
and cum."
[laughter]
ALICE: I feel like it's important for me to
just say some absolutely ridiculous dumb bullshit,
because-
[Liam crashes back in]
LIAM: Ow.
ALICE: -the MI5 agent listening to the previous
bit is like, "Okay, well this fucking dumbass
isn't going to do any terrorism, cause she's
just talking about cum now."
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: [crashing into more stuff] God-
JUSTIN: Liam just knocked my door open.
ALICE: Goddammit, Liam.
LIAM: Ow.
[laughter]
ALICE: Get your shit together!
LIAM: It hurt, oh.
ALICE: You missed a whole digression about
cum, and about the role of cum in the workplace.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Uh, just masturbate in the bathroom
like an adult.
ALICE: Well, this was the bathroom!
I have to assume there were dudes pissing
on it and stuff too!
JUSTIN: Well, you couldn't piss on it.
We'll actually talk about - pissing on it
would actually make it a more effective fertilizer.
Cause urea is a very effective fertilizer
as well.
But in this case there was an issue.
As I stated before, there was a fire that
was sort of smoldering in the hold, right?
And longshoremen get down there and they're
like, "We need to fight this fire," right?
ALICE: Sure.
LIAM: Sure.
JUSTIN: So the first thing they do is they
get a big container full of water, they lower
it into the hold with a crane, and people
dump it on the fire.
ALICE: Sure.
Sounds like... firefighting, I guess?
JUSTIN: Yeah.
They do some firefighting, right?
Well, they do that twice and it doesn't really
reduce the amount of fire there is.
ALICE: It keeps coming back, right?
Like, they tamp it down for a bit, and then
like five minutes later it's just smoking
again.
JUSTIN: Yes.
So, the longshoremen say, y'know, "This isn't
enough, we don't have enough water.
We need a hose."
ALICE: A hose full of cum.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Have I got news for you.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So they call for, y'know, a hose.
Full of an unspecified liquid.
[laughter]
LIAM: It's cum.
Just say cum.
ALICE: Well, what do you think firefighting
foam is?
[laughter]
LIAM: Industrial strength semen, yeah.
[laughter]
LIAM: Getting whole villages pregnant and
shit.
ALICE: [losing it] We are such fucking dumbasses.
JUSTIN: But, I read the actual report for
this, a report from after the incident.
Someone, and it doesn't say who, denies the
request, because the amount of water a hose
would put on the ammonium nitrate would damage
the cargo, right?
ALICE: Oh, sure.
Which is currently a bit on fire.
JUSTIN: It is on fire, yes.
LIAM: Only a bit though, thank God.
JUSTIN: The water would damage more of the
cargo than what was currently on fire.
ALICE: Yeah, but I feel like there's an error
in calculation there in terms of, not understanding
that stuff being on fire, uh, tends to put
stuff near it also on fire.
That being how fire works.
JUSTIN: I feel like maybe the size of the
fire was not clearly communicated to whoever's
job it was to protect the cargo from getting
wet.
ALICE: Well, this is a southern thing, is
you just like, you take a paragraph to say
the thing, and so you, "I declare that there
may be a risk of conflagration, in the vicinity
of, uh-"
[laughter]
JUSTIN: [southern accent] "Why, I do declare."
[laughter]
ALICE: There's a joke that was on, um, a TV
show [Alpha House] but predates it, that's
like, why the South lost the Civil War was
all of these general officers standing there
with their hands in their coats, being like,
"Why, General, I do declare that the Yankees
may appear to- oh shit, here they are."
[laughter]
LIAM: "Heyyy.
What's good guys?"
JUSTIN: Y'know, maybe because it took them
so long to say it, at around 8:30, the captain
says, "Why, I do declare-"
[laughter]
JUSTIN: "I believe we should abandon ship."
ALICE: He sounds the Foghorn Leghorn.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
So everyone on board got the fuck out.
I don't think anyone who was actually - any
longshoreman who was actually working on the
boat stayed in the area long enough to get
blown up.
ALICE: Wise.
The two acronyms, the one you respond to with
the other, ANFO and GTFO.
JUSTIN: Yes.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, at this point there's a pretty
vigorous fire on the boat.
Again, this is, you can see the smoke here.
All the smoke was orange.
ALICE: Oh cool.
JUSTIN: And so, some of the townsfolk of Texas
City decided, "Hey, we're gonna crowd around
and watch.
We wanna go see the firefighting happen."
ALICE: Of course, yeah.
You have, like, the spectacle.
People love street theater.
Same thing with Chernobyl.
"Hey, you wanna go see the power plant catch
fire?
It's got these weird colored flames, it looks
cool as hell."
JUSTIN: Oh shit, yeah.
LIAM: Yeah!
JUSTIN: So, 26 firemen arrived on the scene
with 4 fire trucks, right, and they started
to set up water lines to fight the fire properly.
And some witnesses on scene reported that
the sea was boiling around the ship from the
heat of the fire.
ALICE: Ah.
Shouldn't be doin' that.
LIAM: I see you've never been to Cleveland,
Ohio.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, well, Cleveland is, it's not
boiling, you just walk across, right?
JUSTIN: It's - the river was on fire, yeah.
ALICE: Ah, okay.
But I'm thinking of before it caught fire,
it had like the thick crust, that was the
thing that caught fire.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
ALICE: You could just have, like, a stroll
across the river.
JUSTIN: Of course.
So, it was theorized at this point that some
fuel oil got in contact with the ammonium
nitrate, y'know, possibly from it being so
goddamn hot.
ALICE: Happens.
I mean, that's the thing with oil, if you
work with any kind of oil, it gets everywhere,
you can't control all of it, and once a little
bit catches fire, there's just a lot of fire.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: It's not so good.
JUSTIN: So anyway, uh, at 9:12 the SS Grandcamp
blew up.
LIAM: Oh no.
ALICE: But blew all the pixels out of this
photo.
JUSTIN: Yes it did, it was so, it was such
a big explosion, that most pixels in the area
were destroyed.
[laughter]
LIAM: Wow.
Somber time.
JUSTIN: Yes.
So, this explosion was equivalent to 2.7 or
3.2 kilotons of TNT, depending on which measurements
are used.
LIAM: Baby numbers.
ALICE: That's your nuke.
Basically.
JUSTIN: That's about... one fifth the size
of the Little Boy atomic bomb that was dropped
on Hiroshima.
LIAM: Goddamn.
That sounds unpleasant.
ALICE: I suppose it helps that this is happening,
uh, not just at ground level, as opposed to
an airburst, but also, partly in the sea,
so, y'know, some of that energy's going down
into the boiling water?
JUSTIN: I mean, it helped but it also caused
some problems, which we'll talk about in a
second.
ALICE: Oh good, yeah.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, alright, so the first thing that
happened was the entire Texas City Fire Department
was murdered immediately.
ALICE: F.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
Apart from one guy who hadn't shown up yet.
ALICE: Mm.
I feel like this is, like a lot of these things,
there's, when we do these disasters it's either
the, like, long, slow agonizing deaths, which,
y'know, you feel very bad about, or it's this,
where it's like, one minute you're fighting
the fire, and like, having a nice time, being
a Texas City firefighter...
LIAM: Fighting the fire with your bros, yeah.
ALICE: Yeah.
And the next you're just kind of mist, right?
That's not...
LIAM: It sorta reminds me of what happened
after Lac-Megantic.
ALICE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LIAM: Where you go, "Yeah, we basically don't
need ambulances, because everybody's dead."
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: Yeah.
Like, I still feel bad, but if I had to pick
one of those ways to die, I'm going with the,
I'm with my bros, I'm just vibing, I'm having
a nice time, and then there's nothing there
any more.
LIAM: There's no more of you.
No more Alice.
ALICE: Yeah.
Exactly.
LIAM: Which would be a shame, because this
podcast barely stays on the rails as it is.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, we were saying while you were
off the air, that with one of us gone it just
doesn't work.
JUSTIN: Yeah, it just devolves into inanity.
[laughter]
LIAM: Well, thank you very much for listening
to me complain about, uh, that time Roz did
me dirty, in allowing me to be on the podcast.
[laughter]
ALICE: No, seriously, it didn't work with
just two people.
We did the first episode, and all of the comments
were like, "Who's this dumb asshole who keeps
interrupting Justin?"
[laughter]
LIAM: Now we outnumber him!
ALICE: Yes!
Exactly, you gotta change that power dynamic.
JUSTIN: So, several firefighting crews from
local industries also showed up, and they
were also murdered.
LIAM: Oh.
Okay.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: And the ship was obliterated entirely.
There were huge shards of metal propelled
thousands of feet through the air at supersonic
speeds.
So there were two explosions in short succession,
right?
Cause the ammonium nitrate was stored in two
holds.
ALICE: So, it blows up one, that hits the
other, and then that goes up too.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: A sympathetic detonation, a phrase
I really love.
[laughter]
ALICE: It's like, "Ah, well, if you're going
through it too, man, I'll just, yeah."
JUSTIN: Wouldn't that be empathetic, not sympathetic?
ALICE: You would think!
But I think it is called, I don't know why,
but it's called a sympathetic detonation.
JUSTIN: That's weird, I don't like that.
I like empathetic detonation, I think it's
more accurate.
So, now, windows are shattered in buildings
as far away as Galveston, which is ten miles
away across the bay.
LIAM: That's what you get for not using Linux.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: And Baytown, which is 25 miles away.
These shockwaves were propagated through the
water much further than they were through
the air.
ALICE: Yeah, cause like, when...
Lac-Megantic and, uh, Halifax when we ever
talk about that, people *heard* those pretty
far away, but it didn't do like a lot of damage
to them, right?
JUSTIN: Yeah.
ALICE: Whereas this, you just kind of get
the fucking shockwave of this, and it just
breaks all of your windows.
And all of your windows are made of, like,
just regular glass because it's 1947, and
so everybody gets horribly maimed, it's cool.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
ALICE: You crash your truck full of gelignite
and morphine syrettes.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: It causes another disaster.
[laughter]
LIAM: And so on, and so on.
ALICE: Jesus, it's a miracle the whole fucking
country didn't go up in, like, this chain
reaction of, like, all of the incredibly dangerous
shit that everyone was living with the whole
time.
Everything is a separate piece in a Rube Goldberg
machine, like this sets off all of the leaded
gasoline...
[laughter]
JUSTIN: The leaded gasoline explodes-
LIAM: Don't let your kids lick it.
ALICE: That takes out the radium chemistry
set factory next door.
LIAM: Oh no!
[laughter]
JUSTIN: The leaded gasoline got us, y'know,
a couple of decades of GOP dominance of government.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: We'll talk about tetraethyl lead.
ALICE: Well, we'll talk about the chemist
who invented tetraethyl lead, CFCs, and then
also died in a machine of his own design.
JUSTIN: Hell of a career.
ALICE: Yeah.
That's what you don't want to do when you
become an industrial chemist.
JUSTIN: So, the ship's anchor was found 1.6
miles from the site.
ALICE: Eesh.
JUSTIN: They built a park around it.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: You can still go see it.
ALICE: Huh.
Cool!
JUSTIN: It's still in the same spot.
[laughter]
ALICE: Well, I mean, it makes sense, it's
a bit of solid metal, it's meant to be solid
and immovable, it's on the end of a long chain
and just gets fuckin', *zhoop*, and it just
gets yeeted into East Texas.
JUSTIN: And away we go.
LIAM: This meshes nicely with the Succ Train.
[laughter]
ALICE: Oh, to have been someone riding that
anchor.
It'd be like the flat earth guy who died.
Uh, rest in power to that guy.
JUSTIN: RIP.
So, now, here's the thing.
This explosion was in a heavily industrial
area, right?
With mostly petrochemical industries.
ALICE: Because that's all industry *was*,
at that time, was you make insanely dangerous
stuff out of other insanely dangerous stuff.
"I'm the guy whose job is to paint the radium
paint onto this, like, can of benzene, with
no gloves or anything."
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Yes.
As a result, a bunch of stuff caught fire.
Now...
ALICE: Call the fire department.
LIAM: Ohhhhhhh.
JUSTIN: Oh.
Call Jeff, cause he's the last one left.
[laughter]
LIAM: "Hey Jeff, are you comin' in to work
today, bud?"
As just body parts are falling all around
him, he's just like, "God fucking dammit."
ALICE: Everybody you know has just been turned
into mulch, but you get like a text from your
boss, like, "Hey, we're gonna need you to
come in."
[laughter]
ALICE: "I know you took the day, but-"
LIAM: "We're really short staffed."
ALICE: Yeah, "We're *really* short handed
now."
[laughter]
LIAM: Jeff just texting back, " Damn, that's
crazy.
Good luck though."
[laughter]
LIAM: I once had a coworker who texted my
boss, "Damn, that's crazy.
Good luck though."
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, alright.
Let's look at some of the industrial facilities
surrounding the boat and what happened to
them, right?
ALICE: We got the fuckin', um, like, the Henry
Ford Racism Factory...
LIAM: Oh no!
JUSTIN: Oh no!
Not the racism factory!
[laughter]
LIAM: The home of the Dearborn Independent!
With every new Ford!
JUSTIN: Alright, so there's a lot going on
here.
I believe the main slip here, where it says
2, is where the boat was, right.
ALICE: And then... wasn't.
JUSTIN: And then wasn't, yes.
Then the boat was spread evenly through...
yeah.
ALICE: Right next to it you have a grain elevator
there, those things are deathtraps.
You gotta be careful with those.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
Well, I think the grain elevator survived
pretty much intact.
ALICE: Huh.
Somebody taking grain safety seriously, finally.
LIAM: Thank God.
JUSTIN: Well, just on account of being a solid
concrete bunker.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: I don't remember if it's 2 or if it's
1, it may be 1.
ALICE: I think by this point it doesn't really
matter.
JUSTIN: It doesn't really matter, yes.
So, the bulk of the impact was on the Monsanto
Chemical Company.
ALICE: Oh no, my corn syrup!
LIAM: Aww.
JUSTIN: It's the same Monsanto as it is now,
but this is before they were a GMO monopoly.
ALICE: I just, I keep noticing different things.
There's a molasses tank.
We almost had a Boston molasses flood again.
LIAM: Bonus episode coming soon, folks.
On donoteat's channel.
[laughter]
ALICE: It's just, like, diagonally, bottom
left of the Monsanto Chemical Company, there's
a molasses tank.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah, there is just a big tank
of molasses.
ALICE: And then, south of that you have a
very 40s thing of, we love to do cutesy alliteration
- the Carbide and Carbon Chemicals Corporation.
Fucking Batman Animated Series ass...
LIAM: I was just thinking that, that sounds
like where Joker fell into the mold.
ALICE: They have a beautiful hand-painted
sign.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: The Monsanto Chemical Company, at
this time, they're making styrene, right,
which is - this is a precursor to plastic.
ALICE: Yeah.
It hasn't gotten into the polycule yet, so
it's just styrene.
JUSTIN: Yeah, it's monogamous styrene, not
polystyrene.
And styrene's used for a lot more than just
polystyrene, but for the purposes of discussion,
y'know, they're making plastics.
So, their big warehouse was just adjacent
to the explosion - I think it's this building
here, because this was a converted sugar factory.
And, um, that bore the brunt of the explosion,
it was just annihilated.
Just wrecked.
Right?
And the rest of the factory caught fire.
One notable thing is there are a pair of benzol
tanks-
ALICE: [nervous noise]
JUSTIN: And I'm not sure what benzol is, cause
I couldn't figure it out.
ALICE: I don't like the word, I don't like
the syllable 'benz' in there.
JUSTIN: I'm pretty sure it's just pure benzene.
LIAM: Mmm.
Nice.
ALICE: Which, if you go back and listen to
the Lac-Megantic episode, Justin, you mentioned,
is one of the few chemicals that even the
oil industry is like, "Yeah, there's just
no safe level of this."
JUSTIN: It's what anti-nuclear activists think
nuclear waste is.
[laughter]
ALICE: You don't wanna touch it, yeah.
It's what, uh.
Fuck, who was that chemist who, like, splashed
some fluoride on her gloves, and it just penetrated
through that and just killed her a month later?
It was like some mercury salt or something.
That's kind of like what benzene is like,
you don't...
JUSTIN: Hydrogen fluoride, yeah.
LIAM: Been breathing it non-stop for the last
two months, thank God.
ALICE: Of course, yeah.
JUSTIN: Well, there's an HF tank somewhere
in this image, but I don't know where.
ALICE: I also see the, um, the Humble Pipeline
Company, I buy my videogame bundles from them.
JUSTIN: We'll get to them in a second.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, those two benzol tanks burned
for seven days.
The Monsanto plant was a total loss, just
completely destroyed.
ALICE: Well, I mean, Monsanto didn't seem
to do too badly out of it, so.
JUSTIN: Yeah, they seem to have come back
pretty well.
Another one down here was the Humble Pipeline
Company, which-
ALICE: You pay what you want for, like, a
selection of pipelines.
JUSTIN: Oh, they didn't make pipelines, they
*ran* a pipeline.
What they made was oil.
ALICE: Ah, okay.
JUSTIN: They had ten tanks here, you can see
they're lettered.
I don't know what the letters are for.
ALICE: Uh, 'burned' or 'crushed'.
[laughter]
ALICE: No, seriously, that's what it says
on the legend.
JUSTIN: Oh, does it?
ALICE: Yeah.
B for 'burned', C for 'minor or serious crushing'.
JUSTIN: Ah, okay.
LIAM: Thank you for being so helpful.
JUSTIN: These tanks were an older design,
right, and so they had wooden floating roofs
on them, right?
The rest of the tank was metal but they had
a wooden floating roof.
And as a result of this, when one of them
caught fire, the roof also started burning,
and started releasing embers out, which ignited
other roofs.
LIAM: We don't need no water, let the motherfucker
burn.
Burn, motherfucker, burn.
ALICE: Oh, fuck you, I was about to make that
joke!
[laughter]
JUSTIN: All ten of these tanks were full on
the day of the explosion, because they were
expecting a couple of tankers to come in.
ALICE: Of course.
Can't catch a fucking break, I guess.
LIAM: No.
JUSTIN: So eight of the ten tanks caught fire,
y'know, through a chain reaction with just
the wooden roof burning up, and going through
the air and setting another roof on fire.
One of them was extinguished, and the other
seven, they didn't have enough firefighting
equipment to do anything other than let them
burn out.
ALICE: So, why build these floating wooden
roofs, right?
There's gotta be some, uh, some reason other
than just the aesthetic, right?
JUSTIN: Uhh, they were old.
FUTURE JUSTIN: Okay, this is an extra bit
I'm adding in post, because I don't think
I answered that question adequately.
The reason you have a tank with a floating
roof is for two reasons.
...well, really one reason, which is to limit
the amount of space that the liquid inside
the tank, in this case oil, has to evaporate,
right, so, for instance, the floating roof
floats right on the surface of the liquid,
so there's no room for it to evaporate into
a gas.
This is good because it limits the amount
of liquid you lose through evaporation, and
it also prevents, y'know, the possibility
that you'll get just the right air/fuel mixture
in there, and it'll either catch fire or explode
spontaneously.
So the floating roof prevents both of those
things.
They're usually not made of wood any more.
Alright.
Back to the regularly scheduled podcast.
ALICE: Ah, okay.
Yeah, that'll do.
JUSTIN: So, the Texas City Terminal Railway
had this bih yard here, right, and there were
362 railcars in there, and they were all either
damaged or destroyed.
ALICE: F.
JUSTIN: F.
LIAM: Fuck.
JUSTIN: They also lost four locomotives, I
think.
LIAM: Oh no!
ALICE: Even more F, yeah.
...Jesus, imagine you're just plowing your
fields out in East Texas, and a fucking, like,
4-6-0 locomotive just buries itself in your
beet field.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: And some other miscellaneous damage,
right.
So, there was a fifteen foot tidal wave, on
account of the explosion.
ALICE: Oh good.
JUSTIN: Which managed to propel this barge
about 200 feet inland.
There were two light aircraft flying in the
area.
The explosion just knocked them out of the
air.
[laughter]
ALICE: One thing I read was that they actually
just sheared the wings off of them at the
spars.
JUSTIN: Good Lord.
LIAM: Jesus hell.
ALICE: Yeah, just snapped the wings off.
Uh, it's not great!
'Note the 150 foot oil barge washed ashore
by the high tidal wave,' that caption says.
Yeah, I think I would have noted that.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Just a little thing there.
LIAM: That's not supposed to be here.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, most commercial buildings in Texas
City were damaged or destroyed.
Most homes in Texas City were damaged or destroyed.
A huge amount were condemned.
ALICE: Mm.
Lac-Megantic stuff again.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
All the firefighting equipment in the city
was destroyed.
Power and water were knocked out, I think
power was restored to most of the city by
noon-ish.
ALICE: That's pretty good.
But, like, how are we doing on, like, environmental
contamination?
Where's all that benzene going?
JUSTIN: I mean, everywhere.
ALICE: Of course.
JUSTIN: Every single spot.
[laughter]
ALICE: Just got a thick layer, like a sheen.
JUSTIN: This is my benzene facial.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So then, um, okay, so at least 581
people were killed.
And, like, 8500 people were injured or so.
ALICE: Jesus.
Just from various steering column impalements,
non-safety glass lacerations, radium paint
ingestion...
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: You're handling your big crate of mining
explosives that you got at the store, and
the thing goes off 20 miles away and it just
jogs your hand, and you just blow yourself
up.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: Yeah.
Very sad.
JUSTIN: And the death toll may be higher from
undocumented workers and sailors, who were,
y'know, at the port at the time.
ALICE: Always is.
We, uh, talk a little bit about that in the
Grenfell episode, about how people thought
for months that the death toll was much higher
than it was reported, because a lot of the
people who got killed didn't matter to the
authorities, and same again.
So, cool.
JUSTIN: Yes.
But we're not done here.
ALICE: Of course.
LIAM: Oh, well, thank God for that.
JUSTIN: So.
ALICE: Look at the consistency of the fuel
oil on that water.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
I mentioned before, that photograph was taken
by the captain of another boat.
This is that boat.
ALICE: Ah.
It's not supposed to do that, is it?
JUSTIN: Not supposed to do that.
This is actually another liberty ship, the
SS Wilson B. Keene.
You note that it's not much- a) it's split
in half.
It might have done that on its own.
LIAM: You said it didn't happen that often!
[laughter]
ALICE: Rough handling.
Rough handling, yeah.
JUSTIN: Rough handling, yeah.
Well, okay, so.
The firefighting and emergency response started
immediately after explosions were heard, cause
they were heard as far away as Houston, which
is like 60 miles away.
ALICE: It's only 47, so at least people don't
think that the Russians have nuked them yet.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Firefighters and medical personnel showed
up from as far away as Los Angeles, and of
course, y'know, this is a big firefighting
job, because everything was on fire, and of
course, most of the people with the detailed
firefighting knowledge in the area, uh, were...
not available.
ALICE: Dispersed over the area in a fine cloud.
JUSTIN: Yes.
[laughter]
LIAM: Otherwise occupied.
ALICE: Apart from Steve.
Steve who is still texting like, "Yeah, I'm
not coming in.
I took the day..."
LIAM: "I told you no!"
ALICE: "I took the day two months in advance,
fuck you."
[laughter]
ALICE: "Goin' fishing."
JUSTIN: "I have turned off my work phone."
LIAM: "I was very clear about this."
ALICE: Unlike the liberty ships, very tightly
compartmentalized.
JUSTIN: So, one of the first jobs that the
emergency responders needed to do was to make
sure there were no more explosions.
LIAM: Good start.
ALICE: Gotta keep a close fuckin' eye on that
grain elevator.
JUSTIN: Another ship, not the one in the picture,
this is a third ship, was nearby the explosion,
it was called the SS High Flyer, right.
LIAM: Great name.
[laughter]
ALICE: It had been being loaded with a certain
cargo at the time of the explosion.
And that was 961 tons of more ammonium nitrate.
[laughter]
LIAM: Oh good.
Well, at least it's consistent.
[laughter]
ALICE: Were you doing foreshadowing when you
called Texas City a boomtown?
JUSTIN: Yes.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Texas City has actually seen several
more booms in addition to this one.
Once the Grandcamp had exploded, it tore the
High Flyer from its moorings, and it had drifted
into a third ship, which was the Wilson B.
Keene, which was this one here.
Y'know, it got wedged in there.
Like, no-one could get it out too easily,
right.
So it required a bunch of hard work to get
it free.
And it had also of course caught fire.
ALICE: Of course, yeah.
Because everything was on fire, by this point.
It looked like Mordor.
JUSTIN: It had also inadvertently dropped
anchor.
LIAM: Nice.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
ALICE: "Why is this thing stuck in there?"
Cause the dude left the handbrake on.
JUSTIN: Yeah, apparently.
So, a bunch of longshoremen who were still
there, and a bunch of other folks were working
hard to free this burning ship full of ammonium
nitrate from another ship, which was, the
Wilson B. Keene was full of flour.
So, not so bad.
ALICE: Equally dangerous, yeah.
[laughter]
ALICE: I would not be doing that.
I would be, uh, running for Mexico, by that
point.
JUSTIN: Yeah, I was about to say, I'd be right
there with you.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, the idea was they were gonna try
and get this boat free, they were gonna tow
it farther into the harbor, and they were
gonna leave it there, and it would blow up
on its own time.
[laughter]
ALICE: That's wise, yeah.
JUSTIN: Just, far away.
ALICE: So, do the ending of the third Batman
movie, what is it, Dark Knight Rises.
Yeah.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
It took until 11pm for tugboats to arrive
to move the ship.
Y'know, it's been about fifteen hours or so.
A little bit less than that, excuse me.
Um, and work to free the ship was slow, no-one
could get it out.
And then at about 1:12am, it exploded.
Blew up.
ALICE: Eesh.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
So, that didn't injure or kill so many people,
only the people who were working on it, and
as well as a few people on the tugs that were
positioned nearby to grab it instantly.
ALICE: Inadvertently did a drone strike to
themselves before the invention of drones,
where you just do a double-tap, where you
kill a bunch of people in an explosion, and
then you kill a bunch of people trying to
rescue people from the explosion with another
explosion.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: Yeah, awesome.
JUSTIN: Very nice.
It caused a lot of extra property damage as
well.
Nobody knows exactly what was damaged by what
explosion, because, y'know, the devastation
was so complete.
ALICE: Sure.
JUSTIN: So, after this, there were no more
really significant explosions-
[laughter]
JUSTIN: I mean, 'significant explosion' here
is a high bar to clear, a lot of stuff was
still blowin' up all over the place, but um,
but it took them seven days to fully extinguish
all the fires, or for the fires to burn themselves
out.
And it took them a month before they gave
up recovering all the bodies.
ALICE: Ran out of shovels.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Alright, so.
This is a parking lot about a quarter mile
out from the explosion.
ALICE: Looking like Fallout out here.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
Alright, so, the aftermath-
LIAM: Yeah, holy shit.
Good Lord.
JUSTIN: -and the lawsuits.
LIAM: YAAAAAAAAY.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Immediately, the mayor organized the
Texas City Relief Fund, and it was immediately
co-opted by the mob.
[laughter]
ALICE: Of course.
Back to the switchblade breaks again.
JUSTIN: Yes.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, Sam and Rosario Maceo - is it
Maceo?
It might be Macchio?
ALICE: Ehhh, Sam MurderingJFKaduccialiano.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: Yes.
JUSTIN: So, they were famous for openly running
large illegal casinos in Galveston.
LIAM: Good for them
JUSTIN: Yeah, there was, I believe, one incident
where the local sheriff refused to comply
with an order to raid one of the casinos,
because he said, "Well, it's a private club
and I'm not a member."
[laughter]
ALICE: I mean, Chris has a story from his
grandpa from about this time, of being waved
through Louisiana State Police, or Highway
Patrol, checkpoints, and getting escorted
to the governor's mansion with a truck full
of booze.
Just to be like, yeah, this is the governor's
booze, what's the problem.
JUSTIN: I see no problem here.
ALICE: Southern corruption is really like
a whole other thing.
I have a long story, well, a long-held opinion,
that I feel like we could have done okay out
of a Huey Long presidency, where everyone
has universal basic income, but it's in an
incredibly crooked way, where you have like
a no-show job at a factory run by, like, Burl,
who is someone's cousin.
[laughter]
ALICE: There's like 25 Supreme Court justices,
passing every civil rights law, but they're
all surnamed Long.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: "Are you a socialist?
Are you a Marxist-Leninist?
What ideology are you?"
I'm a Huey Longist.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Alright, so, at this point, the nickname
for Galveston was actually just ' The Free
State of Galveston,' because none of Texas'
laws applied there.
One statistic I read was that one in 62 people
in Galveston were sex workers.
[laughter]
ALICE: So it was New Vegas.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: Cool.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Well, the other thing is the mobsters
running the place went on to be some of the
first people to found the Las Vegas Strip.
ALICE: Of course.
Of course.
LIAM: Another proud moment in Jewish history.
ALICE: And also probably murder JFK.
Which, we need to do a Kennedy assassinations
bonus episode.
JUSTIN: Oh, that'd be fun.
Yeah.
ALICE: Y'know, we're finally gonna solve it,
guys.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: We're gonna do it.
We're gonna look at it with the keen eye of
STEM education.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yes.
Nobody's ever done hard science to this shit.
LIAM: Nope.
And we will be the first.
Pioneering a brave new world.
ALICE: Once you get that map, that overhead
plan of Dealey Plaza, and you John Madden
it, we're gonna solve this shit right quick.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Yes.
So, the Galveston mobsters of course, they,
immediately organize a benefit concert for-
ALICE: Some fucking Sinatra shit.
JUSTIN: Literally.
They got Sinatra.
ALICE: [mad] Of course they fucking did!
Ring a fucking ding ding.
[laughter]
ALICE: You just have Dean Martin there with
an extremely dry martini.
Great.
Cool.
JUSTIN: I'm not sure if they got Dean Martin,
I only wrote down Sinatra.
All those people did play at Galveston clubs.
Which were all run by the mob, so.
Y'know.
And which all had illegal gambling right out
in the open.
LIAM: I can't believe there's gambling in
this establishment.
JUSTIN: And during Prohibition, you could
just get booze there and no-one cared.
They had slot machines in convenience stores,
apparently, in Galveston.
ALICE: The way of the future.
And I guess we just Elliott Nessed that shit
to death.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: Goddamn fun police.
JUSTIN: The relief fund raises a million dollars,
fire insurance pays out four million dollars,
reconstruction of Texas City costs one hundred
million dollars.
[laughter]
ALICE: To be fair, the benefit would have
been at least five million dollars, but four
million dollars of that went onto, like, spray
painting furniture gold.
[laughter]
ALICE: Like, buying a Cadillac dealership,
for some reason.
All weirdly invested into sanitation companies.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Well, y'know, there's no garbage on
the streets, I can't complain.
After this there is a Supreme Court case,
um, Elizabeth Dalehite et al. v. United States,
right.
This was the first ever class action lawsuit
brought against the US government, under the
brand new Federal Tort Claims Act.
And they were trying to recover damages from
the government for the explosion caused by
the ammonium nitrate they had ordered.
Cause this was a government shipment of ammonium
nitrate, over to Europe.
ALICE: Sure.
It was gonna do some Marshall Plan shit, right?
JUSTIN: Yeah.
So, this lawsuit escalated to the Supreme
Court, and they ruled against it in a 4-3
decision.
Like, "No, fuck you, this is a national security
thing," or something like that.
ALICE: Of course.
Of course.
Because it was a discretionary power that
the federal government was exercising to blow
up a small part of the United States.
JUSTIN: "You get nothing!
You lose!
Good day, sir!"
[laughter]
ALICE: And also you still owe a lot of costs,
for lawyers.
Cool.
JUSTIN: Eventually, Congress took pity on
them, and they did some federal relief funding,
almost a decade later.
ALICE: Ah, that's the speedy congressional
response that we all love to see.
JUSTIN: Yes.
That's how Bernie Sanders is going to implement
the Green New Deal and save us all.
[laughter]
ALICE: Yeah, the fucking...
I feel like what's going to happen is, if,
inshallah we get a Bernie presidency, in a
hundred years' time we'll get an act through
what's left of the Moon Congress, saying that
a Green New Deal would have been a good idea.
JUSTIN: Look, look, look, stay positive.
Stay positive.
You have to stay positive.
ALICE: Deep breaths.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Alright, so what happened to Texas
City after this, right?
ALICE: Well, I see some on fire there.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: The other Texas City disaster!
JUSTIN: The industrial plants were rebuilt
pretty quickly, but downtown Texas City never
really recovered, right, there's still a lot
of vacant lots near the explosion to this
day.
And some of that's because of benzene contamination
and stuff like that, but, y'know.
ALICE: Well, at least they cared.
At least they cared enough to be like, "Hey,
maybe don't build your house on the extremely
cancer chemical."
JUSTIN: It was an interesting contrast looking
at this refinery, where there was like a nice
buffer zone between the housing and the refinery,
versus say, here in Philadelphia, where there's
that one little enclave of row houses in the
middle of the refinery, just off of Passyunk
Avenue.
ALICE: I wonder if there's any kind of demographic
reason for why that might have happened.
Anyway.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
Impossible.
LIAM: Don't worry about that.
[bleak laughter]
ALICE: Just go ahead and buy this lot as part
of a Johnny Knoxville style dare to see how
many cancers a person can get at the same
time.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: So, the lack of recovery of the downtown
I guess has as much to do with postwar city
planning as the disaster.
I mean, surburbanization wrecked everywhere...
ALICE: NAFTA took away the explosion factory.
JUSTIN: NAFTA did not take away the explosion
factory.
LIAM: YAY
JUSTIN: Because what you're looking at here,
is the third largest oil refinery in the United
States, located in Texas City.
Which has blown up several times since then.
ALICE: Occupational hazard.
JUSTIN: Most recently in 2005, which is what
we're looking at here.
ALICE: Huh.
That's fine, yeah.
JUSTIN: Yeah, refineries blow up every once
in a while, we just tolerate it.
ALICE: Yeah.
It'll be fun when the one near you just takes
out two thirds of this podcast.
JUSTIN: No, they are shutting down Atlantic
Refinery Company, after 150 years.
ALICE: I thought the White House overruled
them on that, and made them...
JUSTIN: Um, they're still tryin', but it doesn't
look like it's gonna go through.
ALICE: Huh.
Okay.
Well, great.
Finally, you don't have to live next to a
leaky tank of HF any more.
JUSTIN: No, I live near a nice, safe 2 gigawatt
nuclear power plant.
[laughter]
ALICE: People who haven't heard our nuclear
power, our Three Mile Island episode with
Lindsay will not know that you're not being
ironic when you say that.
JUSTIN: Exactly, no, Limerick Generating Station
is why I can produce this podcast with impunity.
All the electricity I use is 100% carbon-free.
LIAM: You're welcome.
You're welcome.
We're saving the planet.
JUSTIN: Actually, 90% of the electricity I
use is 100% carbon-free.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: But anyway, that's the story of the
Texas City disaster.
ALICE: The Texas City ammonium nitrate massacre.
JUSTIN: Texas City is a boomtown which has
boomed many times, but this was the most significant
boom.
LIAM: Got 'em.
JUSTIN: Yep.
ALICE: Roasted.
JUSTIN: That was the podcast.
Next podcast we'll do the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
disaster.
ALICE: Finally get it right this time!
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: Talk about that dog.
JUSTIN: Yeah, talk about the dog.
LIAM: Aww, dog.
JUSTIN: Aww.
And, does anyone have any commercials before
we go?
ALICE: Uh, listen to Trashfuture, it's a very
good podcast, I'm also on it, we are talking
about, for our next bonus episode, Jacob Rees-Mogg,
uh, noted British shithead politician's terrible
book.
We're gonna read that and torture ourselves.
JUSTIN: Are we gonna get more Augustus Welby
Northmore Pugin?
ALICE: Yes!
Yeah, we're doing some more Victorians.
I think we have, um, WG Grace, the cricketer.
So, it's gonna be entertaining.
We're bringing comedian Nish Kumar back for
that, just to like torture him with that,
so.
That's gonna be very fun.
JUSTIN: Alright, uh.
[beat]
ALICE: When's Franklin?
WHEN IS FRANKLIN?
JUSTIN: When is Franklin?
Um.
LIAM: Allegedly, it's coming soon.
JUSTIN: Yeah, allegedly coming soon.
I, the finish line is within sight.
By which I mean I'm still working on those
goddamn models, and I didn't get any work
done on 'em last week, but this week I think
I will get to work on them.
ALICE: What you need to do is, instead of
those, like, Landseer lions, just get, like,
a 3D model of an orb with the lion emoji on
it, and just use those, and just be like,
"Yeah, this was way easier."
JUSTIN: Just an orb with a lion texture.
ALICE: Well, it's like all of the math textbooks.
"Assume a cow is perfectly circular."
JUSTIN: Yeah, assume a lion is perfectly spherical.
[laughter]
JUSTIN: And of uniform density.
ALICE: Yeah, the lion exists in a vacuum,
hypothetically.
JUSTIN: That's gonna cause some problems.
[laughter]
ALICE: We're back to rat viscera again.
JUSTIN: No, I'm imagining like there's a lion
stuck in your vacuum cleaner.
[laughter]
ALICE: Just trying to picture the sound that
that would make, and having a nice time.
LIAM: [lion in vacuum cleaner noise/Chewbacca
orgasm noise]
[laughter]
JUSTIN: And, yes, Franklin 11 is coming soon,
I promise.
Pinky swear.
And follow me on Twitter @donoteat02.
LIAM: You're back, bitches.
JUSTIN: Yeah, I'm back.
And that's my commercial.
LIAM: Alright, and finally, I am Liam Anderson,
I'm @oldmananders0n on Twitter.
Yep, no, I have nothing to add.
ALICE: Subscribe to our Patreon.
When's the next episode going up?
JUSTIN: The bonus episode about Gun is coming
soon.
I'm gonna try and get that up shortly after
I get this up.
ALICE: Sweet.
JUSTIN: Maybe not that shortly, might be a
day or so, just for the upload speed, if nothing
else.
[laughter]
LIAM: Yeah.
Sorry.
ALICE: Shit takes almost as long to upload
as it does to caption.
LIAM: I love you, Usenet.
JUSTIN: Plus you'll get Retro Alice, as opposed
to Crisp Alice.
ALICE: Yes, that's true.
I sound like shit on that one, and I'm doing
most of the talking, so, yeah, pay us money
for that.
LIAM: Give us your money.
Give us your money.
ALICE: Give us your money.
Give us your money.
I will be talking about the SA80 program,
which led to a very dumb assault rifle for
the British Army.
It's a great deal of fun.
JUSTIN: Yes.
ALICE: Yes.
JUSTIN: Gun.
LIAM: Gun.
ALL: Gun.
Gun.
ALICE: The gun is good, the penis is bad.
Uh, forget how the rest of that line goes.
JUSTIN: No, that's the entire line.
ALICE: Oh, is it?
Okay.
JUSTIN: Unless you're doing call and response.
Like Zardoz does.
ALICE: I don't remember.
JUSTIN: Oh no, there is more to it, I don't
remember what it is either.
Ah, it's irrelevant.
[laughter]
ALICE: Well, goodbye, everybody!
[laughter]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
Bye.
LIAM: Bye, everybody.
JUSTIN: Alright.
