Welcome to you softcore History. Well, welcome back to softcore History. My
name is Jake Goldman. I will be your host for this week. I'm
enjoyed as always by my two co hosts, Dan Rochester and Rob Fox.
How's it going, boys, Thanks for having me on your show. Guys,
Oh, you're welcome. Dan pleasure as always, I would have preferred
you stay behind the camera. But god, raccoon. What someone called me
a human raccoon? Oh but I'm clean now, boys, look at this
mustache, this purty sleep part raccoon. Now you I like Jack Mandeville's comment
on our Instagram on your picture, I'm very breed. What did he say?
He looked that Dan looked very breathable. Thanks Jack, I honestly I
I after I look at that picture later to see how he was doing,
and I was just like, you do look like an eighties porn star.
And I can't tell if it's gay or straight. It could be both in
the chain right now too. Sorry, this is all visual humor. But
go to the YouTube. Go to the YouTube. Check it. Just take
a look, take a peek. Yeah, but also somebody said I looked
like the actor of the plays kick Ass. And Aaron Tyler Johnson. I
will gladly take that. Yeah, which is weird because I handsome them.
He hasn't always been um like jacked. Yeah, he's had a glow up.
Yeah, it's called getting older, I guess. I mean, well
he's been He was in Age of Ultron, so he's been jacked for a
while. Well. As some of you may not know if you're new to
listening, we are actually a history podcast, but we also have history Patreon
too. You can check us out at patreon dot com slash softcore History.
We're again, we're softcore history soft we already Yeah, we we're history adjacent
audio show. Yeah. We never will do multipart episodes for deeper dives because
we don't do that that. No, we're keeping it within an hour and
a half here. Dan Carlin is our spiritual stepfather. Yeah, he just
that we constantly disappoint. Yeah, he just looks at us and as why
our goals to get sued by him. Yeah, so if you could make
that happen, it's the opposite of get bought just to get a C and
D. Yeah, I have to stop it dissolved. Yeah for him.
The podcast Bear hug Us and then he would do a sixteen hour episode on
the legal case against us. Yeah, I need to be so good.
That's where these assholes got it wrong. Be a damn good show. But
anyway, Yeah, so check us out on patreon dot com slash softcore History.
We do two extra episodes a week for just five dollars a month ad
free. We've got a great one this week. Oh, I can't wait.
I can't wait to hear it. I'm so excited to do it.
Well, today we actually got a topic. We have a discord too for
Patreon members, but we got a little topic that was brought up in there
and I decided to take it and run with it. Um, it's about
the Johnstown flood. Wow, way to kind of mail it in. Somebody
hasn't done that before last week? What from the discord? Such lazy pieces
of shit. I used chat gpt for my jobbing this week. All right,
you just listen. We're given more value to the Patreon members because it
gets a kind of recommend what we do. Yeah, I'm like, hey,
chat JPT, write this history in the style of an asshole who's lazy
and doesn't care about the topic. What Rob did was he fed all the
frat romance novels into it beforehand, and he's like writing this style. It's
like Greg woke up and came all over. I tried to ask it once
to write a blog in the style of total frat movement. It wouldn't because
it's an inappropriate website. That's funny. Yeah, there are limitations with AI
for now, it's yeah, for now, the cool AI, the ones
that the actual companies have no limitations. But for us, for the peasants,
for us normis we have to deal with a morally right artificial intelligence that
doesn't seem it's dumb. Us the full, give us the full. There's
there's legitimate there's like I'm sure AI behind the scenes where they're like like working
on stocks and they're like, okay, maximize profit and minimize death. And
then they see that, like, you know, minimize the death that would
be caused from this profit, and I was like all right, and they
give them a number and they're like, can I see it without minimizing death?
Increase? Can you increase death by ten percent? Yeah? Do you
think black Rock has these fucking Rock's probably been doing this for like ten years
already too. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's the thing. Also,
like machine learning has been around forever or like not forever, but you know
they've been doing this algorithms for gambling in Vegas, has it? Yeah,
but Hustle Vegas probably invented AI thirty years ago for gambling. That's how they
set all the lots. Yeah, so rich people, uh, wondering what
they can get away with while still minimizing death is actually gonna be a topic
today, oh twa yeah. Oh but we'll get into it. We'll get
into it. So just for everyone that doesn't do Also, the reason I
picked this topic, by the way, I have I have family from Johnstown.
I've been to Johnstown twice. Is this in Nevada or something? Johnston,
Pennsylvania? Okay, the Johnstound flood, I don't know. You don't
know what the Johnstound flood is. No, you're gonna educate me on it.
You know what the Johnsun flood. Of course, I know what the
Johnstown flood is. Well, y'all remember the flood of ninety three. No,
we're going further back. I know. I'm just saying you probably don't
remember the Mississippi River flooded massively in nineteen ninety three. No one cares,
no, one cares, No, it is Jake. So it could have
been in like two thousand and five. Yes, you never know. There
were more recent Johnstone floods. John sounds a pretty flooded place, but we'll
get into it. So the city of Johnston, Pennsylvania, was founded in
eighteen hundred by Swiss immigrant Joseph Johns, where Stoney Creek and the Little Connama
Rivers joined to form the Connama River. The location essentially on the river.
Now, I'm gonna need you to talk in a mid Atlantic Philadelphia slash.
The water is coming, We're all gonna drone. These are It's not either
same thing. It's like still mid Atlantic, kind of Midwest classic mid Atlantic
is my announcer of voice. Oh no, the wall it's coming. We're
all gonna flooding, We're all gonna die. Run. That is the mid
Atlantic. No, it's more of a you have to be complaining the entire
time. You got to sound like it's kind of like an animal. It's
like Mayor of Eastown a little bit. Okay, Mayor of Eastown is like
dollar count. We were talking about us, but it's just slightly different.
They just say weirder shit. Yeah, yeah, I would say so.
I'm always like perplexed by the accent. When I get to Pittsburgh, I'm
like, oh, yeah, that's right. You guys talk like this,
and you forget and then you start finding yourself talking like them after a couple
of days, and you're like, how does this happen? I have no
problems with Pittsburgh. I don't either. I like that side of the state.
Yeah, but a lot of people don't know. Most of Pennsylvania is
just fucking redneck as hell. Pennsylvania gets let so off the hook for how
fucking white trash it is. It's right next to West Virginia, it's right
part of it. But it's also I mean, like it really is.
Like there's Philly and that's great. Really it's just Phlly, let's not theok.
I don't even think Pittsburgh like helps that much because it's a huge fucking
state. It's huge, mostly woods. It's like seven hour drive, yeah
to go across it, and it's not it's you know, it's not like
uh like uh like thin either. Yea, Like north to south probably the
Keystone State run north to south west four hours probably for the most part,
I don't know, because Philly is in New York is probably two two and
a half hours. The point being, there is so much empty, fucking
nothingness in Pennsylvania. It's beautiful too. I will say that it's mountains Poconos,
right, Poconos, that's it. You gotta hit these azos, right,
I'll hit the Poconos. Are you going down the shore? Uh?
God? Going down to wild Wood might hit a wah wah against my hoogies
before we Yeah, there it is. That's a that's an east side Pennsylvania
sound. Um yeah, No, I mean john Sound is a beautiful place.
Yeah, the west, you're going to go to sheets. I just
take exception as a Missourian because everyone hears Missouri and they're like, oh,
fuck redneck. And then but like Pennsylvania gross state, like largely very gross.
I mean, to be fair, we're just a big old redneck planet
floating through space. Gross state. You mean the region of freedom, That's
where our democracy started. Again, Philadelphia's history does a lot of heavy lifting
on masking what that state really is. So do we as a country.
We have a location of Johnstown essentially on the river allowed to become a prime
stop for industrial development and began to prosper with the building of the Pennsylvania Mainline
Canal in eighteen thirty six and the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Cambria
Iron Works in eighteen fifties. However, while Johnstown was built in a place
where industry could flourish, the natural features made it a prime location for flooding
in rapid industrially industrialization at an additional risks. Now you land on the railroad
spot in monopoly, you buying that property, buy everything. I land on
a monopoly. You just shoot first, ask questions later. Yeah, that's
bye bye, bye bye. That's the best strategy monopoly. Yeah, but
then you get down bad stuff for my half price lending, you just keep
leasing. Well, you're gonna steal the money as well. Yet, isn't
real if you never have to be you gotta be the banker and then just
take hunters when no one's looking. Yeah, and that should be legal in
monopoly. There is where it's like you have to catch people. That's awesome.
I'm pretty sure there is a rule where it's like it's on you.
You're supposed to be a robber, baron yeah, the game is called Monopoly.
Oh I've never played it. You've never played Monopoly? No, you're
more sorry Yeah yeah sorry uh nowadays right hey Life. Yeah, it wasn't
a big fan of life. Life is stupid. I'd rather eat the cereal
Life not a strategy game at all. That was a big risk guy,
of course. And then more call if you want to get to more and
the like, dive into nerd shit access and allies. I mean, my
dad my brother would play that a lot when I was a kid. But
that's like at a board game that takes like days or weeks depending on it.
Just kind of sounds like dipping your toe into dungeons and dragons, but
you didn't want to fully dive in. Yeah, it's like Dungeons and dragons.
But for history, there's it more like Warhammer. It's not like war
Hammer. What is Warhammer? Everyone? I see it online and I I
fucking mentally check out the moment I see an orc like, I'm just like
no, pass Yeah, the Rings, I will I do like Lord of
the Rings, like those movies. But if it's like a game or something
like a military game, but then there's like elves and him, just like
pass. I'm out. I'm gonna just leave that alone. Rob doesn't like
fun. The high steep hills of the Narrowconama Valley and the Alleghany Mountains to
the east, the Alleghany Alleghany Mountains. Alleghany And shout out to our boy
that found those kids from having a dream that was in the Alleghany Mountains.
Yeah you remember that. Yeah. Uh. That kept the development of john
Sound close to the river front because there was a geographical barrier for them to
developed outward, meaning even without any man made influence, the areas surrounding the
city is still prone to flooding due to its location on the rivers, whose
upstream watersheds include an extensive drainage basin of the Allegheny Plateau. Is this the
situation like Houston has where they're flooding keeps getting worse because they keep pouring,
like keep concreting over like marshlands and ship so there's nothing to retain the water.
Yeah, it becomes a soup. You nailed it. Yeah, even
more so. The Konama River, immediately downstream of Johnstown is hemmed in by
steep mountain sides for about ten miles. A roadside plaque alongside. Pennsylvania wrote
fifty six, which follows this river proclaims that this stretch of the valley is
the deepest river gorge in North America east of the Rocky Mountains. This is
all very important. It's a super deep river. It's it's very deep.
Fuck that this place is not that important, so let's just get that out
of the way. Actually was very important for steel production, so developers artificial
narrowing of the riverbed to maximize early industries left the city even more flood prone.
So basically, a slag from the iron furnaces of the steel mills in
the area was dumped along the river to create more land for building. They
created artificial extended riverbeds basically and narrowed the waterways little tributaries. Yeah. By
eighteen eighty nine, Johnstown's industries had attracted numerous Welsh and German immigrants. With
a population of about thirty thousand, it was a growing industrial community known for
the quality of its steel. But just ten years before that, some important
American power players would create even more risk for the small yet booming town.
Andrew Carnegie dippest toe in this fucking place. Yet you know it your boy
above the city. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the South Fork Dam between eighteen
thirty eight and eighteen fifty three as part of a cross state canal system,
and Johnstown was the eastern tip eastern tip of the Western Division canal, supplied
with water by Lake Connama, the reservoir behind the dam. Over time,
as railroads became the main form of transportation over canal barge transport, the Pennsylvania
the Pennsylvana sorry, the State of Pennsylvania abandoned the canal and sold it to
the Pennsylvania Railroad. The dam and lake were part of the purchase, and
the railroads sold those to a private interest group. Yeah, railroads really fucked
over any city that um was like booming from water transport. Yeah, like
it happened to like Saint Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, everywhere, every
any city. And actually those cities were still so big that they persisted.
Why you have to pivot, Like Vanderbilt sold all of the steamships and was
like railroads, Yep, that's it. Well, the city's camp really pivot
and that's actually they're just there. Yeah. What's really funny is so like
obviously those major cities they were fine because they weren't fine, but they still
persisted because they were so big. But there is just up and down the
Mississippi River dotted like it's essentially the same as like russ Belt towns when the
seal went away, when the steel or whatever, when the railroad went away,
and like all the cities out west that just are dead now. Like
if you drive through like the western United States States to like where big railroad
lines used to run, you'll just find these like towns with like two hundred
people and you're like, how the fuck did you get here? Oh?
Yeah, I mean it's you. You go up and down the mississy even
even like Hannibal, Missouri, like where Mark Twain is from. Like you
like, why does this town exist? You're like, well, there's not
a reason for it to exist now per se. But at one point I
would argue, there's a lot of those towns in this country. We need
to start getting rid of towns. Yeah, well we kind of are.
I mean, people just move out of them. Get rid of cities though,
I'm saying put some cities on the chopping block. Oh fulls full blown
cities. Yeah, all right, who you chopping that's a great question.
Obviously we're an anti Denver podcast where they're about to win a second championship in
like just as many years. Yeah, with the Avs and then the Nugs.
Yeah, they don't deserve that. What have they ever done? Um,
honestly, I would put Austin on the chopping block. This city is
we could do without it. It doesn't deserve what it's been given. It
doesn't really make a lot of sense. It doesn't deserve comedy. There's no
there's no like geographical reason it's this. There's no geographical reason. People were
just like this just became like some weird city in the seventies and eighties or
something. Then people with some people just kept moving here. Yeah, yeah
vibes. And it was also like all the other Texas cities were kind of
like normy and then this city was like a weird like hippie libertarian spot kind
of and people just vibe with that. Yeah, I guess so. I
mean, but yeah, there is no like really geographical resource here, Like
we have a river quote unquote, but it's really just a damned river.
It's not like it was doing like anything. Obviously, they were taking Saint
Louis off the map. How fuck off Kansas Cities while that whole steak can
just go. Yeah you didn't make that a big lake. That'd be great,
just a big center, like a big old pe hole and then just
flood Saint Louis. Make a lake. It's big lake Lake Missouri. The
arch is underneath and you can kind of got the arch is actually just poking
out of the top and you can jump off and sit on the top of
the arch. Yeah, kind of kick your legs and then you drop into
the like a big sand bar. Yeah. Yeah, it's the like the
sickest hang spottle like Lake Missouri. I'm down with that. Yeah, I
think so too. You would have a current too, would be so big
we could probably get rid of the most of the Pacific Northwest. I would
keep set. We can keep one of them because they're they're very similar.
So like Seattle, Portland, Oh take Seattle, keep Seattle. Fuck Portland.
Portland can go to welland's got a great you know, food and beer
scene, so do Seattle. Yeah, it's the same. It's the same,
the same Seattle on the Bay though, and you have Vashon. Let's
uh, maybe they can combine. How Also, Seattle isn't Seattle like right
next to Vancouver. Uh, it's close. Yeah, it's making a super
city, just making a mega city within w Yeah, we're gonna take Vancouver,
obvious. Yes, all right, we get rid of Portland, we
conquer Vancouver. Yeah, and then we make super Seattle. Yeah, and
we'd bring back the Sonics. Let's get rid of Shreveport, Louisiana. That's
not even big enough to warrant. It doesn't matter. I want it gone.
All right, we're making calls. That's my call. Next one Gainesville
later, No pass College Park, Yeah, no streport. This just becomes
an episode of people that have wronged us. The entire city of Shreveport is
one. Uh anyway, Yeah, So a group of power players in Pennsylvania
decide to buy the reservoir and reservoir there's a war, thereser war. So
yeah, a group of Pittsburgh speculators purchased the abandoned reservoir and converted it into
a private resort lake for their wealthy associates. SI a kind of frat like.
Well, they made like a little Lake Tahoe kind of. Yeah.
Many were connected through business and social links to Carnegie Steele, and in eighteen
seventy nine they created the South Fork Fishing Club. Amongst its members included Andrew
Carney Andrew Mellon, who I'm sure you guys know why those two are in
order, but for those that don't, he's the former US Secretary of Treasury,
a huge banker and an industrialist. And Henry Clay Frick who helped form
US Steel, the reading company, and was a chairman of Carnegie Steel as
well. So these are big wigs, big shots. Well also Carnegie Mellon
yea carnegi Yeah what you never heard of? It? Never heard of?
It? Pretty pretty important. One. Where is it, um, Pittsburgh?
I think or it's in Pennsylvania. I think it is. It is
Pittsburgh. It would I would imagine being Pittsburgh. Yeah, okay. For
some reason, I keep thinking it's in New York. Now Carnegie Mellon,
Well, you know, it makes sense a little bit, Carnegie Hall,
stuff like that. But I believe Carnegie Melton is in Pittsburgh. It is,
it is for sure. Um. The club was designed to give the
most powerful men in Pennsylvania a quiet retreat, a place to enjoy the magnificent
wealth they had accumulated ban horse, bang Horse amongst the pines to enjoy the
wealth. They really smokes guards. That's it in bang Horse amongst the Pines.
I think I don't think they were banging horse, dude. I think
they were just like, how can we aggregate more wealth? That? Yeah,
business was a sport to them. Yeah, that's It's not even about
their advice. It's not money, it's points. Those are points, like
I just need more points. Isn't Carnegie technically the richest person of all time?
Uh? He's up there, man. It would be Octavian Carnegie,
I believe is the richest American of all Okay, and that state is cheating
though kind of, but I mean like Octavian also, it wasn't like really
like a hood of state. He was like the emperor like he that's literally
ahead of state. But like a better Roman example would be crass Us or
crash Us or whatever you say. That guy, that guy who was the
richest dude in Roman history. And they poured like a Parthians killed him by
pouring gold down his throat. The African king had should done of gold.
Yeah, yeah, he devalued all the golden He just tossed it out and
needed Yeah, but as I had a state, I don't. I just
don't know that I want to count heads of state because that would mean but
King Vladimir Putin is like the richest guy in the world right now, right,
but like a king. I think a non democratically elected head of state
counts still like someone that's just a king. But your bank is the treasury
if you're if you're checking account as your country's treasury. Yeah, you just
own a country. I don't know either way. So Carnegie, I mean,
I don't even know if it would be Carnegie, though I think it
is Carnegie, see the Carnegie Rockefeller of all time, even for Americans for
sure, for a single person. But do you think it's more than the
Saudi family now, No, it might be close. Anyway. We can
get into that later. That's probably another episode. NBS is just rolling in
it right now. Yeah. Yeah, So they bought this reservoir to you
know, as Rob said, bang horse and the pines or you know,
just aggregate their wealth whatever. They had to make some changes to the reservoir
for the Ritzy Fishing resort to be exactly how they needed it to be.
Development included lowering the dam to make it stop wide enough to hold a road
and putting a fish screen in the spillway. Workers lowered the dam, which
I don't want an eye sore. Bring that down just a little, just
just three feet. They brought it down from seventy the dam, but it's
still above water level. Actually, uh rod might be right about this,
because they made it was seventy two feet. They made it sixty nine feet
tall. They wait, right, they were they knew what they were doing.
Nice. Even worse, someone tells you who they are. Believe them.
That's the dumbest shit. I hate that, right, because people say
that, But then it's that the person's not actually telling them anything. They're
just interpreting it. And they're being like like they interpret what someone does or
says how they want to interpret it, and they're like, they just told
me who they are. Yeah, No GP Congressman has ever gotten up.
I'm sure maybe one or two has it and been like I'm a Nazi.
It's like yeah in that case, sure, like, but it's never that
right, yeah, um or the other way like ieted it. Yeah,
even worse. A system of relief pipes and valves a feature of the original
dam, which had been previously sold off for scrap, was not replaced by
the fishing clubs, so the club had no way of lowering the water level
in the lake in case of an emergency. That lake, Lake Conoma,
was four hundred and fifty feet in elevation above the town of Johnstown. The
lake was about two miles long, one mile wide, and sixty feet deep
near the dam, so they only had a gap of about nine feet with
that. Damn all God for the water in eighteen eighty nine, a combination
of nature's will, industrial modification, and the decision of these who benefited from
that will you fucking atheist? Sure will God's planned? Yeah, you fuck.
We control the weather though, well now because we control the weather,
always have. It's funny that you think you have power. M I'll be
writing, Hollywood. Yeah, you're like a fucking janitor at Universal celebrating a
big opening. You're gonna knock a dude that cleans other people's messes in a
happy place, especially the Blue Man Group. Imagine that every night to clean
up marshmallows and damn it, yeah you get us a new room. It's
just shot. You're just shot. Backing until fun. Just do this over
a giant great, can we have a tarp please? Oh my god,
I mean I feel bad for any stadium cleaner, Oh dude, like cleaning
up after like a baseball game, especially because that's the that's the messiest foods.
Oh no, some of the baseball stadiums the floor just drops out.
I do that because that'd be smart. The trash just goes into a giant
shoot down to the core of the earth. Yeah, that would be smart.
It just floats there. They should do that, and then it'd be
a funny terrorist attack to flip the shoot in the middle of the game.
And yeah, China's digging a hole right now to the center of the earth.
They are digging a deep oah. You know why they're trying to get
to us, trying to get to Vegas. Yeah, they'll never. We'll
never, we never. We never suspect him to come that way. It's
Ocean's fourteen. It's Danny Ocean over there trying to get into the Balaccio from
China. Da dude, it's a long game. He's a smart fella.
You know, A couple of countries this is in the side, A couple
of countries have. You don't have to announce that it's in the side,
but I want to dive in on it for a second. A lot of
countries have started like we're gonna just keep digging. Russia did one, but
stopped. They always stopped. Japan's doing one where I feel like they should.
They don't have enough room where Russia was doing it in like Siberia,
that's the perfect pace to it. China, I assume, is doing it
where wagers used to live or something, or where they currently using them use
them. Yes, it's just the weaker hole. Actually, it's where they
feel like you can't say that. What else? Yeah, but uh yeah,
like Japan, like they don't have the realist No, no, no,
they're they're a precision. Uh, there're a precision people. It's a
pencil size. It's just like the size of a quarter. Yeah. And
then one guy just goes over the hole and looks at He's like, further,
where would our hole be? I guess our whole would be Saint Louis.
We've already discussed this. It's a lake, it's a fucking hole.
But I guess it would just be New Mexico. We've already ain't done enough
tests there. That's where we did the bomb. It might as well,
well that's white sands, right yeah. So yeah, by the way,
boys, we're gonna go see Oppenheimer together, right, we should live watching
bring a fucking smartphone in on Instagram, Yo, yo, just doing night
Yeah right up front podcast. Look, Oh my god, you're a great
way to get a chart up. What for the back Yeah, drop it.
You kicked out of Almo Drafthouse in five minutes, all right, So
yeah, all that shit that was going on not great conditions for a city
that already floods right on a May twenty eight, just like Houston. By
the way, yes it is. They literally are covering every ounce of soil
that absorbs water in Houston. Yeah. When you when you remove soil and
cover it up, there's nowhere for the water to go. And that's why
Harvey was about. What is a concrete jungle where dreams are made of?
That's New York. Yeah, Houston's a concrete swamp where where dreams can't escape.
Yeah, it's like a black hole. Yeah, it's like a DreamCatcher.
It's like a DreamCatcher. Dome is just over it, but it doesn't
protect you from bad dreams. No stops you're good dreams from escaping. Houston's
rad though. I like Houston, actually not really. It's really spread out,
great food, seems great, It's fine as same as it is here.
I'd rather go to Dallas ten out ten times. That fits. You
have a Dallas face, you do, You're very Dallas, I take I
take that as a comment. By the way, the women in Dallas aren't
looking for wealth, They're looking for generational wealth. Ye, right, lawyer
is not cool. Founding partner. Yeah, but they're not asking what you're
doing. They're asking what your dad does. Right. Well, I'm not
a lawyer. I'm very obviously not a lawyer. But they definitely know what
you are mine. I'm your lawyer. Yeah, you you signed all the
paperwork. That's yeah, if I need to, that's what a lawyer is.
Sure, it's a lot of it. I don't have an agent.
Normally it's writing the papers that are signed. Now the lawyers gotta go through.
We got across the t's dot the eyes. Yeah, so rob's mine.
I don't have an agent. Well, you're like, uh, Lamar
Jackson, your buddy's just doing the legal work for you you never want that.
It's where it's I only get ten percent of this podcast. Yeah,
no, that's an agent's fee. Is you get ten percent, and I'm
I'm a rob's consultant, So you guys get the ninety It makes sense into
there. Weaseled interesting choice really went PG on that. On twenty eight,
eighteen eighty nine, a low pressure area formed over Nebraska in Kansas. By
the time this weather pattern reached western Pennsylvania two days later, it had developed
into what would be termed the heaviest rainfall event that had ever been recorded in
the Midwest. It is fucking like it was last night, just fucking dumb.
You gotta hills. I was crazy. I was so pissed off.
I was sitting on my back porch. I bought a cigar and I was
gonna drink some beer and smoke a cigar and write this Patreon episode. You
could have still done that. No, it was fucking horizontal rain like it
was like was getting blasted. What it's raining sideways? Kind Yeah, it
was. It was really windy. I was getting fucking I had to go
inside, put out a cigar and go inside. You should just smoked inside.
It just seems like you need to be I know my pitch wife wouldn't
let me. And honey, if you're listening to this, which you're not,
I meant every word of that. With the amount of the smoke in
your baby's face, I want to make them stronger. Actually, cigars raised
a saucerone for a short term period. Let him chew on it. What
the babies, Yeah, a fin chew on it. Yeah, he's teething
right, uh not yet, but I mean you could suck on it instead
of a binky. Yeah, you know what I mean. It's an American
pacifier right there, my friend. I do feel embarrassed whenever I talk to
other kids or other parents with kids my age, and they're all talking about
how, you know, these are like alpha parents, Like I don't hang
out with beta cuck Well you can't. And anyway, they all talk about
how they're like, man, a boy two year olds got the thickest pubes.
We he sucks on like five cigars a day. Look at my hippie
wife, and I'm like, why this is Like I can't brag about Rory
orphans pubes, both of whom should have a bush already. Oh come,
Rory can't filet an entire steak yet, like or an entire cow yet?
How come you can't break it down? It sucks. I know you're the
game you hunt, sure whatever. Like I'm trying to, I'm trying to
give him cigars and Scotch and yeah raw venison and my wife will own only
let him in jest salmon and rose. He's gonna end up like Jake smoking
a fucking vape. Yeah, he's gonna having a podcast. Yeah wait,
just there's still time. I think I just need to vent on this show
to be honest about how my wife gives our kids way too much salmon and
rose. Well, at least the mercurial, the mercury poison is gonna drive
him nuts. Yeah, I don't know. He may derive strength through his
insanity. No, that's just gonna make him an artist. He's gonna be
a creative. Now, that's what you want. You want a creative kid.
Not really not, No, it's just disgusting. I'm ashamed to myself
for being even mildly creative. Yeah well well not with this podcast. Yeah,
well I know that. That's why the podcast is really kind of correcting
course nature wise, right, Like I could be writing or do anything.
But instead I'm just drinking and farting into a microphone. And that's you know
better, Well, that's entertainment, a showbiz baby. Hey. With the
amount of rain overnight, small creeks became roaring torrents, ripping out trees and
debris. Telegraph lines were down, and rail lines were washed away. Before
daybreak, the Konama River that ran through Johnstown was already about to overwhelm its
banks, but even worse. Water levels at the South Fork Dam began to
quickly rise. On May thirty. First, Elias Unger, who managed the
South Fork Fishing Club, looked outside and began to worry about the rising waters.
He just looked at us. Yeah, yeah, that's prosing a lot
of water on that crack. And he's not Maine, I know, but
I just I can't. I can't do He ins her voice, can't do
it. Hean's I get out here, yo? Uh yeah. The rivers
come coming up. Yeah, yep, that's right, starting to come in
the backyard of Greek. He supervised the group. He supervised a group of
Italian laborers as they frantically dug a new spillway and tried to unclog the existing
one. The expendable ones smart smart, yes, uh like it damn's gonna
break. Get the Guineas, get him in here. At the Guineas with
shovels now. Uh, they should still be expendable. I agree, Like,
whenever we have issues in this country, send in the Italians. Yeah,
the mafia should just be like I don't know, I feel like the
Italians never really you know, the Irish built the fucking railroads and that that
the horrible. Oh you're saying Italians have no work ethic. Yeah, they're
lazy people. They have to turn to crush to turn a dollar. Yeah
they can't. They can't make an honest buck. Italy wasn't sending their best,
so did they have, I mean, any anything good? I don't
think you look at that country over there, so beautiful place, terrible people.
I've heard that for like I've never been, but I've heard as far
as going to Europe goes like Italy is like incredible to go to, but
it is much they've given up. It's much dirtier and grimier than any like
a greaser or anything. Like Greece is the same way. All these ancient
but in our first world country and it's like way they people have basically told
me, like, it's way grimier and run more run down than a first
world any other first world country they've been too. Yeah, I would say
Greece is a lot dirtier and uh grease is I wouldn't classify Greece as the
first World. Have you been to Grease I have? Anywhere you go to
there's dicks everywhere, like widers, Like you go into the grocery store,
whatever, it's just a dick letter there's like cock everywhere. See, but
that's what amerit. That's what's gonna happen with America too. Eventually we've just
been prude about cock like we got we only got cool about titties like in
the last forty years. We are actually a very messy, dirty country compared
to a lot of like Central a Ropean ones. Oh my god, if
you go to like Munich, you just walk around, there's not trash anywhere.
Are you trying to hold yourself up to Germany? You don't want to
be Germany though it's still gloomy in Switzerland, there's a German Denmark, Okay,
Like Copenhagen's really nice and clean. Yeah, but I mean there's a
lot of dirty, dirty European countries, oh totally. And there's a lot
of you know, clean spots here in this kind tree as well. I'm
not saying we're the cleanest. I'm just saying Italy in particular, like going
there, it's like, I just it feels like people almost described like Mexico
without the bad stuff in Mexican. I've never been, but I imagine Salt
Lake City is like immaculate. Yeah, you would think, so it's got
to be clean. I do need to know the spillway that they were trying
to dig out. While they were trying to dig the new spillway, the
original spillway was clogged because the fish trap got sucked into it. Yeah,
of course. Yeah, dude. Flash flooding is fucking terrifying like this.
That's the only natural disaster here in Central Texas. We don't get tornadoes,
earthquakes, any of that shit. Hurricane inland for a hurricane, flash floods
fucking all the time. So yeah, I'm fine with it. I love
them. The third floor. Every fucking year, there's not drive into the
water, that's but that's every time you'll see three or four cars try to
make it. They're all locals, like they grew up with it. It's
it's like, so I grew up in the locals might be the worst drivers
here and like Toyota Corolla, they're fucking morons. But that would be like,
honestly, if like I'm from the Midwest, right, it would be
like if a tornado was coming, like confirmed motherfucking coming, and you were
like, I gotta get up higher, I gotta get on the roof.
We need a better view because we're gonna be storm chasing because I can't be
that's the eventual spinoff. I don't want to like, I don't care about
softcore history. I want to chase storms. Uh. Storm Chasing is the
other podcast content that I would do for sure, Like I would start,
like if we wanted to go fully independent and supplement softcore history, I would
do it with storm Chase. I just want to live out the plot to
Twister Dude, so I can again. I guess we would just go to
Florida and you'd go to Missouri and we'd do hurricane season. You just get
tornadoes. You can do tornadoes in Texas too. Yeah, we gotta figure
out if we can nuke the hurricane. Yeah, get our hands on a
nuke. See if that works. We're like a giant fan. We just
if we crash, if we use AI to kazack stands economy, we can
probably get a nuke. Yeah they have a nuke. Yeah, why does
because they were former Soviet state. All those motherfuckers haven't Oh yeah, all
those Soviet countries. I just watched war Dogs again yesterday, and so there's
just arsenals. Yeah, there's giant arsenals. There are a lot of nuclear
weapons in the hands of countries you really don't want to have. They're just
sitting in a warehouse though. Yeah, although a lot of them are allegedly
like don't really even work as a nuke anymore, But they still can be
like a dirty bomb, and I mean all bad anyway, tactical dirty nuke.
Sure, I guess, yeah, any I guess any nuke is tactical
in a way, right, Like what is the definition of tactical for more
like a battlefield nuke. You can use it to like nuke out troops.
Yeah, you're not nuke and outs like cities or civilization. Tactical nuke is
like one used in the field. It's small. I think it's smaller and
using the field. Yeah, okay, So like U could technically if they
so, say, if Ukraine's counter offensive began tomorrow and there was a breakthrough
and Putin was just fucking crazy enough to do it and needed to stop that
breakthrough, plug a hole in his line, he could nuke it. Yeah,
which, by the way, you know who really wanted to do that.
General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War was begging, screaming at Truman to
nuke the border between North Korea and China so the Chinese couldn't send soldiers over.
Well, listen, he just wanted to radiate the work. Yeah,
he just wanted to radiate the whole border. That's losing. That's winning a
war to lose the rest of everything else. Yea. And also, if
there's a man with a quick trigger finger with nukes, it's Truman. No,
no, actually not at all. Well, he's the only person to
ever do it. Kind of twice, he kind of like he knew the
bomb exists, he'd be doubled up all of humanity. Oh my god,
let's just do it. Let's just go see hop and high. Yeah,
yeah, you talk about new we can talk about Oppenheimer. We might just
do an Oppenheimer review bonus episode, or might as well just do an entire
episode on Oppenheimer. We'll figure it out. Anyway. Back to your Italians,
Yeah, anyway, So, yeah, what we're gonna do is we're
gonna send in the Italians with a nuke. Yeah, they have to detonate,
but they have to stay there manually. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
that guy. Then a start a bunch of fucking Vinnys with ballpinhammers. It's
like, hey oo hey, bo what's it gonna go? Hey a bang
a bonga boom, We're gonna blow it up. Yeah, so they alias
Unger quickly realizes these Italians are not getting the job done. This thing's gonna
be. There are lazy people, I'm telling you, Irish, German,
Chinese, Mexican, all better workers. Yeah, the Irish would have fixed
this. We would have. No, you wouldn't know, Yes, we
would have. We would have. We wouldn't. We wouldn't have done the
job right. He would have just died more and cried about it later.
Well, yes, who would have cried about later? That's that's how who
we are We're are a good storytelling people kind of, but they're sad stories.
I'm saying. We would have damed it up with our own corpses.
Yeah, yeah, you would have just jammed the other fucking yeah, but
you deal with cuddies in there. But the water, the Italian corpses can't
damn it up because the grease the water rolls off into it. And they
would also just explain it in a theoretical situation that they would never do.
Ye right, Yeah, So Eliza Unger sends John Park, an engineer for
the South Fork Club, to deliver a warning to the people below the damn,
including Johnstown. Park rode on horseback to a telegraph office in the nearby
town of South Fork send warnings to Johnstown, explaining dangers. Unfortunately, Park
the water coming no way. He was faster than it. Well, it
hadn't broken yet, but damn hadn't mere ship. Unfortunately, Park did not
personally take a warning message to the telegraph tower. He sent a man instead
in his place, and uh, yeah, that was never passed the authorities
in Johnstown because there had been many false alarms in the past and everyone's like,
nah, it's not it'll be fine. There was a boy who cried,
yeah, blood all efforts to save the damn or abandon At around one
thirty PM, fearing that their efforts were futile and the dam was at risk
of imminent collapse, under or Under ordered all of the men to fall back
to high ground on both sides of the dam, where they just basically sat
back and watched it all go down to fucking you. Nothing else you can
do now, stay woke. There's plenty of the cities or towns in this
country that were flooded to create man made lakes Oka, Missouri Lake. That's
how Saint Louis was the lake in Georgia. Yeah. Yeah, the people
keep getting your knees and shit. Yeah, dude, it's so crazy to
me that like, forget that that stuff makes sense, because that's fucked up.
It's crazy to me is how many people drown each year because like a
piece of like a lake plant catches their ankle, like that chick from Glee
Naya rivera. Yeah, and their little babies on the boat. Yeah wait,
what caught her ankle? Like, oh, like seaweed or something.
Basically, Yeah, well, there's a massive seaweed issue going on right now
it's just showing up on shores. Yeah, but it's just the ocean taking
a up on the beach. Yeah, that's everything very nasty. So like
I don't want to go to that beach anymore. Well, why would you.
The ocean just took a dump on it. I know. Back to
my original point though, maybe this is the fishing society people the seat no,
no, no, the fucking club right, oh yes, yeah there.
Maybe it was a bad investment and they're like, you know what,
we're gonna collect on some insurance money. Flood this bitch. I don't think
that's out. That would be funny if they were like but it was like
a long game, like a long con, and they were like, yeah,
yeah, we can lower the damn no problem, should be fine,
and want to build a road, will make a big, smooth road much
lower than the damn currently is. Yeah, cars and other stuff, Well,
we're all right over it. They're playing for d chess. Yeah,
fishermen talk about talking about railroads. Yea, yeah, fishermen are known to
do that. They're not fishermen, though, they're like just their industrialists,
high powered individuals that just want a place to go on the weekend. Well,
while this damn is about to breach, Johnstown is already flooding because of
the fucking storm. The situation worse though, just the waterways are already there.
Fucked. Yeah. So the water rose is high as ten feet in
the streets, trapping some people in their homes. Finally, sometime between two
fifty and two fifty five PM, the South Fork Dam breached. A lightar
analysis of the Connama Lake basin reveals that it contained fourteen point fourteen point five
five million cubic meters or three point eight four three billion gallons of water at
the moment the dam collapse. That's I know, that's a lot, but
that number is like meaningless to me. I will get to what it means
incause it is insane. You need to tell me, give us the wave
they created. Yeah, you need to tell me something dumb, like it
could feel five rose bowls. Just something where I'm like, whoa, I'm
about to I'm about to explain all of how bad this is. The rest
of this is going to be about the flood itself. Did it become a
giant aquarium of doom? Yeah? If you like if instead of fish,
you like corpses, Really an aquarium. By the way, this reminds me
of this is speaking of Texas and flash flogs. Always says you read about
this every year. It's like people, it's happening like San Marcus a couple
of years ago. People just lived on the river. Like I mean,
like they had a house on the river and like their house gets swept away.
Like if you want to just watch wild videos, just look up like
flash flood houses, dude, But like the ship, like the Memorial Day
weekend flood in like twenty fifteen where it was just like two story homes floating
down the fucking river. Yeah, like it was insane fucking wild. It
seems like an easy way to move. Yeah, relocate. I will say,
if there's one body of water you should not live on, it's a
fucking river. Don't live next to a river, live high up, live
on a bluff if you're going to yeah, right, yeah, or just
live on a float like Huck Finn. So that three point eight billion gallons
of water, it took only an hour for it to empty from the lake
after the damn collapse. That's how fast it was moving. Okay, it
seems no, it's so fast to displace that much water. The first twn
to be hit by the flood was South Fork. The town was on high
ground, and most of the people escaped by running up nearby hills where they
saw the damn spillover. Between twenty and thirty houses were destroyed instantly or washed
away, and four people were killed. Continuing on its pretty good, honestly,
it's not bad. That's not bad. No, it gets we're talking
about this place and four people. Bad. No, no, no,
no. This is what this is like, little baby flood right now st
it's stopping, it's grinding, it's leveling up at each town it stops up
before it hits Johnstown. Continuing on its way down stream to John's Sound,
fourteen miles west, the water picked up to breeze such as trees, houses
and animals. At the contumn of viaduct to seventy eight foot high railroad bridge,
the flood was momentarily stemmed when de breed jammed against the stone bridge's arch,
but within seven minutes the viaduct collapsed, allowing the flood to resume its
course. However, owing to the delay at the stone arch, the floodwaters
gained an even more powerful urge, so it actually just got really strong right
behind the thing, resulting in a stronger, more abrupt wave of water hitting
places downstream than otherwise would have happened. The small town of Mineral Point,
one mile below the viaduct, was the first populated place to be hit with
the renewed force. About thirty families lived on the village's single street. After
the flood, there were no structures, there was no top soil, there
was no subsoil left. The only thing left of that place was the bedrockets
sat on it. Everything. So it's like if you're like waxing your leg
hair and you just rip it to the bone. Yeah, that's exactly what
happened. It's it's like they got water nuked. Yeah yeah, it's there's
nothing left. It's just rocked. Oh hold on, they got powerwashed.
They fucking got It's like taking a powerwasher to your legs, like just right
to the right, down to the hot white bone. So these are small
towns that it was hitting. So the death toll here was only about sixteen
people. But so far, I'm not gonna lie the body count. It's
not doing it for me. It's all saving up for Johnstound, all right,
so it better fucking delivered. Jake, Just you're swear to God if
I don't hear about a thousand dead toddlers Italians. If you it's Italian toddlers.
You were wondering about the equivalent, like the comparative force of the flood.
This is the part way where I tell you that in two thousand and
nine, studies showed that by this point the flood was as wide as the
Mississippi River and three times more powerful than Niagara Falls. Good lord, Yeah,
that still doesn't really that does it for me? Have you been to
the Mississippi River. It's humongous, It's fucking I guess I've crowded. It's
narrowest, it's really fucking wide. At it's it's like in Saint Louis.
I mean, it's fucking huge. Cool, that's a nuke. Yeah,
they just I need a brink Us to kind of show me a sports sign
to this. What it's like forty Ryan Howard home Rand, What do you
imagine being hit by twelve Ray Lewis's No, it's it's seven hundred and fifty
million intomic on Seu's okay, okay, but specifically stomping on your crotch.
Yeah, while you're laying on the ground. Help. Yeah, yes to
never forget. Kid didn't have a future and he knew it. Did Sue
fuck up, Marcus Vic. No, Marcus Vic just fucking curbs people.
Oh okay, okay, I thought because Sue was notorious for stomic quarterbacks,
including Blaine Gabbert, So I didn't know if I respect that thought in Dominican
Sue, I respect it more from a d tackle than a fucking quarterback.
I'll say that quarterbacks stepping on people, I know, that's like Sidney Crosby
cheap shotting someone and then he just goes and hides behind his fucking goons.
The village of East Conama was the next populated area to fall victim to the
flood. One witness on high ground near the town described the water as almost
obscure, as almost completely obscured by debris, resembling a huge hill rolling over
and over and over again. So this thing is swept up so much shit.
Yeah, that's that's one thing that they talk about in both of the
major tsunamis in the last twenty years is that like, yeah, you drown
or whatever, but you're also getting like stabbed a thousand times by fucking sharp
wood and metal and all this shit sounds like you have something to kind of
just kind of surf on if you if you can mount on the ball,
you do it right, Yeah, tree comes your way, Just kind of
hang on to a branch or like people up. The worst stories are like
someone's like running away or something, and then like they don't even get hit
by the wave. They get like smashed into a wall by a car that
the wave is throwing at them, like it's just or a train in this
case, Oh all right, perfect, So from his idle locomotive in the
town's rail yard. The engine, unstoppable force. You're the immovable object.
Quite often they're like they come to a head. You don't know who's gonna
win. What's the immovable object? Yeah, just me? Yeah, pre's
a train you're gonna win. I mean talking about it. Ain't no,
ain't no train took me yet, that's true. Rob has never once been
hit by a train that was floating down a busted damn Yeah, ever once
happened. Never loss, that's right. I bet you guys. I'll never
be hit by a train. That's that'd be very funny. If dude,
you know, it would be really funny if, like, at that moment
a train just burst through the we put on your gravestone. He said he
would never get hit by a train. He was wrong one. Well,
no, actually just right, Pride cometh before the fall. Pride cometh before
the train. But yeah, so this guy's sitting in fucking this guy's sitting
in his train. He starts feeling the rumbling approach it threw. He threw
his locomotive into reverse, and he raced backward towards East Kanama, the whistle
blowing constantly to warn people. His warning actually saved people who reached high ground.
But when the flood hit, it picked up is still moving locomotive off
the tracks and floated it. A He actually survived, but at least fifty
people died on the train, including about twenty five passengers stranded on trains in
the village. So how the fuck did he survive? He's Bruce Willis.
I don't know. I don't know how he survived. But there there were
trains that were moving at full speed that just got fucking worked right in the
middle of the flood. Yeah, so there are multiple trains in the flood.
Fifty seven minutes after the damn collapse, the flood hit Johnstown and all
hell broke loose. Residents were caught by surprise as the wall of water and
debris board Now I'm traveling at speeds of forty miles per hour and reaching a
height of sixty feet. Some people, realizing the danger, tried to escape
by running towards high ground, but most were hit by the surging floodwater.
So apparently the speed of the water of Niagara Falls is like twenty five miles
an hour, so this is forty almost double, which is nuts. Many
people were crushed instantly, killed by debris. Others became caught in barbed wire
from the Oh god, that's right, did I miss that? Apparently?
Fuck my bad? So uh yeah, this thing hit uh this town's famous
barbed wire factory. This thing hit the Cambria Iron Works before it got to
Johnstown, which was surrounded by barbed wire, like hundreds of yards of barbed
So it was it was a It was a tsunami armed with fucking barbed wire.
Was tied away with a knife. It was just a fight. Just
Nick Foley with a barbed wire back w e rage in a cage the way.
Yeah like yeah, so, uh, the catch of rage in the
cage is at its the wrestlers versus the cage that sala is fighting them.
Yeah. Oh okay, I will get to this. Uh. Those who
reach adds the roofs or managed to stay afloat on pieces of floating bree waited
hours for help to arrive. At Johnstown, the stone bridge, which was
a substantial arched structure, carried the Pennsylvania Railroad across the Kanama River. The
debris carried by the flood formed a temporary damn at this bridge, result thing
in the flood searge rolling upstream back the other way along the Stony Creek River.
Eventually, gravity casts the searge to return back again, resulting in a
second wave that hit the city from a different direction. So it was so
big it got damned, just floated back up, then came back down with
more force. I like that it regrouped. It's a good breath. It's
a good beat. Yeah, yeah, real quick, before we continue,
we do have some ads. First up is policy Genius. If you plan
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up, we've got fitbod. Get twenty five percent off your subscription or try
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m E slash softcore. Look, it's summer, it's pool season, beach
season, lake season. Gotta get tight. You gotta get tight for that
for those floods. Yeah, for those floods. Man, you want to
be hot when you're getting you want to be shredded when you're getting shredded by
a flood. Yeah, exactly, because you never know. Maybe that strength,
that extra strength to the river bank. You well, just you just
run a little bit harder up that hill. Yeah, that's right, you
get to just a little higher ground. Um. Look, fit bod is
Jake and Dan more so than me. I go running and stuff, But
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Next up, we've got first Form. Look, working out isn't just
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let's go back to the show. Some people who had been washed downstream
became trapped in an inferno as the debris that it piled up against the bridge
caught fire. At least eight, yeah, at least eighty people died in
a fire in the water. The fire burned for three days. There was
so much fuel and shit. At that point, you just gotta tip your
cap the food that yeah, you think you're living, and then all of
a sudden the water erupts in flame. At that point, I wouldn't even
because, especially at that point in time, you wouldn't really know what's happening
elsewhere in the world. Like in Australia or Europe. So I would just
be like, is this the apocalypse? Probably? Is this? Maybe?
And so you sink down and you drown yourself because you don't catch on fire
like this. Yeah, And honestly, you'll just probably get crushed by a
submerged train anyway, which is a locomotive wrapped in barbed wires. Yeah,
so that's what. What was that fucking pirate punishment that you talked about?
Oh, that's this, that's this. Yeah, where they put you on
a rope and they just swing you. You under the fucking you become an
anchor and they push you down to the water and they lift you up and
you go against the boat which has a bunch of like articles, articles,
and it just cut you up. Yeah, that's this. This is that
death but with fire too. Oh. By the way, you know who
I think portrayed that death in um uh fuck black Sales? Yeah, Ray
Stevenson. I think he was the one that got dragged. Yeah, Sigrid
Patron. That fire that we just talked about burned for three days straight.
After floodwaters receded. The pilot of debris at the bridge was seen to cover
thirty acres and reached does fires forever? If you have a town that's been
on fire for like seventy years now, so like football and crab cakes,
you guys are like fires and what what else? Wahwas? So Centralia has
been on fire. I forget how long you can load it up. But
it was like an old mining town and it just caught fire and it's been
on fire. Ever, we should do it on site for that. I
don't think it's good for your health. It can't be to like breathe it
in. So think about this. It covers thirty acres in the highest point
of the trash pile is seventy feet high. That's an insane amount of debris.
It took workers three months to remove the mass of debreathe, the delay
owing in part largely to the huge quantity of barbed wire that it composed the
debris pile. They just keep like picking up pieces and be like oh fuck
yeah, like yeah because and then immediately get infected. Yeah, it actually
killed some people trying to help. I'm sure it did at that point.
Like if you're in charge, if you're whatever FEMA is back then and someone
comes up to you and you're like to give me the situation report what's going
on, and they're like, uh, sir, the water is on fire
and armed the waters Like you just gotta be like, Okay, we're not
going in. Everyone in there's on their own. We will just cordon off
the area. That just set up a perimeter. What if the National Guard
went in and just started lighting up the river? They just started stabbing it.
That's why Coligula got ahead of it. He'd sent all those guys to
stab the ocean. Yeah, I mean, honestly, at this point,
just nuke it. Actually, if you had nukes, nuke it. But
you've said why they should have just nuked it at that point they pretty much
did. They The only way they were able to clear it was they just
started blasting the area with dynamite to clear it out. Sounds about right,
That's exactly what I would do. Yeah. According to the Johnstown Area Heritage
Association, two two hundred and nine people died, almost four hundred of them
were children. Among the dead were ninety nine entire families. The seventeen million
dollars in damage equates to four point four billion in current dollars, including sixteen
hundred obliterated homes and four square miles of complete destruction to the bedrock and the
aftermath. Bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio, more than
four hundred miles away. The flood was the first major initiative for the American
Red Cross and was the deadliest non hurricane flood in American history. Um for
for for perspective or context or whatever, Hurricane Katrina. That damage was one
hundred and twenty five billion. Yeah, so not I mean that that's a
nice insurance check though for who America? The people who built that town.
Yeah, I guess if your mister Orleans came through, it was like get
that. No, no, Carnegie, Yeah, Carnegie got the insurance check
the port. Like the steelworker family who are all fucking drowned and wrapped and
trained barbed wire, like they don't get anything. They paid them off like
three dollars. They're dead. Uh. Naturally, people did want answers for
the catastrophic failure of the reservoir, so the American Social Society of Civil Engineers
appointed a committee of four prominent engineers to investigate the cause of the disaster.
William Shin became a new president of this committee in January of eighteen ninety.
He was the former partner of Andrew Carnegie. Oh. Yeah, the committee
included the dam would have failed even if it had not been lowered, and
if it even if it had been maintained with the original design specifications. But
this was pretty much challenged almost immediately. A hydraulic analysis published in twenty sixteen
confirmed that the changes made to the dam by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting
Club severely reduced its ability to withstand major storms, and that lowering the dam
by as much as three feet and failing to replace the discharge pipes at its
base cut the damn safe, the damn safe discharge capacity in half. So
it could it could have just not rained and done this like this could have
happened regardless of it rains, Okay, which is insane. So they killed
ninety nine whole families, four hundred children, two thousand people. Yeah,
because they wanted nicer bang horse between the pines. It was in their eye
line. They had to lower the day well, they needed to be able
to drive a car across the dam to kill the other side filled with horse
to bang. And again they wanted to flood this place because they wanted to
leave no evidence behind, and they wanted all insurance money. Yeah, and
stay awoke people who was not there Carnegie, No, he never is.
They're like, hey, buddy, Carnegie's like, now, remember, no
one go to bang Horse on what day was m March twenty Yeah he planned
with the storm too. Yeah. No, but uh, well, well
they have the machines. If anyone has them, it's probably him. Yeah.
Um. Yeah. The club was challenged in court, but they successfully
defended accusations accusations of fault, claiming that they only lowered the dam by one
foot and that the flood was an act of God. Individuals who sued them
all lost in court, and many went bankrupt, losing their life savings trying
to fight their case. Yep, yep, yep. This decision ultimately led
to the adoption of strict liability in the American legal system. Later on.
I like to think that actually that Andrew Carnegie was like, it was an
act of God, but then to himself was like, oh yeah, God,
that's me. It's my act. Would you rather die in this or
in the Boston molasses flood? Neither? It's impossible to say. That's a
stupid answer. The molasses flood though, you want to suffocate in this type.
This sounds faster. Actually, this might be instant. Yeah, you're
I go with Rob's answer, Yeah, because you're gonna suffocate probably in the
molass. I don't want to drown a molasses That sounds off. You don't
want to die like that Mosquito in Jurassic Park. No, you know what
I mean. I don't want to become a giant like that would be sick
to like be in the future and you're in some cockroaches like Kine they bring
back They're like, hey, let's take it the blood out of this guy.
Whatever's like the future running Earth. Yeah, you're just in there,
cased an aunt. Yeah. So basically those responsible for the strategy never even
got held liable for it. I mean, sure, yeah, Carnegie did,
uh, you know, donate a bunch of money and built a library
in Johnstown. Henry clay Frick actually donated thousands of dollars, but it pals
in the comparison to the damage costs and lives taken. But we did adopt
way stricter liability for businesses regardless of acts of God. So basically, if
you're in charge of something and it fucks up, even if it's an act
of God, You're liable now no matter what, Like you you're responsible for
it. It happens like on your property or whatever. Yeah, because if
you're if you're dealing and it's specific to certain things, so a dam would
be one of them where you're you are making a structure that impedes on the
force of nature. Yeah, that is your liability of that. So if
somebody breaks into your house and they fall and getting paled by some fence,
it's on you. Not necessarily, it's not like that. It does happen,
though it does happen. That's a really random case. Someone is on
your property and you're you're all running around, uh, playing a game where
you just like hold golf clubs up to this guy and yeah we and someone
gets struck by light, which struck by gets struck by a train or a
train. Yeah. Well, if you build your house on a railroad track,
yes, that is on you. I think a train while a train
falling out of this guy and crushing one of your house guesses and metal attracts
trains. Well, that's again that's not what this is talking about. It's
talking about like a corporation that impedes on As Dan's lawyer, I'm going to
tell you that this is exactly what that's talking about. Okay, well,
this is a fun conversation. That's great. Let me told me about the
law. Does it count if I like take a try a knife and jump
on it? But first like that, that's that's an act of gun right,
that's a that's a nice maybe accidental spare bedroom callback a knife butt challenge
was so, yeah, just shove a knife up your ass. That is
a good one. But yeah, um, that's my episode for today,
guys. Really tragic flood. I just wanted to tell you how insane it
was because I didn't know it was filled with fucking knives and caught on fire
for a while. I do appreciate that the flood was armed and then went
super sae very dangerous. It's super sane. It exploded at one point.
My favorite thing about I didn't know floods did this. They kind of dip
out for a little bit and then come back. Um, I don't all
do that. They can though I knew. I know that, like I've
I've heard of water flowing backwards before, like the Mississippi when they're the earthquake
that rocks Missouri in like eighteen twenty made the Mississippi flow backwards for a couple
of days or something like that. Do you think this is what Bruce Lee
meant when he said be a water my friend. Yeah, you may be
incredibly violent. Be on fire, carrying as many knives as you can.
That's the best way to fight. And throw trains. Yes, throw trains
as many times as you vehicles, because like I promise you, if you
throw a train, you will never lose a fight. That's true. Problem
is keeping a train on you at all times? Would you learn though I
learned I knew about this, I know you knew about it. I honestly,
I just learned that. You know, you're not as important as the
wealthy. Having a third or fourth location to bang Horizon, Yeah, they
needed a vacation town like well, they had mult They have multiple vacation towns.
This is just one of them. I know they don't is like a
fourth location. You need a change of scenery. Yeah, what's wrong with
more? Hampton's get boring? Nantucket gets boring? Yeah you always need a
new spot. Yeah, um, who's hitler? Because I have one the
fishing club. Everyone in the fishing club. Wrong Dan, the damn wrong
dam was fine untill they lowered it. M I don't know. Just because
they take away your resources doesn't mean you can't do your job. I'm gonna
say Hitler was railroads because this wouldn't have happened. Oh yeah, they would,
all right, Yeah, they would have maintained that infrastructure if it was
still a transport canal barge like a barge canal. Yeah, they would have.
People would have given a crap about if they were still floating stuff up
and down. It's the same way now people don't give a crap about railroad
bridges and stuff. Huh Yeah, isn't that weird? Have have those chickens
come home to roost yet not maintaining rail lines? Yeah? I know,
right, yeah, yeah, it keeps happening. We just keep forgetting about
the old stuff. It's funny that people like freak out over random well,
don't regulate it, right never regular They answer is deregulation because people will only
use the good tracks if you deregulate. Yeah, no, that's why I
like to will only happen, Yeah, people will only live underneath the good
people will only make good choices, right, that's right. No, yeah
see if they like, you know, regulation wouldn't have helped this, this
damn at all. Now, people just chose to live there. They knew
what was going on, they knew the risk. Yeah. Yeah, that's
it for our show, guys, Thanks so much for listening again. Checks
out at Patreonatreon dot com, slash slash coore history um. Check out our
website software history dot com for some merch dance. We're in a pretty smart
freedom torches. Check out the episode. Listen to that episode. Please like
and subscribe, believe a review five stars, and then write a review on
Apple just five stars on Spotify. That's hugely helpful. Please thank you.
Dan shared a nice review we got on his socials today. Yeah it did.
Also. Thank you MWM five three six seven from Discord for the topic.
Thanks so much, man or woman. I don't know really appreciate that.
Oh I had to shout out th K. I'm a downer though this
one. Yeah, this one was fun. I like talking about big just
talking about like the eighteen hundred nine to eleven that's cool. I mean you
talked about a flood that was funny, though slowly because it was sugar and
only like seventeen people. Dad, whatever, grow up. I want to
say shout out to Whiskey Sours for his review. I didn't read the title
of it until later because I was reading it last week or whatever. I
appreciate the title of his review, deep cut reference. Play it for the
dogs. I don't get that. We say it all the time in the
beginning of the podcast. You don't have the first year of the podcast.
You don't have to listen to it. Oh yeah, yeah the guns.
Just put it on for your dogs. Oh yeah, yeah, you know
what I mean. The only person remembers anything that gets said on this podcast.
Yeah, probably I forget most of it, but I do remember that
because it was my lines. But yeah, just put it on for your
dog. Yeah, just let it ride you leave. You don't like its
actually very go to the back catalogs, start from the beginning, and just
play it for the dog all the way through. If you think your dog
needs to hear voices while you're gone, or if you don't want people breaking
in and they think it's just a bunch of weird dudes talking about weird history.
Damn, we're talking trying to break in this house. It's three dudes.
They're just talking about the dumbest shit. Yeah, do that. But
yeah, that's it for us, guys, So thanks so much for listening.
Tell people about the Patreon and for Dan Regester and Rob Fox. I'm
Jake Goldman. You just got us off stairs.